“Not possible/believable. We prevented/averted your approach to cathedral/anathema.”
Vaughn sighed. “You detected the energy beam we directed at the cathedral, did you not?”
“Detected, we did, your weapon,”the Nyazen commander growled. “Ineffectual/inconsequential it was.”
“It did no damage because it wasn’t a weapon.” Time to roll the dice,Vaughn thought, pausing. “It was a material transmission device.”
As inscrutable as the alien had been up until now, Vaughn could tell instantly that he had finally piqued his counterpart’s interest. He continued his effort at persuasion: “Your sensors must have detected the approach of the D’Naali fleet by now. So here’s my proposaclass="underline" We will help you defend the cathedral against them— ifyou will allow us to approach it and render assistance to our officers.”
“You could/might use your mattercaster to deliver weapons to/within cathedral/anathema.”
Vaughn took a deep breath to keep from raising his voice. “We could have done that before.We didn’t.”
The Nyazen commander was clearly turning that fact over in his mind.
Bowers spoke up. “Twelve D’Naali ships are dropping out of warp, Captain. Almost right on top of the blockade.”
“Red alert!” Vaughn said, and alarm klaxons began blaring. He signaled to Bowers to turn them down.
“Incoming fire!” Bowers said. Tenmei reacted swiftly, turning the stronger starboard shields toward the massed fire of four of the arriving vessels. The deck pitched, and Vaughn held tightly to the arms of his chair.
Over the next few seconds, several more salvos struck the Defiant’s shields, including one that apparently got all the way through to the ablative hull armor before burning itself out. Then the attacks immediately trailed off as the Nyazen fleet began opening fire on their opposite numbers.
Vaughn watched as the viewer split its view; in addition to the face of the indecisive Nyazen commander, it also presented a tableau of two fairly evenly matched fleets bringing all their tubes to bear against one another. And in the unfathomable space beyond the warring spacefleets—one committed to destroying a much-feared anathema, another acting to defend its most sacred cathedral—the inexplicable spacebar artifact continued its heedless, eternal tumble across the dimensions.
The Nyazen captain had evidently seen enough. “This one agrees/assents,”it said, then vanished from the screen.
Vaughn smiled a canny gambler’s smile. “You heard the man, Tenmei. Bring us into transporter range. Shar, start scanning the thing’s interior for our people. Leishman, get those phasers up and running.”
The battle had been at a near stalemate from the beginning. But thanks to Tenmei’s skillful flying, some inspired jury-rigging by Celeste, Leishman, and Van Buskirk—not to mention Bowers’s pinpoint targeting—two of the Defiant’s four pulse phaser cannons very quickly encouraged a critical handful of the D’Naali ships to withdraw to a safer distance. Vaughn was relieved to note that all it had taken to accomplish this was several shots across the bow.
Watching the massed Nyazen forces chase away the remainder of the D’Naali flotilla, Vaughn considered the difficulties that still lay ahead. Once our common threat is gone, the Nyazen are certain to turn on us.
Shar spoke up from the primary science console. “Captain! I believe I’ve made sensor contact with our away team.”
Bowers turned to Vaughn, displaying a look of delighted surprise. “I’m receiving combadge signals from inside the artifact. They’re the prearranged evac signals, sir. They’re very weak, and extremely red-shifted, as though moving away from us at great speed.”
“They could be temporally distorted by the artifact,” Shar said. “There’s no way to tell how long they’ve been transmitting.”
Vaughn was beside himself, but kept his emotions in check. “How many signals are you getting?”
“Two,” Bowers said, intent on both his earpiece and a complex wave-form display on his instrument panel. “No, three. And one subspace transponder.”
Dax’s transport pod.Vaughn grinned. It was about time for some good luck. Where better than a cathedral to go looking for a miracle?
“Good work, people.” Vaughn hit the intercom. “Vaughn to transporter bay one. Chief Chao, I want you to lock onto the away team. Shar and Hunter will feed you the coordinates.”
Chao took a moment to respond. “Sir? That last hit seems to have overloaded the entire transporter system. I can’t get a lock, either from here or with the secondary system.”
“Half the Nyazen blockade fleet is coming about in our direction,” Bowers said, not sounding a bit surprised. “Weapons powering up.”
“Shields?” Vaughn asked.
Bowers shook his head. “They’re still in pretty rough shape, sir.”
“We’ve still got warp power,” Tenmei said. “I can get us clear of these guys so fast they’ll think they’re hallucinating.”
So much for miracles. At my age, I ought to know better.
Vaughn summarily banished that train of thought. “We’ve also got an away team to rescue.”
“And no working transporters,” Tenmei reminded him.
Vaughn stared into the screen at the approaching ships. It had been a long time since he had recalled his rather unhappy Starfleet Academy Kobayashi Maru test so vividly. So it’s come to this.
“We don’t have much time,” Tenmei said. “Should I take us out, sir?”
Shar abruptly sat bolt upright in his seat, as though he’d just received a sizable electrical shock.
Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “Lieutenant?”
“We still have oneworking transporter,” Shar said, frantically entering commands into his console.
Tenmei scowled at the science officer. “Jeannette said the secondary bay was down as well.”
Vaughn suddenly realized what Shar meant: the Sagan.
“Do it. Fast.”
Shar nodded. “Remotely engaging the Sagan’s transporter system.”
“Tenmei, lower the shields and keep them off our backs for at least a few more seconds. Then get us the hell out of here on Shar’s mark. Maximum warp.”
Tenmei flashed Vaughn her best I-love-a-challengesmirk. “I’ll do my best, Captain.”
As she refocused her attention on her console, Vaughn smiled gently. He expected no less from his only daughter.
Krissten received only a scant moment’s notice from the bridge before the away team members began materializing, one by one, in a great sprawl across the center of the medical bay floor.
The first to appear was Ezri, her skin looking as pale as death through the helmet of her environmental suit. An instant later, the transport pod containing the Dax symbiont shimmered into existence beside her; its liquid interior sloshed audibly, as though the small creature within had become greatly agitated. Ensign Juarez’s quick tricorder scan immediately revealed the reason for Ezri’s frightening pallor: Her body was rapidly shutting down because of the absence of the symbiont, which, luckily enough, appeared healthy. As she carefully laser-scalpeled the EV suit from Ezri’s body, Krissten breathed a silent prayer that host and symbiont could be reunited before the Trill woman expired.
But before either nurse could begin hoisting Ezri’s limp form onto a biobed, a second humanoid figure materialized on the floor: Nog, lying unconscious, his environmental suit’s left leg conspicuously flattened, folded, and empty. Krissten could see no punctures, blood, or other signs of trauma. But the regenerated leg was nonetheless gone, as though it had never been.