Trials and Tribble-ations Read online

  He sighed with heavy satisfaction. His job from now on was very easy. This was a Starfleet ship, entirely secure. No Cardassians breathing over his shoulder anymore. No Klingons salivating with suspicious desire over the power of this alien device. No one around who even knew how to read the ancient texts and use the Orb.

  The planet of Bajor had been left poor and struggling after the occupation and had little to call its own, nearly nothing anyone else wanted, other than strategic location. But it had ended up, through some glitch of happenstance, to be the custodian of the Orbs. Not the origin, but at least the residence.

  The Orbs had become synonymous with Bajoran identity, because it was the only identity other planets would notice. Perhaps even respect, even fear. They were mystical and magical, religious and sacred, and he was proud to be standing here in the virtual presence of a reposing god.

  And that was the last thought occupying his mind when the sensation of crackling energy surged through his body, shattering every nerve and vein in his body for a split second.

  He saw his own arms shoot out before him in pure physical reaction and sensed for a fleeting instant a jarring pain in the middle of his back.

  His last glance as vision closed like curtains from either side was the Orb, resting in the tabernacle, and the faint image of his own falling body reflected in the device's alien skin.

  CHAPTER 2

  "WE TRAVELLED UNDER cloak, since we had to get all the way through Cardassian space without being detected by the Klingons. We were halfway home, and I was just starting to breathe easy."

  Ben Sisko relaxed in his command chair for the first time since the Defiant left Cardassia Prime.

  "But you've got to. If you say it, he'll believe it."

  Beside the helm, Chief O'Brien cajoled Jadzia Dax, but she wasn't buying into the latest plot.

  "Trust me," O'Brien went on. "The next time you see him, just sniff the air and say, 'Is that lilac?'"

  Dax offered her elegant smile, but said, "I have my own ways of torturing Worf. Find somebody else."

  O'Brien turned his eyes to Sisko, but the captain quickly said, "Don't look at me."

  Resigned, O'Brien sighed and retreated to the upper deck.

  Sisko was almost instantly sorry he hadn't wanted to play. Certainly he wanted something to do on this long voyage. Cardassia Prime wasn't exactly next door. He wanted to put his hands on the helm and drive, but that was Dax's job.

  He wanted to fuss with the engineering, but O'Brien was constantly doing that. He even thought about health and well-being, but Dr. Bashir was right over there, gazing with that boyish wonderment at the beauty of space on the forward screen.

  Oh, well … what was a captain to actually do? If the ship was in good shape, the crew was trained and doing their jobs without prompt, the mission was going smoothly, there just wasn't much to occupy command staff. He almost started wishing some little thing would go—

  The red alert klaxon whined to life automatically and the bridge lights changed to accommodate their eyes, and a thousand unseen changes instantly came into play. The ship was going into "just in case" mode.

  In case of what, this time?

  O'Brien's voice rang out, "I'm picking up a massive surge of chronoton radiation around—"

  Suddenly the bridge seemed to twist in upon itself. For a second, Sisko saw multiple images of everything around him. Then the second was over, and everything seemed normal. Or perhaps not.

  "What happened?" Sisko croaked.

  As if feeling the need to respond to his useless request with a useless vocalization, Dax said, "I don't know, but we've dropped out of warp."

  Sisko was about to drawl, "No kidding," when O'Brien twisted toward him and said, "Sensors are coming back on line."

  "Something's very wrong, Benjamin," Dax said. "According to the navigational computer, we're over two hundred light years from our last position—"

  "We're decloaking!" O'Brien interrupted.

  Dax frowned at her console. "Someone's activated the transporter!"

  "Deactivate it and get us back under cloak," Sisko said quickly.

  She worked, but didn't appear satisfied.

  O'Brien's voice had a rough croak. "I'm picking up a ship—dead ahead."

  Sisko turned halfway around and looked up at the dark screen. "Can you identify it?"

  He peered at the flickering, struggling viewscreen. No picture yet.

  Dax pressed and plucked at her controls. "Not yet, but it's close … very close."

  Sisko clenched a fist and said, "Chief, I need that screen!"

  "I think I've got it," O'Brien murmured—not really a response.

  The snowy static crackled and fritzed, then blinked twice and suddenly cleared.

  Quite clear. Damned clear. Damned clear—

  So close Sisko could nearly reach out and run his hand along the etched hullplates, a pure white gullwinged angel passed before them like an untarnished shipwright's model. Sisko recognized the configuration as each section passed—Starfleet line-drawing shapes of the dishlike primary hull, the cigar-shaped engineering hull with its gold deflector disk, the two sizzling white antimatter nacelles lancing out in back. Yes, this was Starfleet configuration, but a form that had been corrupted over the years by more and more technology and less and less esthetics.

  But still …

  "That's—" Dax began, but didn't finish.

  Sisko parted his dry lips. "The Enterprise!"

  CHAPTER 3

  "NEVIS, I NEVER saw anybody eat that much. You must be one of those people who gets thrown out of all-you-can-eat restaurants. How can you stay so thin?"

  "Energy. Lots of nervous energy. Lots of nerves. You should eat more too, Major, since you're eating for two."

  "Oh, I eat," Kira said in a complaining way. "I don't know who's in charge anymore—me or this baby."

  "You must be very happy," the Bajoran deputy said as the two strode down the corridor from the turbolift toward the Orb quarters.

  "I am," she said. "But this isn't my baby."

  The young man looked at her and blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

  She smiled. She loved that look on people's faces, and let the instant linger. "I'm doing a favor for a couple of friends. Good friends."

  "Obviously … hmmmm … uh … hmmm." Poor Nevis turned about four colors, then fixed his eyes on the door panel of the Orb quarters as if wishing he could run the last few steps.

  Just as Kira raised her hand to buzz the door chime, the deck beneath her pitched sideways and cast her against Nevis, and Nevis into the corridor bulkhead. She managed to roll against the young deputy and end up with one shoulder pressed into the wall, but she stayed on her feet.

  "What happened?" Nevis choked. "What was that?"

  "I don't know!" She struggled to get her balance, then raised one hand to tap her comm badge, but never made contact, distracted by Nevis's sudden rush away from her.

  Nevis was already plunging into the Orb quarters, perhaps acting on fear, perhaps instinct. From inside, he gasped, "Arlan!"

  By the time Kira got inside, Nevis was crouching beside the collapsed body of the other Bajoran deputy.

  She scanned the room quickly—Orb, tabernacle, no signs of a struggle … no signs of any change, except Arlan lying on the deck.

  "Is he dead?" she asked clinically.

  "He's been stunned!" Nevis bolted as if he'd been running.

  "Could he have been thrown down by that jolt? Hit his head?"

  "I don't see any bumps on his head … someone did this to him!" Nevis looked up at her desperately. "Someone must've come in here!"

  "Well, the Orb hasn't been disturbed," she told him, "at least, not apparently." She tapped her comm badge. "Kira to Dr. Bashir. Medical emergency, the Orb quarters."

  "On my way, Major."

  "Thank you. Kira to Odo."

  "Odo here."

  "We may have a break-in and assault for you to investigate, Odo, in the Orb quarters
. And you thought you'd be bored this voyage."

  "Being bored would be a privilege lately, Major. I'll be right there."

  "Isn't there something we can do?" Nevis demanded.

  Without taking any steps or touching anything, Kira looked at the outer shell of the Orb's tabernacle. No overt signs of breakage. Still …

  "Whatever happened," she said, "I'm sure they're working on it. They'll contact me as soon as they know something. Let's just look around first."

  A thousand questions. There were dozens of possibilities.

  Had they gone back in time? Had someone else come forward? Was that ship a duplicate? A replica? A joke? An illusion? Was it being projected into their sensors? Were they unconscious? Were they dreaming? Was this mind control?

  Resisting the silly urge to demand a report that nobody had yet, Sisko held his breath and listened as O'Brien tapped frantically on his console. Star alignments, planets, moons, charted anomalies—they could measure down to the second.

  After a few seconds, he looked up at the engineer. O'Brien's face was now turned once again to the glowing ship on the forward screen. The answer was in his stunned eyes.

  "We've gone back in time!"

  So much for a dream.

  The answer was only usher to another thousand questions. Which part of space were they now occupying? Was the cloak secured—could they be seen? Was O'Brien right in his calculations, or had the old Enterprise come forward in time instead?

  Before them in majesty of legend, the classic vessel hung before them, its pearly hullplates showing them how much things had changed. Now—in their own time—the majority of Starfleet vessels were no longer proclamation-white. The Defiant herself was workhorse-gray, pretty much the color of the metal she was made of.

  Before them was a driven-snow prize, with a gold deflector dish, black lettering, and white nacelles with crackling red antimatter activity in the front, like two lit cigarettes from an old detective movie. Her softly blinking running lights were unmuted Christmas red and green, her forward and aft lights bright white. She had no intention of hiding in the darkness, as Defiant was doing at the moment.

  Sisko quietly asked, "Verify cloak."

  Strange—he had nearly whispered, as if that starship out there were close enough to hear.

  It nearly was. His hand twitched to reach out, run a finger along those shining plates. He still felt he could do that. More, he wanted to.

  "Cloak is still operational," O'Brien murmured, his voice also low, subdued. "I'll shore it up some."

  "Dax …"

  "Yes?"

  "Uh …"

  The Defiant's bridge sounds surged forward into the cup of anticipatory silence. Sisko could hear his own heart beating.

  Dax finally had enough and broke away from staring at the beautiful classic ship to turn. "Sir?"

  Sisko kept looking at the ship. "I … can't think of anything to say," he admitted. "There's got to be something, doesn't there?"

  She smiled, cracking the tension. "There's quite a lot."

  He cleared his throat. "All right, let's get on the questions—what happened, how did it happen, how do we protect ourselves, and how do we get out of this? Consider the mission delegated. Where's the major? Find her and fill her in—make sure she's alone when you tell her."

  * * *

  Sisko leaned back in his office chair and gazed at the two time bureaucrats as if gazing down at them from twenty feet in the air.

  "Be specific, Captain," Dulmur asked, because Sisko had deliberately not said enough and was forcing him to ask. "Which Enterprise? There've been five."

  "Six," Lucsly said with an air of superiority.

  "This was the first Enterprise. Constitution-class," Sisko noted.

  He stopped short of adding "The original, the prototype, the legend, the exemplar."

  Dulmur and Lucsly seemed to get the significance without prod. They stared at each other in confirmation of dark and sinister anticipations.

  "His ship!" Dulmur croaked.

  "Kirk," Lucsly filled in. "James T. Kirk."

  Sisko smiled.

  Admiral Nelson. Francis Drake. Captain Cook. Leif Ericson. Seledon of Vulcan. Nadee of Antares. James T. Kirk.

  "The one and only," he fed in proudly.

  Lucsly shook his head disapprovingly. "Seventeen separate temporal violations. The biggest file on record."

  "The man was a menace," Dulmur added.

  Avoiding a smile this time, Sisko felt his eyes gleam with satisfaction. They didn't like James Kirk! He felt eminently fulfilled. Bureaucrats didn't like Kirk, so Sisko suddenly liked him even better. Guys who never did anything looking down their noses at guys who did all kinds of things. He felt good, because he suddenly knew where he fit into this puzzle.

  "What was the date of your arrival?" Dulmur went on.

  Flashing back momentarily on that first minute with O'Brien's shocked face rattling off the details, Sisko reported, "Stardate 4523.7."

  The two deskies paused, and he could tell they were both making quick mental calculations, eyeing each other to make sure neither referred to a padd for help.

  Dulmur murmured, "A hundred and five years … one month, and twelve days ago—"

  "A Friday," Lucsly pounced.

  Dulmur shook his head and turned back to Sisko. "Did the Enterprise detect your presence?"

  "Luckily our cloak was still operational," Sisko said by way of avoiding details.

  "What was the Enterprise doing?"

  "She was orbiting one of the old Deep Space stations—K-Seven, near the Klingon border. Security reported that just before we went back in time someone stunned the deputy who was guarding the Orb and broke into the cabin. Sensor logs showed that someone had beamed off the ship moments after we arrived. It didn't take long for us to realize who was behind it all."

  In the now-empty mess hall, Sisko glared down at a face he'd never seen, the only person on board the Defiant whom he'd never met—the rescued trader Barry Waddle. But this was only a representation on a screen, a file image for transport clearance. The man himself was gone. Gone completely. No longer on board. Damn it. Skunked by an afterthought.

  "His real name is Arne Darvin," Worf explained with some obviously personal irritation. "He is a Klingon altered to look human."

  Dax shifted her lanky body and drawled, "His surgeon does nice work."

  Beside her, Security Chief Odo's plasticlike mask of a face showed no emotion other than a certain glow of interest in his eyes. "We're assuming he came aboard the Defiant for the express purpose of gaining access to the Orb."

  Sisko considered all this and came to the conclusion that, if Odo was correct, Darvin's presence on Cardassia had been a willing one. Not a nice conclusion. Were the Cardassians involved in this? Or was this some kind of personal plot on Darvin's part? Did the Cardassians know he was a Klingon in disguise? Surely they'd done a bioscan in so many months … how deeply did this entwine, and how could it be unraveled from eighty years in the past?

  Darvin wasn't on board anymore. That meant he was somewhere else and they had to get him back or endanger the future.

  Sensing he was going off on the wrong tangent, Sisko decided to try a different angle of analysis. "Any idea why he brought us back to this point in time?"

  "We have a theory."

  Worf worked the computer console briefly, calling up a picture of a young man with somewhat angular, pinched features and a decidedly studious look. "This is Darvin as he appeared during this time period. He is presently aboard Space Station K-Seven, posing as a Federation official."

  Julian Bashir leaned in from Sisko's side. "You're saying he's a spy?"

  Odo nodded. "The younger Darvin's mission was to derail Federation colonization efforts by poisoning a shipment of grain being stored aboard the station."

  When Kira spoke up—asking, "Will he succeed?"—Sisko realized that his entire command staff was down here in the mess hall and entertained a fleeting thought
that somebody should actually be running the ship. True, they were hanging out here adrift, cloaked, but if the cloaking device blipped, somebody would have to make a decision awfully fast. The demands of the big picture were suffusing the moment-to-moment functions of the ship. Sometimes he had trouble reconciling the two. Command of a ship was a lot different from command of a station, where he could ignore some things for certain periods. Usually a mission on the Defiant was specific, even if action was involved. He could concentrate on the action.

  Not this time. He didn't care for this dividing-the-mind demand of captaincy. He'd found over these latest years there were two men in him—an administrator and a soldier—and they didn't like doing each other's work.

  "No, he won't succeed," Odo was telling Kira. "Eighteen hours from now, James Kirk will expose him and he'll be arrested."

  "That arrest will end Darvin's career," Worf filled in. "To punish his failure, the Klingon intelligence will turn its back on him. He will become an embittered outcast."

  Odo nodded and shared the explanation. "From what we've been able to piece together, he spent the next hundred years eking out a meager living as a human merchant. Then, in a final indignity, he was trapped in Cardassian space by the Klingon invasion."

  Slowly they put things together and into perspective with all the nasty repercussions. They knew about time travel. Minor changes could have major repercussions one hundred years from now. And if Darvin had come back in time to make a change, chances were it wouldn't be just a small change. Few people would take that risk once the decision had been made. They—he—would make good and sure things changed. There would be no mere flap of a butterfly's wings this time.

  "Trapped in Cardassian space," Sisko repeated thoughtfully, "until he hears of an Orb capable of taking him back in time … and letting him change the past."

  "So what's he planning to do?" asked Bashir. "Contact his younger self and warn him about Kirk?"

  "He could be planning to kill Kirk," Dax offered.

  "Or destroy the Enterprise," Odo suggested, "or even the space station."