The Conquered: Rebels Trilogy, Book 1

by

Daffyd ab Hugh





PRELUDE



THIRTY YEARS AGO



"MY LORD, what may I bring you from our Prophets?"  Sister Winn asked,

as Gul Ragat and his Cardassian friends and colleagues roared with

laughter at her impishness.



"From your Prophets?"  echoed another young Cardassian, a gul in the

Cardassian land forces.  The boy--Akkat, Sister Winn remembered--wore a

sneer that he obviously practiced before a mirror.  His voice held a

nasal quality found to a lesser extent in most Cardassians--probably a

species trait--but grating to Bajoran ears nevertheless.



"Yes, Lord Akkat," said the priestess, bowing low to the boy who was

only a little more than half her age.  "The Prophets offer peace and

hope to all, even Cardassians."



The council room was dim and cool, with harsh dark-wood chairs

surrounding a severe table.  Communications equipment, viewers, touch

pads adorned the place settings, along with a chalice of Kanar for each

man.



There were four other Cardassian lords and overlords around the table,

including Winn's own master, Gul Ragat.  They all laughed at her last

statement, and Gul Dukat, master of Terok Nor and one of the governors

of Bajor Province, probably in line to succeed Legate Migar as prefect

of all Bajor, nudged the young colonel.  "Are you going to allow a

Bajoran priestess to speak to you that way?  Offering you leftover

blessings from her gods-after the Bajorans take what they want?"



If Akkat was haughty before, he was positively livid now.  He leapt to

his feet, knocking over the heavy Cardassian-style chair.  His facial

ridges stood out stark and white... an ominous omen.



Sister Winn was used to such Cardassian outbursts, and she knew what

she had to do.  She had survived most of her adult life under

Cardassian occupation, and she was no fool.  Winn fell to her knees,

bowing until her face was pressed against the floor.  "Please, My Lord!

I meant nothing by it.  I spoke in error, and I beg your indulgence."



Akkat pushed his way around the table, teeth clenched; he even shoved

Gul Ragat out of his way in his rage--a bad move, as the gul, though

just as young, outranked him by quite a margin of social status.

"Wretched beast!  Get up off the floor and accept your correction like

a--like a Cardassian child would!"



But the priestess's own master rose, now annoyed at Akkat for pushing

him.  "Akkat!"  he shouted, deliberately ignoring the lesser soul's

title (a serious insult in Cardassia).  "Don't touch my servants!  Take

your hands away; if you want to damage property, damage your own!  I

still have use for mine."



Ignoring the warning, Akkat swung his open hand at Winn's face.  She

did not try to shield herself from the blow; she was too canny from

years of experience.  Instead, the priestess twisted her head in time

with the blow to minimize impact, then allowed herself to fall in the

same direction, exaggerating the force.  Then she covered her face with

her arm and again begged forbearance.



Gul Akkat looked uncertainly at his colleagues, aware he had just

struck a woman--a Bajoran woman, to be sure, but even so.  When Gul

Dukat himself turned an angry gaze at the young gul and said, "A

Cardassian does not lose his temper around Bajorans," Akkat slunk back

to his seat, his face flushed with embarassment.



Still stretched out on the floor, Sister Winn felt several moments of

triumph that she had finally goaded the weakest Cardassian into

humiliating himself.  She had subtly taunted him for several minutes:

nothing overt enough to truly give him cause to strike her (in which

case, the others would have ignored the incident), but sufficient

needling that he lost control at the most innocuous of statements. Then

Winn felt a twinge of her own conscience; she tried to tell herself

that it was a "strategic" maneuver, trying to make the lords and

overlords lose confidence in one of their own.  But that was a lie: it

was a petty, vindictive act and not in keeping with the teaching of the

Prophets.



She rose to her knees, bowed again to Lord Akkat, and said, "I humbly

beseech your pardon for the disrespect I have shown."  But she was not

talking to the young pup of a Cardassian; in Winn's heart, the words

were directed skyward, to those who heard even the quietest heartfelt

prayer.



The rest of the meeting proceeded routinely.  There were no secrets

discussed, and the lords took no precautions against any of the

servants, including Sister Winn, listening in.  The matters were run

of-the mill administrative reports and the issuance of standing orders

that were already available over the subspace newsmitters anyway.  It

was more a formal event, held so that four guls and the legate could

set themselves aside as the administrative (and military) leaders of

the subcontinent.



In fact, it was quite an honor that Gul Ragat was even allowed to

attend, as he excitedly told Winn during a break, walking alone in

Legate Migar's garden with only a "personal priestess" in attendance.

"Winn, you have no idea how extraordinary it is for a mere provincial

sub governor to be invited to Legate Migar's for the monthly bulletin

tea



"I know it is a very great honor for your lordship," said the

priestess.



"A great honor, indeed."  The young gul turned serious for a moment.

"I'm afraid it's too great an honor, Sister Winn."



"Oh, surely not, My Lord!"



"Relax, Winn.  We're alone now."  The boy turned an astute face to the

priestess, who felt the most absurd impulse to comfort the lad.  "I'm

not disparaging my family; my lineage is if anything even grander than

that of Legate Migar himself... and the old man knows it.  But since

when does the provincial sub governor of Shakarri and Belshakarri rate

an invitation to the bulletin-tea?"



Winn thought for a moment; the child had a point, not that she

particularly cared much about Cardassian rules of protocol.  "Perhaps

they are grooming M'Lord for a promotion?"



Gul Ragat grinned and chuckled, shaking his head.  "It's called a grant

of honors, not a promotion!  Silly girl.  But I understood what you

meant, and I confess that I've been thinking the same thought myself...

and damning myself for being an ambitious man even for thinking it."



Sister Winn said nothing.  The garden was too tight, too martial, as

were most Cardassian artifacts.  The trees were planted too close

together, like soldiers in ranks, and the paths were straight as

Cardassian roads, intersecting with each other at precisely defined

angles that one could see for many steps ahead.  Sister Winn preferred

either the soothingly planned garden of the Kai, which she had seen

only once in person but had walked often in her dreams, or the

rambling, meandering footpaths of the woods outside her native

village.



Gul Ragat stopped and sat upon a stone bench, watching the Fountain of

Discipline: the spigots fired in bursts like a weapon, launching a

cylinder of water into the air, arching over the hexagonal plaza to

land squarely in a small catch-basin on the other side.  Sister Winn

did not, of course, sit beside the gul; it would have surprised him and

made him uncomfortable... though he would not have punished her for

it.



He might also have taken the wrong idea.  One night, he had somewhat

drunkenly explored his options with Sister Winn, but she made it clear

(by "failing to understand" his advances) that she may be his servant,

but she was not his toy.  She much preferred somewhat an air of

formality, to ensure the two did not get too close; Sister Winn had no

illusions about their relationship, the conquered to the victor.



"Winn, I'm..."  The gul trailed off; Sister Winn did not prompt him--it

wasn't her place, and she hoped he wouldn't decide to confide in her

anyway.  "Winn," he said again, "I'm afraid."  "Afraid, My Lord?"



"Afraid of the added responsibility.  Afraid of what we're doing re Gul

Ragat froze in mid-sentence, looking around himself in an almost

comical paranoia.  "Sister Winn, do the Prophets truly exist?"



"I have spoken with them frequently, My Lord."  Ragat did not ask

whether they answered her when she spoke.



"Winn, I'm--afraid for the soul of Cardassia, what this occupation is

doing to us.  I know Akkat; we go way back."



He g going to tell me what a good person he is, thought the priestess

with amusement.



"Winn, Akkat is such a good man!  I know you feel hurt and humiliated

by what he did, striking you like that for no reason.  You're confused,

and you're angry--furious at us!  No, don't deny it; I know how you

Bajorans feel about this occupation.  And to tell the truth, I even

understand it.  There's no heavenly reason why Cardassians are any

better or superior to you people.  I understand you completely."



Sister Winn said nothing, not trusting her selfcontrol.  She decided it

was politic to bow her head; she also put her sleeves together and

savagely gripped one hand in the other to prevent them moving of their

own accord where they wanted to go.  Oh, Prophets of Bajor, please

forgive and take from me my violent impulse st



"But it's this damned military thing," continued the young gul, little

aware of the emotions he was stirring in the normally placid Sister

Winn.  "It warps us, makes us the sort who--who strike an old woman

because she reminds us of how uncomfortable we feel, trying to civilize

the Bajorans by force... trying to force our civilization upon the

Bajoran civilization, I should say."



Winn seized upon the phrase "old woman," successfully translating her

homicidal feelings into mere indignation that a woman in her thirties

would be called "old" by this young aristocratic snot.  She thanked the

Prophets for their gift from the mouth of Gul Ragat.



"Oh, I'm blathering.  Let's return; Legate Migar probably wants to

start the meeting again, and I don't want to be the last man back."  He

flashed her a boyish grin.  "Could give him second thoughts about my

promotion, what?"



PRESENT DAY



Kai Winn awoke in her bed, thirty years after the dream that had seemed

so strong, so real.  Am I that old, she asked herself, that I live in

ancient memory instead of the present?  Tomorrow is an important day,

and I must rest.



The Kai rolled over, and was, thank the Prophets, dreamless for the

rest of the night.



CHAPTER



CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO stood in room 77A of the All Prophets Council

chambers on Bajor, facing Kai Winn and surrounded by sixty-six vedeks

and conciliators and priests and rotaries and even an audience

circumnavigating the viewing stage above the council floor.  The crowd

mobbed in from the left, circled the viewing stage, and exited on the

opposite side, where their prayer tokens were collected.  Major Kira

Nerys stood next to the captain.  As they had arranged, Kira spoke

first.



"Most Gracious Kai," said Kira, "the Federation offers an... assignment

of Deep Space Nine on a temporary basis, to Bajoran command."



Kai Winn frowned in the virtual council chambers, smoothing her plain

frock.  She pulled at one finger, carefully framing her reply in the

most diplomatic terms possible.  Although it was Kira who had spoken,

she addressed her reply to Captain Sisko.  "If the station remains

under Federation control, Emissary, yet Shakar or some other member of

the council becomes its governor, doesn't that mean we have accepted

the authority of the Federation over Bajor?"



Damn her.  Sisko--the "Emissary of the Prophets"---was careful to keep

his poker face, but the Kai had a point.  Tricky diplomacy was required

not to offend the Bajorans.  "The United Federation of Planets most

certainly does not claim hegemony over Bajor, the councit~ or any vedek

or political leader who might assume temporary control of the

stafford."



Kai Wi~m shook her head; "more in sorrow than anger," quoted Sisko

silently to himsetfi "Emissary," she said, "if we control the station

only subject to approval of our actions by the Federation Council, then

we are nothing but puppets of the Federation."  She put her hand over

her mouth as if she had accidentally let slip an indiscretion.  Good

acting job, thought Sisko glumly.  Kai Winn never did arty thing by

accident.  "I beg your pardon .... Perhaps it would be better to say we

would be nothing but--political subsidiaries of the Federation. Rather

like a colony or a protectorate."



Sisko took a deep breath.  Winn had negotiated his back right up

against a wall: he was authorized by the Federation Council to offer

one further step... then that was it; if Kai Winn and the other vedeks

didn't accept that offer, negotiations were at an end.



"The Federation is prepared to forgo the normal review process for

turnovers of this sort in lieu of an explicit timeline of events,

culminating with a final evaluation."



"You won't be looking over our shoulders?  Emissaw, how kind of you to

make such an offer."



"No reviews until the final evaluation, Kai," added IGra, bobbing her

head rapidly~



"But does the Emissary have the diplomatic authority to make such an

offer?"



"I do," Sisko said.  "And the Federation feels that with tensions

between us and the Cardassians in abeyance for the mort lent this would

be an excellent time for such an experimenW'



"How pleasant to carry on such productive negotiations."  Kai Winn

smiled broadly.  She~ going to take it, thought Sisko.  And he was

right: "I, too, am authorized by a vote of the leading vedeks of each

party in the council to agree to the Federation offer on a temporary

basis, of course, subject to our own evaluation of the ongoing

process."



Fancy footwork on first base to confuse the pitcher, thought Sisko with

a simile.  But the extra escape clause allowing Bajor to terminate the

agreement early would not substantially alter the final proposal; the

captain was certain the Federation Council would approve.  "Then we

have agreement, Kai Winn, Members of the Council.  In nine days, you

will send up a governor to assume control of Deep Space Nine for a

period of sixty days... which may be extended indefinitely, provided

both parties agree."



The Kai's eyes flickered toward First Minister Shakar when Sisko

mentioned "governor."  An excellent choice, thought the captain.  Major

Kira's only fear had been that Winn would try to take the position

herself.  For obvious reasons having little to do with the future of

Bajor, Kira was quite pleased with the prospect of once again working

under her old Resistance commander... and current romantic interest.



Before the final ceremony could begin, they were interrupted by the a

chime of a com badge  Sisko tapped his com badge as discreetly as

possible.



"Captain," Worf said, "My apologies for interrupting.  But there is an

urgent message for you from Starfleet.  You are needed on Deep Space

Nine at once."



"This had better be good," Sisko said to Worf under his breath.  He was

not looking forward to the explanations and apologies he'd have to give

the council.



Back on the station, Kira was in no way pleased with the interruption

from Starfleet.  "Captain, couldn't whatever this message is have

waited until we finished the negotiations or at least--"



"Let's see what Starfleet wants, Major.  If it wasn't worth it, we'll

soon know," Sisko said.  As he spoke, he read down the text of the

message on the padd that had been handed to him the moment he stepped

into Ops.



"Sir, Kai Winn and the vedeks are going to be very upset.  We walked

right out on a meeting of the Council of All Prophets .... That's like

re



"Apparently a group of renegade Cardassians have invaded a star system

on the edge of the Federation," Sisko said bluntly.  "I think even Kai

Winn and the vedeks will understand the urgency of the situation."



Kira froze in mid-sentence as the implication sank through her

annoyance and humiliation and crash-landed on her comprehension

circuits.  If the Cardassians, any Cardassians, were starting a major

offensive, the Federation was in grave danger, indeed--as was Bajor,

needless to say. The Cardassians had never forgotten the embarrassment

of Shakar and his compatriots forcing them off the only planet they

never quite managed to subdue.



"How close?"  she asked.



"Not very close, Major," said Worf, hovering nearby--as usual when the

subject is war, thought Kira.  "The Cardassians have invaded the system

around Sierra-Bravo 112, the active half of the binary star system that

includes the neutron star Stirnis."



The captain shook his head.  "I was afraid of something like this;

that's why I fought like the devil against this turnover of DS9 At

least right at this moment."



"Oh?  And why is that?"  She didn't mean it to sound quite so frosty;

it was almost an autonomic reaction.



"I mean no slur against Bajor, Kira."



"I'm only concerned," he continued, "about the timing.  While Starfleet

is claiming that these Cardassians are renegades, disavowed by their

central command, there could well be more to this.  At the moment, I

think it's a terrible idea to remove the Federation presence here."



"Radiation readings," said Dax, stepping forward from her science

station, "in the vicinity of Sierra-Bravo 112 indicate a technological

civilization on the second planet from the star, but the Federation

long-range survey ship didn't pick up any subspace transmissions or

warp signatures."



"Prime Directive, Old Man?"  asked Sisko.



"Yes, Benjamin, I'm sure the Prime Directive would apply."



"Benjamin," continued Dax, "There are no enemy ships anywhere near here

and a quarter of the Klingon fleet is on standby in case anything nasty

comes out of the wormhole.  Now is as good a time as any for the

turnover--much as I hate to leave."



"Perhaps you're right," allowed Captain Sisko.  "But in any case it's

not an option: gentlemen, we have been ordered by Admiral Baang to at

least investigate SB- 112 .... Investigate, not necessarily to act upon

what we see.  That, at least, Starfleet leaves to my discretion."



KJra's blood leapt in response to the simple announcement--stop!  It's

just another mission, it's nothing!  But her pulse raced regardless.

The admiral had downplayed the potential for fighting, but Kira somehow

knew the rumor would turn out to be true, and they would have no choice

but to intervene.  And by the Prophets, I want to be on that job.  She

tr/ed to tell herself it was only to avoid tedious duty during the

turnover... or even (a dark thought) to avoid the inevitable deep,

meaningful discussion with Shakar about where they were headed--they,

as in They.



But she was too honest to deny what she knew: she had killed

Cardassians for so long--her whole adult life and much of her

youth--that she had become accustomed to blood.  She fought the dreams

every waking moment and gave in to them at night... slinking once again

through the black dark with disruptor rifle in arms, approaching the

Cardassian sentry as quiet as a meurik, and "taking him out" (such

euphemisms for perverse joy) with a k-bar knife.



Kira smiled, remembering grim and glorious days in the Shakaar

resistance cell.  "I can see where you're going to need someone like

me, Captain."  To go to battle again--against Cardassian aggression-was

surely enough to overcome her conflicted desire to be with Shakar

during his moment of triumph.  Besides, she thought, putting a pious

spin, he'll be proud of my role in a mission like this.  It would mark

the first time she went to war with Cardassian slavers on her own,

without Shakar.



Sisko stopped, turning to gaze in seeming serenity upon the assembled

senior crew, Kira in particular.  "And that is why I am disappointed to

have to leave you behind, Major."



"What?"  She blinked, not understanding.



"You are of course a very good choice for this type of job, but you are

the only person who can smooth the inevitably choppy waters of the

turnover of Deep Space Nine to the Bajoran government."



"But I--"



"Major Kira, when First Minister Shakar arrives-or whoever is sent by

the council--I cannot give him an executive officer who is a member of

Starfleet; Kai Winn would never allow it.  She's already as nervous as

a cat that this is a conspiracy to take away Bajor's independence.

There are only two people on the station she almost trusts... and one

of us, Major, has to command the Defiant."



Captain Sisko turned and ascended to his imperial roost, leaving behind

a Bajoran major with her mouth opening and closing wordlessly.  But...

I should be in charge of the Cardassian operation!  Who else could

Alas, when Kira turned for moral support to the rest of the Ops crew,

they had all returned to their ongoing task to ready the station for

the turnover.



Kira blew a breath through her clenched teeth.  "Aye, sir," she said

belatedly and angrily sat at her station.  Don't be such a whiner, she

berated herself; perhaps it's a hidden blessing from the Prophets.

Leaving Kira as executive officer of the station not only provided

stability, it would mean sixty days of face-to-face contact in a

relationship that already appeared to be drifting toward the shoals of

neglect.  She smiled, wondering what it would be like to once again

take orders from the most brilliant leader she had ever known.



CHAPTER 2



Two DAYS flickered past in the wink of an eye, but not without terrible

yet vague fore shadowings of doom in Odo's imagination.  The thought

that he would probably be kept on by the Bajorans for a week or two, to

facilitate in the turnover, before ultimately being let go, didn't calm

him; just the reverse: if he couldn't stay on Deep Space Nine with

Major Kira--and Kai Winn would never agree to any but a security

officer who was Bajoran in descent as well as in name--Odo would much

rather leave with Captain Sisko and these other people he had come to

care for; far better a strange posting with my friends.



Odo would not admit it to himself except in the darkest moments of

contemplation in his bucket, but he was frightened.  Despite the

physical appearance of a fully grown man, Odo was, in the long and

short, less than fifteen years old; insecurity seized him, just as it

had eight years earlier, when the Cardassians left and handed the

station over to the unknown quantity of "The Federation."  Odo felt as

if he were learning the basic shapes all over again: cube, tetrahedron,

pyramid, cylinder.



There was terribly much to do... so many things that could only be

taken care of by Odo himself--and others requiring the personal

attention of the captain or Dax or Worf--that departure on the Defiant

to investigate the reports of Cardassian boojums was delayed for two

days.



When at last everyone who was anyone (except for Kira) boarded the ship

and prepared to cast off, leaving the rest of the packing-up and

shipping-off to enlisted crew and sundry ensigns and jay gees Odo found

himself staring out the window of the Defiant at the cold, silent

station outside, as if it might be the last time he would ever see it

again.  As well it might, he told himself.  Now stop dithering and pull

yourself together.  They would probably be returning, not to Deep Space

Nine, but to another starbase and a detailing officer for new

assignments... unless, against all odds, the Bajorans decided they

didn't want the station after all, and they gave it back in sixty days.

(If the Federation took it back, over Bajoran wishes, Odo decided

glumly, it would cause a quadrant wide diplomatic incident.)



In the four years Odo had known the captain, he had learned to read the

man, and Sisko was, if anything, even more agitated than the constable.

Captain Sisko paced on the bridge, something he never did, and he

snarled at Dax when the lieutenant commander tried to tell him what a

great job he'd done as CO on the station.  "You're already writing my

obituary," said the captain quiet lyre not quietly enough.  He sat in

his command chair with a loud thump.



Dax took the drastic events with more equanimity, which didn't surprise

Odo in the least; in all her lifetimes, she must have been uprooted and

sent to Outer Nowhere more times than she could count.  She probably no

longer even felt nervous or lonely in new places.  Or perhaps she~ just

better at hiding her feelings, he thought.  But Dr.  Bashir sat white

faced and white-knuckled in the supernumerary jump seat; Deep Space

Nine, Odo knew, had been Bashir's very first posting after leaving

Starfleet Academy--his first and only Starfleet home.  He was as

nervous as a Ferengi on trial about what might lie ahead--not on

Sierra-Bravo, not for Deep Space Nine, but in his own life and career.

Worf and Chief O'Brien were stoical; but then, they had only recently

arrived from some Starfleet ship, and Worf would never show his

nervousness anyway.  The chief will at least bring his family along,

the constable realized.



Curiously enough, Odo decided he would even miss Quark.  Well...

perhaps a little; I'll miss the relentless games and contests--games I

always won.  But Odo sighed, realizing he was only fooling himself;

over many years and too many near-death experiences to count, he had

come to hold a grudging respect for that one particular Ferengi.  And

he suspected that Quark, who would be even more reluctant to admit it

to himself, would miss Odo every bit as much.



Commander Dax ran through the departure checklist: "Check bala st ....

Nay systems on-line and operational .... Weapons and shields within

operational capacities .... Level-three diagnostics nominal ....

Doctor?  Doctor Bashir?  Defiant bridge to Doctor Bashir."  The doctor

jumped up with a strangled noise and darted to the nearest console.

"Infirmary--I mean, sickbay diagnostics nominal; no problems

detected."



Odo listened to the pulse of departure, all the routine tasks that

junior officers struggled over, but which the senior crew now aboard

could do in their sleep.  The sounds were familiar, not quite as

comforting as reading the daily incident reports in his security

office, but better than standing and staring out the porthole.



"Dax," began the captain, "what have you found out about Sierra-Bravo

112 from the planetary database?"



"Hm?  Oh, it's a six-planet system, but only 112II is of any real

interest.  The inner planet is a burned-out hulk of nickle-iron; the

outer four are gas giants.  "112-II has a technological civilization at

least capable of broad-spectrum EM transmission .... No warp signatures

detected in the three sweeps on ultra-long-range scanners, but that was

eighty years ago.  Spectroscopic analysis indicates it's

extraordinarily rich in latinum, selenium, and trilithiumdisulphite."



Odo interrupted.  "Which cannot be easily separated into dilithium, as

I recall."



"On the nose, Constable."  Dax continued.  "There are atmospheric

traces of cyanide, so there's probably some cyanide compound in the

local life-forms."



"Doctor Bashir," queried the captain, "should we have to beam down, can

you protect the away team from the level of cyanide in the atmosphere?

And can we eat the local food?"



Odo watched the doctor poke at his console, transferring Dax's data

entry to his own station.  "Well, yes and no, sir: yes, a simple

hypospray can counter the level of poison residue on the atmospheric

dust, but no, we surely cannot eat the local food."



"Then it's com-rations all the way," said Sisko with a smile.



There was a sudden and urgent pounding on the airlock door; everybody

on the bridge jumped and stared except for the captain.  Sisko closed

his eyes and let his head fall back on his command chair.  "Who is that

rapping at my chamber door?"  He did not sound pleased that his final

departure from the station had been marred by such an unseemly

occurrence.



Worf looked back and forth, twice, between Sisko and the door; the

infernal racket started up again, sounding to Odo as if some persistent

neighbor were beating on the airlock with a battering ram.  Odo moved

to the airlock and cycled it open.



Standing before him was an aggrieved and very noisy Quark.  "Don't tell

me you simply forgot to let me in on the departure time," whined the

Ferengi.



"Forgot?  Quark, I never forget anything.  Let me assure you, the snub

was quite deliberate."



"Captain--I appeal to you in the name of... of kindly benevolence.

These people who are taking the station over are absolutely impossible.

They haven't the first idea of how a free market should work--believe

me, I know.  I've tried to open a franchise on Bajor for the past--"



"You mean," interrupted Constable Odo, interpreting for the captain,

"you've been trying to palm off your stolen merchandise, but the

Bajorans are too moral and ethical to deal in contraband."  Odo

crouched low to stare directly into Quark's eyes; he was gratified to

see the felonious Ferengi lose his train of thought.



But Quark quickly rallied.  "Not in the least, Captain Sisko.  I have

legitimate business interests in the sector you're headed toward ....

"



Odo was on a roll; Quark couldn't seem to open his mouth without

convicting himself.  "Really,



Quark?  And just how do you know where we're headed?  That information

is classified."



The Ferengi managed to look innocently surprised.  "Aren't you going to

the binary pair of the neutron star Stirnis?  I heard through the

grapevine--"



"There is no grapevine, Quark; the information was classified.  And I

suppose you're going to deny tapping into the station computers?"



"Odo!  That would be illegal."  Quark grinned, exposing a full, snaggly

set of freshly sharpened teeth.  "Captain, I just want to come along

with you.  I can't stand all this... religion."  He shuddered, glancing

back over his shoulder.



Odo stretched both hands out and gripped the sides of the airlock door,

expanding his arms into a nice imitation of a thorny thicket. "Captain,

I strongly advise against allowing this... unindicted co-conspirator to

accompany us."



Dax wormed her way past an exasperated Worf and stood next to the

constable.  "Oh, come now, Odo.  Would you rather leave this unindicted

coconspirator alone on the station to work his magic while you're gone

for at least two weeks?"



Odo said nothing at first; then the full horror of the lieutenant

commander's point became clear to him.  Quark, alone on the station,

with nothing but Bajoran religious figures to control him Quark running

amok.



"I believe Dax has you there, Constable," said the captain; he almost

sounded as though he were smirking.  "The real question is, are you

selfish enough to wish Quark on the rest of the station just so you,

personally, won't have to deal with him?"



The blow slid home like the well-aimed thrust of a Klingon d'k tahg.

"No, I... I suppose I'm not," mumbled Odo, feeling thrice a fool, three

times over.  Glumly, he retracted his thickets; after a moment spent in

a glaring contest with Quark, Odo stepped aside and allowed the Ferengi

to enter.



"Thank you," said Quark, with a shirty sort of exaggerated politeness;

he rolled his eyes as he passed the constable.  "Really, imagine trying

to hog all that latinum for yourselves."



It took a moment to sink in.  "Latinurn?  Quark, how did you know about

the latinum?  You did break into the Federation planetary database!

That's a class-two felony ....Captain, I must insist--"



"Odo, Odo, Odo," said Quark, shaking his head sadly.  "I'm shocked,

shocked that you have never heard the Ferengi legends of, ah, the Grand

Planet of Latinum, fabled in Ferengi lore.  Have you?"



"No, Quark," said the constable, curling his lip, so close, he could

almost taste the charge... and the Ferengi was in danger of slithering

away again.  "I've never heard of a "Grand Planet of Latinum," and

neither have you!  There is no such legend."



The Ferengi made a grand theatrical gesture.  "Why, every Ferengi knows

it lies in, why, right there in Sierra-Bravo 112.  When I heard where

you were going, I just knew I had to explore... for



Ferenginar--for the Grand Nagus, not for myself."



"Every Ferengi?"  demanded Odo, making himself bigger.  "So if I were

to ask, say, Nog--"



"Ah, youth!  Young Ferengi are so poorly educated these days, and I'm

afraid my ignorant nephew is even less assiduous about it than most."



Odo opened and closed his mouth, feeling as a starving solid must feel

when food is dangled, then snatched cruelly away.  But once again,

Quark had beaten the charge.  The constable snorted and turned away,

frustrated.



"All aboard," sang out Chief O'Brien; it was evidently some obscure

Federation reference, and Odo didn't catch it.  Snorting heavily, Worf

poked at the door panel with a meaty forefinger, and the airlock slid

shut.



"Are we all done now?"  inquired Captain Sisko, looking directly at the

constable.



"I, uh, don't think there will be any more interruptions," muttered

Odo, still struggling to find the flaw in Quark's ridiculous

fabrication.  Great Planet of Latinum!



"Thank you.  Cast off, Old Man; let's really wring out this beautiful

piece of machinery.  Who knows?  It may be our last time."



With a wistful-sounding "aye, aye," Dax ran the final launch checklist,

detached the Defiant from her moorings, turned a sharp 130 degrees, and

headed off toward the star system known only as Sierra-Bravo 112.  Odo

watched Quark as if the Ferengi might shoplift a warp coil.



The days crawled with exaggerated slowness for Major Kira Nerys as she

nervously awaited Shakar's arrival.  She paced the long, crowded

corridors in the habitat ring, sidestepping the hundreds of boxes and

anti gray dollies, dancing around civilian and Starfleet movers, and

occasionally studying some transitioning resident's requisition without

really seeing what she saw.  She really had too much to do herself to

waste time wandering the rest of the station; every security code and

classified program in Ops had to be either changed to Bajoran standards

or encrypted and hidden away, in case the "temporary" turnover really

did turn out to be temporary.



Secretly, in her heart, Kira suspected that was the most likely

outcome.  I guess I really don't think we're quite ready yet, she

thought, feeling strangely ambivalent where she ought to feel either

patriotic pride in Bajor's accomplishments or burning shame at the

places where they fell short.  But having sat through more than her

share of Bajoran council meetings and seen, firsthand, the astonishing

acrimony over the slightest miscommunication or dispute, she was sure

the Federation had been wise to slip in the sixty-day escape clause.



Am I just being an unpatriotic snob?  What, Bajor's not "good enough"

because we're not the wonderous, omnipotent FEDERATION?  The thought

truly bothered her, as did what it implied about her lack of confidence

in Shakar, but there it was with all its humiliating consequences: I

truly believe we're just not ready and this whole turnover is going to

be a fiasco.



What was worse, Kira was ninety percent certain that Kai Winn was

setting Shakar up to fail; and the Kai would use his so-called

"failure" as a hammer to bludgeon him out of his post as First

Minister.  "Beware, Shakar; Winn has always wanted exclusive power in

the hands of the ve~ deks," spoke Kira into a letter log she planned to

send down to Shakar before he departed for the station.



But she knew it was to no avail; if Winn offered the governorship to

Shakar, there was no way he could refuse it without appearing weak and

losing face.  That, too, might cost him his ministerial rank.  Shakar

would just have to take his chances; maybe, against all the odds, he

could succeed so well that the turnover would become permanent.



Kira finished the letter log and encrypted it using the special,

one-way key code she and Shakar used.  (It was definitely the sort of

undiplomatic missive one didn't want falling into the "wrong hands,"

especially the Council of Vedeks.) Then she sent it with a request for

receipt confirmation.  The major waited for fifteen minutes near the

console, but there was no friendly double beep; evidently, Shakar was

not available to hear it right away.



Odo's office was immaculate, of course; he had not packed up anything,

since there was still a reasonable chance that the Bajorans would keep

him on as internal security officer, or "constable."  Kira had made a

persuasive case that Odo could enforce Bajoran social-religious law as

easily as he could Federation law... or for that matter, the harsh

Cardassian legislative code of Terek Nor, though she still wasn't quite

sure he appreciated her efforts.  Still, because it was a good time to

do it--Captain Sisko would need a full legal accounting for his final

out processing report--Kira wanted to perform a complete inventory of

all cases handled, their dispositions, active and ongoing

investigations, informant lists, and profiles of "suspicious

characters," as Odo termed them (by whatever arcane methods he used to

arrive at that determination).  Odo would have done it himself, of

course; it was just the sort of nit picky thing that Odo loved and the

major detested.  But he was away on the Defiant, and the task fell to

her.



She started setting up the query criteria for the computer, similar to

an engineering diagnostic scan but for security office actions rather

than computer responses.  She yawned several times... and then blinked

her eyes, confused, feeling the warm, smooth press of Odo's desk

against her cheek.  It took Kira several seconds to realize she had

actually fallen asleep at her task, and more than an hour had passed.



Jumping up with a confused start, she stared wildly around; the

computer beeped, and Kira realized that was what had awakened her in

the first place.  "Attention Major Kira," said the smooth female voice,

"runabout from Bajor docking at



Docking Bay Four, carrying the new governor of



Deep Space Nine."



"Shakar!"  So that~ why he never acknowledged my message; he was

already en route.  Kira headed for the door but had to stop halfway and

squat onto her hams to avoid passing out.  When her blood pressure

climbed back to "awake" level, she jogged to the nearest turbolift,

which hauled her out to the habitat ring, up the pylon, and into the

docking bay.  She straightened her uniform and only belatedly realized

that she was the only person in the reception area not in dress

uniform.  When the huge airlock door rolled aside on its geared teeth,

she felt a flush of embarrassment creep up her neck to her cheeks and

nose ridges.  If only she hadn't stupidly fallen asleep, she could have

greeted the First Minister with the proper ritual.  Her cheek still

felt creased from Odo's desk.



The inner airlock and the door of the runabout rolled back

simultaneously in opposite directions, and a mob of diplomatic-looking

Bajorans shuffled out, murmuring ritualized greetings and well wishes



Then the mob parted, and a large gentteman--a vedek Kira didn't

knowmstepped up to her.  "Major?  May I present the credentials of the

new governor of Deep Space Nine, now called Emissary's Sanctuary."



The vedek stepped aside, and a small, plump and frumpy woman stepped

forward with grave dignity and a phony, ingratiating smile.  "Hello, my

child," said Kai Winn, beaming.  "May the peace of the Prophets be with

you always."



Kira forgot every word of the wonderful speech she had prepared.  She

stared in horror at her new boss for the next sixty days... or maybe

forever.  "I... !... hi, Kai."  Then she flushed even harder.  "The,

ah, station greets you, my Kai; may the peace of the Prophets be on

you. Be with you.  This is so... so--"



"Unexpected?"  suggested Kai Winn with a toothy smile.  It wasn't

exactly the word Major Kira had in mind.



CHAPTER



THIS IS a bad dream, thought Major Kira.  Any minute now, I'll wake up

andKira sat up suddenly in bed, head spinning like a gyroscopic

stabilizing unit.  She had been having a nightmare: Kai Winn fired

everybody in Deep Space Nine, even the Bajorans, and replaced them with

corpses and monsters reanimated by black magic.



The reality wasn't much different, except instead of the walking dead,

the Kai was in the process of replacing all the longtime administrative

personnel on the station with her own cadre... what Kira insisted upon

thinking of as the Kai's "toadies."  Although the top officers of Deep

Space Nine were all Starfleet (hence, leaving anyway), the women and

men who did much of the day-to-day "real" work were civilians: the

janitors, dock wallopers communications and traffic controllers, ship

inspectors, security personnel, jailers, tour guides, lawyers and

paralegals, maintenance workers, astronomers, fuel handlers, painters,

and polishers.  None of these people was actually required by Starfleet

to leave when the Federation pulled off the station, and since most of

them were Bajorans, Kira had simply assumed that Kai Winn would keep

them in their jobs.



No such luck.  The Kai arrived in the airlock with sixteen bags of

personal effects and a forty-screen list of patrons who had supported

her bid to jump from vedek to Kai.  Kira stood next to Kai Winn, still

blinking pieces of sleep out of her eyes and desperately wishing for

another coffee, and highlighted names on the list as they showed up at

the station.  The docking pylons had become huge traffic snarls, jammed

with resentful members of the newly disemployed shuffling out and down,

to be replaced by smug and fervent boosters of Kai Winn cycling up and

in.



The major's only consolation, as she broke up the third fight that

morning--a laid-off gardener with two children tried to plant a

geranium in the skull of a childless, unmarried lay pastor who had just

taken his job--was that Kai Winn was setting herself up for a

spectacular failure .... After which, with Winn disgraced, surely the

Council of Vedeks would reconsider the only other obvious candidate for

governor... First Minister Shakar.



The lay pastor's head turned out to be much harder than his attacker

anticipated; Constable Odo was away on the mission to Sierra-Bravo; Kai

Winn was far too busy to worry about minor details like assault and

battery; the holding cells were already full to overflowing; and to

tell the truth, Major Kira's sympathies lay entirely with the gardener.

There was nothing to do but scream at the attacker for several minutes

and send him on his way.



The major was just pushing the subdued family man onto the runabout,

which would take him down to Bajor and a long stint in the Office of

Labor Resource Allocation, waiting for another job opening, when the

stupidity of what Kira had been doing for the past few days hit her

square in the conscience.  She turned away, mumbling a long string of

blasphemies against the Kai through clenched teeth, and discovered

herself nose to nose with Kai Winn.



The Kai smiled ingratiatingly.  "Child, what troubles you?  Do you

worry about the justice of removing so many people, even Bajorans, from

their jobs?"



"Kai!"  Kira stared, dithering between keeping her job and keeping her

sanity; sanity won.  "Well... now that you mention it, yes.  Why are

you doing this?  What have these people ever done to deserve..."  Kira

groped for the word.  "To deserve exile?"



"Exile?  No one is being exiled, child.  They are all welcome to stay."

Kai Winn gestured expansively, evidently including the entire station.

"If these Bajorans wish to begin taking more seriously the traditions

and spiritual beliefs of our people, they may even be given new jobs

here on the Emissary's Sanctuary."



"Big of you."  Kira struggled in vain to keep the sarcasm out of her

voice.



Kai Winn shook her head sadly.  "They have made their choices, child;

those who choose to live by the secular law alone, not according to the

ancient wisdom of the Prophets, have only those rights protected by the

law: which means, my child, l can let them go whenever I decide others

should take their places."



Isn't there anyplace in the heart of a Kai for compassion?  Kira

thought, and for a moment wondered if she had spoken aloud.  But if Kai

Winn heard anything, she chose not to take offense; she merely smiled

and repeated the justification that those being "let go" were the

purely secular workers who were either not devoted enough to the

Prophets... or at least not public enough in their devotions and

rituals.



"Fine.  Just fine--my Kai."  Then I should be the first one fired, Kira

thought as she squeezed her fists, fingernails stabbing painfully into

her palms; and where the hell were YOU when we 'geculars" were fighting

Cardassia to give you back your bloody world?  Fortunately, the major

left the latter unsaid.



"No, Major Kira," said the Kai with the same smug, irritating smile,

"you are still needed.  For reasons i cannot discuss, I must retain you

in your position as executive officer of Emissaryg Sanctuary."



Kai Winn put her hand on Kira's head, murmuring a blessing; then she

walked away, already having forgotten the major's outburst... and the

very real concerns that sparked it.



She doesn't understand that the turnover is just a temporary measure,

thought Kira, amazed; does she really think it~' going to be PERMANENT?

The major's next thought was even more chilling: What if she has a plan

I don't know about?



The Federation ordered the turnover to see how well the Bajorans could

adapt to running a fullsized starbase, a "coming-of-age" test to see

how mature Bajor was after decades of Cardassian occupation.  Kira had

always told herself that after the sixty days, everything would revert

to normal.  But Kai Winn was a Very Imporant Life-Form in the

Federation recently... and if the Kai absolutely insisted on keeping

the station, would Starfleet risk an interstellar incident by insisting

on taking it back?  In fact, who was to say the Kai hadn't already

worked it out (at a level far above Captain Sisko) that Bajor would

keep the station, no matter what the agreement read?



For the first five days of Kai Winn's tenure (of either sixty days or

forever), Kira's anger and jumpiness increased exponentially.  She

followed the Kai around like a pet dakthara, taking dictated orders and

being sent to tell families that their fates were now in limbo: they

were being removed from positions they had held, quite literally, since

Deep Space Nine had been Terek Nor.  By the end of the transition

period, as the last of Kai Winn's "toadies" was ensconced in a job that

used to be considered critical but now was just patronage, Kira had

developed a burning itch to beam the Kai into empty space.  The major

had just begun to envision the infuriating old woman gasping for a

lungful of nonexistent air when she realized what a blasphemy even such

a thought was.  Kira forcibly erased all violent thoughts from her

mind; she was more religious than she generally liked to let on, even

to herself.



She sat in her normal chair up in Ops, all alone, feeling as if she

were the one who had moved to a new duty station; instead, it had been

quite literally everyone else who had abandoned her.  The patrons of

the Kai who had been placed on Ops duty rotation--every one a brother,

sister, or an ordained sub-vedek--were far too busy "administrating,"

whatever that meant, actually to stand their watches; they never showed

up, leaving Kira to do the work of four people.



It hardly mattered.  The stationwide com channel chimed, catching

Kira's attention.  The Kai's beaming visage appeared on the main

screen--a prerecorded message, Kira guessed.  "Good day, my children. 

I know how hard it must be for you to adjust to your new duties.  The

ears of Bajor have heard your heartfelt pleas .... Until this trying

turnover is complete, Bajor, in my person, hereby bars all ships'

traffic with Emissary~ Sanctuary.  For the moment, until we stand

aright again, we Bajorans must concern ourselves only with Bajor; the

outside world must wait."



"Excellent idea," muttered Kira, making sure no "ears of Bajor" were

stretched nearby.  "Who needs the sector, the quadrant, the entire

Federation when we can stick our heads in a hole instead?"  Surely we

couldn't be invaded TWICE.t but she kept the last thought silent.



"In keeping with this new focus," continued the smug smile of Bajor,

"each must concentrate him or herself on the inner soul.  There are a

number of old customs and laws from the bright days before the

Occupation that must be restored, if Bajor is to be once again Bajoran.

A complete list shall be available on the main computers and will also

be posted on bulkheads in the Promenade, in accordance with the ancient

custom."



"By All the Prophets," breathed a stunned Kira, "are we going to revive

the old laws?"  She stared at her hands, hands that had about as much

chance of becoming great sculptors as Kai Winn had of winning a Ferengi

beauty contest.



Frantic, the major poked at the panel before her, calling up the file.

It took a moment to find; she finally tried "Code of the Prophets," and

the list appeared.



It wasn't as long as she'd thought it would be... and it did not

include certain archaic provisions that she had feared--praise the

Prophets and the Kai~ mercy But as Kira read each law, most of which

she had never seen before, her mouth opened in astonishment.  "Rank?

Seniority?  Etiquette between boys and girls?  This is a military

code." When she reached the detailed passages about food preparation,

incense burning, hair length--she fingered her own too-short hair,

wondering whether the executive officer of Emissary's Sanctuary would

be forced to grow locks down to her shoulders--she sat back, more

amused than angry.  "Yeah, good luck, my Kai."



Kira met Kai Winn on the Promenade.  "Child," said the Kai, "there is

one den of iniquity that I'm sure you'll be pleased to see converted to

more, shall we say, appropriate uses?"



Kira thought for a moment, but really, the reference was clear.  "You

mean Quark's Place?"



Winn leaned close.  "It's not just that it serves liquor," she

whispered, glancing left and right conspiratorially; Kira followed suit

automatically.  "Child, you cannot be aware of what dreadful debauchery

lurks in the upper chambers."



"Oh, you mean the..."  Kira stopped; if the Kai thought she hadn't

known about the holosuites, why disabuse her?  "You mean the other Dabo

tables?"



Kai Winn shuddered, marking the sign of the Prophets upon her ample

belly.  She took Kira's arm, clumsily wrenching the major's elbow

painfully.  "You don't want to know, child; truly, thank the Prophets

you were in ignorance!  But now that the--Ferengi--will be leaving, we

must decide what to do with the space.  And we must inspect the

premises now, painful as that may be.



"Let your moral code guide you," prayed the Kai, "and walk hand in hand

with the Prophets."



Rom, who was looking after the bar while Quark himself was mercifully

away with the Defiant, instantly busied himself monkeying around with

the glassware.  His hands shook, and he clinked the glasses hard enough

to break one, leading Major Kira to the conclusion Rom was very much

aware that almost everything about Quark's was a violation of the Code.

The Ferengi didn't even glance up as Kira and the Kai entered,

clinching the case, but Kira decided to keep her mouth shut, hoping the

Kai was too preoccupied to notice.



"Rom/" shouted Kira, trying to alert him.  "Two root beers.  Kai Winn,

you have to try this drink"



The Kai declined and headed out quickly.  Kira hurried on behind the

blithely indifferent Winn as she bustled out of the erstwhile bar and

headed into the Promenade; the Kai set a straight line for the

turbolift, ignoring the swarms of the devout who parted around her like

waves before a ship.  Kai Winn enunciated a firm "Operations" to the

computer, and the lift obediently began to rise.



Dog's breakfast, that's what Chief O'Brien would have said," this whole

experiment is turning into a real dog's breakfast.  Kira should have

exulted: the station in an uproar, positions filled by incompetent

political hacks, ancient religious codes forced upon reluctant

residents... surely all this nonsense would lead to the complete

disgrace of Kai Winn and her entire faction.



The major almost smiled, but she didn't feel like smiling; instead, she

felt a great sadness that Bajor had been given a chance and was

throwing it away in a futile effort to recapture the glory days of the

Prophets instead of moving into the modern century.



"Dog's breakfast," said Kira with conviction.



"I'm sorry, my child, I don't understand."



"It's something Chief O'Brien says."  "Oh, yes.  Colorful man.  What

does it mean?"  Kira shrugged.  "Oh, I can't really say."  Not QUITE a

lie, she told herself I The turbolift hummed for Ops, carrying the Kai

to the very office once occupied by the Emissary, and before him, by

Gul Dukat, as he oversaw the enslavement of the world.



"A pig's breakfast," said Chief O'Brien, reading the scanners over

Dax's shoulder.  "A real pig's break fast."



The Trill science officer looked back at the chief.  "What exactly do

pigs eat for breakfast?"



The chief didn't answer the question, at least not literally.



"Seven Cardassian warships, Captain," he added.  "Couple of heavies,

GM-class, a cruiser, and the other four are speeder-destroyers.

Identification shows they were all reported stolen over the last two

years."



"So they may well be renegades," Sisko said, "or perhaps Cardassian

Central Command is looking for plausible deniability.  Chief, what odds

would you give us?"



"If we popped off the cloak and opened fire?  Well, we might cripple

one of the GMs in the first volley, then the other would engage us, and

the destroyers would nibble us to death."



"Wouldn't advise it?"



"No, sir.  Not if you're wanting to make it away in one piece.  And

frankly, sir, I wouldn't advise revealing our presence for any

reason... not even to send a diplomatic message for them to bug out."



The captain stroked his beard; "I don't like this," he said to Dax.  "I

don't like sitting here doing nothing."



"Then we'd better get down to the planet ourselves, Benjamin," she

replied.  Amen to that, thought O'Brien .... Then he remembered the

odds: seven Cardassian warships could mean as many as fifteen hundred

soldiers on the ground.  Odo stepped off the turbolift onto the bridge,

fresh after several hours spent in his bucket.



O'Brien watched the constable narrowly; Odo frowned and scowled,

clasped his hands behind his back, and made other fidgety signs that he

wasn't satisfied.  The chief decided information was more important

than secrecy.  "Captain, I'd like to make a full level-three scan of

the entire system."



"Chief, wait," said Jadzia Dax, "the Cardassians can detect level three

Maybe we'd better make it level two."



"That won't tell us enough, Commander."  As usual, O'Brien found

himself annoyed when he had to argue with a commissioned officer; he

always had the sneaking suspicion that he was starting several points

down already.  "Level three will show us any technology hidden on the

second planet.  We can't rely on the lack of ships."



"And the Cardassians?"  asked Sisko.



"I'm hoping they're too preoccupied with suppressing the planet to pay

that much attention to their passive sensors."



Sisko nodded absently; surprised at winning so easily, O'Brien quickly

completed the scan before the captain could change his mind.  The

systems chief stared at the viewer as the readout slowly crawled across

the screen; his mouth opened wider with every pass.



Dax, crowding the screen, said, "What are you .. . oh.  Wow."



"Well?"  demanded the constable.  "Is there any hidden technology on

the planet?"



"Well, Odo, I really can't say," said O'Brien.



"And why not?"  The changeling looked even more annoyed than usual.



The chief snorted.  "Because I can't read a sundial under a

spotlight."



Everyone on the bridge except for Dax stared at the chief.  "You're

going to have to explain that last one," said the captain.



If he g upset now, just wait until he sees the report.  "I mean, sir,

I'm not sure whether we're going to rescue the life-forms on this

planet... or vice versa," said O'Brien.



"Thank you, Chief," Odo said, "now perhaps you'd care to explain your

explanation?"



"In short, simple sentences," added Sisko, articulating each word

distinctly.



"What he means, Benjamin," Dax put in, "is that there's so much

technology on that planet-technology far beyond anything the

Cardassians have, or us either--that there's no possible way to tell if

there's anything unusual; it would be lost in the glare."



"And that, "said O'Brien in triumph, pointing at the viewer, "is what a

pig eats for breakfast."



CHAPTER



JAOZIA DAX hunched down at her console so everybody could peer over her

head at the viewer.  "Yes," she said, "I'd say this qualifies as a

porcine meal, Chief."



Sisko voiced the thought on everyone's mind... certainly on Dax's.  "I

don't think I've ever seen so much technology in one place.  And what

technology!  I can't even begin to guess what half of it does .... But

why haven't they warned away the Cardassians yet?"



Dax noticed something and moved to shift the scan frequencies, but

Bashir's elbow was in the way.  "Julian J. Bashir, do you mind?"



He jumped away from her instruments.  "J?  What does the J stand

for?"



"You don't want to know," muttered the Trill, readjusting to scan for

life-forms.  "Um... well, looks like there's life on that planet, all

right."



"How many species?"  interrupted Bashir.



"Hm."  Jadzia Dax ran a quick subroutine.



"About three million, Julian.  Mostly insects, I'd guess."



Bashir gave her a look.  "I mean how many sentient species, as if you

didn't know."



"One.  Wait, I take that back: there are actually three ....

Cardassian, Drek'la, and an unknown-presumably the natives of the

planet.  There are about a dozen Cardassians, a thousand Drek'la, and

eleven million natives."  "Drek'la?"  Sisko asked.  "Never heard of

them."  "Me neither," Dax said, "let me check the records.  Here they

are.  They're a space-living race, very small in numbers.  That

thousand of them must be a good percentage of their entire species.

They're like hermit crabs, stealing and/or recovering old spaceships

and using them as home."



"Interesting.  Are they working for the Cardassians, or did they

capture the Cardassians along with their ships?  And just eleven

million of the natives on the entire planet?"



"Yes, pretty sparse.  There are quite a few cities, but they're mostly

deserted, except Cardassians occupy two of them.  The indigenous

population is sticking to the countryside.  No subspace or radio

communications, no space presence."



"But that's it.  "The chief suddenly stood, staring at the forward

viewer; he paced right up to it, so close he was probably looking at

individual pixels.  Dax waited patiently; Chief O'Brien continued.

"Captain, that's the explanation for everything: these eleven million

creatures must be the degenerated remnants of the mighty civilization

that built all this technology.  They probably don't even know how to

use it anymore."



"I hate to say it," said Quark from across the room, "but the chief's

got a pretty good explanation."



"When did he sneak in here?"  demanded Odo, but no one answered.



"It would explain why they don't just zap the Cardassians--or Drek'la

or whoever--out of orbit," concluded Quark.



"Let's not jump to conclusions.  Dax, is there any sign of resistance?

Weapons discharge, explosions, fires, battle lines?"



Dax scanned from pole to pole, letting the planet revolve beneath the

Defiant, whose orbit was high enough, forty-two thousand kilometers,

that they were only moving at half the angular velocity of the

planetary rotation.  "Nope; nothing on this side.  The Drek'la and a

few Cardassians are filling up the cities, the natives are going about

their business in the countryside."



"As if they weren't even aware they'd been invaded," mused the captain.

"All right, Dax; throw an away team together.  Starfleet Command and I

want to know what's going on down there."



Dax stood, slipping out from the knot of players to decide who would

accompany her downstairs.  Worf obviously; O'Brien to evaluate their

technology; hm... oh, of course: Odo for infiltrations.  "You, you,

you--volunteers.  Meet me in transporter room three in ten.  Oh, Worf,

where do you keep the planetary exploration-survival gear?  And

weapons; there are enemies about."



Quark spoke up unexpectedly.  "Commander Dax, if you don't have any

objection, I'd like to be on the away team."  Quark?  QUARK?



"Well, Dax may have no objection," snarled Odo, "but I certainly do."



Quark shook his head sadly and spoke to Dax.  "I suppose he just has a

problem dealing with any authority but his own.  Especially female

authority, poor fellow.  If you choose to have me--I mean, have me

along--I don't see how it's any decision of his; after all, the captain

did put you in charge."



Dax chuckled; she knew exactly what Quark was doing.  He made the same

mistake everyone did: assuming Jadzia Dax was as young and easily

charmed as Jadzia might have been (though in truth, Dax didn't think

even the pre joined Jadzia had been all that innocent and naive a

girl). On the other hand, Dax did not have quite the same knee jerk

reaction against Ferengi capitalists as did most Starfleet officers,

who believed that the Federation had long since "transcended" such

"destructive competition."  As an alliance of traders, the Ferengi

would deal with everyone... which meant they had to learn to deal with

anyone.  Necessity had given them an uncanny ability to penetrate right

to the heart of unknown cultures and civilizations-and figure out what

they could be talked into buying.



"Thanks for volunteering, Quark; glad to have you aboard."  Odo opened

his mouth, but Dax interrupted before he could say a word.  "Get down

to the transporter and try not to kill Quark before we make planet

fall



Less than ten minutes later, everyone stood on the transporter pads

wearing backpacks with enough equipment to climb Mount Traxanaxanos on

Betazed (a task which Torias Dax had actually tried three times before

giving up in disgust).  A transporter chief waited patiently for the

order to energize.



Bashir went to each away team member in turn and hypo sprayed him in

the neck.  "There are trace particulates in the air that are

poisonous," he explained.  "This should protect you.  But you'd better

perform a complete microbioscan of anything local you want to eat or

drink; a single hypospray can't protect you from large doses."



"Hit us," said Dax, pointing at the woman; after a moment's hesitation,

the transporter chief ran her fingers down the transporter touch plate

The next thing Dax saw was the side of a mountain, appropriately

enough; they were standing on the slope, looking down into a verdant

valley dotted with small hamlets.



She turned and did a slow scan with her tricorder.  "Well, one

direction's as good as another, I suppose," said the Trill.  "Let's

head down that way."  She set out toward the nearest hamlet, setting a

brisk pace that would get them to their destination in just over half

an hour.  The Cardassians were a hundred klicks away, not moving at the

moment.



The plant life was lush, but everything had a peculiar bluish tint; Dax

scanned the vegetation carefully as she passed it: in addition to a

form of chlorophyll, the plants also contained peculiar trace elements.

"Cynanine," she reported, "and a lot of radical cyanogens."



"What does that mean?"  asked Worf.



"It means the doctor was right: please don't eat the grass.  We'll have

to pack our lunch."



"The food is poisonous?  To Cardassians and Drek'la as well?"



"Well, I'm sure the Natives enjoy the spice.  Yes, Worf, poisonous to

Cardassians and Drek'la too."



O'Brien spoke up.  "So what would they be wanting with the planet,

then?  They can't live here; they can't colonize the place."



Quark was on hands and knees; at first Dax thought he had stumbled, but

he was examining something on the ground.  "That's an excellent

question, Chief," she said.  "It's been noted and logged.  But at the

moment, I don't have a clue why."



"Well, I think I do," muttered Quark; he began to slither on the

ground, sniffing at the dirt.  "Looks like that Starfleet database--I

mean the Ferengi legends were actually right."  He continued rooting

along the soil like a worm.



"Oh, please," said Odo, rolling his eyes in disgust.  "I've half a mind

to change into a verlak bird and swallow you whole."



Quark looked up at the constable.  "Well, you're definitely right about

one thing."



"Oh?  And what's that?"



"You have half a mind."



"Gentlemen, please.  Now what did you just say, Quark?"



The Ferengi stood up, brushing off his painfully colorful knickers and

vest.  "Oh, nothing.  Never mind."



But Dax was wise to the ways of Ferengi.  She pointed her tricorder at

the dirt.  "Interesting," she exclaimed.  "The soil is saturated with

latinum drops."



Quark stared mesmerized at the ground.  "There must be... thousands of

bars, just waiting to be siphoned up .... "



Quark's nose was right; but latinum was the least of the riches: tiny

dilithium crystals were also liberally scattered through the soil, as

were eleven other rare minerals.  "The Ferengi Alliance would die for

the mining rights," remarked Dax.



"Hey, I saw it first," wailed Quark.  He dropped to his knees and

spread his arms protectively over the ground.  "I claim this dirt in

the name of Quark's Mining and Mineral Processing Facility."



Odo snorted and pointed an accusing finger, stretching it a full meter

to wag directly in the Ferengi's face.  "You have no mining and mineral

processing facility."



"I do now," responded Quark defensively.



"It belongs to the Federation, not to you and your Nagus."



"Look, I don't mean to interrupt," said Chief O'Brien, "but this planet

already has eleven million owners.  If anyone owns it, they do."



Dax smiled.  "Anyone who wants the mining rights will have to find

something the Natives want more and negotiate for it."



"That can be arranged," added Quark, still sullen at being denied his

claim.  "If necessary," he added under his breath.



"But at least," continued the Trill, "we have a pretty good idea why

the Cardassians and Drek'la are here.  And that means they're not

likely to just pack up and leave."  Dax, she imagined Benjamin saying,

if you say "this place is a gold mine," your away team is going to

mutiny.  She wrinkled her nose--even she could smell the metallic tang

of lat inurn



While everyone else mulled over the fortune they were standing on, Dax

decided to change the subject.  She recalibrated the field variables on

her tricorder and did another sweep.  "I really, really don't like

being surrounded by tons of technology, and I mean literally tons, that

I don't have a clue about.  The stuff is just lying around,

unattended."  Even worse was wondering how much of it the Natives knew

how to operate.  At least there are no Cardassians or Drek'la around,

she thought with relief; they would almost certainly figure out

something quite nasty to do with the stuff.



The away team headed into the village, still spotting no one.  "Big

clump of Natives about two hundred meters that direction," said Dax,

pointing; she held up her hand, and everyone came to a halt upwind of

the mob.  "The Natives are having an intense discussion."



"Must be some kind of a town meeting," guessed the chief.



Dax scanned.  "Well, everyone's over there for sure.  The houses and

stores are all empty."



Odo glared at Quark for several seconds.  "Well?"  he demanded.  "I

know you can hear them with those big ears you're always boasting

about. What are they saying?"



Quark glared needles, but turned in the direction Dax pointed; he

closed his eyes and started to mumble inaudibly.



"Out loud, Quark," snarled Constable Odo.



"Give me a break.  There's more than one of them talking."  He

continued his mumble act for a solid minute, then opened his eyes.

"Everybody's talking at once, and they're all saying things like

'what's she doing now," 'did she find one yet," 'is she getting out,"

'she doesn't have much time," 'isn't she out of the well yet," 'maybe

she's just too young," 'too bad, she seemed like such a bright child."

Lots of other things, but that's pretty much the consensus."



"Out of the well, Quark?"  demanded the constable, incredulous.  "With

all this technology around us, you're saying they get their water from

a well?"



"I don't interpret, Odo; I don't translate; I only repeat."



"Perhaps it is merely a rustic decoration," grumbled Worf.  "I have

seen such things in holodeck programs."



"Surely they would just turn a tap, or at least use a modern, sealed

well."



"Maybe it's abandoned?"  suggested Dax.  She noticed that Chief O'Brien

appeared anxious, looking back and forth from the group to the

direction of the mob.  Dax looked at him and gestured for him to spit

it out.



"Pardon me, sirs, but can't we save the philosophical gobbledygook for

later?  There's a little girl stuck in a well over there."



Whoops.  "Chief's right: double time, let's rescue a kid."  And maybe

ingratiate ourselves just a wee bit with the Natives .... Dax led the

charge, weaving through the buildingsmplastic houses and storefronts

molded into asymmetrical geometric shapes made of triangles and

hexagons, like pieces of a honeycomb.



She stumbled over nothing, dropping tricorder and phaser; picking them

up and rubbing her shin, Dax stared back at the faint, shimmering beam

along the ground, ankle high.  "Watch out for the force beam," she

warned.



O'Brien stepped carefully over the beam, following it left and right

with his gaze.  "You know, I think it's a bench."  "So?  As you said,

we have a damsel in distress."  "But Commander... if they can

manipulate force beams like that, why can't they use them to levitate

the little gift out of the well?  For God's sake, even we can't make a

park bench out of a mobile force beam."



Shrugging, Dax continued threading the houses toward the congregation.

But he does raise an interesting science question, she conceded.



When they reached the last building facing on a large clearing, she

finally saw the Natives.  Humanoid, fortunately, and not too different

from the Alpha Quadrant norm.  The shape of their noses was remarkably

Bajoran, en ought to make Dax wonder if the ancient Bajorans, who used

a type of solar sail to ply the star winds might be related to these

natives in some way.  Dax held up a hand, halting the away team at the

edge of the clearing.  At Dax's command, Odo, the least vulnerable

officer, led the away team forward, followed closely by Worf, then Dax

and O'Brien, with the gnomish Quark hiding in the back.  As they

crossed the clearing toward the mob of nearly seventy people, the

murmurs from the crowd gradually faded to silence and everyone turned

to look at the newcomers.



"Greetings," said Odo, making no gestures; the universal translator

would turn his words into the Natives' speech, but there was no telling

what a raised hand might mean on this planet.  "We come from... another

village a few days' journey from here."



"Another village?"  said a ga mine nearly androgynous woman; the others

deferred to her as if she were the local hetman.  She looked the away

team up and down.  "Are you sure you don't come from another planet?"

"A-another planet?"  said Dax, surprised.  "Those who occupy the cities

came from another planet, so I figured you might've.  You look strange

enough, especially the short one with the cooling flaps."  "Cooling

flaps!"  shouted Quark, enraged.  "Shh," soothed Jadzia.  "Quiet,

Quark, or you'll never close the deal.  My name is, ah, Dax.  Whom have

I the honor of addressing?"



"I am Asta-ha.  I speak for these Tiffnaks."



Just then, a shrill burst of profanity emerged from the center of the

mob, complete with re verb and echo effect.  If it was the child, she

seemed to be in reasonably good health; kid has breath enough for some

powerful screaming, in any event.  "Astaha, it sounds as if there's a

little girl trapped in that well there.  Do you need help getting her

out?"



Asta-has face brightened at the suggestion.  "Can you find the tool? We

can't help her, of course, the poor child."



"May we take a look?"  Dax dodged her way up to the lip of the well and

peered over; the sun was in later afternoon, and the slanty rays didn't

quite reach all the way down to where the little girl waited,

presumably stuck.  Still, the well walls had a high enough albedo that

Dax could just pick her out in the dim, reflected sunlight.  "Hold on,

little girl; we'll find something to haul you up."



Jadzia Dax was answered by another long chaw from the profanity plug,

which the universal translator thankfully failed to translate; the

meaning was nevertheless as clear as an unstressed dilithium crystal,

connecting the little girl's desire to be about ten meters higher than

she was with her annoyance that she had no means to levitate herself.



O'Brien pushed his way through the crowd to join Dax at the well.  "Ah,

anybody have a rope?"  he asked hopefully.



"And some wood," added the Trill, thinking of a painter's chair.  "A

chunk at least this wide and this thick."



The crowd oohed and ahhed in amazement.  Asta-ha clutched at Dax's

elbow.  "You can raise her with such simple tech?  How?"



The lieutenant commander stared for a moment, nonplussed.  She opened

her mouth to say something, then decided it would be unkind.  Poor

woman probably got stuck with a bad set of chromosomes.  "Well, get us

the rope and the wood, and we'll show you."



CHAPTER



FINDING A SIMPLE ROPE and hunk of wood proved harder than Miles O'Brien

had anticipated.  You'd think they'd have a hardware store back in the

village, he complained silently.  Or even just a clothesline.  But at

last, a couple of nameless Natives--what did they call themselves?

Tiffnaks?--returned with the implements.



Commanders Dax and Worf busied themselves hacking the wood down to

manageable size (using hands and feet, not phasers), while the chief

uncoiled the rope and began tying loops for the little girl's legs to

fit through; it wouldn't do to haul her halfway up, then have her

tumble off the seat back down the well.  The shrieks from the child

lent him a sense of urgency He could just imagine that was Molly down

there.



"Sir, I've got the rope ready," he cried.  Dax handed him the wooden

seat, and O'Brien set about carefully tying the rope to it so the loops

would dangle on either side.  All the while, the crowd pressed closer

and closer, seemingly astonished anew by each phase of the operation;

they pointed at the rope, the seat, and the knots and whispered amazed

explanations to their neighbors.  [ can't believe they've never even

heard of a rope rescue, thought the chief, even more amazed at the

crowd's amazement.  Everything he was doing was just plain common

sense.



At last, they had a workable "painter's chair," on which artisans used

to sit so they could decorate the sides of buildings, back in the

ancient days before antigravs or even scaffolding.  Worf dangled it

over the mouth of the well and began to lower it, while O'Brien shone

his hand torch down the shaft; curiously, the same crowd that had stood

astonished at the painter's chair took the flashlight without a second

glance, as if they'd seen hundreds of them, trading a score for a strip

oflatinum.  Worf lowered the chair, swiftly but well controlled.



After a moment's silence, there was a loud thump, followed by a renewed

string of cries from the innocent child.  "I think we made contact,"

said the chief.



"Sit on the chair, honey," he shouted clown the shaft.  The child

seemed as utterly confused as the crowd was amazed.  "Little girl, sit

on the chair, and we'll haul you up here."  At the words "up here," the

little girl's brownish face brightened into a smile.  She tugged the

chair down into the ankledeep water at the bottom of the well and

obediently straddled it.



The pose was all wrong; they wouldn't have made it even a meter without

losing her over the side.  "No no, honey; not that way Just like it was

a swing."



"Swing'?"  she queried--the first words that the universal translator

had deigned to translate.



"You know, like the swings on your playground."  Blank stare.  "Urn...

well, put both legs on the same side of the wooden seat--yes, now the

other leg, my wee tiny colleen.  That's good, honey.  What's your name?

Can you stick your legs through those two dangly loops, dear?"



"I'm Tivva-ma, and I'm seven."



"That's wonderful, my heart.  Now Tivva-ma, can you put your legs

through the little loops?"



After several minutes of begging and pleading, O'Brien, with Commander

Dax's help, managed to talk Tivva-ma into the proper way to seat

herself on a painter's chair.  As she held on tightly, Worf pulled up

the rope hand over hand; within a few seconds, Tivva-ma's dark face and

bluish yellow hair appeared over the well.  O'Brien made a diving

catch, grabbing the girl in a strong bear hug and depositing her on dry

land.



"You made it, honey.  You're safe."  Then he held her back at arm's

length, inspecting her with great concern.  "Are you all right,

Tivva-maIs your mommy here?"



"Yes, of course," said Asta-ha, "I haven't left."



The entire away team stared at the plump woman.  "You're Tivva-ma's

mother?"  demanded an incredulous Dax.



Asta-ha seemed oblivious to the tone of shame in the commander's voice.

"Why yes; she's the crown mayor, my heir."



"Does this count, Madam Mayor?"  asked Tivvama in great trepidation.



"It was rather an unorthodox solution," mused Mayor Asta-ha, "but I

suppose you could call this ingenious rope thing new tech of a sort."

The lady mayor looked around the crowd.  "Anyone want to dispute the

mark?"



There was a low rumble of voices as everyone glanced back and forth at

his neighbor; the hubbub gradually turned into a chorus of negative

responses.  "Yes, precious one," said Asta-ha, leaning hands on knees,

"it counts.  Congratulations on attaining the first mark."



Tivva-ma whooped and began to march around the clearing like a band

leader; O'Brien stared back and forth in confusion and mounting anger.

"Do you mean tac tell me," he shouted furiously, "that this whole thing

was a coming-of-age ritual?  Throwing a little girl down a well, your

own daughter?"



Again, Asta-ha blinked in confusion.  "We didn't throw her down the

well.  What do you take us for--monsters from another planet?  We

lowered her quite carefully."



Something was wrong; something smelled fishy to the chief.  He wrinkled

his nose, savoring the taste of the lady mayor's last remark.  "Wait...

you lowered her?  But--you were all shaken by the rope rescue we just

did .... You'd never seen such a thing before.  I don't understand."



"Truly, we haven't.  !  never realized you could do such complicated

tricks with such a simple piece of new tech."



Commander Dax butted her way back into the dialogue.  "Then if you

don't mind us prying, Madam Mayor, how did you lower her down?"



Asta-ha answered slowly, as if fearing it was a trick question.  "With

old tech, of course.  Like this .... "



The mayor fished a tiny piece of equipment out of her sporran; it

looked like one of Dr.  Bashir's hypo sprays she pointed it at Worf and

depressed a button.



As Asta-ha raised the tool, the gigantic Klingon floated into the air;

he began to bellow and thrash his limbs.  "Put me down.  At once" The

lady mayor held Worf dangling over their heads for a few moments, then

carefully lowered him back to the ground, landing him with a gentle

thump.  The Klingon didn't actually attack Asta-ha, but O'Brien could

tell it was only by the most extraordinary forbearance on his friend's

part.  If steam could erupt from a Klingon's ears, Worf would have

resembled a teakettle just then.



Smoothly interceding before Worf could explode, Commander Dax said, "We

would absolutely love to see your village, if you have no objection?"



"Objection?  Tiffnak is open to all, unlike the angry villages across

the big water."



"Can someone show us around?"  persisted the



Trill.



"I shall do it myself," said the mayor proudly.  "Tivva~ma, the crown

mayor, must be paraded through the streets anyway for her great

success."  great success?  snorted the chief to himself.  "Excuse me,"

he interjected, "but did you say the town is called Tiffnak?"



"Yes.  Isn't it a wonderful name?"



"What does it mean?"  inquired Odo, looking around curiously at the mix

of high-tech buildings and force beams and low-tech, rustic touches

like the wishing well.



"It doesn't mean anything," said Asta-ha.  "I thought it perfectly

expressed our emotion this less-moon.  As a people."



O'Brien was trying to get at something.  "So when you say you people

are the Tiffnaks, Mayor Asta~ha, you mean you people here in this town,

this--ah, less-moon?"



"Don't you like the name?"  asked the mayor, blinking her blue green

speckled eyes at the chief; he was almost overpowered by the urge to

reach out and pat her head.



"It's a lovely name," said Dax, smiling.  "But I think what O'Brien is

asking is whether you will still be the Tiffnaks in, say, another

couple of less moons or what people a day's journey from here would be

called."



"Two less-moons?  Oh, I'm sure the mood will have changed by then.

We'll have lots more new tech, since we have nine ceremonies of various

sorts scheduled before then.  Our mood always changes with each new

tech; in fact, after seeing what you gave us with rope and wood, I'd

have to say that maybe Tiffnaki would be better now."  Asta-ha

brightened, and her nose ridges paled.  "That's it!  We shall have

another meeting, and I'll suggest Tiffnaki.  I'm sure it'll be

approved."



O'Brien mulled this answer.  He edged closer to the commander and spoke

quietly; Asta-ha made no effort not to listen .... Evidently, the

Tiffnaks or Tiffnakis had little concern for other people's privacy.

"Commander, I'm starting to get the impression that these people didn't

create all this technology rathe force beams and such."  "They use it,"

she pointed out.



"I think they find it, but maybe they don't build it."



Dax stared at the chief, lowering her dark brows.  Her spots were pale,

always a bad sign.



O'Brien tried again: "What I mean is, I think somebody else built all

this stuff, and these people--Tiffnaks, or whatever they call

themselves-use what they find.  I think they have coming-of-age rituals

where they put someone in a weird predicament, like down a well, and

see if she can find some piece of 'new tech' that gets her out."



Dax whipped up her tricorder and scanned all around her, not only at

the Tiffnakis but the plants surrounding them.  "Well," she said,

"their DNA is obviously related to that of every other living thing

within tricorder range.  I think they did evolve here, Chief."



Now that he listened, Chief O'Brien heard clickings and rustlings in

the wide-bladed, grass like flora at his feet; stooping low for a

moment, he saw large four-legged "insects" with bodies three or four

centimeters long and a pair of leg tufts at each end; he saw what

looked like a worm; and in a fenced-in area near one building, he saw a

furry, tinned animal that looked like a cross between a wolverine and a

Bajoran whip beast sunning itself.  While he watched, the animal rolled

on its back and writhed, just like a dog scratching its back against

the lawn.  What a cozy, domestic scene, he thought, almost enviously.



He leaned even closer to the commander.  "Well... maybe their ancestors

invented the stuff, and somehow their civilization has degenerated? 

How old are these buildings?"



Dax scanned again, looked puzzled, and recalibrated.  She repeated the

scan.  "Well, according to the decay rate of trace radioactive

elements, I'd guess these buildings are at least two million years

old."



"Two million?  Are you sure, ma'am?"



Dax raised one eyebrow in a look she must have learned from some Vulcan

she knew in a previous life.  "I'm sure; I checked for carbon 14 in the

wooden squares encased inside the plastic, but it was entirely gone.

That was my first clue; I had to switch to elements with a longer

half-life to get a preliminary estimate .... It's between two and seven

million years, which makes these structures among the oldest still

standing in the Alpha Quadrant."



Well, ask a stupid question.  O'Brien accepted his lumps for having

questioned the science officer's science.  "Well, that fits in with the

thesis, doesn't it, Commander?  I mean, if they still had the

technological know-how, they'd have torn down these old houses, or at

least built new ones."



"There's not a building here that was built within the past two

thousand millennia," said the commander.  "They're not just using old

wood chips, if that's what you're thinking, because if they were that

old, they'd have long since rotted away-unless they were enclosed in

the plastic, which I presume happened only during construction."



O'Brien blinked, wondering whether he was going to be tested.  "All

right, all right; I believe you, Commander."



Mayor Asta-ha (and her daughter, the crown mayor) took them on a Cook's

tour of the village; it looked pretty much like any other village on

any planet in the Federation, except for the extraordinary level of

technology .... And the trivial uses to which the Tiffnakis put it:

they used antientropic heat generators to dry themselves after bathing;

they used transporter technology to beam replicated groceries from one

end of the town to the other; the children played on force-beam jungle

gyms.



Worf sidled up to the chief while the hereditary mayor explained the

use of a self-mobile tractor beam to sweep up rubbish after a picnic.

"This is like the Federation gone mad," he complained bitterly.  "If we

are not careful, this is where we shall end up."



The tour was broken by a celebratory luncheon that was actually for

Tivva-ma, having passed her first ceremony; but the Tiffnakis turned it

into a welcoming for the newcomers "from another planet" as well.

Tivva-ma was not exactly thrilled at sharing her day; but she was only

the crown mayor, not the mayor.



Luncheon was somewhat a misnomer; because of the high cyanogen content

of the food, which broke down into cyanide, among other chemicals

poisonous to Federation and Ferengi personnel, the entire away team had

to beg off the local delicacies.  The chief was uncertain how to do so,

but Dax explained the rudeness by resorting to the religion dodge: they

were on a special diet ordained "by the tech" and could only eat the

food they brought with them.  Odo simply claimed not to be hungry.



Most of the food looked like exotically prepared fungus, and Chief

O'Brien felt a great sense of relief that he could eat none of it; Dax,

however, being more culinarily adventurous, seemed disappointed.  When

the Tiffnakis had bloated themselves on a magnificent fungal feast (and

the away team had shoveled down some miserable combat rations,

"com-rats"), the postprandial interrogation commenced.



"Mayor Asta-ha," asked Commander Dax pleasantly at luncheon, after

Tavvi-ma had given a "commencement" speech that O'Brien found

simultaneously charming and frightening, "you spoke of the Cardassians

and Drek'la earlier.  How do you know about them?"



"Oh, it's all across the bush," said the mayor.  "They have overwhelmed

several villages not far from here.  They live in the abandoned centers

and strike outward, trying to conquer all the different people, I

suppose."



"Ah, gravy please," said the chief, pointing at the away team gravy

boat being monopolized by Quark.  "Thank you, your... mayorship.

Doesn't that concern you, aliens having conquered and destroyed whole

villages?"  demanded O'Brien, incredulous that she could be so blase

about the obliteration of her own people.



"Yes, it might pose some risk to the Tiffnakis, but we have a great

deal of new tech, surely much more than did the worthless and

unsuccessful villages that fell to the invaders.  You're sure you

wouldn't like some succulent fungus?"



"No... no thank you."  Chief O'Brien stared around the table, seeing

only mirrors of Asta-has own mask of unconcern.  Sensor readings now

indicated Cardassian life signs within seventy klicks, but nobody

appeared to care.  "Look," he added, "maybe you're not aware of what

some aliens can do to the people they conquer.  Odo?  Explain, will

you?"



"Yes," admitted the constable reluctantly, "I'm afraid I do know a bit

about it."  He proceeded to regale the mayor and her contingent for

several minutes on the atrocities visited upon the Bajorans by their

Cardassian masters, the scars still left behind.



"But that's terrible," cried Asta-ha, her mouth dropping open.



The mayor shook her head, clucking in sympathy.  But still, she didn't

seem to connect the stories and the pillaging of the other villages

with imminent danger to her own townful of Tiffnakis.



"If you don't mind my asking," tried O'Brien, starting to feel

frustrated, "how did the other villages fall?  I mean, you have enough

tech here, new and old, even just what little bit I can figure out, to

send the Cardassians packing.  How could the other Natives--the other

villages lose?"



Asta-ha took on a dreamy aspect.  "They must not have found favor in

the tech's eyes," she opined.  Looking heavenward, she added, "We

TiffnaksmI mean Tiffnakismare beloved in the eye of the tech."



"Um, how do you know?"



Blinking her way back to the here and now, the mayor said, "Isn't it

obvious?  Were we not so favored, would this marvelous and exciting new

tech have been given us?  Imagine, a rope and a stick that has the

power of an anti gray  She looked so excited that O'Brien hadn't the

heart to continue the inquisition.



Later, after luncheon and after the away team had been shown every

point of interest in the town--no churches or temples, O'Brien noticed,

not even one to "the tech"; replicators but no fields or stockyards;

technology for entertainment put upon the same level of importance as

that for survivals the team huddled to voice their observations.  At

first, Asta-ha stood right next to them, listening in a polite but

somewhat uninterested fashion, until Commander Dax asked if she could

leave; the mayor toddled off without apparently taking offense.



"All right, people," said the commander, "I want to pull everything

together before we contact the ship; I want to give the captain

answers, not questions."



"Frankly," said the chief, kicking off the discussion (which he

considered his right whenever the subject was engineering and

technology), "I don't think they have anything to worry about.  I don't

know the half of how these weapons work"--he gestured at a haphazard

pile of devices that the Tiffnakis said they used to defend against

other villages' tech-raiding parties--"I mean, they might be excavation

tools, for all I know.  But they make damned good weapons; I saw

Asta-has little daughter Tivva-ma, no older than Molly, carve a furrow

in a hillside with that thing over there that looks like a magic

wand."



"I concur with the chief," said Worf, his deep basso vibrating

O'Brien's teeth in their sockets.  "There is much here that Starfleet

should investigate."



"Such as, besides the earth-moving equipment?"  Dax seemed considerably

brighter at the news that they had good stock to work with in defending

the planet from the Cardassians.



"There is a personalized force shield that somewhat resembles those

used by the Borg," said Worf.



"And a projection device that I'd swear can drain power from a phaser

or disruptor at a distance," added O'Brien, remembering a fast

demonstration by one of the other Tiffnakis, a tall man with one

blue-speckled eye and one red-speckled.  "I couldn't actually try it

out because I wasn't sure whether we should allow them to see our

phasers."



Quark spoke up.  "By the Divine Treasury, do you people even realize

what we're sitting on here?  This is the greatest technological

treasure trove since--since I found the wormhole Or even since the

first Grand Nagus invented warp drive."



"Ah," sneered Odo, "the new toys have driven all thoughts of

strip-mining the landscape out of the tiny lump of latinum that stands

in for Quark's brain."



The Ferengi glared at his old nemesis; not for the first time, O'Brien

found it somewhat surreal that the animosity friendship between the

constable and the Ferengi smuggler went back much farther than the

discovery of the wormhole (by Captain Sisko, not by Quark), or the

liberation of Bajor .... In fact, the pair had known and hated each

other with passion since long before the Federation even knew of the

existence of Deep Space Nine, then called Terek Nor.  The marriage of

hatred between Quark and Odo predated O'Brien's marriage of love with

Keiko, which seemed to have been around forever; Sisko was probably

still a lieutenant commander without even his own ship yet when Quark

and Odo met and discovered revulsion at first sight, and Major Kira was

probably rank less and hiding in a cave.  With a connection of hatred

going back so far into the mists of antiquity, how could Quark and Odo

not be the closest of enemies?



"Constable Odo," said the Ferengi, with a deep undertone of "talking to

the idiot child" rippling behind his words, "any fool would realize

that brand-new technology, especially weapons in time of war, would be

far more lucrative than mere minerals.  Any fool would jump at the

chance to profiteer--I mean profit--from such a discovery."



"Yes, Quark," said the constable, smirking slightly, "any fool."



"Time's up," chirped Dax.  "That was your one exchange for the day. Now

let's get back to business .... Quark, your zeal to exploit the

resources and technology of these people is duly noted; it will be

greatly to your credit when you reach the Divine Treasury."



"Well, all right then," he mumbled, but continued working his mouth--as

if trying to weigh the whole planet on a lat inurn scale, the chief

thought.



O'Brien took a deep breath and broached the subject that had started

nagging at him while they discussed what they had seen.  "Commander,

I'm a bit concerned about the Prime Directive How do we apply it in

this case?"



Worf had an opinion on that subject, too.  "Surely it does not apply to

cultures this technologically advanced."



"But these people are not space farers protested the chief.  "They only

barely know they live on a planet.  They don't even have a one-world

government .... How could they be considered an advanced

civilization?"



"They use warp technology," insisted the Klingon, gesturing angrily at

the pile of stuff on the table.  "Several of these devices are

offshoots of warp technology, including the power-draining device and

the personal shields.  Chief O'Brien will confirm my observation."



"Well, technically that's true," admitted the chief; he was reluctant

to interject his position in between that of two lieutenant commanders

and a security chief, which must be a rank at least equal to full,

three-pip commander.



"The planet's already been invaded, so any violations have already been

committed; the Natives are already fighting--and we want to keep our

presence here secret in any event," said Dax.



O'Brien, satis fed that the officers had arrived at a consensus that

he, the lone enlisted man, could definitely live with, tried to steer

the meeting to a close so he could get back to something important:

playing with the new toys to see what he could learn.  "I think we can

report to the captain that the Natives are mobilizing against the

Drek'la and the spoon-heads--I'm sorry, been hanging around the major

too long--the Cardassians."



Worf suddenly sniffed the air; he looked around, wetting his finger and

raising it as high as he could.  He looked like a man who had a strong

suspicion about something.



Plucking Commander Dax's tricorder from her belt, he poked at it and

then made a sweep.  When Worf realized everyone was staring at him, he

cleared his throat.  "Well, we are about to find out whether the

chief's observation about the--the planetary natives is accurate."



"Why, Commander?"  asked O'Brien, already feeling the familiar

tightening in his belly and urgent desire to find a handy tree that he

always felt just before combat.



Dax looked over Worf's shoulder down at the tricorder.  "Because we're

about to have extra planetary visitors," she said; "the Drek'la are

coming .... They're about forty kilometers distant and moving fast."



CHAPTER



ASTA ham came scurrying up to the away team, proving that the

Tiffnakis, at least, had as good an early-warning system as did the

Federation.  "Enemies coming, like you were talking about.  Can you

fight?"



"We can fight," said Worf; then remembering what Jadzia had ordered, he

added, "You must arm



US."



"Spoken no faster than undertaken," said a short man at Worf's elbow;

his blue-and-red hair crest was elaborately curled alternating left and

right, grooming that doubtless took hours to perfect.  The man handed

Worf a tiny toy that looked and felt like a finger torch, a child's

flashlight operated by squeezing the plastic sides together.  Worf

scowled down at it, wondering whether he was being made light of....

But he had enough respect for the technology of the Natives not to

point it at anyone he liked.



O'Brien was handed a man-sized rifle with sights and a trigger, adding

to the humiliation; the Klingon almost offered to trade with the chief,

but he reflected that it would be dishonorable.



Jadzia received the excavating tool that Chief O'Brien referred to as a

"faerie wand," while Quark and Odo were each given tubes with tiny

bumps.  "Urn... um... what do I do with this?"  demanded the panicky

Ferengi.



"I don't know every function yet," said Hair Crest, "but I've

discovered that if you point this end at the enemy and press this

yellow nodule, his skin cracks, causing intense pain."



"But--but what do the blue-and-gray nodules do?"  demanded Quark,

staring in horror at the innocuous-looking tube.  Hair Crest shrugged,

unconcerned, and the Ferengi staggered away muttering curses befitting

his cowardly shopkeeper's personality.



Constable Odo seemed quite happy with his tube.  Worf edged close

enough that no one would overhear.  "Perhaps you should shape shift

into one of the planetary natives, to further confuse the Cardassians. 

We do not want to be discovered."



"I think it might upset the Natives, as you call them, if they saw me

changing shape before their eyes... don't you think?"



Worf frowned; much as he tried to avoid it, the psychology of the

individual kept cropping up.  "A warrior does not concern himself with

such fears," he muttered, retreating to the front line.



Such as it was... there was no military organization, not even any

attempt on the part of the Natives to find cover or concealment. Jadzia

and the rest of the away team had found outlying buildings to hide

behind, and Worf joined them, but the mayor, Asta-ha, and the other

Natives simply stood in a clump, monkeying with their weapons and

waiting for the Cardassians to slaughter them.



"What are they doing?"  urgently demanded the Klingon in Jadzia's

ear.



"Best guess?  To them, technology is warfare.  They don't have any idea

what to do but stand in the middle of the road and fire their tech at

anything unfriendly that approaches."



"Have they never fought in any wars?"



Jadzia shrugged.  "Why don't you ask them?  Maybe you can get them to

hide behind something, at least."



"How long until contact?"



"The advance has stopped.  It looks like our friends are waiting for

something.  Interesting.  I'm showing a force of Drek'la led by a

solitary Cardassian."



"Perhaps the Cardassians ~lied with the Drek'la when their ships were

captured."  Worf rose, snuck a quick peek in the direction where the

Cardassian invaders waited, then trotted to Asta-ha.  He was shocked to

see that she had her daughter Tivva-ma with her... and the young girl

also carried a weapon.



Is this the honor of a young warrior?  he wondered, or is it complete

ignorance of the danger?  "Mayor Asta-ha... have your people, the, ah,

Tiffnakis, ever fought a war before?"



"War?"  She pronounced the word as if it had not been translated by the

universal translator... perhaps because the natives had no word for war

in their language.



"Do you have--enemies?"



Asta-has puzzled look turned to sudden understanding.  "Oh, enemies all

around!  There are the Day who live over the hill toward the needle; we

aren't very friendly with the Tiffnakis, either."



Now it was WorPs turn to be puzzled.  "But... you are the Tiffnakis."



"Yes.  Do you like the name?"



"How can you be on unfriendly terms with the Tiffnakis if---"



"What?  No, we're the Tiffnakis; it's the Tiffnakis we have to worry

about.  They live to the left hand of the needle."



Worf snorted loudly; clearly, there was a nuance of pronunciation that

he could not hear.  "Very well.  But should you not get to cover to

more effectively kill your enemies?"



Asta-ha looked blank.  "Cover?"



"It is--you use..."  Worf had what O'Brien would call a "brainstorm."

"It is another piece of our new tech: you use the buildings as a... new

tech shield against disruptors.  As we are doing, see?"



The female's astonishment was painful for Worf to see.  Clearly, no

such thing had ever occurred to her in all her life; it was, truly, new

"technology" to her--the simplest, most rudimentary of tactics. 

Without bothering to thank the Klingon--why not?  did not "new tech"

fall from the trees every day?--she bustled to her comrades to

demonstrate the gift from the tech.



Satisfied for the moment, Worf returned to the away team, still feeling

a vague disquiet.  "There is something very wrong with these people,"

he complained.



"Well, we're about to see whether it affects their ability to defend

themselves."  "Our friends are moving."



"They paused for five minutes, then started to roll again."  Dax stood,

called loud enough for her own troops to hear: "Stand ready, men."



Worf crouched, holding his weapon at arm's length to get a better sight

picture; he felt the thrill of battle surge though him .... I am alive,

a Klingon, a WARRIOR!  He could barely contain his glee when he saw the

dust kicked up from the Cardassian skimmers darken the eastern

horizon--"the right hand of the needle," the natives would probably

say, assuming their needles pointed to magnetic north.



Worf held his fire until the first blast came from the enemy.  Then he

squeezed his flashlight.  Nothing .... He tried again and again, but

the weapon was dead.



"Blast," he snarled.  "Somebody give me a weapon; mine has

malfunctioned."



In front of the Klingon, Jadzia threw her "faerie wand" to the ground

in disgust and drew her phaser, but Worf swiftly grabbed her hand and

pointed the weapon towards the dirt.  "No, Jadzia.  We must not let

them know Starfleet is here."



Snarling like a true Klingon woman (to Worf's marveling eyes), Jadzia

stood and spoke in command tones: "Does anyone have a working Tiffnaki

weapon?"



From O'Brien's passionate, rich, Irish cursing, Quark's temper tantrum,

and Odo's look of disgust, Worf understood the answer even without

anyone answering.  Running across the gap to the natives, who now

milled about in total shock and confusion, he discovered that their

weapons, too, had simply ceased working.  There was not a man or woman

in the entire village whose tech would operate .... Somehow, the

Cardassians had turned it all off.



Jadzia leapt up and gave the hardest order for any warrior to give:

"Retreat!"  she shouted, waving to the Natives; they stared in

confusion--evidently, it was yet another piece of "new tech" they had

never seen.  "Run away," she tried, to no avail.  "Are you deaf?."  she

shouted, pointed rear wards  "Point yourselves in that direction and

run like the wind.t"



A few of the natives understood, including Astaha and the mayor's

daughter; they turned and ran, slowly at first, then in panic as the

Drek'la leisurely opened fire with their disruptors on the clumped

group.  Worf caught a glimpse of Natives being torn to shreds by the

Cardassian weapons, then he, too, was forced into the ignominy of

running away like a dub bop being chased by a hunter.



It was easy to escape; the Drek'la were in no hurry.  The away team and

approximately two hundred of the Tiffnakis kept running until they had

put five kilometers between themselves and the village; the Drek'la

stopped in the settlement and settled in, at least for the night.  The

first pitched battle between the Drek'la and the Federation for the

tiny mud ball Sierra-Bravo 112-II was a rout.



Worf grabbed Jadzia by the arm as she limped past, trailing blood.  She

refused to rest until after she made sure O'Brien, Quark, and Odo were

safely stowed, as a Klingon would.  Her eyes were the color of violets

with flames around their edges, or the Klingon Sea of the Stand when

the sun was nearly set in the distant waters.  Her face burned with

shame, and the Trill spots were dark against her bone white skin.  She

looked like the goddess of death.



"It was not your fault," Worf said, offering a warrior's comfort.  "It

was a system failure that you could not anticipate."



Major Kira sat in Ops, sipping tea and musing on the wild workings of

chance and fate.  She closed her eyes and listened to the hum of the

station .... What had been Deep Space Nine was now Emissary~

Sanctuary--and it was running like a Bajoran children's prayer top.



To Kira's immense frustration and annoyance beyond her (political)

ability to say, every senseless move Kai Winn had made had turned out

perfectly: the vedeks and flatterers she had placed in charge of every

aspect of station operations, tossing out men and women who had done

their jobs with eclat for years, turned out, each and every one, to be

brilliant bureaucrats; and contrary to everything the major had always

believed, good bureaucrats were exactly what the station truly needed

all this time.



The vedeks managed to bring out the best and most selfless devotion in

the workers, and jobs that were done only haphazardly at best under

Captain Sisko sparkled under Governor Kai Winn.  The infrastructure of

the station, which Miles had spent every waking hour complaining about,

was systematically replaced with fine Bajoran craftsmanship; it could

have been done under the Federation, but it would have taken every hand

working triple overtime shifts around the clock for a week... which was

exactly what the new Bajoran workers did at a word from the Kai.



Devotions at the temple had never been better attended; even the

replicators seemed to work better; the food tasted like the devices

were being overhauled every other day--which they probably are, thought

Kira in mingled awe and bitterness.



At this rate, far from replacing the Kai as governor of the station,

Shakar would be lucky to keep his post as First Minister.  "Oh,

Prophets," breathed Kira, eyes still tightly shut and head back, "if

only she could face a small crisis or two.  Just a little one--it's all

I ask."



Immediately, Kira felt a chill run along her spine.  "Be careful what

you wish, for you may get it" was as common a saying on Bajor as it was

in the Federation.  She had the most terrible feeling that such

prayers, especially this close to the wormhole, the lair of the

Prophets, were far too easily heard: something was surely about to go

terribly wrong.



CHAPTER



The FroSt.  disruptor blast took Major Kira completely by surprise.

There'd been no warning.



There they were, eleven ships, to be precise.  They'd plowed out of the

wormhole in minutes.  Not one of them showed up on Deep Space Nine's

deep-imaging sensors, none tripped the earlywarning alerts.  There was

nothing.



When the pounding began, the first thing Kira did was raise the

shields; while they were still rising in intensity, she scanned for

enemies.  At last, she switched to straight visible-light

viewing--"looking out the window," as O'Brien called it--and that was

when she finally saw the eleven ships.  According to the scanners, they

weren't even present.



"Dominion," said Kira to no one, since the last time she checked, she

was alone on the Ops floor; Kai Winn's patronage appointees still

refused to show up for their watches, though she had to admit they had

done a good job with the routine aspects of running Deep Space Nine....

No, it's Emissary's Sanctuary now, she thought, smiling at the grim

joke.  Some sanctuary.



"Are you sure, child?"  said Kai Winn from directly behind the major.

Kira jumped and spun around.  How could such an out-of-shape woman as

the Kai move so quickly and quietly, on a station that was heaving with

every hammer blow?



"Kai!  Sure about what?"



"That it's the Dominion."



Kira returned to her threat board.  "I can't aim the damned phasers

.... The sensors don't even see them."  Kira tried a couple of

line-of-sight shots, but the attackers were moving too quickly, making

random evasive turns.  "Who else would it be?  They came through the

wormhole, and they don't show up on the sensor array."  But she didn't

even recognize the ship design--they were like no Dominion ships she

had ever seen.



The Kai seemed remarkably cool, enough so that Kira noticed in the heat

of battle.  "Isn't there any other weapon you can bring to bear against

them?"  she asked.



"Yes, of course.  The quantum torpedos--they don't have to be precise

hits."  Kira snapped the guards off the arming touch plates and

proceeded to arm the thousand torpedoes that Captain Sisko had

installed against just such an eventuality.  Her hands were working so

quickly, she had already moved to key in the launch sequence before

realizing that the board had not caught up with her.



PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZATION PASSWORD."



Kira blinked, staring at the message.  The computer's mellifluous voice

repeated it out loud.



"Child, what are you waiting for?"  asked the Kai, leaning over Kira's

shoulder.  "Enter the password."



"There is no password," blurted Major Kira, shocked.



"But Kira, it asks for one."



"It never has before."  Kira half rose, forcing Kai Winn to stand

quickly to avoid contact.  "Damn it!  Ah... ah--Kira Nerys,

authorization Bravo Alpha-Bravo-Echo Unlock the damned torpedoes!"



"I'm sorry," said the computer with detached efficiency, "but that is

not an authorization password.  Please enter authorization password."



There it was, staring her in the face ....



PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZATION PASSWORD'



"Blood of the Prophets!"



"Child?"



"Sorry--urn, Sisko, Benjamin, authorization..."  She struggled to

remember what she once had overheard the captain say to unlock a

personal message from Starfleet Command; she had never used the code

herself, of course, and it took her a second to remember... a second

during which the attackers fired two more salvos, jerking the station

noticeably, even right through the shields.  "Authorization

Hugo-Uniform-November-Kilo."



"I'm sorry, but that is not an authorization password.  Please enter

authorization password."



Kira felt a flush of horrified understanding creep up her neck and

across her face.  She hadn't expected the code to work, since the

computer would realize she was not Captain Sisko, but it gave the wrong

error message.  She had expected the computer to respond, "Invalid use

of authorization password," which would mean she had to tear into the

circuits and cross her voice patterns in the main database clip with

those of the captain.  But the response had been the same as to her own

normal authorization code.



Kira turned and discovered to her astonishment that the Kai had

vanished; but a moment later, the turbolift arrived carrying six

mean-looking Bajorans, four men and two women; they hustled to the Ops

battle stations without sparing a glance at Kira: two at Dax's console,

one at Worfs, and the other two with heavy phaser rifles scanning the

room with low-intensity phaser beams to flush out any changelings who

might have infiltrated as seat cushions or pieces of equipment.



The Kai reappeared on Sisko's balcony.  "My flock, the Emissary's

Sanctuary is under attack by unknown enemies from the Gamma Quadrant;

they may be Dominion or may not... but we must defend ourselves and our

planet, regardless."



The combat team looked at the Kai with such reverence that Kira felt

outnumbered and uncomfortable.  Then they turned their attention to the

phasers.



She had no complaints about their competence; they were a professional

phaser crew either from a Bajoran patrol ship or from the planetary

defense forces themselves.  "Sensors out--visual track, follow my

tracer .... One-mark, two-mark, three-mark--pattern analysis .... Are

they repeating?--bracketing shots... clipped one, no telemetry.



Kira found herself excluded from the fight.  Nobody told her to leave,

but she quickly lost track of what the combat crew were saying--they

spoke in the code word staccato of a squad that had lived, eaten,

slept, trained, and fought together for months or years.  Realizing

that she was about as necessary as a piloting stick on a runabout, Kira

stood down from her console and joined the Kai on the balcony.



Kai Winn followed the battle with hard, calculating eyes; she betrayed

no emotions and even offered intelligent and workable suggestions to

the team (which accepted them gratefully).  "They're trying to get

close enough to launch boarding parties," warned one of the two women

at Dax's console.



"Seal the station," ordered the Kai.



"Kai Winn," said Kira in great urgency, "I have to contact the

Federation and get the authorization codes for those torpedoes."



Without looking away from Ops, which had become a de facto CIC, a

combat information center, the Kai responded forcefully: "I'm sorry,

child, I absolutely forbid it."  "But without the torpedoes, we'll

never--" "This is a test sent by the Prophets, Major; we must survive

without the help of your Federation.  I have already sent for Bajoran

destroyers."



Kira's mouth was dry; she tried to lick her lips, but there was no

moisture.  The station was struck by a particularly close hit, and the

deck yawed left, nearly dropping Kira over the railing to the floor

below.  The Kai crouched, clutching the rail tightly; the combat crew

didn't react.



"Bajoran destroyers won't stand up against these disruptor blasts,"

warned Kira.  "The most they can do is distract the ships long enough

for us to get a clean shot."



"Then they will distract the enemy ships, child," said the Kai, still

following the performance in Ops rather than the conversation she

wasn't quite having with Major Kira.



Gritting her teeth, the major spoke in a hoarse whisper.  "Kai, the

Federation will release the torpedoes-this is an emergency.  With the

quantum torpedoes, we can blow these jerks to hell and back, right back

through the wormhole to the Gamma



Quadrant.  Don't you understand?  We need those codes."



For the first time since the assault began, the Kai looked directly at

Kira.  "I am in command of Emissary~ Sanctuary, child.  You are my

executive officer.  The decision is mine to make, and I will not run to

the Federation for help."  She closed her eyes, tilting her head back.

"We are all in the hands of the Prophets now."



Kira waited a long moment, searching her heart for what she should do,

for Bajor, for Sisko, for her friends and enemies still aboard the

station: for Jake, for Keiko, for Rom... even for that lousy excuse for

a Cardassian, Garak.  "Yes... my Kai," she said at last.  Winn was

right; there was no other way out for Bajormand the future of Bajor

trumped everything else.



"Hadn't you better begin organizing the defenses, Major?"



"But your combat crew is handling it perfectly well.  I couldn't do any

better."



Kai -Winn looked directly at Kira again, and this time, the major saw

in the old woman's eyes the same granite she had seen in the captain's

when he stood on the same balcony, overlooking a team much like the one

in the CIC below (a team that always included Major Kira).  "You had

better prepare the internal defenses, child; call out the station

militia."  Winn handed Kira a data clip.  "This fight is not going to

be easy or quick, I believe; I've been here before.  Prepare for

forcible boarding."



Kira stared at the viewers; she had a good look at the ships every time

they passed one of the camera eyes while shooting and dodging return

fire: she had definitely never seen the design before.  "Who the hell

are these guys?"  she asked, but the Kai had already returned full

attention to her CIC and the combat crew running the desperate defense

of Emissary ~ Sanctuary.



Kira Nerys slid down the ladder way feet and hands upon the rails, and

darted for the turbolift platform, snatching up her personal phaser en

route; she was almost thrown to the deck by a shot that set the

rotational axis of the station swinging gently, like a pendulum, for

several cycles before the gyros restabilized Emissary's Sanctuary.



Sealed by the turbolift after leaving Ops, Kira tapped her com badge

and said, "Computer, scan all messages from Starfleet to Deep Space

Nine." or, ah, Emissary~ Sanctuary--since the turnover, in particular

any verbal explanation of the message locking out the quantum

torpedoes."



"There is no record of a transmission locking out the quantum

torpedoes."



"Headers of all non routine message traffic from the Federation Council

to the senior staff of the station."



The computer began rattling off a list of message headers, most having

to do with administrative elements of the turnover, but then Kira

heard,



"Message thirty-eight of forty-four, weapon extension lockout

explanatory communiqu6."  "Stop.  Read me that message."



Another booming pair of assaults testified to the battle still raging

beyond the hull--the station was holding its own, but it couldn't

continue forever.  The damned Bajoran ships better arrive soonest,

thought Kira, gritting her teeth; the brief distraction might be the

only hope we have.



"Please enter authorization password."



Oh, Prophets.  Here we go again.  But when Kira gave her own code,

"Kira Nerys, Bravo-Alpha Bravo-Echo," the computer accepted it without

qualm; evidently, the accompanying text was not as highly secure as the

torpedoes themselves.



"The Federation Council regrets that the new administration must be

informed that certain classified extensions of the weapons subsystems

of the station formerly known as Deep Space Nine have been reallocated

to a terminated state pending approval of subsequent demonstrations of

successful operation of station service optimization protocols; at time

of such approval, normal preoperative status of the affected subsystems

will be reinitialized into a resumptive condition."



Translation, thought Kira, who really was becoming quite an expert at

burospeak; after a while, if you don't blow up the station, we'll send

the signal to unlock your torpedoes.  But what was a while?  How

long--a week?  The Bajorans had run the station for nearly a week

already, and there clearly had been no reinitialization into a

resumptive condition. A month?  The end of the sixty-day trial

period?



With a chill, Major Kira realized they were enmeshed in a terrible

struggle against unknown enemies while blind and crippled: they could

neither see the attackers on the sensor array nor use the only weapon

that didn't require precision aiming.



And of course, much as it galled the major to admit it, Kai Winn was

right: if Bajor were to go screaming to the Federation for help now,

barely a week into the turnover, the chances of it being made permanent

were like unto those of finding a shrine to the Prophets on Cardassia

Prime.



The old--woman--gets another point, she glumly admitted.  The Kai had

been full of surprises lately, from her efficiency at running the

station to her startling capacity for command under fire.  Add now an

insightful analysis of Federation psychology.  Every such success stuck

in Kira's throat like a bone splinter, one more stone in the pouch of

First Minister Shakar, weighing down his chances; he was already

swimming upstream by trying to force the government to remain secular,

when the Kai and most Bajorans clearly preferred rule by vedek

decree.



The turbolift jerked to a stop at the Promenade level, and Kira pushed

into a scene from a madhouse: civilians, nearly all Bajoran, were

running to and fro in a frenzy; some were injured by the shaking,

though no shot had yet penetrated the shields, and with every blow,

more civilians fell to the ground screaming or ran into each other or

tried to rush the turbolifts that could take them to the habitat rings,

the launch bays, and presumed "safety" away from the station.



The Kai's security guards refused to allow the civvies to storm the

lifts, quite properly: they were needed to transport the security

forces (the one area that Kai Winn had packed but not purged).

"Commander," shouted Kira.



The acting CO in Odo's absence, Dag Haraia, ran to Kira and saluted;

Kira was nonplussed for a moment .... No one ever saluted on Deep Space

Nine.  Then she remembered that he was now "militarized" and under

arms, which changed things considerably.  "Dag, round up these

people"--she handed Dag the data clip of names she had gotten from the

Kai--"and arm them; put men at every port and airlock and shoot anyone

coming through; and get these damned civilians into the shelters."



"Yes ma'am!"  he shouted; he saluted again and ran to his

lieutenants.



Kira was surprised to catch herself taking a moment to pray: Please, 0

Prophets, she said clearly in her head, don't make me be the one to

have to explain it all to the captain.  "The big one that didn't quite

get away," she muttered to herself, but she was too busy to listen.



Limping from her wound, which was still bleeding slightly, Lieutenant

Commander Jadzia Dax led the rest of the away team, plus Asta-ha (the

hereditary mayor of the no-longer-extant village of the Tiffnakis) and

the surviving members of her entourage, over a pair of hills that she

named Dreary and Black, across a stream that O'Brien dubbed the Anna

Liffey, and through a wood.  (The trees were the same scintillant blue

and green as the Natives' eyes.) They had put fifteen kilometers

between themselves and the Drek'la, who camped in the ruins of the town

after disruptor fire cut the two-million-year-old buildings to shards;

Dax decided they were safe for the moment.



If the worst came, and the Drek'la struck too quickly for them to bug

out conventionally, the Trill had already decided they would call for

an emergency beam-out of everyone, and to hell with the Prime

Directlye.  "It's too bad we can't move any faster," she said.  "Are

you sure none of your neighbors has any tech for moving quickly along

the ground... say, something with wheels or floating on an antigravity

field?"



Asta-ha shook her head; her daughter Tivva-ma, who announced she was

still seven, shook her head at exactly the same time, causing both Dax

and of course Chief O'Brien to chuckle.  "Damn," muttered Dax; she

wondered whether she could talk



Sisko into having the Defiant replicate a vehicle and beam it down

where they could "stumble" across it.



"Please watch your language, Commander," cautioned the chief.  "There

are young ones present."



"Um, sorry about that, Chiefi" The Curzon within her ached to cut loose

with a stream of profanity that would straighten out O'Brien's hair and

turn it white, but Jadzia Dax controlled it.



Asta~ha sighed.  "Yes, too bad.  If you really wanted to get somewhere

fast, we could use the Instantator tech in the village of the Shignavs.

But I'm afraid I have no tech of the kind you seek."



"The... Instantator?"  Dax suddenly had a horrible feeling she knew

exactly what they were talking about... and it could have saved them a

lot of grueling travel.



"I have seen it in operation," breathed the hereditary mayor.  "You

step into a booth, sparkles obscure your body, and you disappear--only

to reappear days' and scores of days' travel distant, in the next

booth."  She described the obvious transporter with such holy

reverence, Dax almost felt like bowing her head; from the description,

Dax realized that, like the one in the Tiffnaki village for food, it

was a booth-to-booth device, but sophisticated even by Federation

standards.  Still, she sighed, it would have been useful.



Quark came limping up to the group, moaning and trying to massage his

calves while still walking; he was followed closely by his elongated

shadow, Constable Odo, sneering at every Ferengi protestation of

weakness, being done for, and prediction of dire consequences.



"Oh, get off it, Quark; you're going to make it, because no one is

going to pick you up and carry you.  Honestly, you're like a spoiled

child at an excessively permissive nursery school."



"Have a little heart, Odo Or better yet, why don't you make one?"



"It's too much effort to bother with unnecesary internal organs, Quark;

besides, I'm happy as I am.  Too bad you can't say the same about

yourself."



The Ferengi sneered.  "Well, you certainly didn't put any effort into a

brain, now did you?"



"Oh, very funny.  I'm hysterical, ha, ha, ha.  Let's see how your

quadrant-famous sense of humor gets you through your upcoming ordeal:

selling your banned bar and becoming an employee of Kai Winn."



Quark shuddered.  "I'd tell you to bite your tongue, if you had one."



"Gee... I wonder whether Rom has unloaded the bar to some luckless

Bajoran yet?"  Quark simply glared, so Odo won the round.



"Boys, boys," said Dax halfheartedly; in truth, she was barely

listening to them bicker .... She was far more concerned about what had

happened back at the village of the Tiffnakis.  I blew it.  I screwed

it up and nearly got everyone killed.  Now that the immediate danger

was past, and they were far enough away to feel a little safety,

Commander Dax began to get the shakes.  The more she thought about the

Cardassian raid, the more like a fiasco it looked.



"I think I've figured it out," said O'Brien, plopping down on the dewy

teal grass with a disassembled mass of components in his hand; the

jumble used to be a disruptor rifle.  He glared at the hunk of

disassembled junk--then turned a sympathetic gaze on Dax herself.  She

leapt to an interpretation: even the chief thinks I completely screwed

up the mission, she raged to herself; it3 only the sheerest luck that

we weren't all butchered back there.



Dax started to realize that she could have, should have, evacuated the

village; if she had, a hundred dead Tiffnakis, including a dozen

children, would still be alive.  She felt sick.



"You figured out what happened back at the defense?"  she asked,

leaning forward too eagerly, trying to drive deep inside thoughts of

her own terrible command decisions.  "What went wrong with all the

weapons?"



"Nothing, Commander; nothing at all."  O'Brien sounded bitter, and he

looked like he wanted to spit into the mechanism.  "Nothing?"



"But it looks like it runs on some kind of broadcast power, of a

variety our tricorders couldn't detect.  The Drek'la must've somehow

cut that power before attacking."



But would Asta-ha have withdrawn anyway?  "You mean, Chief, that there

isn't a single backup power source anywhere around here?"



"No, Commander"--the chief scanned with his own tricorder--"I've

adjusted my tricorder and can now get faint readings of the kind of

power being broadcast.  The nearest power source I can detect is four

hundred kilometers away."



While they spoke, Worf, Quark, and Odo had joined them.  "Gentlemen,"

said Dax, "I've got a very bad feeling about this whole mission.  If

all the enemy has to do is kill the lights and pull the plug, then we

are in giant-sized trouble."



Worf spoke up, immediately seeing the tactical situation: "The natives

will have to learn to fight on their own, even without their

devices."



Dax looked at the Klingon and felt a chill; was he looking at her with

a faint trace of charity?  Was he?  If he was, she couldn't stand

that.



"Fight and win, "corrected Dax.  Her wound was painful, possibly

infected, and the pain was making it hard to think.  Courage and

bravado can take me only so far; there's more than my pride at stake

here.  As much as I'd like to finish this mission, it's time, as

Benjamin would say, time to call in a relief pitcher.



"People," she said, "I'm kicking this decision upstairs.  And I'm

taking myself out of the game."



CHAPTER



CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO materialized in a loose wood, the trees not

quite thick enough for cover or dense enough for concealment; but there

were enough of them to make any disruptor shot tricky.  As soon as he

appeared, he glanced first at Worf, then Odo, then O'Brien; the three

stood alert but not tense, and the captain relaxed a bit.



He had just completed a very unsatisfactory and alarming conversation

with Dax.  She had filled him in somewhat but wanted the captain to

make his own assessment before she made her full report... so his

tactical judgment wouldn't be "influenced by expectation."  He had

reassured her that there was little she could have done differently

without psychic abilities... but she was still furious at herself for

not foreseeing the future and preventing the deaths of the villagers.



The away team stood by themselves on a small rise; water welled from

underground at the base of the rise, trickling down to form a

meandering, sluggish stream that cut mostly northeast, eventually

becoming a tributary to the largish river that Dax reported crossing

(which the chief called the Anna Liffey, after the river that bisected

old Dublin, fabled in song and legend).  The rest of the escapees, two

hundred and twenty of them, huddled across the mini stream fire-shocked

and shaken not only by the suddenness of their loss--many of their

friends, enemies, and neighbors had died, including children--but, if

Dax was right, as much by the sudden loss of their tech from heaven:

they had nothing, for nothing worked.  They didn't even know enough to

build shelters or campfires against the coming cold night.



"Fill me in," said Sisko to his away team.  They did so.  "All

right"--Sisko looked toward the alien threat to the eastm'let's hear

some strategic team thinking: what are we going to do about the

situation?"



This time, Worf was first to speak; he was on familiar, rehearsed

ground.  "We must set up an immediate military training facility," he

advised, "and forge these people into an effective fighting force

against the invaders."



"And what do you expect them to fight with?"  demanded O'Brien.

"Spears?  Bows and arrows?"



"If necessary."



"But they don't even know the first thing about even that level of

technology, Worf.  They don't have any math, any physics or

engineering, no materials science, nothing of chemistry or field flow,

no plasma technology .... Nothing that could possibly discommode the

enemy or even slow them up.  They would roll over the Natives

like--like Klingon warriors across a Boy Scout troop."



Worf growled deep in his throat, but he said nothing in response to the

chief.  Odo, standing unnaturally straight--like a changeling, not like

a solid, who had to balance on muscles and bone-cleared his throat.

"Sir, perhaps it would be better to begin at the beginning."



"Teach them basic math, engineering, and chemistry?"  asked the captain

skeptically.  "As Worf said, 'if necessary.""



"Necessary it may be, Constable, but is it workable?  Chief O'Brien,

how long would it take you to teach a crash course in the fundamentals

of weapons engineering, just concentrating on what they need to build

bombs, guns, and other destructive devices?"



The chief squatted on his haunches, dipping his knees in the moist

ground; he tapped away at his tricorder, presumably figuring out what

he would need to teach.  Then he stood, shaking his head.  "It's

hopeless, sir.  Unless the Natives are engineering super geniuses it'll

take months of' academic work, and we don't have that much time."



"And there is more to it than that," said Worf glumly, obviously

realizing he was shooting down his own idea.  "It takes more than

weapons to make an army, as we have just seen demonstrated.  It takes

organization and leadership, as well as an understanding of long-range

strategy and shortterm tactics."



"Aren't these Natives organized at all?"  Sisko couldn't believe that

the planer's people, with access to such sophisticated technology,

weren't at least curious about each other.



Quark answered for the team, startling everyone except the captain.

"Why do you think we call them "Natives"?  It's because they don't even

have a generic name for themselves.  Everything is just village this

and village that .... "Quark leaned forward and spoke in a

conspiratorial whisper, glancing at the disheartened villagers as if

afraid they would overhear and cut off his lobes.  "And they don't even

have inter village trade.  Can you believe it?  it's the basis for

mercantilism, which must precede capitalism--they don't even have the

concept of money!"



"Money isn't everything, Quark," said Odo, curling his lip in

disgust.



"But indeed it is something, Constable," said the captain.  "Quark has

an unhappy point.  On Earth, it was merchants following trade routes

who eventually converted isolated city-states into great nations."



Quark picked up the thread, surprising even Captain Sisko with his

sudden earnestness; the subject was clearly dear to his Ferengi heart.

"These Natives are living in a post economic society .... Everything

they need, they literally find scattered on the ground like dead

leaves.  They've never had to trade for anything in their lives.



"They don't understand the concept of making things or the division of

labor or the accumulation of capital to finance large-scale projects.

How do you expect them to learn it all in an eye blink?  And if they

don't, what makes you think they won't just wander off in the middle of

one of Chief O'Brien's engineering lectures?"



"And if the enemy just repeats their sneak attack," said the chief,

"clicking off the broadcast power to a village, then attacking it, over

and over, then the Natives will panic, and their villages are going to

fall, one by one, until the Cardassians control every Native settlement

on the planet.  I don't have to tell you what that means."



Indeed he didn't; Sisko thought of all he had learned about the brutal

occupation of Bajormand that was when the natural cruelty of the

occupiers was tempered by the frequent revolts and rebellions of the

Bajorans.  With such helpless slaves, the captain shuddered to think of

the depths of depravity that might occur.



"Perhaps we ought to send a subspace message calling for backup,"

suggested Odo.



Couldn't the Defiant simply call for help, for some Starfleet ships to

drive away this Drek'laCardassian alliance?  Dax had asked exactly the

same question.  This time, the answer from Captain Sisko was an abrupt

"No, Constable.  Think of the technology that must be in the hands of

the Cardassians and Drek'la by now.  We don't know what they've learned

to use or mounted on their ships.  At the very least, we have to learn

that much before we call in Starfleet.  So for now, we're on our

own."



"Then it looks like we don't have any other option," the chief said.

"We have to find a way to start training them to fight, however long it

takes."



Sisko looked from O'Brien to Worf to Odo and even to Quark; each man's

unhappy, resigned look told him what he didn't want to know.  The chief

had stated the consensus; he was sure that when he got Dax's full

report, it would contain the same recommendation.



"We need to start by forcing them to see their own need for training,"

said Worf.



"My thoughts precisely.  It's time, I believe, for a shakedown hike."

The away team looked blank, not understanding what Sisko meant.  "Get

the troops in line, Mr.  Worf," said the captain, surveying the

tricorder topographic map he had downloaded; he studied the contour

lines, trying to chart a reasonably efficient route westward ....

Better than the pell-mell dash away from the victorious enemy--a route

rather than a rout, he thought somewhat uncharitably.  "We're about to

organize the Native Scouts of Sierra-Bravo."



CHAPTER



THREE DAYS OF BO?  Scout hell.  Chief Miles O'Brien moaned as he

massaged his aching calves; he had never quite managed to become

involved in Scouting--never seen the urgency behind forty kilometer

forced marches, slogging through swamps (enthusiastically labeled

"wetlands" on the tricotder map) and steamy jungles, up and down

precipitous slopes, all the while trying to beat into the Natives'

heads that they didn't need all that technology manna falling from

heaven--they could do it themselves with lower-level but sustainable

technology.



Worf was exhilarated, and the captain seemed chipper enough, but

O'Brien found himself siding more and more with Quark; the two grumpy

old men of the group didn't see anything stimulating about a huge gorge

to cross or a marsh to wade through.  The chief was amused, however, to

watch Captain Sisko's best laid schemes gang aft a-gley.



The countryside was rugged and forbidding.  The mineral composition of

the soil meant the ground was spongier than on other planets, and since

they were in a very moist climatic band above the planet's equator,

they were inundated by water from all directions: rain, seepage, and

rivers, sluggish and meandering on the plains, rushing white water in

the hills.  The combination of the spongy soil and seepage meant

quicksand, of course, and the mineral content made it more like cement

sand.  Just walking was hazardous.  Though the brilliant blues and

greens, in trees and rocks alike, punctuated by streaks of brilliant

orange-and-red algae and fungi, made for a colorful (if deadly,

draining, and inedible) hike.



The planetary axis tilted alarmingly toward the sun, so the sun rose

not so much in the east as the northeast, hooking around the sky in a

great crescent, then setting in the northwest.  Masses of clouds (more

particulate precipitants in the air) acted as heat transfer engines,

warming the air to an unbearable mugginess in the daytime, then

dissipating to allow rapid cooling close to zero degrees Celsius at

night.  A real garden spot.



The overt purpose of the hike, as Sisko explained it to the Natives,

was to trek across seventy-five kilometers of wilderness to reach a

certain village far enough away from the enemy that the Tiffnakis (and

the away team) would stay out of the invaders' way--until they were

ready to return and fight.  Unsurprisingly, Asta-ha and her Tiffnaki

comrades were spoiling for a rematch.



"I want to immobilize them with my motion constrictor," she said,

fixing the chief with a mad, rigid stare, "and slowly rip their limbs

off with the lift pull, the murderers."  The motion constrictor,

O'Brien discovered after they got far enough away to begin picking up

power broadcast from another relay, was a small, one-handed

neural-impulse inhibitor; the lift pull was a phaser-sized tractor beam

that required an anchor point.  O'Brien had never seen either one of

those two pieces of technology before in his life.



The covert reason for the march was to put the Tiffnakis into a

position where they had to rely on themselves and their own ingenuity.

It was Captain Sisko's idea to march them across the most forbidding

landscape imaginable so they would be forced, willy-nilly, to discover

three of the four basic engines of antiquity: the lever, the pulley,

and the inclined plane (neither the captain nor Chief O'Brien could

think of a way to introduce the Tiffnakis to the water screw).  At the

least, the away team expected the Natives to finally understand ropes,

especially after rappelling down a cliff face.  Alas, as the Scottish

poet Bobbie Burns wrote, a verse that came back to O'Brien again and

again: But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be

vain: The best laid schemes o'mice an' men,



Gang aft a-gley, An' lea 'e us naught but grief an' pain,



For promise joy



--And the trip did not work out quite the way the captain planned.



The first tiny glitch occurred late the first full day of travel, when

they came to the precipitous cliff face (marked on the tricorder map by

an incredibly tight convergence of sixteen contour lines) down which

Sisko intended them to rappel.



Looking over the face of that monstrous cliff, even O'Brien felt his

gut tighten, and a chill passed from tailbone to cervical vertibrae.

"We're, ah, going to rappel down that... sir?"



But the captain beamed, happy as a proverb.  "I always feel so

exhilarated when I drop down a mountain," he exclaimed.  He walked away

from the milling Tiffnakis, whom Worf struggled to keep from pressing

close to the cliff like penguins trying to chivvy one of their number

off the edge to see if it was safe.  The chief watched Captain Sisko

tap his com badge and speak in low tone~ for a moment; a few minutes

later--long enough to get to the Defiant's replicators and back,

thought O'Brien-eight harnesses, ropes, and anchor stakes materialized

on the ground nearbywalong with more edible combat rations, "com-rats,"

for the Federation members, who could not, of course, live off the

poisonous wasteland.



Sisko returned.  "The constable and Quark will demonstrate the

technique... won't you, gentlemen?"  Odo didn't look too worried; he

can shape shift into a bird or something if he starts to fall, thought

the chief.  But the Ferengi was first confused, then shocked, then

horrified as Worf took Quark by the elbow and hustled him over to the

rigs and ropes.



"Think of the harness as a sort of chair made of nylochite webbing,"

said the captain, flashing a face-splitting grin.  "You basically sit

in it, as Quark is demonstrating."



"What?"  demanded the Ferengi, turning distinctly pink.  "You were

serious?  You expect me to trust my precious life to that pile of

primitive junk?"  His eyes grew nearly as huge as his ears, and he

tried to back away--only to back directly into an immovable Chief

O'Brien, who had casually shifted behind the Ferengi, trapping him.



Worf steamed; he did not like the humidity one bit.  "You will put on

this harness," he snarled, "or I will put it on for you."



Quark breathed a sigh of relief.  "Oh, would you?  There's a good

Klingon.  You'd make a much better test subject than I."



With a howl of frustration, the Klingon surged forward, webbed harness

in hand, and struggled with the Ferengi; a moment later, a yoked and

harnessed Quark cringed before the mighty-the wed Klingon warrior.

"Your years of sitting behind a bar have made you fat and sluggish,"

said Worf.



"I don't sit, I stand," mustered the Ferengi with some dignity.

Constable Odo, meanwhile, had pulled on his own harness with no fuss.



"Now observe carefully," said the captain to the fascinated Tiffnakis.

He found a solid rock without difficulty and pressed the anchor pins to

the rock surface, one by one; they phased partially out of existence,

dropping deep into the rock with hardly any resistance; then they

phased back to solid with a bang .... They were embedded into place

much more strongly than could ever be the old-fashioned kind that one

pounded into a crack.



Running one end of each rope through the anchor pins, Sisko showed

Asta-ha and another gaggle of Tiffnakis designated the "second group"

how to run the rope through the carabiners attached to the front of the

harnesses.  Then Odo backed to the edge of the cliff and began to jump,

letting out rope as he fell... rapidly enough for a quick descent, but

not so fast as to lose control.  Quark took some prodding by Worf; he

fell jerkily, shouting and cursing all the way until his voice faded

from earshot.



Fearless, the Tiffnakis crowded the edge of the cliff, craning their

necks to follow the progress of the two "volunteers."  "Such tech,"

breathed Tivvama, Asta-has daughter.



Odo landed on the ground and quickly shed the harness, which Chief

O'Brien hauled back up.  A few seconds later, Quark lighted, but the

Ferengi just stood there shaking.  "Come on, you coward!"  shouted the

chief.  "Strip that thing off so the next batch can go."  Quark stared

up at the chief, silently mouthing something obscene in Ferengi.  Then

he pulled off the webbing (fighting off some unwanted help from Odo),

and O'Brien hauled up that harness as well.



"All right, then," said Captain Sisko, striding forward with more

harnesses in hand.  "Where's my next batch of Scouts?"



O'Brien looked around for Asta-ha.  "Well, she was right here," he

said, puzzling over the disappearance.  "Maybe she got frightened and

ran of~."  Suddenly, Worf shouted in surprise, pointing down the cliff

face.  O'Brien jumped, so startled he almost fell off.  Heart pounding,

he leaned over and saw Asta-ha and about twenty of her Tiffnaki

villagers slowly floating down the cliff in perfect comfort... wearing

nothing but their clothes.



Sisko, O'Brien, and Worf stared openmouthed, no one saying a word, as

the Natives drifted down at a constant velocity, finally landing at the

bottom with a tiny bump.  Cupping her hands, Asta-ha shouted up to the

Scout troop still waiting above: "Perfect.  Send down the next group,

Captain Sisko."



Another group was already stepping toward the cliff edge when Sisko

waved them back.  "How the hell did they do that?"  he bellowed.



Fighting back a grin, Chief O'Brien told the captain about the antigrav

device Asta-ha had demonstrated back at the well the first time they

saw her.  Sisko leaned close to the chief.  "This was supposed to be a

learning experience," he said, patiently but with much menace behind

the words.  "We're supposed to be teaching the Natives how to survive

without their technology.  Confiscate all anti gray devices right

now."



"Yes, sir," the chief said, "I thought we had.  They must have had

more."



The Tiffnakis remaining at the top of the cliff looked startled as the

chief relayed the order; reluctantly, thirteen of them handed over

devices ranging in size from a medical scanner to a phaser.  The chief

put them in a bag and handed them to the captain, who quietly had the

Defiant beam them up.  "Much better," he concluded.  "Now let's get

them down the cliff."



O'Brien and Worf returned to the cliff edge, but something was wrong:

most of the Tiffnakis were gone--disappeared.  Struck with a sudden

suspicion, the chief went immediately to the cliff edge and looked

over; now the Tiffnakis were descending on a slant, as if sliding down

a gigantic slide .... But there was nothing there.



For an instant, O'Brien felt a surge of panic; he had never longed for

a bottle of Tullamore Dew as much as he did just then.  Then, with a

sigh of relief, he recalled the force beam benches in the village;

evidently, some enterprising Tiffnaki had set up a device to project

such a force beam slantwise down the cliff, and the rest were simply

sliding down it to the ground.



By the time the three away team members on top of the cliff located the

device, all but three of the Tiffnakis were already on the beam slide.

Worf and O'Brien stopped the last three, but of course they couldn't

shut off the beam until the last person touched ground (not wanting to

drop the sliding Tiffnakis to their deaths).  Sisko confiscated the

force beam generator; up it went to the ship.



"Any more force beams?"  demanded the captain, his teeth grinding and

fists clenching and unclenching.  The remaining three Tiffnakis shook

their heads.  "Antigray devices?  Aircars?  Parachutes?"



"What's a parachute?"  asked one of the remaining three.



O'Brien jumped in to explain, while the captain cooled off for a

moment.  "A piece of material shaped like, um, a dome or hemisphere,

which catches the air and lowers you gently when you fall."



A Tiffnaki brightened.  "Oh.  That's right, I almost forgot."  Before

anyone could stop him, he walked to the edge and stepped off.  Sure

enough, when O'Brien stared downward, there was the telltale blue

billow as the native wafted gently down the cliff, like a dead leaf

falling from an autumn branch.



Sisko lunged forward, grabbing each of the remaining two Tiffnakis by

the scruff of his collar.  One was Owena-da, the man who had handed out

the weapons before the disastrous fight against the Cardassians;

O'Brien didn't know the other one.  "Get-in-the-harnesses," enunciated

Captain Sisko, hands shaking with suppressed emotion.



Confused by the captain's obvious rage, the two Tiffnakis quickly

complied, stepping into the webbed affairs alongside Worf, O'Brien, and

the captain himself.  The chief swiftly planted three more anchor pins

for a total of five, one for each of them.



"Walk to the edge backwards," said Sisko, back in control of himself,

"and step off."



O'Brien turned around and demonstrated, as did Worf on the other side

of the Tiffnakis.  O'Brien tried to keep his right hand clear, in case

he had to reach out and grab a Whatsit, should one panic and lose

control of the rope.



The captain was still giving helpful advice: "Lean back against the

rope and let it play out .... Slowly, there's nora" Sisko froze in

mid-sentence, as both Tiffnakis had simply backed off the cliff with no

hands and begun to plummet.



Leaping wildly, O'Brien struggled to catch up with the Natives, who

were simply falling at normal gravitational acceleration, their ropes

slack; then the chief pulled up short as he abruptly caught up with

them: they had come to a sudden halt-but their ropes were still slack.

They started to descend once more, lowering at a constant speed while

still not holding their ropes; it was as if they were being lowered by

an invisible fishing line attached to a reel on top of the cliff.  The

chief bounced closer, straining to see if there was a wire; what he saw

instead was that each Whatsit had his hands cupped, as if holding

something.



At that moment, O'Brien remembered the handheld "tractor beam" toy that

Owena-da had shown him.  He sighed deeply and bounced the remaining

distance to the ground in one mighty leap.



When the captain touched ground minutes later, he may as well have been

wearing a sign that said "Abandon hope all ye who talk to me."  O'Brien

touched his com badge and quietly said, "O'Brien to anchor pins:

release."  The ropes went suddenly slack, and the freed anchor pins

dropped to the ground, bouncing a couple of times on the hard,

mineral-rich surface.



Wordlessly, Captain Sisko stormed off along his preplanned route, not

even bothering to collect the handheld tractor beams .... The commander

and the chief took it upon themselves to confiscate the cheat-tools and

send them upstairs.



"Well, sir," said O'Brien cheerfully, five kilometers later, "what's

next on the outdoorsman's test?"



Captain Sisko had cooled off his own temper by leading the Scout mob on

a fast march: five klicks at six and a half kilometers per hour.  It

would have been a fast walk along a paved road; in the wilderness, it

was more like an overland run.  Fortunately for O'Brien (and the only

point that kept poor Quark alive), the planet had a gravitational

acceleration only 0.79 that of Federation standard .... It was like the

chief had dropped sixteen kilograms, or more than two stone.  The

Tiffnakis were huffing and blowing so much, it sounded like a balloon

inflating contest.  Neither Worf nor the captain was even sweating

heavily; nor Odo, of course, but he didn't count.



Sisko consulted his tricorder map, smiling faintly in a way that raised

snakes in O'Brien's stomach.  "Dead ahead is a marsh that preliminary

tricotder readings put at about a meter deep, with the approximate

consistency of tar."



"Oh, lovely.  This is a really... challenging course you've laid in for

us, Captain."  The chief didn't mind physical exercise, when it was

fun, like stretching himself against Dr.  Bashir at spring ball But

slogging through a sticking bog, with tendrils of goo that clung to

every step like the vengeful dead resenting the footsteps of the

living, was decidedly not Miles Edward O'Brien's idea of a grand

time.



"Scout troop, halt," ordered the captain; Worf relayed the order up and

down the line of two hundred in a series of bellows that could probably

be heard by Dax up in orbit.  O'Brien stared at the vast expanse of

nothingness ahead of them.  The marsh (bog, fen, swamp, mud hole)

stretched as far as his eye could see... a blue black sea of frozen

waves and humps that were probably sandbars of relative solidity.  Then

again, knowing the captain, they might be bottomless dust bowls,

thought O'Brien; he decided to give leadership its privilege of going

first.



"Well, troops," addressed the captain, "I will leave it up to your

ingenuity to get yourselves across this mess.  You're going to have to

know how to traverse such terrain if you want to fight a guerrilla war

against the--against your invaders."  Sisko turned back to the mob,

jabbing his finger at Asta-ha, then rotating to include all the

Tiffnakis in the admonition: "And there shall be no use of force beams,

parachutes, para gliders or antigravitational devices of any sort.  Is

that understood?"



"Why not?"  asked the hereditary mayor in puzzlement.  "If the tech

gives us the means to cross this smelly and unpalatable fen, why

shouldn't we use it?"



O'Brien responded for the captain.  "Don't you remember what happened

in the battle?  The invaders have the capability to make all your

lovely tech stop working.  What are you going to do when your anti

grays fail, and you're a hundred meters in the sky?"



Asta-ha nodded sagely; her little girl Tivva-ma imitated her with

tremendous gravity.  "Yes, I see your point," admitted the mother.  "No

antigravs, or anything else that could injure or kill us if the tech

suddenly chose to take itself away."



The Tiffnakis called a town meeting to discuss the new, perplexing

rules, and Sisko gestured the away team away to allow the villagers to

work out their own problem.  The captain sucked in a lungful, looking

upon the slough of despair as if it were a rolling line of modest hills

under a soft carpet of Bajoran dushti grass.  "This takes me back," he

said.  "One thing I find I miss as commanding officer is the

opportunity to lead an away team: just me and my command against the

elements.  It's invigorating."



Odo was staring at the mob of Scouts.  "It also appears to be ex

foliating he said.



"What?"  asked Sisko.  "Constable, if you could be a bit more..."  The

captain trailed off, and O'Brien followed Sisko's gaze.



The Tiffnakis, led by Asta-ha, were just finishing burning a path

arrow-straight through the swamp, using a projection device that

strongly resembled an old-fashioned coffee grinder, including the hand

crank.  The mayor was using the crank as the away team watched, playing

an orange beam up and down the new path... a rock-hard rut with

permanent sides that appeared to be' Obsidian breathed the chief.



"Volcanic glass," responded Constable Odo automatically.  Probably

wondering if he can shape shift into it, thought O'Brien.



"This is completely unacceptable!"  shouted the Klingon, but the

captain merely sighed and shook his head.



"I can see this just isn't going to work," he said sadly; "I have a

very bad feeling about this."



Asta-ha put the finishing touches on her creation, and with a wave, the

Tiffnakis began marching normal-pace along the hardened furrow she had

dug; at the rate they were trucking, O'Brien figured they would be at

the other side of the bog in thirty minutes... without a spoiled shoe

or muddied pant leg in the lot.



Chief O'Brien heard an abrupt cry for help from twenty meters away in

the opposite direction; it was Quark, who seemed to be the only person

floundering in the swamp for some peculiar reason.  In the SWAMP?

puzzled the chiefi



Odo led the pack over to his old sparring partner.  "What's the matter,

Quark?  Did you go swimming too soon after stuffing your face?"



"Get--memO UT shrieked the Ferengi, panicked.



For some reason, everyone turned and looked at O'Brien.  "Well, how

come I have to dive in and get covered with that foul-smelling mud?"

Nobody answered, but nobody else volunteered, either.  "Oh, all right.

Why not?  Clearly it's the job of the senior chief to wade into the mud

hole to rescue any random bartenders we happen to find."



"Chief, HELP.t I'm dying, I'm dying!"



O'Brien scanned with his tricorder.  "Oh for God's sake, Quark, it's

only a meter deep--just stand up."



"I can't.  I'm--my coat is too heavy!"



The chief waited a few moments, expecting Quark to stop whining and get

up, but it became obvious that the Ferengi was struggling against a

heavy weight, like a huge pair of hands rising from the mud to suck him

down.  "Chief," said the captain, "I think you ought to see to your

teammate."



O'Brien rolled his eyes, but Sisko had a point: having accepted Quark

onto the away team, they had to treat him like a normal member. Sighing

in exasperation, Chief O'Brien waded into the goo, stepping gingerly to

avoid slipping and falling.  He struggled his way to Quark. "How the

hell did you get out here?"  he demanded, trying to get a grip on the

Ferengi's mud-soaked jacket.



"I slipped and kept sliding," snarled Quark.  "What did you think, that

I was swimming to the opposite shore?"



"What have you been eating?  You weigh a ton, Quark."



The Ferengi looked simultaneously smug and put-upon.  "I'll thank you

to keep your personal comments to yourself," he sniffed.



Something felt strangewwrong.  "In fact," mused the chief, "it's not

you what's so heavy... it's your damned jacket!"



"W-w-what do you mean?  How could a jacket be heavy?"



Quark tried so hard to look casual that O'Brien instantly grew

suspicious.  Reaching around Quark from behind, the chief yanked the

jacket off the Ferengi with a swift move.  Sure enough, the garment

weighed nearly twenty kilos.



Quark popped up immediately, now jacketless and no longer mired.  "Give

it back!"  he shrieked, snatching for the coat.  "You have no

right--it's mine!"



"There's something in here," announced the chief, holding the jacket

aloft with one hand, just out of Quark's reach.



"It's mine.  I found it."



"Now now, Quark," said Odo, striding into the mud to intercede between

the struggling pair; he removed the jacket from O'Brien's hand and held

it aloft himself.... Three meters aloft.  "You wanted to be part of the

away team?  Well, now you are .... So whatever you found belongs to the

Federation."



O'Brien quickly looked at the Tiffnakis, but they were long out of

sight; Odo had been careful not to let them see him shape shifting One

shock at a time," the constable explained.



"Why don't you bring that coat out here," suggested Captain Sisko.  "We

can all take a look and see what wonderful thing Mr.  Quark has

found."



Constable Odo slooshed his way onto the bank; O'Brien let go the

Ferengi and followed, leaving Quark to struggle his way out unassisted.

The chief stared at Odo; naturally, the changeling's "trousers" were

still sparkling clean, since they weren't cloth at all but Odo's own

body cells.  O'Brien and especially Quark looked as though they had

been dunked in an inkwell.



Laying the jacket out on the ground, Odo began searching each pocket.

"Hey," shouted Quark, rallying for one last defense of his privacy,

"don't you need a search warrant?"



The constable smiled condescendingly at him.  "Not to safety-check the

equipment of a member of the away team, surely."  Odo pulled packet

after packet out of Quark's pockets, laying them on the ground at the

Ferengi's feet.



O'Brien bent and studied them.  "Dirt," he pronounced, pouring it into

his hand and sifting it through his fingers; it felt cool, crumbly, and

faintly metallic.  "Quark, why in God's name did you fill your pockets

with dozens of bags of dirt?"



The Ferengi said nothing, but Odo rolled his eyes disgustedly.  "He

didn't fill his pockets with dirt .... He lined his pockets with

latinum-lat inurn drops."



Quark snarled at the ground, saying nothing lest it be taken down in

evidence and used against him.  Worf snarled and edged closer to the

Ferengi; O'Brien thought the Klingon looked like he was hoping to get

in one good shot before Captain Sisko could stop him.



"So, Mr.  Quark," said the captain, defusing the situation with a

smile, "I see you've been collecting geological samples.  Not a bad

idea.  Let's send them up to the Defiant for analysis."  He touched his

com badge "Sisko to Defiant."



Silence.  The captain tried a hail again, then added, "Dax, are you

there?"  There was no response.



Feeling suddenly apprehensive and very much alone, O'Brien slapped his

own badge.  "O'Brien to DaxmCommander, can you hear us?"  The response

was the same: nothing.  Worf, Odo, and even Quark tried with no better

luck.



O'Brien whipped up his tricorder, dialed the scan range out to maximum,

and swept the sky.  "Captain," he said slowly, hardly believing his own

words as they came out his mouth, "it's gone."



"Gone?"  Sisko didn't seem to understand.



"Gone.  The Defiant, it's gone--it's no longer in orbit."



"Dax," said Worf, with a sudden and very personal apprehension; he got

hold of himself immediately, turning to the captain.  "Perhaps the

Cardassian ships discovered the Defiant, and Commander Dax took it out

of orbit."



O'Brien checked again.  "No, there's no warp signature; nobody has used

warp engines around here since we arrived.  She's just..."mhe looked

up--"gone, Captain."  Taking our future luncheons and suppers with her,

he thought.



A pensive Captain Sisko absently rubbed his beard and stared after the

Tiffnakis.  "Gentlemen," he said at last, "this is no longer a Scouting

hike.  This is now a military action.  And like it or not, those"--he

gestured at the trail burned through the mud~ "are our only forces."

Then he turned back to the team and grinned.  "Let's see just how much

hell we can give," he said, grinning like a Klingon general.



I should be scared out of my wits, thought the chief, but he didn't

feel frightened: he felt the most curious sense of liberation.  At

last, a chance to scratch the itch that had bothered him ever since the

Cardassians had defected from the war to join the Dominion; a real

hullabaloo, and no holds barred.  "Too bad we don't have any Tullamore

Dew," he muttered, but nobody heard him.



CHAPTER



lO



LIEUTENANT COMMANDER Jadzia Dax sat in the Defiant's lonely command

chair--lonely not only because all her comrades were down on the planet

below, but because she felt she should be with them.  Julian said her

wound was healing nicely, and that she'd be ready to fight in another

day or two, but that meant nothing now.



Stupid, she berated herself, fretting won't help them.  She tried to

keep a poker face for the duty shift on the bridge, Ensigns Weymouth

and N'Kduk-Thag (with a glottal stop; Dax couldn't quite pronounce it)

and Lieutenant junior grade Joson Wabak, a good-looking Bajoran man

that made Jadzia think fondly of her wilder days.  Curzon had had lots

of "relationships" that he'd given little long-term thought to, but in

her female years Dax had rarely been quite that frivolous.



Suddenly, Lieutenant Wabak at Ops jumped in startlement and stared

intensely at his threat board.  "Commander," he said hesitantly, "we

were just scanned."



Dax considered.  "Random sweeps by the Cardassian ships.  Right?"



"No, ma'am."  Wabak looked up nervously.  "We're being scanned by the

planet."



"By the planet?"  Dax half rose.  "By the Natives?  Or is it a

Cardassian probe?"



"I mean scanned by the planetary defense system in orbit Not the

Cardassian ship, ma'am."  Uh oh .... Dax almost sprinted to the threat

board.  Looking over the lieutenant's shoulder, she double-checked his

read.  He was absolutely right: the scan came from orbit, and it wasn't

a Cardassian signal-processing system.



Dax uttered a single Klingon oath before she remembered she was in

charge: raw ensigns (and jay gees did not want to hear their commanding

officer get upset.  "All right, so we've been detected by the planetary

defense systems; they're not firing on the Cardassians Any reason to

think they'll fire on us?"



"Well," hedged Wabak, "we are a lot closer than they are."



"Mr.  Wabak, how much higher in orbit are the Cardassians?"



"We're at half-synchronous, about forty-three thousand.  The

Cardassians are all somewhere around a hundred thousand kilometers."



Ensign N'Kduk-Thag cleared his throat; it sounded like sandpaper across

a washboard.  "The Cardassians would doubtless prefer to be at a much

closer orbit to support their troops," he said, speaking perfectly

correctly but without inflection.



"Or even at the one percent atmospheric level, to cover the entire

planet more quickly," added Wabak, "like a low orbit with a one- or

two-hour period."  Ensign Weymouth said nothing; she sort of contracted

within herself--earning a possible "down" on her OOD watch, whenever

Dax got around to doing the CDO log.



"In either case," continued the monotone of Ensign N'Kduk-Thag, "the

Cardassian ships would not be so far away from the planet's surface

unless they were afraid of being detected and classified as an

unfriendly object by something--presumably the planetary defenses."



The opening salvo of something struck them at just that moment.

"Incoming," shouted Lieutenant Wabak, somewhat belatedly.



There was no shock; the Defiant didn't rock or shudder.  The beam that

struck them was nondestructive, fortunately--since of course they had

no shields.  They were "silent running," as the Trill recalled

submariners used to call it centuries ago; the cloak was incompatible

with shields.



"Shields up," said Wabak.



Without a perceptible pause, Commander Dax responded, "Belay that.

Ensign Weymouth, diagnostics .... What the hell is the beam doing to

us?  Anything?  Is it a scan?"



The brunette--whose hair was shaved into some improbable design that

was probably a religious symbol (otherwise Starfleet wouldn't allow it)

squeaked nervously, but her hands flew across the console.  Once you

kick her in the butt, she~ not too bad, thought Dax abstractly, editing

the log entry in her head.  "It'sum not doing anything.  I mean, I

don't see any problems."  "Try a level-three."



"I did, levels two through five.  No damage, sir."



"Wabak?  N'Kduk-Thag?  Sorry if I mangled your name .... Can I call you

Nick?"



"You may call me Nick.  Commander, I can detect no effect from the

beam."



"Neither can ..."  Wabak trailed off, staring at his threat board with

eyes so bright blue, Dax idly wondered whether they would shine in the

dark.  A pity he hadn't come aboard Deep Space Nine a year earlier ....

"What is it, Wabak?"



"The Cardassians are scanning us--and they're heading right toward

us."



Dax was up and out of the command chair again, looking over Wabak's

shoulder, vaguely aware it probably wasn't a good idea--it might make

him think she lacked confidence in him.  "Now what?  How are they...

Weymouth, fire a probe, opposite direction from the Cardassians."



The ensign poked at her board, Dax heard a faint hiss.  "Probe away."



"Point it backwards and take a look at us on sensors; put it on the

main viewer."



Five pairs of eyes on the bridge, counting the silent security chief by

the turbolift, stared up at the main viewer.  Dax saw a star field,

with a pair of dots moving slowly closer; each dot was accompanied by a

bright green box full of information about the type and specs of

Cardassian warship it was.  But the centerpiece of the screen was a gi

antsized picture of the Defiant, accompanied by its own bright green

box... and the ship was radiating on all frequencies.



"So much for the cloak," said Dax, more disappointed than incredulous.

"No wonder we're attracting attention.  We're lit up like a courting

lantern."



"Well," said Lieutenant Wabak weakly, "at least now we know what the

planetary-defense beam does, Commander."



"Belay that last belay, Lieutenant.  Shields, quickly--before the

Cardassians get close enough to take a clean shot."



"Incoming torpedo from the cruiser," said Wabak, raising shields, but

the shot was far wide, of course .... They were only barely in range.



"Ensign Weymouth, evasive maneuvers."



"Which--which pattern should I use, sir?"



"Pattern four."



The Defiant began to bob and weave, maneuvering to keep the planet in

between herself and the Cardassians... an impossible task, Dax quickly

realized, as the seven ships fanned out: the two GM-class heavy

cruisers, either of which could probably handle the Defiant by itself,

backed away, waiting for the cruiser and the four destroyers to harass

and chivvy the Federation vessel, which had probably been identified by

then, into the open.  Dax felt herself begin to sweat, feeling like a

burglar when someone suddenly turned on all the lights.



"Commander--should we contact the away team?"



"Negative.  The Cardassians will just follow the signal--"



"And they will locate the away team," finished the unpronounceable

Ensign Nick.



Please Benjamin, she prayed silently, whatever you do, DON'T call me

right now.



The Defiant lurched with another disruptor torpedo, fired this time by

one of the destroyers; it was only a small charge, and not a direct

shot in any event, but Dax realized it was the harbinger of more, many

more, to come.



"Commander!"  shouted Wabak.  "Should we return fire?"



"Don't bother," she said, glumly.



"What?"



"Don't bother returning fire, we're out of effective range.  Weymouth,

continue evasive maneuvers .... Do it randomly--use the computer,

that's what it's there for."  Dax paced nervously, aware she was

showing her stress, hoping it would just appear as battle lust.  It

would make sense; over the last few centuries, they know I've been a

berserker warrior more than once.



"Incoming," said the jay gee  "Torpedo, two disruptor blasts--took us

on... the disruptors took us on the for' and left flank, shields

holding."



"Sort of," added Dax, noticing the bridge lights flicker... a subtle

sign of power strain as the computer instantly compensated.  "Return

fire?"



"We're not close enough, Lieutenant; just vamp until ready."



"What?"



"Sorry Just fly in circles, try to keep the planet between us and the

heavies."  Centuries ago, on ancient Earth, when the vaudeville acts

weren't quite ready but the audience were restive, the MC would "vamp

until ready"--come out, tell jokes, sing songs, insult the audience,

and in general make a turn reel literally a noise, until the first

juggler or dance act felt the psychic moment was perfect to make an

appearance (or was paid the extortion money they demanded not to walk

off the show).  At the moment, against two heavy dreadnoughts and five

smaller ships, that was about all the Defiant could do--and Dax knew

it.  The junior officers should have known it too, but Jadzia Dax was

more willing to forgive the sins of youth than her youthful protege,

Benjamin Sisko.



Suddenly, Lieutenant Wabak jumped half out of his chair and his skin.

"Incoming missiles" he nearly screamed; then without bothering to ask

permission, he fired a pair of photon torpedoes.



The explosion literally spun the ship, sending it tumbling in its orbit

until Ensign Weymouth corrected and regained control.



"What the hell was that?"  demanded the commander.



"Planetary defenses," bellowed Wabak, trying to regain control of

himself.  "Prophets, more missiles."



"Get us out of this orbit, Mister."



Discussion ceased as the bridge crew poured on the impulse engines,

increasing momentum in the direction of their orbit; in accordance with

gravitational laws that not even the Joint Federation, Klingon, and

Cardassian Peace Negotiations Discussion Subcommittee could yet repeal,

the Defiant drifted farther and farther from the center of the planet.

"Take out any missiles aimed at us," ordered Dax retroactively, for the

record.  The lieutenant junior grade repeated his earlier actions,

though this time one of the missiles got too close, and the explosion

tore right through the shields and shredded the external packet of one

of the nacelles.



"Dax to Bashir.  Casualties on decks, ah, nine and ten."  The battle

continued, forces conjoined, and Dax forgot everything, even the

casualties, in her mad zeal somehow to keep the rest of them alive for

at least a few more minutes.



Dr.  Bashir, running down a corridor in the increasingly damaged

Defiant, staggered and fell against the bulkhead as the damned ship

heaved and shook under the bombardment.  He barely avoided actually

sprawling on the deck and dropping everything.



A nurse behind him unnecessarily grabbed him under the arms and helped

him up.  "I'm all right, Aaastaak," he snapped, testy under the

strain.



Julian Bashir sighed as he continued down the corridor, slower this

time.  Well this IS what I signed up for, isn't it?  "A lesser man

would crumble," he muttered, but Virjaaj Aaastaak didn't hear, of

course: Toorjaani were known throughout the quadrant for their lousy

hearing, made up for by an almost psychic empathy with the injured,

nearly as good as the Betazoids'.  Taking a break from bumpy noses,

evolution had equipped the Toorjaani with noses that bent at a right

angle, pointing left (the dominant caste) or right (servants, doormen,

boot polishers, so on); the Federation had debated their admission for

years.



And here I am, mentally babbling again, thought the doctor angrily.

Bashir pushed through an emergency door that was flashing red; had it

been flashing blue, it would have indicated hull breach beyond it, and

Dr.  Bashir would have needed a pressure suit to treat the

casualties--assuming they managed to survive a close encounter with

the



Void.



And casualties there were.  Sixteen crewmen were scattered about the

room, bloodstains painted the floor an eerie red with streaks of green

(Vulcan) and silver and black (any of several different species; Bashir

would worry about identifcation after triage).  '~,taastaak!"  shouted

the doctor, catching the Toorjaani's attention.  "Her and her,

emergency transport to sickbay.  The ones I'm marking get your

immediate attention."  The ship rocked again, throwing Bashir to his

knees.  What the hell is going on up there?  he wondered, climbing back

to his feet.



As the two most injured crew women disappeared into sparkles, Bashir

drew a device from his bag and spray-painted the faces of seven other

crewmen: they all had broken bones, multiple contusions, and serious

but not life-threatening lacerations and abrasions; one was bleeding

badly enough that the doctor staunched the flow before spraying him.

"Leave the rest until later.  They can wait."



Bashir slapped his com badge  "Marge.  Start..."  Realizing he was

still shrieking like a banshee, Bashir cleared his aching throat and

started over.  "Marge, prep the two patients for immediate surgery,

then start with an alpha wave inducer and start isolating the most

serious internals with an exoscalpeL I'll be down in three or four

minutes." He was holding tight to a hatch-access handle; nevertheless,

he was almost knocked off his feet anyway when the ship first lurched

forward, like a boat sliding down a particularly grim wave, then jumped

backwards, as if it had slammed into something solid (like a planet).



Leaving Aaastaak in charge of the first serious casualty site, Julian

Bashir picked up his tricorder and medical bag and literally ran to the

next chamber.  He found only four more casualties, none as seriously

injured as the ensign and the patient he had already sent to surgery.

"People, listen up," he said.  "You can all make it next door except

you, Ensign.  The rest of you go into that room there"-Bashir

pointedm'and the nurse will take care of you after he squares away some

other, more seriously wounded patients."



Bashir pressed his lips together, playing his portable plasma infusion

unit across the chest of the far more seriously injured Ensign Yamada,

who had lost a significant amount of blood.  The ship seemed to roll;

at least Julian Bashir was pressed against the floor with nearly three

times the normal gravitation allowed by the inertial dampers.



"Ensign Jones," he gasped when he could breathe again, "I checked you

out: your pulse, respiration, and blood pressure are all normal.

Whatever you're feeling is entirely in your mind; your body is all

right, except for some minor scratches."  Dr.  Bashir looked up at the

sweating, shaky star man  "It's all right to be seared mI scared to

death.  You're going to be fine .... trust me.  I am a doctor."  He

smiled at the man, who looked terribly embarrassed at his outburst.



When Bashir had stopped Yamada's blood flow with his hypo tourniquet

despite being knocked to his rear twice because of torpedoes or

disruptors pounding against the fading shields, the doctor had the

computer transport himself directly to sickbay.  Just as he arrived,

the ship rolled so severely that the inertial dampers couldn't quite

keep up; Bashir found himself hanging from the edge of the operating

table, while the bulkhead separating the surgery from his office

abruptly became the "floor."  Then normal gravity reasserted itself,

and he fell to the deck.



He stood, holding his stomach and trying to find the breath that had

been knocked away by the blow.  "Oh, Marge... this is going to be a

relaxing session."  He shook his numbed arm.  "I can just feel it in my

bones."



The nurse looked at Bashir and shook her head, as if ruing the day she

had ever been assigned to Dr.  Julian Bashir.



Jadzia Dax was far too busy to be sick to her stomach; after the third

time thrown to the deck, she sat in the command chair and ordered

everyone, herself included, to strap in.  It was the most lopsided

battle she had fought in more than a century: the Defiant had been so

busy dodging, she had gotten off only a few, poorly aimed shots at the

Cardassian attackers... and those had done barely any damage at all.



"Weymouth, continue evasive maneuvers.  Wabak, shoot anything you see,

keep us outside the planetary defenses--last thing we need is to be

dodging their impulse missiles in addition to torpedoes and

disruptors."  She tapped her corn badge "Dax to Ensign Nick, private

channel."



She started to correct herself and use his actual name; surprisingly,

N'Kduk-Thag responded instantly .... The computer must have been

listening to us, mused the Trill.



"Nick, you're the only one not engaged in keeping us alive: I need

input.  We're being pounded .... Got any suggestions?"  She spoke

quietly into the ether, not wanting to distract either of the other two

bridge officers; they had their hands full dodging Cardassians.



"We nmst exit the vicinity," suggested the emotionless, or at least

uninflected, Ensign Nick.



"Yes, but how do we disengage when we're surrounded by Cardassians?

Before we made a move in any direction, the minute their sensors picked

up the impulse engine run-up, they'd be all over us like--well, never

mind."  She wrinkled her nose at the image she had been about to

invoke.



"Then there is only one course.  We must surrender the ship," concluded

the rational but not exactly morale-boosting ensign.  "Surely the

Cardassians are more interested in capturing and studying the Defiant

than blowing her to pieces."



Dax thought for a moment: something as yet inchoate floated in her

stomach, reaching pale tendrils of cognition up her throat toward her

brain.  Something... something there Suddenly she knew what to do.

"Ensign Nick," she called sharply, "open a channel to the lead

ship-well, either of the ships.  Use the Cardassian guard frequency,

ah"--Dax closed her eyes for a moment and felt the nausea she had

fought off so far-"twenty-seven, thirteen, thirteen, thirty, three

niner "Channel open, Commander."  "This is Lieutenant Commander Dax,

commanding officer of the United Federation of Planets vessel Defiant. 

I hereby surrender my ship and crew and demand you cease fire in

accordance with the Uniform Rules of Warfare Treaty."  The rest of the

bridge crew fell silent, nearly forgetting to dodge the final incoming

hammer blows.



CHAPTER



THE DEFIANT took six more hits to the shields, then the Cardassian

ships grew silent; everyone drifted along his previous course,

eyeballing each other.  "Shields down to eleven percent," said Ensign

Nick, science duty officer, doing the analysis that really should have

been performed by Ensign Weymouth, "extensive hull and bioelectrical

damage on most decks, atmospheric containment still operable,

thirty-seven casualties--two fatal, six critical.  Doctor Bashir has

commenced medical treatment reports."



Weymouth and Wabak stared back at the Trill, and Joson Wabak's mouth

was open in astonishment.  "We're surrendering?"  he demanded,

incredulous.



"Sure sounded like it, didn't it?"  Dax wasn't being intentionally

cryptic; she sometimes conceived a plan and concealed it even from her

own conscious mind.



A cautious voice responded over the comm link.



"I am Captain Maqak.  The New Cardassia accepts your surrender."



The New Cardassia?  That wasn't a name Dax had ever heard before.  "We

await further instructions, Captain Maqak," said the commander.  She

caught Ensign Nick's eye and drew her finger across her throat; he

understood and severed the connection.  "Lieutenant," Dax said, leaning

forward conspirator ally "cut the shields, but let them kind of flicker

out, like they were failing."



"That won't be hard," Wabak responded, eyes cold and dark.



Damn Bajorans, thought Dax, always so emotional about everything.



Wabak's hands were shaking with suppressed anger, frustration,

humiliation, as he killed the shields.



"Are the Cardassians surrounding us?"  asked Dax.  "Pretty much, ma'm,

"he said, rolling his eyes.  "Perfect.  Weymouth, listen close: just

tap the impulse engines a tad, just enough to nudge us so that we pass

very close on the lee side of this dreadnought here."  Dax unbuckled

and strode to the ensign's console, pointing at the nearest of the two

larger ships.



"The--lee side, Commander?"  She looked puzzled; the term was too

ancient to be familiar to her,... a problem a multi-lived Trill had

more often than one might think.



"Just get that dreadnought between us and the source of that discovery

beam from the planetary defenses, Ensign .... You follow?  I want us in

Maqak's shadow, far as the beam is concerned."



Jadzia Dax glanced over at Wabak, the cute but hotheaded young Bajoran.

The look of growing comprehension on his face was music.



Ensign Weymouth seemed to get it as well.  She expertly maneuvered the

crippled Defiant into position, even allowing her to tilt alarmingly,

as if she had lost control of her attitude stabilizers.



"Let me know when the discovery beam is blocked," said Dax to Wabak,

who stared intently at his threat board.



"But Commander," queried the greenish blue Ensign Nick, whose

literality seemed to slow him down at times, "even if we restore the

cloaking device will not the beam simply find us again and strip it

away?"



"Out here?  We're obviously beyond the triggering distance, or else

they'd be shooting at the



Cardassians."



"Commander, the beam is blocked," shouted



Wabak.



"Joson, ready to cloak?  Do it now."  Dax waited a couple of seconds

for the cloak to take full effect.



"All right, Tina, now.  Point zero seven five impulse, dive and to the

right, get out from between 'em."



The engines hummed and rattled, obviously damaged.  Come on, babies,

just a little more.  We'll have plenty of time for repairs and coddling

later-just GET US OUT OF HERE.  Unwilling to leave navigation, Dax

hovered over Ensign Weymouth, gripping the chair and feeling excitement

build in her gut like a nova.  Dax's mouth was dry and her lips stuck

together; she tried to lick them, but she had no saliva.  As the

Defiant dodged around the



Cardassian hedge and broke free, she alternately clenched and

unclenched her fingers on the back of



Weymouth's chair.



"Nick!  Are we trailing any debris, ionized tritium or gallium

arsenide, anything like that?"



The ensign checked.  "Yes, Commander, we are leaving a trail of tritium

plasma.  I will attempt to correct."  "No, leave it .... We want them

to track us."  Wabak shot Dax a suspicious glance; Weymouth was too

busy driving and Nick obeyed without question.



"Turn and head directly for the planet, maintain point zero seven

five."  "What orbit?"



"No orbit.  I said, directly for the planet."  Oh boy, she thought, if

this doesn't work... well, at least !  won't ever have to see Benjamin

staring reproachfully at me ever again.



The Defiant turned and dove directly for the planet, as Dax ordered.

"Cardassians," shouted the commander.



Joson Wabak checked his threat board; for an untrained crew of junior

officers, they actually weren't doing half bad, Dax realized .... At

the back of her mind, she was already writing the log entry: Competent

and dutiful but somewhat unoriginal.  "Hope I get a chance to log it,"

she said under her breath.



"They're--ah--they're kind of milling around; they're sweeping the area

for a warp signature."



"Hah.  Well, we're not running."



"Now they're fanning out--they're heading lower.  I think we're..."



"What?  We're what?"  Dax caught hold of herself; someone had to remain

levelheaded.  She back into her command chair and buckled up again.



Wabak looked back at her, eyes wide.  "Commander-they've spotted the

ionized tritium trail.  They are tracking us.  They're following us

down.  They'll see right where we're going!"



Dax grinned like the Cheshire Cat in that old Earth book Jake Sisko had

insisted she read.  "I'm counting on it.  That's why we're going slow

enough they can follow.  Tina, set speed to one hundred kilometers per

second but wait to engage for my mark."



The Defiant plunged closer and closer to the planet; Dax ordered Ensign

Nick to count off every ten thousand kilometers, which he did a little

faster than one beat per second.  When they hit forty thousand

kilometers from the planet, Dax said,



"Tina, engage.  Hang on, kids; Wabak, take over emergency helm--hands

off, Tina--Joson, be prepared to dodge any accidental missile

intercepts."



Wabak was impressed.  "Oh... Commander, that's brilliant!  Cold, but

brilliant."  Not surprisingly, the Bajoran seemed less than concerned

about Dax's coldness toward their Cardassian attackers.



A few moments later, the pursuing Cardassians, having forgotten their

lesson, also passed below forty thousand kilometers, and the planetary

defenses engaged.  Missiles began to launch so quickly that, even

though none was fired directly at the Defiant, it was all Joson could

do to dodge the ones headed for the targets behind.



"A hit," he shouted; since Dax hadn't felt any shudder in their own

ship, she concluded he was talking about hits on the Cardassians.

"Another hit .... Two--correct--three more; Cardassian destroyer down"

he whooped in triumph.



His triumph was short-lived, alas.  "Prophets take us," he snarled,

"the damned discovery beam is back."



"Found us again?"



"Yes.  Now they're shooting at us."



"Ten thousand," called out Ensign Nick.



"Slow up again, Wabak.  Ten kilometers per second.  We don't want to

swat the ocean like a bullet."  As they approached the great northern

ocean, Dax had them slow again, and again, until finally they

approached the water at a stately five hundred meters per second. Wabak

continued to dodge missiles, which became tougher every time the speed

dropped.



Dax touched her com badge  "Dax to crew: crash positions.  Repeat,

crash positions--everyone strapped in or down on the deck.  Julian, put

a stasis around the patients and get down."  "Aye, aye, Commander."



"How close, Commander?"  Joson asked nervously.



"Stay the course, Wabak."



"We're headed right for the water."



"Stay the course, Lieutenant.  We're headed right into the water.  Hang

on, everybody.  Count it, Nick."



"Five seconds until impact..."  He paused; Dax held her breath,

gripping the arms of the command chair, wondering for a moment whether

it wasn't all just a mirage.



It struck--hard.  The inertial dampers couldn't cushion the entire

blow, and Dax felt a tremendous impact against the restraint webbing,

which almost jerked her eyeballs out of her head.  Her head snapped

forward savagely, and her arms and legs splayed out in front of her.



When she blinked back to full consciousness, she made the mistake of

shaking her head to clear her vision; the pain in her neck was so

severe, she almost cried out.  But she gritted her teeth, playing



Klingon, and made no noise.



Still, with every movement of her body, especially her head and neck,

Dax lurched just slightly off balance, her brain compensating for too

much motion.  A frightening feeling: not quite the spinning room of

vertigo or the inability to stand still of dizziness, but the imbalance

frightened her enough that her heart pounded.  Within a few minutes,

the horrible sensation coalesced into an angry pain in her neck, and

she realized it was caused by the sudden jolt of the ship's impact

against the sea surface.



The Defiant rolled and pitched far beneath the ocean waves, caught by

deep underwater currents.  Out the forward viewer, all the commander

saw was a swirl of gradually dimming silvery blue and millions of

green-glowing bubbles.  "Computer," she gasped, "color correct for

water transparency."



Now she jumped in vertigo, causing her head to throb as if someone were

kicking her brainpan with an iron-shod boot: the ship was headed

straight for an immense rock wall.  She blinked, and realized it was

the ocean floor; they were still pointed directly downward, though

their speed was tremendously diminished--the impulse engines ran at the

same power level as if they were in vacuum, but the enormous drag of

seawater slowed their progress to a crawl.



Well, good, she thought; otherwise, we might're smacked into the dirt

before we even recovered from crashing the surface.



"Ensign Nickmwhat's our depth?"



"We are at one thousand one hundred meters below the surface; the

pressure against the hull is one hundred and ten atmospheres, still

descending; ocean floor in five hundred meters."  "Is the hull going to

cave?"  "The hull is not built for high external pressure."  "Wabak,

full power to the hull integrity shields .... In fact, over crank it; I

better head down to engineering to pump it up a bit.  Tina, land us on

the ocean floor and maintain the cloak."  She unbuckled and stood.

"Good job, crew; we made it.  We're safe."  She didn't add the caveat

she thought silently to herself: Safe FOR NOW~ How long "now" would be

was open to consideration .... depending on whether she could goose the

hull-integrity field to withstand an eventual hundred and sixty

atmospheres of pressure from the surrounding seawater longer than a few

minutes.



Otherwise... Dax left the bridge for the turbolift with visions of a

fist crushing an egg, splattering the contents across the deckplates

and the overhead.



Quark squatted on the frigid ground, trying not to think of hundreds,

thousands of bars worth of raw latinum buried beneath his feet.  Focus,

he ordered himself; greed is eternal; even a blind man can recognize

the glow of lat inurn home is where the heart is... but the stars are

made of latinum.



The Ferengi couldn't help smiling, though his students couldn't

possibly see him in the dark, despite the moons; when the immortal

Seventy-Fifth Rule of Acquisition was writ, who could know how literal

it would turn out to be?



Quark popped a glow tube  He and his twelve students were away in a

dark part of the plain, not near one of the fires that dotted the

heath; the fires were warmer, of course, but the Federations tended to

circulate among them--and Quark's plans did not include the away team,

and especially not Odo.



"Now these," he said, letting a pile of torn paper bits fall to the

ground, "are called money.  Chits, credits, whatever you want.  Each

chit represents-oh, call it twenty bars of gold-pressed latinum."  If

we're going to go for it, let~ go for it.



Asta-ha, the female leader, nodded as if she understood.



"Do you know what gold-pressed lat inurn is?"  asked Quark.  "Neg."



He sighed deeply.  All right, let's start back a little farther.

Suppose you wanted something you didn't have... say a piece of new

tech; this glow tube for instance.  Now, I have a bunch in my pocket,

and you want some.  What do you do?"



Asta-ha puzzled for a moment; then she asked, "Could I have one of your

glow tube techs, Quark?"  "Certainly, Asta-ha, but I want something in

return.  What will you offer me?"



Without a thought, the female extracted her force beam projector.  "No.

That's totally ridiculous," snarled the Ferengi, pocketing the

projector.  I thought Sisko confiscated all that, he idly wondered,

feeling virtuous in removing another Tiffnaki cheating tool.  "This

glow tube gives you light for four hours, then it stops... but the

force beam projector works forever.  You gave up something much more

useful for something of limited value .... That's uneconomic."



"But what should I offer?"  she asked, still trying to work it out.



"Just something equally valueless and temporary, like--" Quark

struggled for an example; the problem was, all the technology on this

priceless gem of a world was seemingly perfect and eternal.  "Like a

sandwich, or some other foodstuff.  Yes, that's perfect.  A meal gives

you about four or five hours of sustenance; the glow tube gives you

four hours of light .... A perfect trade.  See why?"



"I guess so," said Asta-ha; she didn't look sure at all.  "But what if

you just ate?"



Quark beamed; the perfect straight line.  "That's where this money

comes in.  It's a place holder for the value.  I give you the glow tube

and you give me one of your chits; I hang onto the chit until I get

hungry again .... Then I trade you back your chit, and you give me a

sandwich.  Get it?"



"Yeah... yeah."



"And suppose," continued the Ferengi, on a roll, "I get hungry and

you're not around.  Do I starve?



No.  I can trade the chit you gave me to anyone else who has food, and

he'll give me an equivalent amount of food.  Then he keeps the chit I

gave him, and eventually, when he needs something from somebody else,

he trades the chit for it."



In reality, Quark thought darkly, a Sierra-Bravo sandwich was just the

ticket if he ever ended up destitute and an employee, and he decided to

end it all; the local food was deadly poison to Ferengi and human

digestion.



Which raises an interesting question, he thought: what ARE we going to

eat when we run out of the despicable Federation com-rats?  There

didn't seem to be an edible beetle in sight.



Rimtha-da, a burly man who didn't know his own strength, interrupted.

"Money tech.  This is an amazing discovery, Quark.  You nmst show your

friends, too."



The Ferengi sighed again.  "No, it's not new tech, it's old tech... and

anyone can use it.  It's not like, ah, the anti gray which is

controlled by one person at a time; this tech only works if everyone

uses it."



Quark worked with the Tiffnakis for more than an hour, all the while

looking apprehensively over his shoulder for the omnipresent constable;

somehow, Quark was certain, Odo would find a way to harass Quark for

giving so generously of his knowledge of profitable capitalism.  No

good deed ever goes unpunished, he quoted to himself; it was the very

last Rule of Acquisition, number 285, to be exact, and truer words were

never spoken.



He made the Tiffnakis work with him, constructing several hundred

pieces of "money" from the paper he had borrowed from Drukulu-da, the

Tiffnakis' hard or recorder or historian--Quark wasn't sure which

description fit the man best.  After some false starts, the Ferengi had

the Natives buying and selling all their possessions from one another,

using the chits to mark the value .... It was truly a remarkable

accomplishment, Quark thought, teaching these in numerate barbarians

the principles of capitalism in just one hour.



Then Quark began to notice something odd.  By the light of his fading

glow tube he examined one of the chits: he was sure he had seen that

exact chit just a few moments before, and there were so many, they

shouldn't be recycling so quickly.  He shrugged it off, too busy to

worry about the strange coincidence; he was involved in a difficult

negotiation with Asta-ha for her mineral separator, which she had

acquired by the Profits only knew what bizarre series of trades from

someone else in the group.



A cynic, such as Odo, might have thought that



Quark concocted the whole lesson just to get his greedy hands on the

device, which would allow him to separate all the lat inurn from the

soil compound.  The Ferengi grinned.  Well, cynicism is an ugly

emotion... but the universe is sometimes an ugly place.



Then, trading away the useless (to Quark) anti gray device, which could

be found aplenty on Deep Space Nine, he received from Tivva-ma,

Asta-has daughter, a handful of chits, among which were three exact

duplicates of the chit Quark had just puzzled over.  He stared at the

four: they were identical, right down to the irregular tear along one

edge, the exact style of numbering in the Tiffnakis' complex and

inefficient duodecimal system, and even a stray charcoal mark on the

back of each one of the papers.



Somebody, he realized with a terrible shock, is counterfeiting chit

markers.  Fingers counting automatically, Quark's mind raced: the only

way to perfectly counterfeit the little slips of paper would be to use

a tiny, handheld replicator... but the replicators on the ship and the

station were huge, bulky affairs, run by the entirety of the ship's

computer system.  Quark felt dizzy at the prospect; imagine, a

replicator he could carry in his pocket while out on a stroll--I'll be

a millionaire shrieked the vital greed center of his brain.  The image

of a million bars of gold-pressed lat inurn made him actually lose

count of the "money" Tivva-ma was handing him.



CHAPTER



SNAKING FROM DES mE Quark initiated inquiries.  "Asta-ha, have you ever

seen a piece of tech--I don't know whether it's new or old--that lets

you, ah, duplicate objects?  Like if I had, oh I don't know, one of

these chits, I could use the tech to make an exact copy?"  Quark

shrugged his shoulders, trying to look and sound casual; in the dim,

green light from the glow tube it occurred to him that no one could see

him anyway.



"Never heard, never seen," said the female, shrugging right back at the

Ferengi.  She pointed to a female Quark had never met.  "Jokka-ha keeps

better track of tech than I. Try her."



Quark sidled up to Jokka-ha, a huge, strapping female who looked like

she could roll the Ferengi into a ball and boot him into the Cardassian

encampment.  She, too, claimed never to have heard of such tech.



Jokka-ha sent him to Manna-ha, who sent him to Drukus-da, who sent him

to Alba-ha, who sent him to Imyard-da, who directed him to little

Veelishdeiey-ma, and so on through a progression of more then forty

Tiffnakis, until Quark was certain he was being given the royal

runaround by the Hereditary Female Mayoress.  But abruptly, the shuck

stopped there with Tivva-ma herself.  Quark cast a dirty look at the

little girl's mother, but Astaha was obliviously involved in her own

elaborate arms negotiation with Owena-da.



Tivva-ma solemnly nodded when Quark asked the by now ritual question

about the "duplicating tech."  "Yes, I have," she said, holding up an

object the size of a hypospray.



"Can you show me?"  asked Quark, tingling with excitement; he fished in

the pocket of his once beautiful, now mud-ruined coat for something to

test and found only a plastic-wrapped treat he had taken along and

promptly forgotten.  He extracted it cleverly, laying it on the ground

in front of Tivva-ma: "Want some Huypyrian bee candy, little girl?"  It

was a sad but useful fact of biology, according to Dax's original

analysis, that Ferengi food was not poisonous to Natives--though it did

lack essential nutrients like cyanide, and they couldn't live on it.



The negotiation took another hour.  During the course of teaching the

essentials of profit, many of the chits had somehow stuck to Quark's

fingers.  He fished them all out now, along with the force beam

projector he took from Asta-ha as punishment, and several other pieces

of tech he had accidentally acquired in the course of the away team

mission.  The girl drove a brutally hard bargain, but at last, the

Ferengi brought together exactly the right combination of tech,

promises, Federation technology, and chits.  Tivva-ma handed over the

mini replicator



Gleefully, Quark hopped to his feet, stopped to pat the little girl on

the head (which indignity she took gracefully), and pranced away,

dancing in little circles... directly into a solid, massive object that

felt like a ship's bulkhead but turned out to be the dreaded Constable

Odo's immovable chest.



"Well, well, Quark... what have we here?"  Darting his hand faster than

the Ferengi's eye could follow, Odo seized hold of Quark's wrist and

twisted his hand palm-side up; Quark clenched his hand into a tight

fist around his new acquisition.



Odo hummed happily; maintaining the death grip on Quark's wrist, Odo

slowly began to metamorphose his other hand into a nightmarish

entrenching tool, with huge, jagged, metal shards instead of fingers.

The metal claw snapped open and closed a few times; then it began to

move inexorably toward Quark's clenched fist with terrible purpose.



Quark screamed and opened his hand by reflex, as quickly as he would

have jerked his fingers from a red-hot hunk of metal.  Odo's hand

contraption expertly plucked the mini replicator from Quark's trembling

paw.



"That's mine!"  shouted Quark.  "You can't have it!"



"Oh?  And how, exactly, did you get it?"



"I bought it legitimately," said the Ferengi stuffily.



"From whom?"



"From Tivva-ma."



"You bought it legitimately by tricking a child out of it?"



"I didn't trick her!  I paid very handsomely for it."



"And you paid what, exactly, Quark?"



The Ferengi licked his lips, wondering just how much of the truth to

tell.  '2, uh, gave her a force beam projector and an anti gray

device." Best not tell him about the Tiffnaki death ray, Quark

decided.



Odo arched his eyebrows.  "Correct me if I'm wrong, Quark, but didn't

those devices belong to the Tiffnakis already?"



"Well... I bought them earlier."



"With what?"



"With these."  Inspired, Quark dug into his pockets and coughed up

another handful of chits.



"You bought three devices from credulous Natives with little pieces of

paper marked in your own handwriting .... Is that your story, Quark?"

The constable curled his lip.



Quark scowled; as usual, the witless Constable Odo, unable to win a

fair battle of the minds, was resorting to sarcasm and mockery.  "Well,

earlier I traded them some of my glow tubes and a ph..."



"A ffJ~.  What's a ff?"  Odo tilted his head, almost smirking. "Were

you about to say a phaser?  So in addition to theft and fraud upon a

child, you also engaged in culture contamination.  You've had a busy

day, haven't you, Quark?"



"Odo, for profit's sake.  I was teaching them something about money and

the market."



Constable Odo perked up.  "Well, perhaps they'd enjoy a lesson about

jurisprudence, then.  I'll have the chief confiscate the phaser; I have

more enjoyable duties regarding you."



Turning about, Odo stalked toward the fire where the rest of the away

team sat; the constable's hand around Quark's wrist shape shifted into

an iron manacle, and the Ferengi was dragged, willy-nilly, toward

disgrace, dishonor, and the probable loss of the single greatest

treasure trove ever discovered by any Ferengi since Grand Nagus Zek

first realized the potential of the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant.



This has not been my day, sighed Quark.



The Defiant settled at approximately a fifteen degree angle to the

seafloor, according to the sensors.  Julian Bashir checked once more on

his surgery patients; they were all recovering nicely, sleeping soundly

with the help of an alpha rhythm inducer.  Nurses Marge and Aaastaak

monitored the patients carefully; really, there was no reason for

Bashir to stay in sickbay.



He took the turbolift to the bridge, but Dax wasn't there.  "Computer,"

he said, "locate Lieutenant Commander Dax."  A few minutes later, he

knocked on her quarters door.



"Enter," she said glumly, and the door hissed open.  "Jadzia!  Why are

you sitting here in the dark?"  She rubbed her temples.  "A, I'm trying

to get rid of this headache, and B, I'm trying to figure out how the

hell we're going to contact the away team.  There are so many ionized

minerals in the water, I can't get a subspace communication out... and

we can't beam through this stuff, either; the reflection scrambles the

beam pattern."



"You have a headache?"  asked Bashir, picking up on the one problem

where he could at least have some positive impact.  He played his

tricorder across her skull, probing for the problem.  Hypertensive, he

thought .... Perfectly normal, considering the circumstances.  "Let me

give you a mild analgesic, if you don't mind."



"Will it make me slow and stupid?"  She stared at him with hard, dry

eyes.  "Because I just can't afford that right now."



"I'm not giving you a sedative."  Julian smiled, and Jadzia couldn't

suppress a tiny smile herself.  He injected it below the skin of her

scalp using the hypospray, and she started feeling better after a few

moments.



"Here's the predicament," she said, lying back on top of her rack.

"We're stuck on the ocean floor at 1,640 meters below the surface.  We

can't beam through the water, it's too heaviliy ionized.  We can't send

a message to the away team, same reason.  And we can't rise out of the

surface because the four remaining Cardassians in orbit will spot our

leaky impulse thrusters, as will the planetary defenses, and the two of

them will bomb us into constituent atoms.  Any suggestions from the

medical staff?."



"Take your vitamins," said Julian.  But it was only a pro forma

witticism; inside, he was trying to arrange the situation into a

logical, coherent pattern so his superior brain could analyze it.

Hiding his advanced genetics from his friends was vital, but not more

vital than Jadzia's and everyone else's life.



"Obviously there's no logical engineering fix," said the doctor, "or

you'd have already thought of it."



"Thank you."



Julian continued, unsure whether she was being sincere or sarcastic.

"So what we're looking for is a solution resulting from thinking

sideways."



Jadzia rolled onto her side.  "All right, think sideways.  With the

Cardassians on the surface, I'll bet Benjamin has his hands full... and

we must find a way to communicate with him to find out whether he can

hold out long enough for us to run to the fleet and get a couple of

escorts--assuming they're not heavily engaged themselves on the



Cardassian border."



Bashit completed the thought: "Or whether the captain and the team need

immediate extraction, no matter what."



"So how do we exchange pleasantries with Benjamin and the away team?"



Julian sat down in Jadzia's desk chair, putting his chin in his hands

to ponder the problem; then, remembering his own analogy, he stretched

out on his side on the floor, facing her.  He closed his eyes, trying

to envision every crazy method of distance communication he had ever

read about, from subspace bouncing to the old radio days of ancient

Earth, to semaphor, bagpipes, signal fires, two paper cups connected by

a string.



He decided to think out loud, hoping to stimulate the brainy Trill.

"I've heard that the old sub-what are they called?--submarines used to

extend a wire on a float to the surface so they could send and receive

message traffic without surfacing."



"Subspace communications require line of sight; they don't bounce

around like electromagnetic waves.  The team would have to be within a

few kilometers of our antenna... and they're not."  "All right, then;

how about electromagnetic waves?  Old-fashioned radio, I mean."



"But how would we send to the captain?"  objected Jadzia.  "He doesn't

have a radio receiver to pick up the signal."



"Can't you rebuild a com badge so it receives radio frequency?"



"Of course.  But why would he think to do it?  We didn't arrange

anything like this before they left."



Julian Bashir thought long, hard, hot, heavy, cool, sneaky.  He

envisioned himself and Jadzia somehow rising from the sea as gods or

water sprites.  He wondered whether they could replicate a bullhorn on

a seventeen-hundred-meter pole, raise it up, and shout for the

captain.



Julian gasped; he half sat--he had it!  but where had the answer

gone?--then it poured back into his consciousness.  "Jadzia," he

shouted, startling her so that she sat bolt upright; she clutched her

head, swearing lustily Evidently, the headache was not utterly gone.



"You'd better have something after shouting me up like that," she

declared, making a threatening fist.



"Jadzia, why merely communicate with the captain when we can have a

face-to-face meeting instead?"



She considered him for a moment, scanning right to left across his

prone body, head to boots; she turned to the empty air next to him.



"Deranged," she said to the man who wasn't there.



"Totally deranged."



"No, really.  If we transport ourselves to the surface, can't we find

the captain?"



"Julian," she explained patiently, "I already told you we can't beam

through this water."



"Who said anything about beaming?  What about using the runabout?"



Jadzia blinked, startled by the suggestion.  "I never even thought of

that," she admitted.  "It's a nice idea, but the pressure would crush

the runabout like a paper lantern.  It's not built for that."  "what if

we pressurized the inside to match the outside?"



Smiling, the commander said, "That would save the runabout, but we'd

die from oxygen poisoning.... At that pressure, the partial pressure of

oxygen is enough to be toxic."



"Put a force shield around the runabout, like the ship has?"



Jadzia considered.  "That would delay the crushing, but I still think

we wouldn't make it to the surface."



"Replicate armor plating for the hull?"



"We'd need the industrial-sized replicators they have at the shipyards

Ours are much too small."



"All right then," said the good doctor, "one last suggestion: we put a

force shield around the runabout to delay the crush, and we replicate

deep-sea scuba diving gear and wear it on the way up; when the runabout

is about to blow, we let the seawater in ourselves, stick the

regulators in our mouths, and swim the rest of the way."



Dax stared at Julian, her expression utterly unreadable until the

doctor realized she was doing the math in her head--she probably didn't

even see him.  "You know," she said, "this is going to sound crazy...

but your crazy scheme might just possibly work."  She blinked back to

the same space time coordinates occupied by her body.  "Give me a

couple of hours to run some simulations, and in the meanwhile, can you

set up a scuba holosuite program?"



"Yes, I think so.  The experimental holosuite is still on board.

Why?"



"Because I need the practice.  I've never dived below thirty meters in

my life."



Julian Bashir bowed his head.  "Your wish, as always, is my command,

Jadzia."



Captain Sisko deferred any judgment about Quark and his alleged

nefarious activities "until such time as we're not in imminent danger

of being blown to small bits"; neither Odo nor Quark was happy about

the delay, but it was the fastest way to quench the fire.  Sisko was

far more concerned with supervising the division of his troops, the

Tiffnakis, into a semicoherent military organization.



Though they fought frequent wars with their neighbors--"oh, enemies all

around!"  repeated the mayor, Asta-ha--the skirmishes, near as Sisko

could sort them out, consisted of two ragtag armies standing in lines,

facing each other, and activating various pieces of found technology

until one side cut and ran.  They had no sense of strategy, tactics,

supply lines, military hierarchy, reserves, or anything else routine to

armies everywhere else in the quadrant.



He consulted with his two most experienced battlefield commanders:

Lieutenant Commander Worf and Master Chief Petty Officer O'Brien.  "The

first step," rumbled the Klingon, truly in his element leading an army

against Cardassians, "is to train an elite corps of commandos.  They

can train the rest of the troops of the village, and even travel to

other villages to train the Natives there."



"Worfs right," said the chief, "but there's nothing in any manual I've

ever seen telling how to train a people who don't even know how to use

a rope.  Without all their fancy tech, they're helpless."



Worf took a long, hard look at O'Brien.  "I can think of another great

people with that same problem."



"You're not on about Risa again, are you, Worf?"  The chief sighed in

exasperation.  "I told you, it's totally different.  The natives never

even--"



"Gentlemen," said the captain, holding out both hands for silence.  "I

like the idea of training an elite commando unit; both of you, start

picking out who you want to be in it.  When you start the training, I

want to see both the constable and Quark heavily involved...

together."



While Worf and O'Brien conducted the planet's first military draft, and

Quark and Odo continued to try the Ferengi's case before it got so far

as a formal complaint, Captain Sisko paced in the darkness, trying to

calm his mind and think clearly, logically.  He kept coming back to his

ill-fated Scouting trip with the Tiffnakis.  Fundamentally, he told

himself, I had the right idea: put them in a situation where they CAN'T

use their tech and force them to start improvising.



Genetically, the Tiffnakis and their fellow planeteers--the captain had

little experience with worlds that were not unified into a single

planetary government .... What did one call them, other than Natives?

Genetically, they were exactly the same as they were when they created

all that fancy technology; they were obviously intelligent enough to

improvise real solutions to their problems.  If only their culture

weren't so blasted fixated on techno manna falling from Heaven.



According to Asta-ha, every one of their rites of passage, at every

stage of life, followed the same pattern: put the candidate into a

difficult, or at older ages dangerous, situtation, surrounded by

various disguised pieces of old tech and new tech; then stand back and

wait for the candidate to discover the right piece and use it to solve

the problem.  But wasn't that in essence the way all science worked?

"Finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst

the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me," as Isaac

Newton wrote more than six centuries before.



Without realizing it, the Natives might have prepared themselves for

their true renascence, as they were ripped from their womb of sleep and

thrust into the adult world once again.  Sisko chuckled, amazed at his

own melodramatic nature; he felt like Captain Ahab, not Captain Sisko,

standing one-legged on the deck of the Pequod, spouting jeremiads at

the great white whale.



But fundamentally, I was RIGHT.  He clung to that thought like a

shipwrecked sailor to a floating spar.  "I just didn't go far enough,"

he said aloud.



"Beg pardon, sir?"  said O'Brien from directly behind the captain.



Suppressing the urge to spin about, Sisko kept his back to the chief,

contemplating the horizon.  "Fundamentally, I was right," he said, "on

the idea of the Scouting trip.  I just didn't go far enough .... I

should have strip-searched the damned Natives before we set out."



Sisko turned; the chief was uncharacteristically silent for a moment

before speaking.  "I'm, ah, not sure what Keiko would think about me

strip searching females, sir."



The captain snorted.  "I think we can trust the women to search the

women and the men to search the men; I don't think we should be

involved at all.  But we must impress upon them the urgency of keeping

nothing technological Nothing."  "Um, how about rope, sir?"



"No.  Nothing but their clothes... and run a tricorder over the

clothing to make sure there's nothing hidden.  We'll teach them how to

weave rope."



"Food?"



"We'll pick it, pluck it, or catch it."



"All right.  Does that apply to the instructors as well?"  Sisko

chuckled.  Not unless we have a death wish, he thought.  "Aye, aye,

sir," said O'Brien.  "Then what?  Where are we going?"



"The commandos, led by the away team, are going to watch the

Cardassians conquer another village.  I want Asta-ha and her raiders to

see how an enemy strikes--and how their own people fall apart when

their little toys are taken away."



"I... don't know that I could just stand my ground and watch women and

kids being killed, Captain."



Sisko felt his own gut tighten, but he had long ago learned the primary

Law of Command: sometimes, you simply have to let some people die to

save a larger or more important group.  "You won't have to, Chief.  But

these people, they're asleep.  We have to shock them to wake them up,

and this is the only way to do it."



O'Brien turned to stare at the same horizon that the captain had found

so fascinating a few moments before; was he seeing the same visions, or

his own, private, Boschian hell?  "Aye, aye, Cap'n.  I'll tell Worf."



"Muster the troops and the away team in one hour and we'll begin

stripping away their manna."



CHAPTER



NEVER, in more than twenty years of hard service in Starfleet, training

scores--hundreds--of young enlisted men and even a few officers, never

had Chief Miles Edward O'Brien had to nanny such a whiny group of

complainers as were these Natives.  Everything was all wrong.  The hike

was too long; the slope was too steep; the ground was too hard; the sun

was too hot; the wind was too windy; the rocks were too rocky.  By the

time the nonchalant Captain Sisko had led them but thirteen kilometers

"into the wild," Chief O'Brien was wishing he had palmed one of those

force beam projectors to whack a few of his squad members over the

head.



"Sure," grumbled the chief to Worf, "what does he care about all the

complaining?"  He nodded his head at the captain, as if Worf might not

understand who he was.  "He doesn't have to hear it.  He's up there at

the front, gawking at blue trees and birds with metallic feathers ....

We're the ones back here having to stomach all this junk."



Worf growled deep in his throat.  "Chief O'Brien, you are making as

much noise as they."  Miles raised his eyebrows; whenever Worf resorted

to calling him Chief O'Brien, it meant the huge Klingon was at the end

of his rope.  "Can you not just be silent except when correction is

called for?"  Suddenly, Worf pointed at Owena-da, who had stopped by

the side of the road and was staring at the ground as if looking for

something.  "You!  Get back in line--"



Owena-da looked back at Worf, blinking in confusion.  "Neg, fellow--I

mean, no sir, I thought I saw the sparkle of new tech among the weeds

here.  In fact..."



Owena-da reached for a small box, the size of a tricorder, but Worf was

quicker.  He flashed past Chief O'Brien before the latter even

registered what Owena-da was doing, and tramped down on the "new tech"

with Federation-standard footgear that somehow looked more like an

iron-shod jackboot when Worf wore it.  "I see no new tech," said the

Klingon.



"It's right there, under your foot."



Worf crouched down to look the frightened Tiffnaki in the eyes.  "I see

no new tech," he repeated, his voice taking on an unmistakable tone of

menace.



Owena-da swallowed hard.  "You're, ah, right; I must've been mistaken,

sir.  There's no new tech beneath your boot."



"Get--in--LINE.t"



The Tiffnaki didn't waste any time; he shot past O'Brien faster even

than Worf had, but in the other direction.  By the time the chief

swiveled his head, Owena-da was back at his assigned row and file,

matching steps with the other Tiffnakis in the march.  "Well," remarked

O'Brien to his friend when the Klingon returned, "I suppose that's one

way of stopping them from whining.  Now are you going to scare the rest

of them half to death?"



Worf shot O'Brien a look, and the chief grinned.  He allowed his stride

to shorten as he moved outside, and the column marched past him; when

he was even with Odo and Quark, the rear guards, O'Brien tried his

complaint again, this time to more receptive ears.



"I know exactly what you mean," sympathized Quark, shooting a venomous

sideways glance at the constable.  "Being around people who spend all

day, every day complaining about this or that tiny little infraction of

the most insignificant regulation, makes me want to pack it all up and

move somewhere."



"Oh, really, Quark?"  said Odo, his lip curling.  "Well, who's stopping

you?"



"You know," mused the Ferengi, "maybe it is time I made some lifestyle

changes.  All that hustle and bustle on the station--Quark, fetch me

another drink.  Quark, the Rigelian blood wine is too cold.  Quark, the

gagh is too sluggish?



"Oh, my heart just bleeds for you; when did you say you were

leaving?"



"And the help!"  Quark smacked his forehead and stared skyward, as if

appealing to the Final Accountant.  "Rom was bad enough, but those

Bajorans that Kai Winn brought over with her.  You'd think their

Prophets had something against alcohol, synthehol, and Dabo girls."

"Why, I can't imagine what."



Quark and Odo were on such a roll that O'Brien felt himself jollied

right out of his mood just listening to the pair.



"So I thought that maybe..."  Quark leaned close to O'Brien to speak in

a conspiratorial whisper; Constable Odo made no effort to move closer,

but the chief noticed that Odo's ears grew distinctly larger.  The

advantages of a shape shifting eavesdropper, thought O'Brien.

"Perhaps," continued Quark, "the captain wouldn't be averse to my

moving to some nice, quiet, out-of-the-way planet more or less

permanently."



"Such as here," suggested O'Brien.



Quark shrugged.  "If you like.  Someplace where I could settle down,

grow some roots--"



"Mine a little lat inurn added the constable without missing a beat.



"And so what if I do?  Is there some law against honest labor, a day's

pay for a good day's toil?"



"If there is, Quark," smirked Odo, "that's probably the only law you're

in no danger of breaking."



Before Quark could respond to the latest outrage, a whisper traveled

along the column: "Silence behind--on the signal, break ranks, find

cover in the woods."



O'Brien watched Captain Sisko, way at the front of the regiment-sized

column; without further warning, the captain raised his left hand flat

and touched his right fist to the left palm, the signal for

"Attention."  Then he gestured to the right with his now-opened right

hand Scatter; cover," the signal meant.



O'Brien raced for the silver blue woods, leaping over a thicket of

purple berry plants; this time, most of the regiment actually beat him

to the tree line, though it still took them too long to fall flat

behind something solid.  Sisko waited in front of the trees until he

could see no one; then he melded into the forest himself and vanished.

Even knowing where the captain was, O'Brien could barely pick him out

from among the trunks, now bluish gray in the waning sunlight, under

the first moon.  Even Odo awkwardly hid behind a tree, though the chief

could tell he would have been happier becoming, a tree.



Chief O'Brien listened closely but heard only the faintest of rustlings

as somebody squirmed to a more comfortable position.  At least no one

shushed him this time, laughed the chief silently to himself.  The last

time, the chorus of shushes were so loud, they totally drowned out the

squirming unfortunate.



O'Brien heard the tramping of boots.  From around a bend ahead of them

came a troop of Natives .... Probably enemies of the Tiffnakis, thought

the chief nervously; he had not forgotten Asta-has insistance that

"enemies are all around."  They were, on the whole, taller than the

Tiffnakis, and all had silvery hair.  Either it~ a dye job, thought

O'Brien, or there ~ REALLY no interbreeding between the villages.  They

all dressed similarly in tog alike wrapping garments, unlike the

Tiffnakis, who dressed like a roomful of color-blind Ferengis, grabbing

jackets and pantaloons at random from a bin, no two alike.



The ghostly parade shuffled silently down the road; they sported a

guidon carrying a guidon: a white, triangular pennant that flapped in

the breeze, seemingly glued to a curved, sectioned pole that looked as

if it would expand and contract like a pointer.  Glancing neither left

nor right, the fifty or so Natives marched on past.



O'Brien held his breath; the last encounter had not gone well.  Despite

nearly a whole day working with the Tiffnakis on the principle of

concealment--"such a powerful new tech that requires no device...

better even than rope tech," insisted Astaham they had made so much

noise, each person trying to shuffle to a more comfy position or better

concealment, or loudly shushing the other noisemakers, that the

previous troop the Tiffnakis passed had easily heard them.



That group, who looked like a contingent of Highland Scots with kilts

and feathered blouses, had stopped and stared at the hedgerow behind

which the Tiffnakis attempted to conceal themselves; then one of them

pointed a device at the semi hidden mob, and the hedges flattened like

they'd been blown over by gale-force winds.  O'Brien had felt the push

from the probing force beam, but he refused to react; alas, the

Tiffnakis evidently decided the game was up, and they stood up, waving

to the kilt wearers, who turned out to be friends of theirs (one of the

few other Natives who weren't Tiffnaki enemies, again according to

Astaha--who evidently thought her hereditary position largely required

keeping lists of who around them was naughty and nice).



It was a fiasco, of course; it took Worf and O'Brien fully fifteen

minutes to restore some sense of order and get the two mobs of friendly

Natives separated again.  Quark and Odo were no help whatsoever,

especially after Quark accused Odo of shape shifting a direct violation

of the captain's orders; the ensuing argument, pursued in loud whispers

to keep it from the ears of the curious Tiffnakis, occupied both the

constable and the Ferengi.  Captain Sisko ignored the scene, observing

the ruddy sun sinking toward the horizon.  The chief had to admit the

sky turned a beautiful shade of amber, then purple, then dark blue, due

to the metallic dust in the atmosphere; the Whatsit planet boasted

three moons, but only two were visible from the surface .... The two

shining together cast about half the light of Earth's gigantic moon,

Luna.  But annoyed as the chief was, he knew that Sisko was only

exercising the CO's prerogative of leaving all the headaches to his

XO... Lieutenant Commander Worf, in this case.



As the new group passed by, Chief O'Brien tried to lick his lips with a

tongue as dry as the dust he lay in; the silent phantoms scuffed along

the trail, holding some wicked-looking devices at port arms.  From the

hang and the care the women took with them--only the women carried the

devices--the chief knew they were hefty weapons of unknown

technology... and on Sierra-Bravo 112-1I, unknown technology was a

deadly term.



He turned his head slowly to the left, careful not to make any moves

sudden enough to catch a glance, or to rustle any leaves.  Owena-da was

nearby, and from the tension with which the weapon master of the

Tiffnakis clenched his fists and his jaw, O'Brien knew these Natives

were no friends of the Tiffnakis.



Abruptly, everything was real; this was no longer a Scouting hike into

the Big Woods; the exercise fell into focus for what it was: a military

excursion into enemy territory, where a single dumb mistake could cost

people their lives.  Possibly even members of the away team.



The chief had only one hole card; he had held back a small hand phaser,

concealed in his boot, when the captain ordered everyone stripped.  "He

only means the men," insisted the chief to Worf, nodding at the

Tiffnakis, but he didn't check with the captain, not wanting to find

out he was wrong.  Worf seemed skeptical; but O'Brien would bet his

last replicator ration that the Klingon had not completely disarmed

himself, either.



O'Brien watched the toga-wearing Natives shuffle past... and realized

to his amazement that they hadn't noticed a thing.  In only the second

test of the Tiffnaki ability to grasp the brand-new concept of hiding,

they looked to have scored a bull's-eye.



He felt like half a man as Sisko resumed the march; but he wasn't too

self-absorbed to notice that time and patience had proved the captain

right: the Tiffnakis, hence Natives in general, were trainable.  The

war for Sierra-Bravo 112-II no longer looked quite so bleak.



After several hours of annoying bandying with the Ferengi bartender,

Odo reached his limit of tolerance.  He knew the next stupid insult,

the next clumsy attempt to stake a claim on the topsoil of the planet,

even the next arrogant sneer directed at anyone motivated by any

principle loftier than profit, and orders or no, Odo would change his

fist into a sledgehammer and pound Quark right into the ground he so

coveted.  To spare everyone the pain and heartache, the constable

turned about and strode into the blackness of night.



Seeing was no problem; away from prying eyes, he risked a little bit of

shape shifting to give himself owl eyes .... In fact, he had been

working on the entire bird, but the eye-morph was as far as he was

willing to push the captain's strict prohibition.  Odo stared around

the bleak landscape, realizing that anyone with infrared sensors or

light-amp goggles could see the Tiffnakis as plainly as if the sun were

up.  Well, Captain $isko has the tricorder, and he's convinced we're

alone out here.  Of course, if one of the Natives--ridiculous name, so

typical of Commander Dax--if one of the Natives had a sensor shield,

the regiment could be in for a rude shock.



He stared up at the sky, feeling a terrible sense of 1onliness

and--anxiety.  Something was dreadfully wrong with the scenario, but

Odo simply couldn't put his fist on it.



Without even noticing, he found his feet directed him toward the

captain's circle of firelight as if they had a mind of their own. Well,

technically they do, I guess, he realized;

Founders--changelings--didn't have a distinct central nervous system or

brain, of course, else they could never transform into anything flat;

the Founders' mental activity occurred everywhere and nowhere... which

only meant that the language of "solids"--terrible term-simply wasn't

equipped to handle the biomorphogenic concepts.



"Good evening, Odo," said the captain without turning around.  "Sit

down, take a load off your mind."



Had Odo been the gasping sort, this would have been a good time: how

did Captain Sisko always seem to know what he was thinking?  "I've been

thinking about the Defiant, "he said, nervous at the lie.  "I'm very

concerned about Commander Dax and our transportation back home."



"As are we all, Odo."  Odo's eyes were good enough to see the captain's

tense jaw and shoulder muscles.  Yes, you especially must be frantic,

thought the constable.



"Even if we win this war, and I'm not admitting the probability yet,

how would we even let anyone know we're here?"



Captain Sisko smiled mysteriously.  "Actually, I've been playing with

one or two of the toys we removed from our pack rat troops," he said,

"and I'm more than ever convinced that their ancestors did have warp

field technology."  "They did?  You're sure about that, Captain?" 

"Some of these components look so damned familiar, but just different

enough. Given a few months, I'm sure that Chief O'Brien and I could

build a workable subspace communicator powerful enough to reach to the

nearest Federation outpost."



Odo frowned, wishing he could imitate more subtle emotions.  "If they

had warp technology, then why didn't they leave the planet?"



"Maybe they did, Odo."  The captain gestured Odo toward the fire,

perhaps forgetting that a changeling didn't get cold.  Quickly morphing

his eyes back to normal, the constable sat where he was directed.



"You think they did leave this planet, sir?  Could you elaborate?"



The captain shrugged.  "There are simply too few, ah, Natives for a

technology this advanced.  The traces of warp technology, the advanced

tech--more advanced in many ways than ours-make me suspicious.  How can

a culture develop antigravity, force beams, and all those other things

and not develop warp drive?"



"So... they were here and they left?  But where?  Why?"



"Who can say?  The first thing I would check is whether the Natives and

all the other plant and animal life here share the same DNA; this might

have been a forgotten colony."



"I believe Dax did so; they evolved here."



"In any event, for some reason, the ancestors of the Natives stripped

all warp technology from the planet before they left: they wanted these

people to stay."



Odo had a disturbing thought; he mulled it over for a moment, then

offered it.  "Captain, could this planet have been a penal colony or

medical quarantine planet?  Or a--what did your planet use to call

it?--a lunatic asylum?"



"Unless we locate central records of some sort, we'll never know."

Captain Sisko leaned forward to milk the fire of all the heat he could.

"Well, unless we can help these people throw out the Cardassians and

the Drek'la, it's going to become a slave colony, just like Bajor

was."



Odo heard the crunch of hurrying footsteps long before the captain,

with merely solid ears, could do so.  "Sounds like Commander Worf is on

his way here, double time," he warned.



Captain Sisko stood to receive his executive officer.



Worf spoke quickly in a low tone, not to be overheard.  Of course, Odo

heard perfectly: "Captain, tricorder readings of fuel cell emissions

indicate the Cardassians are on the move again.  Asta-ha believes they

are headed toward a city of people called Druvats-has as that is only

fifteen kilometers away.  If we hurry, we can reach a bluff that

overlooks the city before the Cardassians arrive in force."



The captain nodded.  "Rouse the troops for a night march, Commander;

get them moving in ten minutes."



"Aye, aye, sir," said the Klingon with a vengeful grin that made the

constable shudder.



CHAPTER



ODO FELT very uncomfortable with the military turn of events, aware he

knew absolutely nothing about military discipline and strategy.  His

only duty, he decided, was to obey orders and to keep Quark in line:

the creeping Ferengi had already tried to sabotage the development of

the planetary natives once by corrupting them with the concepts of

money, capitalism, and profit, before they were ready to develop them

on their own; and Quark had also made several serious attempts (worthy

of formal charges upon return to the station) to exploit the planetary

resources without authorization from the planetary ruling body.



But what IS the planetary ruling body?  wondered the constable.  He had

never before dealt with a situation of such anarchy, where there was no

world government.  How can anybody ever decide to do anything .... Who

supplies the authority to--to buiM a village, dam a river, or even

plough a field?  After all, virtually anything one could do would

affect people all around .... Plough a field and you change the local

ecosystem for your neighbors, driving away roaming animals and

attracting insect al (and insectivorous) pests.  Irrigation would alter

the water table; even the very air could be affected.



As the unruly mob of Tiffnakis were whipped into a semblance of order

by Commander Worf with his bellows and Chief O'Brien with angry

gestures and "butt-chewing" (a solid term Odo found distasteful in the

extreme), the constable threw his entire energies into rousing the

practically somnambulant Quark and prodding him into shouldering his

pack and falling in at the rear of the column.  Still he fretted: how

was it possible for an individual Tiffnaki to make even the simplest

decision without a single controlling legal authority to set the rules?

Odo shook his head; it was yet another mystery of solids... worth a

long conversation with Nerys--with Major Kira--when I get back.



Something else nagged at the constable.  It had been nearly fourteen

hours since he had last been able to slip away during the night and

revert to liquid form, and now they were headed out on a march that

surely would take Odo "past his bedtime," as Commander Dax would

probably put it.  Feeling apprehension, Constable Odo scanned the bleak

surrounding countryside for someplace to hide; he found nothing.



But then, sentient solids generally had very poor night vision,

sacrificed in evolution's blind drive toward the larger brain.  The

darkness itself was Odo's friend.



Still, he needed that controlling legal authority.  Leaving the

half-asleep Quark, Odo hurried his pace and caught up with the captain

just as the latter gave the order to "head 'em up and move 'em out."



"Sir, may I speak to you privately?"



"Certainly, Odo.  I'm always happy to talk to you."



"Captain, it's getting to be about that time."



"Time?"



"For me to regenerate."



Captain Sisko raised his eyebrows; he often forgot the needs of his

shape changing constable, especially after Odo's lengthy interregnum as

a solid himself.  "Odo, I cannot possibly delay the march."



"No, and I wouldn't ask you.  All I ask..."  Odo simulated a deep

breath, a habit he had picked up during the interregnum; strangely, it

still worked to calm him down and center him.  "All I ask," he said

quietly, "is for you to leave me behind; let me liquefy for a few hours

.... Then when I'm myself again, let me shape change to a hawk and

rejoin you."



The captain frowned.  "I'm reluctant to allow you to do any shape

changing here.  We've already pushed the limit of the Prime

Directive."



"I won't let anyone see me if I can help it.  I'll add a bluish tint to

my feathers, and perhaps I'll be mistaken for a local avian even if I

am spotted."



Captain Sisko struggled with his first inclination for a moment, then

relaxed.  "All right, Constable; Worf will show you where we're headed

and give you the approximate time of arrival: but I want you there when

the battle commences.  I need your eyes, Odo."  "Tn be there," the

constable promised.



He consulted Worf, then left the outraged Chief O'Brien in charge of

Quark.  Then Odo let himself slip farther and farther behind the march

as "rear guard," finally stopping, shape changing into a hawk for

practice, and flying far enough aside that even a sharp-eyed Klingon

shouldn't be able to see him in the one-mooned gloom.  He found a

vaguely cup-shaped indentation in a rock; with a deep sigh of

relaxation, Odo squatted in it and allowed his form to break down into

the sensuous, liquid pool.



He slept and he dreamed, something unusual: Odo remembered his brief

interlude in the memory pool of the Founders, on his homeworld, the

embracing peace of being part of the whole, in his proper order,

surrounded by and filled with his own kind.  Odo dreamed of touching

minds, being At One--a concept frequently enunciated but never truly

understood by any solid creature, forever locked away from its fellows

by walls of flesh and bone.



When he jerked awake, many hours later, at first he couldn't remember

which "one" he was supposed to be.  It was a delicious feeling at

first; then he remembered he was supposed to do something, something

urgent--and he panicked until, by force of habit, he rose as Constable

Odo again.  The task jumped back into his consciousness.



Settle, settle, he commanded himself to little avail.  The horizon was

lightening; it was later than he planned.



It was three forty-one.  Odo was shocked to discover he had overslept.

Nervously, he tapped the com badge "Odo to Captain Sisko."  No reply,

so he tried again.



Odo was stumped.  No response from the Defiant he could understand:

they had left orbit.  But until this moment, the com badges had been

working person to person among the away team.  Something (or someone)

was jamming the signal Well, if it's the Cardassians, I'd better get

aloft.



Furious at himself, and dreading the captain's animadversions almost

more than the possibility of mission failure, Odo burst into the form

of the hawk again and flapped aloft, only remembering the color-tinting

minutes later.



Once at cruising altitude, carrying the com badge safely tucked inside

his abdomen al cavity, the constable was surprised anew, as he was

every time, at the freedom he felt from earthly restraint.  He soared,

feeling almost as if he could flap harder and harder and fly right into

orbit. He circled for a few moments, finding his bearings; Odo had to

compare the two-dimensional line rendering of the terrain with its

topographic symbols and contour lines to the living, pulsing,

three-dimensional, full color image hawk eyes sent to hawk brain.



At half a kilometer in altitude, the sun had already dawned, though it

wasn't yet five o'clock local time; remembering the tilt and rotation

of the planet, Odo oriented himself the correct direction, and of a

sudden, the map and the territory merged and he saw his route.  He

pushed his head and neck forward and pumped powerful wings to eat up

the kilometers.  Odo saw no Cardassian vehicles along the route;

evidently, they were not the ones jamming the com badge subspace

transmission.  Could there be some sort of planet wide defenses?  mused

the constable.  Surely Cardassians had no subspace countermeasures

strong enough to jam a com badge from orbit.



Even as the hawk flies, fifteen kilometers is no negligible distance;

by the time Odo could see the lights of the city, and the bluffs

overlooking them--filled, as he squinted his eyes, with creeping,

spreading Tiffnakis and the away team--the terminator line, with the

brightness of daylight right behind, was already crawling across the

city of the Druvats-has as and headed toward Captain Sisko's regiment

at their position in the heights.  Odo couldn't help being astonished

at the blue gray beauty of Sierra-Bravo 112-11 in dawn's light: the

high metal content highlighted every color with shimmers and sparkles,

while the dust in the atmosphere drew out the reds and yellows of the

sun, forming an inverse of the holosuite program of Earth's Bryce

Canyon .... On Sierra-Bravo, it was the iron-latinum cliffs that were

Magritte blue and the sky that was rust red.



From his height, Odo saw another sight to freeze him solid: an

advancing line of Cardassian planet skimmers headed toward the town,

then pulled up short, freezing in place... except for one, solitary

skimmer that set out at an oblique angle for the captain's position.



At first, the hawk's spirit leapt; they were discovered.  Then the

Cardassian stopped, and Odo realized the true destination: a small,

rounded building that resembled an oversized mushroom cap.  The

Cardassian in the single skimmer fired his disruptor at the building,

evidently blowing the lock; then he stepped inside.



An instant later, the lights of Druvats-has as town flashed bright and

faded instantly, and the constable understood.  The rest of the column

resumed its drive; the attack was underway.



For a moment, Odo hesitated, making long, lazy circles in the air,

catching the hot, rising currents off the already day-lit bluffs.  What

is my duty here?  Must I rejoin the captain immediately, or should I

act as his eyes?  From the regiment's vantage point, they couldn't have

seen the Cardassian skim to the powerhouse and cut off the broadcast

power~ so in a sense, Odo's tardiness already had paid a dividend.



Well, that's one way to rationalize it, he thought bitterly; it sounded

just like one of Quark's post hoc "explanations."  Regardless, however,

the constable continued to circle above the battle, alternating between

using his hawk eyes to view individual actions with telescopic

precision or pulling back to more normal eyes to view the larger

picture.



The battle was as devastating as the one in the Tiffnaki village:

without the power broadcast to animate the tech they had come to depend

upon, the Druvats-has as were helpless before the onslaught.  The

invaders used no particular finesse or grand strategy; after cutting

the local power relay, they simply disembarked from their skimmers and

walked forward in a straight line, sweeping disruptors back and forth

across the defenseless mob.



There was of course nothing the Druvats-has as could do; there was

nothing that Commander Dax could have done--and Odo made a mental note

to tell her that, next time he saw her.  IF I see her again, he added

with a chill.  With the Defiant missing in action and Dax nonresponsive

on the nonexistent subspace co rem link, it was beginning to look

doubtful that Odo would see anything familiar again .... Not even his

wonderful, old bucket, or the bucket-of-bolts station that contained

it.



The villagers fell back, more orderly at first than the Tiffnakis had

been; but it made no difference in the long run--when the Druvats-has

as line broke, it broke suddenly, like a dam collapsing outward from a

single crack at the center.  Watching as a hawk, Odo had already picked

out the obvious leader of the village, the hereditary mayor, or

whatever they called the post; he was a man with immensely long,

reddish blue hair hanging across his naked torso to his waist, where he

had tucked it into a green sash he wore.  A powerful man with corded

neck muscles reminding Odo of a bull's, and supplying the constable

with ideas for future shape shifting experiments.



When the leader suddenly threw down his useless rifle and bolted for

the rear of the central company of defenders, his nearest comrades-at

arms panicked first; the rout spread from the center out, as more and

more Druvats-has as realized the futility of their position, and then

saw their own leader running like a thief in the night.  The one sided

firefight was over in nine minutes.



The line comprised no more than twenty Drek'la and the two commanding

Cardassians, but they overran the village and seized the four core

buildings, which outlined a large village green (or village blue,

actually) filled with booths.  Odo swept a little closer and saw that

the booths contained grab bags full of tech; at the back of each booth

were a number of targets and trinkets for testing the new toys as

people acquired them.  The Drek'la began burning the targets with their

disruptors, for no other reason that Odo could see but sheer devilry.



The other Cardassian, the one who cut the power, rejoined his

compatriots.  He climbed out of his skimmer with little of the usual

Cardassian strut; he stood, hands clasped behind his back, viewing the

pillaging.



Something struck Constable Odo about the man, something wrong and out

of place; but he couldn't quite put his talon on it.  He continued to

circle, to watch, knowing his instinct was trying to tell him

something--but not yet what it was.  I'd better have something

worthwhile for the captain, considering how angry he~ going to be

anyway.



The Cardassian observed for a while; then he slipped into a shadowy

recess to gather some of the devices that had fallen over when other

invaders destroyed the stall.  At once, the incongruity struck Odo full

force: Cardassians were arrogant, strutting, condescending figures,

each of whom thought himself more than the equal of all the other

Cardassians; they thought of themselves as the elder race, civilized

long before most of the others, and they observed the "young" races

much as one would observe a monkey or a Thoractian curl tail .... But

this one was turning the same clinical gaze on the Drek'la--and the

other Cardassian.



There was no trace of the swagger of Gul Dukat in the lone Cardassian's

stride; there wasn't even the overly self-effacing preening of Garak,

back on the station.  There was the cold, clinical gaze of a

zookeeper.



While he watched, circling around and around, Odo thought he saw

something else.  In reaching for one of the fallen pieces of tech, cdo

could almost have sworn that he saw the Cardassian's arm lengthen to

the ground, grab the gun, then return to its normal length.



He was so stunned, he almost forgot how to fly.  Founders?  A Founder

is with the invaders?  He thought for a moment, turning his loops into

figure eights.  Or perhaps, he admitted, a Founder is leading the

invaders.



Then the questionable soldier looked up, fixing Odo with a piercing

glare of his own.  Feeling suddenly terribly vulnerable himself, Odo

decided on a bold approach: he picked from the air a spot where many

Druvats-has as defenders had died.  Swooping down on the spot, Odo

walked behind a body, flaring his wings, and pecked at the ground

behind the corpse.  Odo fervently hoped that the Cardassian, whether

Founder or not, would be fooled by the perspective into thinking that

the hawk was actually eating the dead flesh.



It seemed to work; when Odo looked up a moment later, the lone

Cardassian was gone.  But the constable was shaken.  I don't know for

sure what I saw, he told himself, but it's hard to deceive the eyes I'm

currently wearing.



Odo continued pretending to peck at dead bodies, waiting for an

opportunity to lift off and return to Captain Sisko's vista point.  At

least now, Constable Odo reflected, he certainly had enough new

intelligence that the captain would probably forgive him the minor

indiscretion of oversleeping his watch.



As it happened, Chief O'Brien was the first to spot the spectral hawk

circling far above the carnage.  "Commander," he said, nudging the

Klingon and pointing at the bird.



"What about it?"  answered Worf in an irritated voice.



"Five days of replicator rations says it's Odo, spying for us."



"Hm," said Worf; then he said it again and rose to crawl toward the

captain.



O'Brien continued to watch the hawk, seeing it circle, circle: the

prodigal bird returned, and lo, it was Constable Odo.  He stood tall, a

tempting target were he not far enough back from the edge of the cliff

to avoid detection.  O'Brien saw Worf and the captain slithering toward

Odo, and he quickly joined them; Quark, meanwhile, had also noticed Odo

but was moving away from his ancient foe.



"I think I saw something," said the constable gravely.  "If so, it's

grave news indeed, Captain."



"What is it?"  asked Sisko, in a voice indicating he really didn't need

any more grave surprises.



"I think one of the Cardassians isn't a Cardassian," said the

constable.  "Captain... I believe at least one of the Cardassian

overseers leading the Drek'la is a Founder.  And the other Cardassians

don't know it."



It was Worf who made the intuitive leap: "If that is true, Captain,

then I believe we are dealing with a renegade contingent of

Cardassians.  If they were with the main force, the Founder would not

be hiding his presence from the rest of them."



"My God, Worf," said O'Brien, "you've hit it on the head.  These aren't

Cardassian invaders .... They're Cardassian fugitives."



CHAPTER



Ar mE darkest crystal of night, when the world is at its stillest,

comes first the faint tinkle of morning, hera Ming the light that will

shatter the blackness like hammer against glass.  Captain Benjamin

Sisko lay at the top of the bluff, stating down at the smouldering

ruins of the Druvats-has as village, raked by disruptor fire in a

profligate waste of life and property; and when did Cardassians ever

care for another's life, somebody else's property?



But spread to either side of the captain, his own Tiffnaki commandos

radiated their own burning light of revenge and anger.  When their own

village was destroyed, they were too demoralized, frightened, ashamed,

and stunned to nurse the feelings of injustice and rage necessary to

spark a rebellion against overwhelming odds: Fiat justitia, ruat

caelum--Let justice be done, though heaven fall.



Perspective, thought Sisko, that's what's needed.  It was not the

slaves directly under the whip who rebelled against early Earth

slavery; it was a slave who had escaped slavery, Frederick Douglass,

who was the movement's most gifted orator.  And closer to home, he

thought, the Cardassians were driven off Bajor not by those who were

most directly controlled, such as Kai Winn, but by the freedom fighters

in Shakar's and other groups who had momentarily escaped the lash. 

Perspective: his Tiffnakis needed the perspective of seeing the pain,

blood, and humiliation of other Natives to awaken the burning flames of

justice in themselves .... And that was no distorted reflection on

them; it was a universal truth.



Benjamin Sisko looked left and right; the Cardassians had long since

won, and there was little reason to fear they would scan the

overlooking cliffs for observers.  But the Tiffnaki commandos were

silent with hatred and bitter resolve, to a man and woman of them.  The

flesh of the once chipper, voluble Asta-ha was pale blue, and Owena-da

clenched his fists so hard, Sisko heard the bones crack from three

meters away.



Sisko knew what the scene would look like back at the main encampment,

where they had left the rest of the villagers, once they had all been

told the evidence that only a handful had seen this day: the men would

stop chattering, the women would dress for camouflage.  Both would

begin finding metal (in abundance on Sierra-Bravo), crystal, anything

that would take an edge.  Even the little children left behind at the

river, even Tivva-ma, would take to crying silently--not with a wail,

as a child wanting attention uses (how well he remembered Jake as a

child), but simply letting the tears roll unheeded down their grimy

cheeks, neither demanding nor even expecting a grown-up to do anything

about their pain.



Captain Sisko had seen wars; he had seen war with the Cardassians.  He

even remembered himself, if it really was himself, in the years just

after the Borg killed Jennifer, his wife and Jake's mother.  I've set

them on the road to a terrible future, he thought in leaden silence,

but what else could I do?  We MUST believe that death is better than

subjugation and slavery--or why would anyone EVER resist the tyrant?



With a gesture, Sisko drew his freedom fighters back from the brink.

They crawled slowly backwards until the village was no longer

visible-hence they were no longer visible to the Druvatsnasas village.

Then they stood, and flanked by the reassembled away team, they beat a

cold, quiet retreat.  Nobody spoke but Asta-ha, hereditary mayor, and

all she said was, "We will learn the new tech, Sisko; neg, we are not

fools."  She said it as if



Sisko had implied they were.



Well, perhaps I did, thought the captain sadly; he'd tried not to let

his annoyance and disappoint merit show, but it probably came across

despite best intentions.  Sisko felt a gigantic presence loom behind

him and heard the crunch of boots that had never even attempted to

sneak quietly.  "Commander Worf," he acknowledged without turning

around.  "Captain, what is the destination of our march?"  Wordlessly,

Sisko turned and walked at a right angle to the rest of the troop,

followed by the Klingon; when Asta-ha looked questioningly at him, he

said, "Carry on, Mayor."  The Tiffnakis continued their slow, beaten

march.



"Worf," said the captain quietly, "we must rejoin the main force.  I

suspect you will see a gratifying seriousness of purpose among the

commandos now."



The Klingon curled his lip.  "Then they were tweaking our beards.  I

knew they must have been .... Nobody is so witless as to think it

perfectly fine to--"



"Commander," said the captain, so low that Worf had to pause and cock

his ear to hear, "they were born into a culture where 'found tech' was

the only way they had to solve problems.  Don't be too harsh."  Sisko

smiled faintly and whispered, "Who but a Klingon could follow Kahless?"

in Worfs native tongue.



The Klingon calmed down, breathing slower and deeper, and the captain

continued.  "We've turned them, Worf; they finally understand the

stakes.  Let's wait and see what happens over the next few days, on the

way back."  Captain Sisko grinned like a grim Ferengi: "I've mapped out

another Scouting trail for the return trip."



How on God's blue Sierra-Bravo does he expect to do anything with this

lot?  Chief O'Brien sighed; nothing that Captain Sisko had done should

have had any effect whatsoever.  And when the column came to another

cliff, and Sisko ordered yet another rappelling "evolution," O'Brien

expected exactly the same shenanigans as the last time.



But something seemed to have seeped into their heads.  Something!

O'Brien set the phasing stakes, grunted the anchors into place, and

hurled the ropes over the edge.  One didn't clear the base of the

cliff, snarling on a teal scrub line with branches shaped just like

grappling hooks; the chief labored to haul it back up again for another

cast.



"You know, Worf," he said, "there's a wide difference between the

officer who says, 'set those anchors," and the working man who has to

sweat them into place."



The Klingon, who had been studiously ignoring the drama with the rope,

turned a scowling face toward O'Brien.  "If you are incapable of

casting the line far enough, I will do it for you."



"I can throw a damned line!  I was just commenting on..."  O'Brien

returned to his task, grumbling.  It wasn't that setting the lines was

particularly heavy labor.  It's the sheer futility of it all/O'Brien

was already fuming that after all this work, the Tiffnakis were just

going to make a mockery of it again.



But when the lines were properly set, and the Natives began to rappel

down the cliff, the chief's mouth dropped and stayed open until the

first wave hit the ground.  The Tiffnakis carried out the entire

evolution exactly as taught at Starfleet Academy.



No cheating.  No magic.  No teleportation or flying ear pets or pocket

elevators.  Mayor General Asta-ha dropped in the first wave; she

squirmed into a harness, hooked her carabiner into the line, and

stepped backwards over the edge.  The carabiners, being safety

equipment, were among the only pieces of technology that the captain

had allowed the Tiffnakis from the well-stocked backpacks the away team

still carried from the first Scouting trip.



The chief winced a bit, watching her make that first step into thin,

thin air, suspended only by a string, dangling a hundred meters above

the ground.  But Asta-ha seemed not even to notice the drop beneath her

feet.  It ~ like she never developed the normal fear of falling, he

decided, since the damned "new teeh" has always been there to save her.

The rest of the Tiffnaki commandos followed three by three, each

showing the same lack of fear about the height as their mayor

general.



Drukulu-da, the "historian" of the mob, if O'Brien's universal

translator was doing its job, got into trouble going down the cliff; he

let himself go too fast, burned his hands, and in a panic, yanked

himself to a halt halfway down the cliff face.  When Worf shouted for

Drukulu.-da to continue, the historian yelled back that the rope had

slipped along the carabiner and was trapped against the "Swiss seat"

harness he sat in.



Drukulu-da had only made the commando cut at the last minute when

another Tiffnaki was eliminated making a rude gesture behind Sisko's

back, and now Worf complained bitterly that O'Brien had talked him into

accepting the writer.  But without prompting, Asta-ha at the bottom

already put her fingers into her mouth and blew two short, sharp

whistles, followed by a longer third.



Owena-da, supervising the drop from the top, sent another man,

Rimtha-da, down the parallel rope.  Rimtha-da was the largest of the

Tiffnakis, and he slid perhaps a little too slowly but steadily down

his own rope until he was next to Drukuluda.



Rimtha-da hooked himself to the trapped man with one loose carabiner,

then got Drukulu-da to put his weight on Rimtha-da while the latter un

jammed the rope.  Then both men untethered and slid down their

respective ropes to a chorus of undulating whistles, which Chief

O'Brien decided was the Whatsit version of applause.



Nobody lost his cool, and what was most astonishing, they cooperated on

an innovative solution to a sudden problem.  "My God," said O'Brien

somewhat sarcastically to his Klingon friend, "there's an improvement

already: they didn't even start checking the cliff face for new tech."

Worf merely grunted in response; but it was his all-right-so

maybe-I-was-wrong-for-once-in-my-life grunt, and O'Brien understood.



When the Tiffnakis came to the bog, they had a slight setback.  Someone

found another force beam projector carelessly left on the ground, and

Owenada started to use it.  But when Sisko strode up angrily, the

weapons master shuffled his feet like Molly caught with her hand in

Keiko's mo chi jar, and he handed over the device.



"Target practice, Worf," shouted the captain, throwing the projector

high in the air over the swamp.  For the first time on this planet, the

Klingon drew his service phaser and fired a short blast, all in one

fluid motion.  The device exploded noisily, making the point more

brutally than any number of words could have: when the Natives ran up

against the Cardassians, the invaders could make all the tech, new or

old, vanish as quickly if not as dramatically as Worf had just

"vanished" the force beam projector.



O'Brien was fascinated to see what low-tech method the Tiffnaki

commandos would invent to get across the swamp; the final technique,

masterminded by Owena-da and Asta-ha, but with input from virtually

everyone in the platoon, was impressive enough that Chief Miles Edward

O'Brien awarded it his "Croix des Cerveaux" with cukoonut clusters: the

Tiffnakis retreated a kilometer to a forest they had bypassed; using

knives they improvised out of the sharp pieces of shale that seemed to

be everywhere on Sierra-Bravo 112-I1, they hacked down a number of

small saplings.



They spent two hours tying the saplings together and covering them with

wide, palm like fronds of some local fern; when they finished, they had

a pair of long, flat mini bridges with half a dozen stubby legs about a

meter long on either side.  Each mini bridge was long enough that the

entire platoon, including the away team "officers" (counting Odo,

Quark, and O'Brien as officers for the sake of discussion), could stand

along it without much crowding.



Then they returned to the bog.  Placing the first mini bridge down into

the muck, Asta-ha led the way onto it.  The plank sank into the mud,

but nowhere near as deeply as an individual person would; the muddy

water that slooshed across the top was easily waded.



Once the entire platoon was onto the mini bridge they passed the second

across the tops of their heads to drop it into the muck in front of the

first.  Once everybody had traversed onto the second plank, the

team--they were truly working as a team now--drew up the first by means

of twisted vine ropes.  Passing it along overhead, they repeated the

process all the way across the swamp, arriving in half the time it

would have taken to wade, and with perhaps a tenth of the mud clinging

to their legs and torsos as Quark had when he had played Diving for

Latinum a few days earlier, on the first, abortive Scouting trip.



Even Captain Sisko admitted it was a brilliant improvisation... but he

said he would reserve judgment until they returned to the main regiment

of Tiffnakis.  But Chief O'Brien was already starting to feel the swell

of pride that he always got when "his" recruits began to shine.



Owena-da got the award for Conspicuous Obviousness when, after long

minutes of silent thought on the part of all the commandos, he was the

one to figure out how to ford the rushing river: they put their best

rope thrower up in a tree with a vine rope, and he lassoed the opposite

tree.



Alas, when they tried to shimmy from one to the other, the vine rope

stretched enough that everyone got a thorough dunking in the angry

river... as O'Brien had secretly suspected would happen.  Fortunately,

the chief insisted that everyone tether to the tightrope using the

carabiners, so no one was washed away.  Chief O'Brien sighed and took

his dunking when his turn came.  "Well, at least it's washed away the

rest of that muck," he told Odo on the other bank.  Odo was most

annoyed at having to get wet.  Probably wishes he could've just turned

back into a hawk and flown over, thought O'Brien, smiling to himself.



The biggest obstacle faced by the commandos was the lake, which the

captain added as an afterthought after seeing how well they did on the

bog.  Chief O'Brien paced to and from the shoreline, watching the

Natives spread along the lakeshore, pointing to the other side and

talking excitedly.  Whenever they used the newly discovered "tech" of

exerting their brains for innovation and problem solving they tended to

yell at each other in excited tones and flutter their hands up and down

directly in front of their chests... either a cultural or evolutionary

characteristic, the chief wasn't sure.



The patrician but still good-looking Asta-ha, with her straight, bluish

blond hair and small, boyish figure, wrapped her cloak around herself

and said nothing, staring directly across the water with an unwavering

gaze and mumbling to herself.  Owena-da drew figures in the wet sand of

various "weapon techs" he had seen or heard about, wondering if any of

them would help them across.  The other Tiffnakis offered exaggerated

and increasingly fantastical suggestions, ineluctably reminding O'Brien

of the scene in the holoplay Cyrano de Bergerac, where the

seventeenth-century courtier swordsman extemporizes twelve methods of

flying from Earth to the moon (including a sedan chair drawn by geese

and a hot-air balloon).



"Keiko made me go see that play," he nmttered to himself... going

insane trying to stop himself suggesting the obvious solution: a raft.

"And I'm glad she did."



"I beg your pardon?"  asked Odo, standing directly behind the chief.

O'Brien jumped guiltily; he hadn't heard the constable come up behind

him.  But then, no one ever does, he consoled himself.



"Sorry, Odo; I was remembering a holoplay that Keiko made us attend.

Actually, I wanted to go; but sometimes it's a good thing"--he leaned

forward and gave the constable a winkm'to be reluctantly dragged away

and then gush about how much you enjoyed it.  Good for the marriage, I

mean."



Odo shook his head in puzzlement.  "I'm afraid I still can't understand

why you play so many games with your relationships.  Isn't it enough

simply to enjoy common interests, without having to trick your wife

into believing she convinced you against your will?"



O'Brien shrugged, so very paradoxical ma pregnant Irish bull, he half

remembered from somewhere.  "What could be more fun than playing silly

games with the woman you love?"  But thinking of Keiko made him long

for her, and Molly.  O'Brien grinned a somewhat goofy, cockeyed smile.

"I really miss them, Odo.  I miss them both; I miss the station.  Damn

it, why do we have to leave?  Even if Kai Winn is in charge, all right,

I can accept that; but why do we have to leave?"



"I hate to say it, but I miss the station whenever I'm away," said the

constable, surprising O'Brien.  "I'll... probably be asked to depart

permanently as well.  Somehow, I can't picture the Kai using any

security officers but her own.  And I must admit, there are several

Bajoran deputies on my staff who would make reasonably adequate

constables."  The constable pulled a long face, literally.  "I wonder

whether I can accompany Captain Sisko to his next billet?"



"I wonder how they're doing," mused the chief.  "I'll bet Keiko really

has her hands full, trying to pack and take care of Molly."  He sighed,

thinking of Deep Space Nine, his home for the last four years .... the

home he probably would never see again after returning and immediately

departing.



O'Brien continued to pace and grumble to himself for another hour

before the struggling Tiffnakis finally hit on the idea of a raft. They

had a hard time with the concept of buoyancy at first; Asta-ha (an

early raft convert) required every gram of persuasion at her command to

convince the rest of the commandos that Dalvda-has "floating bridge"

would actually float: "You know Tivva-ma, you know she is strong in the

tech.  My Tivva-ma has floated such toys herself on the Electromagnetic

River southeast of the village .... Some of your own children have done

so with Tivva-ma; and you, Owena-da, have even seen the sticks she

floats."



"But those are sticks, Mayor Asta-ha.  How can you compare a stick to a

bridge?  The bridge is far larger, hence it will sink.  A great rock

sinks faster than a tiny pebble, doesn't it?"



O'Brien listened, fascinated in an abstract sort of way.  Knowing the

answer so deeply--Archimedes' principle was still one of the first

engineering concepts taught at school, even three thousand years after

its discovery on Earth (and thirty thousand years after the Vulcans

figured it out)--it was incredibly hard for the chief to put himself in

the position of someone who literally had never heard of a boat.  The

principle was actually not as selfevident as it seemed from his

perspective.  I mean, he thought, why SHOULD a big, heavy object float

on top of the water?



But finally, the girls, Asta-ha and Dalvda-ha, persuaded the rest of

the commandos to give it a try.  After a number of false starts,

occupying the better part of a day, they put together a passable raft

that passed inspection with the captain.  It carried them across the

lake and within five kilometers of the place along the tributary river

where the rest of the Tiffnakis waited (they hoped).  But by the time

they arrived, it was well into night, and the greater moon had already

set; Sisko decreed they would start out in the morning.  "Tonight,"

said the captain, "when the troops have gone to sleep, I shall see the

away team in my tent."



Two hours passed uneventfully.  The Natives, after some instruction and

training sessions, managed to get a fire started using a bowstring to

rotate a stick in a hole.  It was an ancient military technique, but

Chief O'Brien hadn't learned it in Starfleet .... He'd picked it up

watching old American Western holoplays.  Oddly enough, it worked;

other Tiffnakis were experimenting with a hastily woven gill net, and

fish aplenty (with legs!) were caught for dinner.  The away team ate

more com-rats in silence; O'Brien found his nearly as inedible as

Native food would be.



As O'Brien saw Worf stealing through the night toward the commanding

officer's tent, and just before the chief himself was to leave, Odo

sidled up.  "I've just had the most disturbing conversation with that

female," said Odo, looking stuffier than usual.



O'Brien shrugged.  "Should're taken my advice; women like a little

mystery."



"Oh, get your mind off such nonsense.  That-that lady mayoress just

came up to me and asked if I..."  He looked sideways, left, right;

O'Brien found himself doing the same, though he had no idea what he was

looking for.  "She asked me if I was going to turn into jelly again

anytime soon."



"Well?  Are you?"



"Yes, of course.  But that's not the point, you-that's not the point,

Chief O'Brien."  Odo sucked in his lower lip and glared back at the

Tiffnakis, who were beginning to snore (they made an irritating hissing

noise, less like sawing logs than frying bacon).  "The point is, Chief,

that she saw me shape change  He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial

whisper.  "Despite all my precautions.  They must have excellent

eyesight.  But she and who else?  Do they all know I'm a shape

changer



"Odo, !  don't know what to say.  I know the captain ordered you not to

shape change but he knows you can't hold your form longer than sixteen

hours."



As O'Brien led the way; Odo said nothing more about the incident... and

the chief was amused to notice that the constable said nothing to

Captain Sisko, either; evidently, Odo had been paying attention after

all to O'Brien's oratory about the games solids play.



CHAPTER



THE ENTIRE AWAY TEAM was at the meeting, of course, and it was the

first time O'Brien could remember in days that they had all gotten

together as a team, without anyone but themselves in attendance.  Just

us, he thought; just us alien invaders.  Sisko sat at the far end of

his inflatable tent, the fire burned down to embers between him and the

open door.  The rest of the team filed in one at a time and found a

seat.  O'Brien sat cross-legged, closest to the tent flap, so he could

keep an eye behind them, at the commandos huddled on the open ground,

without tent or blanket: he still didn't quite trust this planet.



"We are in danger of allowing this mission to run away with us," said

the captain gravely, his thoughts seeming to echo the chiefs.  "We've

allowed ourselves--/ have allowed us--to integrate more thoroughly into

this planet's culture than I intended.  From now on, I mean to be the

captain of the Defiant away team... not the general of the Sierra-Bravo

defense force."



O'Brien spoke up.  "It was a good plan, sir, if I do say so.  But it's

done; we've set them on the road .... Isn't this their fight from now

on?"



"You are missing the point," objected Worf.  "We are not helping one

side in an internal power struggle.  The Cardassians, not we, have

interfered in the planet's development."



"Worf is right," Sisko adjudicated.  "This is still our fight, Chief,

but I don't want us leading the Native charge, if you can see the

distinction."



"Perhaps," said Odo, "we should confront the Cardassians personally,

ourselves, not surrounded by a mob of native life-forms."



"But how?"  demanded the chiefi It was a great speech on the captain's

part, but vague on the details.  "How are we five to stop the

Cardassians and a thousand Drek'la foot soldiers, or even slow them

down?  Perhaps the best we can do is stay here and lead the troops into

battle."



"No, Chief; that's too close an involvement.  We should face them

directly .... Somehow."  O'Brien swallowed, and neither Quark nor Odo

looked particularly happy.



Worf, however, showed a terrible, frightening Klingon grin of battle

joy.  "Yes Perhaps tomorrow will be a good day to die."



Here we go again, thought Chief O'Brien, but the captain was

surprisingly on Worfs side.  "Yes, Commander, perhaps it will.  But in

the meanwhile, I'd rather stay alive a while longer and burn the

Cardassians rather more than we have so far."



Quark, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, could no longer

contain himself.  He burst forth with a cynical yet truthful

observation: "More than we have?  We haven't burned them at all."

Snarling and muttering darkly, the little Ferengi paced up and down. "I

can see where this is going .... Nowhere.  None of you has a clue how

to handle the situation."  "Oh," jeered Odo, "and I suppose you do?"

Quark sighed, shaking his head as if speaking to a six-year-old;

O'Brien fought the impulse to wind up and kick the barkeeper into the

next campfire.  "Of course I, personally, would have plenty of better

ideas, because I, personally, have a code of life to live by."



"Oh, of course.  The Federation Code of Criminal Offenses.  How

shortsighted of me."



"I'm talking about the Rules of Acquisition, you runny-faced

bucket-sitter."  O'Brien noticed that when Quark got really piqued, his

face turned almost bright pink, the color of the flowers of the deep

Glen Tsismusk on Bajor.



Sisko interrupted smoothly, trying to keep the argument on some

productive track.  "Do you have a particular Rule of Acquisition in

mind, Mr.  Quark?"



The Ferengi paused, taking a long glare at Odo before saying, "Yes,

Captain; as a matter of fact, one has been lodged in my planet-sized

brain ever since we saw the Cardassian attack on Brew--on

Druvis-miss-russ-whatever the heck it is."



Quark paused as if finished.



"Well?"  demanded O'Brien; Worf glowered and Odo snorted; only Captain

Sisko seemed to have enough patience to out wait the melodramatic

Ferengi.



"I've been almost obsessed with the two hundred and eighty-fourth

Rule," said Quark.



Sisko spoke up instantly: "Deep down, everyone's a Ferengi."



Quark's eyes widened.  "Very good, Captain!  Better than Rom, as I'm

sure you're not surprised to hear."



Odo snorted again, even more loudly.  "Typical Ferengi arrogance.  All

right, Quark, how is everyone deep down a Ferengi, and how does that

help



US?"



"It means that when you push anyone hard enough, he'll manage to find a

core of ingenuity somewhere within him .... Though I admit, the rule

does seem to have one or two exceptions-Odo."



"All right; so how do we push them hard enough?"  prompted the

captain.



"My next thought was of Rule Forty-Four .... Do you know that one,

Captain?"



Sisko smiled.  "I memorized them all; it's not that difficult, and good

mental discipline.  Never confuse wisdom with luck."



O'Brien was starting to catch the Ferengi's drift.  "The Cardassians,

right?  They've won every battle, and they probably think it's because

of their brilliant tactics.  But it's really just their luck that they

landed here, where the power-cutting trick works such magic."



"You see, Odo?  If only the humans would start to teach the Rules of

Acquisition in Starfleet Academy, they could rule the... wait.  Forget

I said anything."



"All right.  So the Cardassians have been winning because of their

luck, that the Natives never learned how to respond to the loss of all

their toys; but if you scratch them hard enough, like we've seen here,

all that inborn ingenuity comes back, and suddenly they're a formidable

enemy.  So what's the key, Quark?  What's the magic bullet to connect

Forty-Four with Two Hundred and Eighty Four



Quark smiled, then curled his lip in a snarl of triumph in Odo's

direction.  "The Rule that keeps me alive on Deep Space Nine, or Terek

Nor, or whatever it ends up being called tomorrow: It's always good

business to know about new customers before they walk in your door."

"One Hundred and Ninety-Four," muttered Sisko.



"Or in this case," concluded the Ferengi, "it's good strategy to know

all about a new Cardassian tactic before they use it on you."



Sisko stared at Quark.  In the wink of an eye, the mad scheme had

become crystal clear.  "Quark... you're suggesting we cut the power

over the entire planet at once."



"Cut the power on the whole planet?"  asked Worf, not following the

logic.



"Worf, it's brilliant!"  Chief O'Brien felt more alive, excited than he

had since transporting down to the forsaken, senseless planet.  "What's

the one big advantage the invaders have in every battle?"



"They cut the power broadcast and render the Native weapons useless.

But I do not see how this--"



"But it's not that the toys stop working, Worf; it's that they stop

working just before the fight.  And the Natives are so shaken by the

sudden loss of everything that they can't even mount a defense at the

level of spears and swords."



"Slings," said the captain, "arrows, traps-everything that a poorly

armed and equipped band of freedom fighters ever used to bring a

superpower to a grinding halt."



"So we cut the power first--O'Brien was in his element, explaining

something--"and by the time the Cardassians get to the next village,

the Natives'll have already had days or even weeks to get used to the

new way of things."



Sisko nodded.  "I must admit, Quark, it's a plan."



"It's a ridiculous plan," objected Odo, "and it's totally illegal.  We

can't go around cutting the power of people who depend upon technology

for their very survival.  How are they to eat?  How will they defend

themselves against each other?"



Sisko grinned.  "Constable, you have hit the nail square on the head.

That's it exactly: they will find a way to eat, to defend themselves

against other Natives--and to defend themselves against the

Cardassians."



Chief O'Brien blinked.  Well.  Constable, there g yet another example

for you.  The chief chuckled.  "Beats me why they don't just accept

reality and repeal the bloody thing," he said.  Nobody paid

attention.



The captain rose, his head just brushing the ceiling of the tent.

"Gentlemen, we have our plan: we will find the central power generators

for the whole planet and kick them off-line .... Temporarily, at least.

Chief, put together an action plan for finding them, and work with Worf

to profile what sort of generators the planet would need and how we

might sabotage them.  Odo... be prepared to infiltrate the Cardassian

camp; we must find out whether the chief was right, and they're

fugitives from the empire--or whether this truly is a front in a new

war And whether there is a Founder among them."



Chief Miles Edward O'Brien rose first, followed by the rest.  Full

plate, he thought, happy for the first time since arriving in orbit and

looking over Dax's shoulder at the technology readout; at last, there

was something positive to do.



But how humiliating that it was Quark who had to think of the key.  The

only point that made the embarrassment bearable was when O'Brien

thought of poor Odo... stuck with a Ferengi who would never forget or

allow the constable to do so .... For years and years, if the chief

were a good judge of character.



That is, assuming they all lived that long.



Major Kira Nerys stood in the Kai's private audience chamber, what once

had been Captain Sisko's office, overlooking Ops and the fatigued,

frustrated, but still utterly professional defense team.  The station

shuddered regularly now with the pounding from alien invaders attached

to the hull, as they tried to bore their way by hand through the

containment field and the station's outer skin.  The enemy worked its

way at every joint and join, and still Kira had no idea in the world

who the bloody attackers were!



She paced back and forth, parallel to Kai Winn's desk, mumbling

inaudibly to herself.  The Kai seemed perfectly calm, adding to Kira's

fury; "serene" is the word that popped into the major's head: That

blasted woman is always so damned SERENE.  I can't take any more of

it.



Kira turned her back on the Kai, so the woman wouldn't see the tears of

a chained attack dog.  "I should be out there.  People are dying!"

"Your place is here, child?"



"I should be fighting!  I'm a warrior--I fought in the underground, I

should be fighting now to defend this--this little piece of Bajor from

the Prophets know what is trying to worm under our skin."  Kira whirled

to face Kai Winn.  "Can't you understand that?"



Stunned, Kira stared again at the sensors, the viewers; both showed the

same tragic scene: four Bajoran cruisers sliced open like dissected

animals, their guts streaming into space.  The invaders hadn't even

bothered either to rescue or to kill the survivors of the ill-fated

effort to relieve the station.  There might be another expedition, but

not soon.  The rest of the Bajoran navy was desperately needed to

defend the planet... assuming the pirates from the Gamma Quadrant next

turned their attention thither.  There was no help from the homeworld,

no help from home.



The Kai shook her head.  "You are the one who does not understand,

child," she said sadly.  "The senior officer's place is not at the head

of the troops, where he could be slain by a single lucky shot.  His

place is behind the lines, at the nerve center, where he can control

his followers."



Kira shook her head, astonished.  "You talk as if you know what you're

talking about," she said; the words began in respect but ended in a

scream of fury.  "What do you know about fighting?"



It was an unfair charge; the Kai had done remarkably well so far.  The

enemy (whoever they were) had not yet penetrated the station itself;

they had managed to slither inside the defensive screen of DS9--rather,

the Emissaryk Sanctuary; but there, they had so far stalemated: they

crawled all along the skin of the station in bulky black pressure

suits, hacking and chopping and trying to drill their way inside.  But

in another sense, it was something Kira had to clear from her

conscience.  "Kai Winn, with the deepest, most profound respect, I must

say that I know a lot more about this sort of fighting than you... and

I should be there in the thick, leading the troops--Bajoran troops--to

victory."



Behind the words, inside her head, Major Kira came to a decision at

that very moment that made the tragedy complete: orders or no, Kira

Nerys decided that she had no choice but to broadcast a Priority One

distress call to the nearest Federation ship, begging for assistance

from Starfleet.  It meant the end of her dream of a Bajoran Deep Space

Nine, but not to do so would strike the final gong for the station and

everyone inside, and perhaps for Bajor itself.  I have no choice she

screamed silently.



She would do it the next time she was able to leave Ops, which if the

Kai had her way, would be never.  But Kira would find a way to deliver

the message; she always did.



In the meanwhile, Kira stood rigidly opposite her Kai, the people's

Kai, the freely elected (in a sense) leader of the government of

Bajor--the self selected governor of Emissaryk Sanctuary.  Kira had to

talk about something, make conversation; there was nothing else to do

for the moment.  The alien attackers controlled everything from the

skin of the station outward; the Bajorans owned the flesh, blood,

heart, and brains beneath.  Unless there was a

breakthrough--Prophetsforbid!--Kira was a helpless, caged animal,

useful only to wait, and wait, for penetration.



But the Kai was taking this all calmly, as if she'd been through it all

before.  "Kai Winn," Kira asked, "I know a Bajoran doesn't ask another

this question, and if you don't want to answer, I'll understand."



"Why child, what could I possibly want to conceal?"



Yeah, right.  "Kai... what did you do during the Occupation?"  The

reason it was considered terribly impolite to ask such a thing was the

huge numbers of Bajorans who were forced by necessity and empty

stomachs to cooperate with the puppet government established and run by

Gul Dukat, who ruled from his iron fist in orbit, from the dreaded

Terek Nor.  Why drag through the mud the last shreds of dignity an old,

frightened woman might still possess?  Even if she was the Kai.



"During the Occupation?"  The Kai seemed quite genuinely suprised.

"I'd... just as soon not discuss it."



Stunned by the sudden turn of events--the Kai had actually accepted the

challenge--Kira relaxed slowly into a chair, staring at the seemingly

stubborn, old woman.  Kai Winn began to speak, her voice so soft, it

caressed Kira's cheek like the wind through the trees of Glen

Tsismusk.



"But if you have to know... the Occupation began before I was born, but

by the time I turned twenty-one, before you were born, child, I was the

primary house slave to a young Cardassian gul--a gentle man, as far as

that went."  The Kai smiled disarmingly, winking at Kira.  "But that's

not all I was, my child; you freedom fighters were not the only enemies

of Cardassia."



Kira waited, breathlessly... but that was all the answer she got.



The (fake) walls of the (ersatz) runabout cracked under the (pretended)

pressure of the hulking sea.  Jadzia Dax licked dry lips inside her

scuba helmet-the holo-simulation was so real, too real!-and spoke

through a (faintly) cracking larynx over the comm link.  "How... how

much pressure, Julian?"



Bashir looked at the gauge as the runabout lurched in the current.  "I

read it as seventy-three standard atmospheres."



"No, I don't mean in the simulation.  I mean for real.  How much

pressure as soon as we exit the Defiant?"



The puzzled doctor stared sideways at Dax, turning his whole body,

since his head and neck were constrained by his own helmet.  "Jadzia,

you know the answer to that better than I. The ship currently sits at

approximately one hundred and seventy atmospheres."



"Enough," she said, almost to herself, "enough to crush a runabout like

a..."  "An egg?"



She smiled wanly.  "We already used that one.  Crush us like some...

small, crus hable thing."



Bashir reached across, piercing her with his limpid, brown eyes, seen

through the faceplate, putting a heavily gloved hand on her arm.

"Steady, Commander.  We'll be all right.  It was your own

calculations."  He gestured with his head at the seawater beyond the

(holo) hull of the (holo) runabout.  "It appears to be working, you

see?  Your calculations are correct.  Shields down to forty percent. We

should rupture and lose pressurization in about six minutes."

"Computer," said Dax quietly, "end program."  The two of them stood,

still absurdly attired in deep-ocean scuba gear.  Dax cracked her seals

and removed her helmet, just in time to be berated by her

aqua-comrade.



"Jadzia, why did you do that?"  Bashir stared in open-mouthed

irritation.



She shook her head.  "It's no good, Julian.  It's not the real thing...

but it's too real.  If I do this now, I might not be able to do it for

real, when the time comes."



The doctor pressed his lips together, stared at the walls, floor, and

ceiling of crisscrossing lines of holoemitters.  "You don't want to

rehearse?"



"Not my death, Julian."



Bashir sighed.  "It was the one thing keeping me from screaming in

terror."  He snorted.  "All right, we'll split the difference.  We've

already practiced the first ninety meters; I suppose we'll just wing it

the rest of the way."



Shrugging in apology, Jadzia turned and left the holodeck, leaving Dr.

Bashir behind.  Pride held her rigid through the passageway, down the

turbolift, and into her quarters.



Only then did she allow herself to collapse on the bed, shaking like an

out-of-balance turbine.  She fell into a thrashing, fitful sleep and

dreamt of trillions of tons of poisoned water crushing host and

symbiote alike into undifferentiated constituent atoms.



"But what did you do during the Occupation, Kai?"  persisted Major

Kira.



"I kept myself occupied, child."  Kai Winn fidgeted; she was determined

not to fall into the sin of living in the past, as did so many others

who suffered through the decades of brutal occupation.  It was such a

common failing!  So many people, decent people who loved the Prophets

and tried to live as kind and good a life as possible, too many began

nearly every sentence with a sigh, a glance flickered over the

shoulder--as if there might be a Cardassian informer in the next

booth--and words like, "Back during the Troubles, I--" or "It's not

like it was during the Bad Times, when



I .. ?"



I will NOT be one of those people, Kai Winn firmly told herself.  She

despised such people.  No, that~ not fair; I despise that evasion, but

I pity such people.  Pity was a very unpopular emotion, but it was one

of the most decent (when it wasn't used as a euphemism for "look down

upon").



"I resisted, child."  Finally, the Kai's young protfig~e--surely Kira

didn't know she was a protege!--took the hint and sat down, still

trembling like a racing beast waiting for the gong.  The Kai felt a

terrible sympathy; Kai Winn had been through so much, so muc?"  more

than anyone realized, that this small attack could not pierce her

shield.  She knew she was not fated to die at the hands of unknown

aliens in the Emissaryrs own sanctuary; she had looked into the Orb and

seen herself older, seen struggles ahead.  She didn't know just when

she would die (thank the Prophets!), but she knew it was not now, not

here.



There is a great comfort in knowing one will survive one's present

difficulties; Kira had no such certainty, the poor dear.  Just as I had

no certainty during the Occupation that Nerys so obsesses upon," I knew

not what Gul Ragat would take it into his head to do next.



Stop!  The Kai wrenched her mind out of the indulgent groove and

returned to the present time.  She could see that the past could not be

suppressed utterly; it would out now and again.  But she would control

it, at least awaiting a more opportune moment.  Perhaps during the

night; Kira, who just arrived on duty after a fitful five hours of

supposed rest, would take command while Kai Winn returned to her own

quarters in the back of what had been the Emissary's ready room.



Then will be the time; then I will allow the demons of the past to

engulf me... for a little while.



In the meanwhile, she had to manage the battle.  "Child, there has been

no new assault while you slept.  The Gamma Quadrant aliens are

maintaining their siege positions, but I'm sure they're planning

something."



"I don't think they're just going to give up, my Kai.  They've invested

too much--and they've killed people on the Bajoran destroyers.  They

must know we won't let them simply leave!"  Kira's skin darkened as the

blood rushed to her face.  She was desperately suppressing an emotion

that could overwhelm her senses if she allowed it.



Don't slip the floodgates, warned the Kai silently.  "They know,"

agreed Winn.  "They're planning to breech the station manually. 

They've been scanning us continually, very high-level scans."



"Looking for a crack?"



Kai Winn nodded.



"Is there a crack, my Kai?"



The Kai shrugged.  "Probably.  It's in the hands of the Prophets; we

can only do what we can do, imperfect beings that we are."



Nerys seemed glumly dissatisfied with this response as well.  She stood

and slid down the ladder way to the main level of Operations; there she

paced around the central control panels, probably distracting the Kai's

personal defense squad, who manned the battle stations.



Kai Winn sighed, wishing she could as easily give vent to her anxieties

as her young protege.  But the Prophets were strict: they required

self-control and discipline.  The Kai smiled, imagining what Major Kira

of the Shakaar resistance cell would think if Kai Winn were to tell her

the destiny she envisioned for Nerys' that someday, and not too far

into the future, Nerys would herself hear the call of the Prophets ....

and would take holy orders, eventually succeeding Winn as Kai.



She'd probably laugh in my face, then turn bright red with horror!  Kai

Winn smiled at the thought.  She hoped someday to see confirmation of

her vision in the Orb; until then, it was a mere possibility, nothing

more.



Nerys, thought the Kai, forgive me, but you would make an excellent

priestess," if only you could believe it!



The last hour of the Kai's shift passed uneventfully.  When she felt

the fatigue of her aging body overtake her brain, she knew it was time

to hand over the reins.  "Nerys," she said, catching the young

officer's attention; Kira looked up, surprised at the familiarity of

her given name.  "Take command.  I must rest; remember my authority,

Major .... Do nothing to undermine it."



Kira's face burned red again, and she couldn't look the Kai in the

face.  "I--I will, my Kai.  I mean I won't."  Kai Winn smiled as she

turned away to the ready room.  She~ going to betray me, she thinks;

she~ going to call the Federation for help against the invaders.  But

of course, it was all part of the Prophets' plan... whatever Kira chose

to do.



Yawning fiercely, Kai Winn took stately, measured steps into her new

office, overlooking Ops, and ordered the door shut.  Then she relaxed

and became an older woman once more.  A few hours of just being

Winn--not Kai nor vedek nor interpreter of the Prophets--was what she

urgently needed.



Just being Winn, like the young girl who found herself, a newly minted

sister, assigned to tend the spiritual needs of Gul Ragat's Bajoran

slaves... and a slave herself, of course.  Sister Winn was not a

warrior.  What did you do in the Resistance?  I may not have carried a

gun and planted bombs, but child, I surely resisted.t And how much

harder it always was to resist without weapons .... Something the

soldiers never seemed to appreciate.



Remaining appropriately dressed, in case she was summoned from sleep by

an emergency, Kai Winn lay carefully on the bed that once was the

Emissary's emergency cot, feeling a small, girlish thrill at being so

close to the man so personally blessed by the Prophets--who spoke to

them directly!  She barely closed her eyes, giving herself final

permission to let the dead past rise, when she found herself dreaming

of days gone by .... She was back in Governor Legate Migar's mansion

attending the young and dashing Gul Ragat, sub governor of the Bajoran

provinces of Shakarri and Belshakarri ....



TO BE CONTINUED IN



Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Rebels



Book Two



The Courageous



