Chapter 3

It was a quiet day. Ops was running on a skeleton crew, and they were all Starfleet. Lieutenant Commander Alden paused to review the duty roster for the day, not out of any questions about the day’s personnel — he’d prepared the roster, knew it inside and out, and could see that everyone was where they should be — but to give himself something to look at it.

Lieutenant Kaoron alternated between the science station and the main situation table, as he always seemed to be. Lieutenant Nog was at engineering, performing some kind of diagnostics. Ensign Kuhlman manned communications. A handful of other personnel monitored various systems and carried out assignments and errands, all in a somewhat relaxed manner.

It all changed in a half-second.

Kuhlman suddenly sat bolt-upright. “Commander Alden!” he shouted. “We’re picking up a distress signal!”

“Details?”

“It appears to be from the freighter Xhosa, sir.”

“The Xhosa! That’s Kasidy Yates’ ship!” Nog interrupted from his station.

“I know that, Nog. What’s their situation? Put it on screen.”

“Can’t really tell, sir,” the ensign said replied. “It’s not clear, and there’s no visual. The signal may be partially jammed, or they may have taken damage.... But they appear to be under attack, trying to find cover in the Letharan asteroid belt.”

Alden frowned. “That’s a couple hours away.”

“Not if we take the Defiant,” Nog interjected, already at the XO’s side. “We could be there in just over an hour at maximum warp.”

Alden’s eyes widened. “Yes....”

Kuhlman worked at his console, trying to get more information.

Kaoron joined him, adding his expertise, murmuring quietly as he gave instructions.

“Any indication that anyone closer is responding?” Alden pressed for more information after several impatient moments.

“No, sir.” The ensign shook his head. “And we can’t seem to get a signal through to them — or they’re not acknowledging our hail, if they’re receiving it....” He frowned. “The distress signal’s gone, now. Either it’s being completely jammed, or....”

“Or they’ve been destroyed — or their comm is down.” Kaoron’s words were precise and somber as he stood up, no trace of humor in his tone.

“Damn.”

“I’ve informed Colonel Kira, she’s on the way,” Nog reported in an undertone.

“You—“ Alden all but clamped his mouth shut to avoid saying he could handle the situation, he didn’t need the station commander’s critical eye on him. But it was standard procedure, after all. Instead, he ordered Kuhlman, “Keep monitoring. Find out what’s happening.”

It took only a minute for Kira to reach Ops, the others trailing behind her, all of them still in their seventeenth-century Earth French cavalier attire for Dax’s holo-program. Trouble on the Xhosa affected each of them. Kasidy was a friend of Kira and Dax; Bilecki’s husband was one of the Xhosa’s crew; and to Kira and Pryen both, Kasidy was also the Emissary’s wife, and the mother of his unborn child. The thought of danger to them was appalling, a spiritual and emotional tempest.

“Update!” Kira demanded, jumping up out of the turbolift before it had fully reached Ops level and stopped.

Alden’s eyes widened as he took in her garb, but he gestured at Kuhlman and Kaoron.

“Nothing new, Colonel,” Kuhlman replied. “We received a distress signal, scrambled and hard to read, for about seven seconds, then it went dead. Nothing since. As far as we know, we weren’t able to get a signal back to them, and we haven’t had any communiques from anyone else who might have picked up the signal or who might be responding.”

“So it’s just us.” She glanced around, blowing the plume out of her face when the feather nearly brushed her eye. “All right, we depart in five minutes. Nog, Kaoron, to the Defiant. Kuhlman, alert the infirmary, we’ll need a medical staff. Then report to the ship yourself.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Colonel....”

Kira met Bilecki’s wide, anguished gaze. She remembered the lieutenant’s husband was on the Xhosa. “We need someone here too, especially with the Festival going on, and you’re second in command in engineering operations.” More softly, she added, “We’ll find them, Caryn.”

After a second, Bilecki nodded. Pryen put her hand on her friend’s shoulder, sympathy and worry in her own expression.

“All right, then, let’s go.”

Before she could take another step to the turbolift, she found her way blocked.

“What is it, Commander?” she asked, annoyed at anything getting in her way at a time like this, especially Alden.

“Per your prior ... instructions, Colonel, I have been reviewing station and Defiant logs, systems, and protocols,” he reported stiffly, his posture equal parts challenge and struggle not to reveal how much this meant to him. “I have also been training at tactical and navigation. I’ve passed the bridge officer exam. I’m qualified for line duty on the Defiant.”

Kira glanced at Dax. She saw pleading in the young Trill’s eyes, urging her to bring Alden on the mission, to let him start serving on the Defiant as he so deeply desired.

There was no time to argue.

“All right, then, Commander. Conn. Dax, you too. Let’s go.” She turned and led the way, mentally growling to herself, hoping this wasn’t a mistake.

The minutes stretched out into eternity. Then, just when they thought they could start breathing again, Sindelar called out, “There’s something out there, not an asteroid! Coming into view—”

“Ryltee, get something between us—“

“No identity on the ship, but I’m detecting an energy build-up...,” Sindelar reported ominously.

“Move it, Ryltee! Everybody else, hang on!” Kasidy yelled, gripping the arms of her chair. She would have given the warning ship-wide, but they already knew the internal comm wasn’t operational. She had no way of knowing what shape the rest of her crew was in, nor any way to warn them.

The sturdy freighter suddenly bucked as it was hit again by weapons’-fire.

Torm cursed volubly, as only a belt-raised station-rat could. He’d managed to cling to the door frame as the ship shook for the fourth time — no Andorian raised in the resource-harvesting ships of the Zeorcan asteroid system would ever lose his footing in anything less than a full-scale gravity-inversion. But keeping his space legs wasn’t getting him out of the cargo pod. The hatch remained sealed, stubbornly unresponsive to command, obscenity, or attempt at manual override, and no response or order came through the ship’s comm.

He pounded on the metal door again, shouting profanities in the dozen languages he’d learned in his years in space. True, Captain Yates wouldn’t approve of the terms, but her young Bajoran shadow wouldn’t understand them anyway.

There was a sound. His antennae quivered, focusing on the hatch, straining to hear.

Even with forewarning and a chance to brace themselves, the bridge crew of the Xhosa was shaken and erupted into turmoil again.

“All right, everybody!” Kasidy shouted, trying to bring order to the hubbub. “We need to know how much damage we took this time.”

“I think communications are down, external as well as internal,” Vinj reported from that console.

“Did we get a distress signal out?” she asked.

“Can’t tell. We’ve had no response.”

“Scanners aren’t showing anything now,” Sindelar called with unexpected volume for a slightly-built man. “Looks like they’re completely down too.”

That was frightening. In the heart of the asteroid belt, they needed to know exactly where they were, and what was around them.

“Get them back.”

Somebody started banging on the hatch to the main corridor.

“Can somebody let in whoever that is?” Kasidy asked.

Pokel made her way to the door, keeping one hand on the wall in case the ship started shaking again. She pushed at the manual entry pad. Nothing happened.

“It won’t open,” she reported, her young voice shaking as much as her hands.

“Try the manual override switch.”

“I just did.”

“That’s just the manual pad. Here’s the switch....” Vinj joined her at the door. He pulled off the panel from the override handle, and began tugging at it.

“It’s jammed!” he called. He turned to Cartier. “Lou!”

“Right. Temma-demoiselle,” Cartier said, “come here, I need another pair of eyes on the console while I check the door.” He gave her what was intended to be an encouraging smile. “And you know what our normal readings are, you can handle it.”

The Bajorans stepped aside for the human engineer, with the young woman moving over to the systems console. Cartier stooped to remove another panel under the manual override handle, then stayed on his knees for a moment, examining the interior circuitry. Finally, he flipped to his back and inched his way closer to the opening, almost sticking his head inside.

“I have to—“ Kasidy started to rise.

“Stay here,” Vinj muttered, already at her side, one hand on her shoulder, forcing her back into her chair. “If we get shaken up any more, we don’t want you hurt.”

“You—“ She couldn’t stop the flare of annoyance; she didn’t expect this kind of religious protectiveness from him. “Just because—“

“Emissary’s wife or no,” his voice was even softer, “you don’t want to risk your baby. And while we may not be as rigid as Starfleet when it comes to rank and regulations, you are still our captain. We need you whole. There’s nothing you can do anywhere else on this bridge that you can’t do from this chair.”

She gripped the arms of her chair, swallowing words. True, from the small panels built into the arms, she could see the basics of her ship’s condition, and all she could do anywhere else on the bridge was hover over someone else’s shoulder, maybe getting in the way. She couldn’t shimmy halfway into the bulkhead like Cartier was at that very second.

But she couldn’t repair anything from her seat, she couldn’t try to bring up the comm, she couldn’t monitor the scanners, she couldn’t get into the circuitry. That was frustrating. If she were elsewhere on the freighter, she could help repair whatever might have been damaged, try to bring systems back online, jimmy open the doors, at least double-check the cargo status.

All she could do was sit here. Meanwhile, her crew was trying to get the ship going again, and figure out what was attacking them.

“Oh-oh...,” she heard Sindelar mutter. “If that’s what I think it is....”

“Do you have the scanners back up? What is it?” Kasidy called.

“I think so. I might have just picked up another energy build-up. Reads the same as whatever’s been hitting us.”

Kasidy and Vinj exchanged glances, long-time spacers knowing the situation was not good, and was only getting worse.

“Evasive action, Ryltee,” she ordered unnecessarily. “Whatever will lose us—“

Something hit near them. The proximity alarm went off again — and the freighter reeled under what felt like a scattershot of blows.

“What’s that?” Pokel shrieked.

“Asteroid fragments,” Vinj hazarded. “I’d say they missed us, but hit one of the asteroids, like their earlier strike, only smaller. Probably blasted it to bits, and we’re in the path of those bits. They won’t do much to us.”

“As long as our shielding stays up and nothing punctures our hull,” Sindelar murmured, breathing faster than normal.

“What’s that?” Cartier asked, suddenly pulling himself clear of the open panel.

The others listened intently. After a few seconds, they could all hear the low whine, and began to feel it through the deck beneath their feet.

“Something’s not right. I’ve got to get to the engine room,” he said ominously.

Rosha Zimbaret couldn’t help crooning huskily to the engines, urging them to give the ship the speed the bridge was requesting. Cartier might snicker and tease her a little about her singing, but she was part-Haliian; singing was life, singing connected a being to all things around her, as surely as the Prophets connected the Bajorans to one another.

And she was unshakably convinced that the Xhosa responded to her voice. She might not have the low telepathic level of so many of her father’s people, but where mechanical things were concerned, she had a way, and that way included music.

Just now, she focused on keeping the small freighter’s engines from faltering and losing power. There’d been no contact from the bridge, but she could tell they were being targeted by somebody. In the last few minutes, the ship had changed course a dozen times, obviously taking evasive action. And something had hit them, or nearly hit them, at least five times. Freighters weren’t meant for that kind of maneuvering, nor were they built to take much weapons’-fire.

Preoccupied, she let her hands rest on the power read-out screens, willing them to stay steady and strong. Her voice ran up and down the alto scale.

She paused. Something wasn’t right. Something whined somewhere at the upper edge of her hearing.

Zimbaret turned away from the console to stare over the railing at the warp core, half afraid of what she would find out.

Dellin pounded at the door, frustrated. She could hear erratic tapping on the other side — or was that something in the wall, shorting at close intervals?

“We can’t get in!” Turrit snarled, throwing his impressive weight against the sealed hatch.

“There’s got to be another way!” She fell against the wall and slumped to the floor, panting. “We’ve got to reach her! We don’t even know if she’s all right!”

“She’s all right,” he replied grimly. “She’s the Emissary’s wife. The Prophets will protect her.”

Dellin sucked in a deep breath. Some mechanical tang was spreading through the air. Her fear grew.

Chapter 4