“Aye, sir, phasers firing….” Another flash of orange exploded across one side of the alien ship, and the vessel abruptly vanished from the viewscreen.
“They’ve dropped out of warp,” Tenmei confirmed. “We’ve overshot them.”
Kira let out a long breath and leaned back in her seat. “Bring us about and switch to impulse,” she said. “Shar, what’s their condition?”
“Dead in space,” Shar said, translating the numerical data scrolling up his console display. “They’re on emergency power. Their weapons systems appear to be offline.”
“Life signs?”
“Twelve. Five of them are concentrated in the bridge, the others are in or around engineering. There seems to be—” Shar stopped, his antennae angling forward. He began tapping his console.
“Ensign?”
“I’m sorry, sir. For a moment I thought there was a slight power spike underneath the ship. It’s gone now.”
“Sam?”
Bowers shook his head. “I can’t confirm it. They’ve got plasma venting from at least eight different sources all over the ship. The spike could easily have been a ruptured EPS conduit.”
“Keep the shields up,” she told him, “and Lieutenant, if they so much as twitch…be sure to remind them why they shouldn’t.”
“Understood, sir.”
Kira stood up and faced the main viewer, on which the disabled freighter could now be seen again, becoming larger as the Defiantapproached. “Open a channel.”
“Channel open.”
“This is Captain Kira Nerys of the U.S.S. Defiant,representing the United Federation of Planets. You’re ordered to surrender and prepare to be boarded.”
She was answered with a burst of static, but there seemed to be a voice behind it. “Can you clean that up?” she asked Bowers.
“No,” he answered after a moment. “I’m showing that their comm system is mostly slag.”
“I thought we didn’t hit them that hard.”
“Dominion shield generator or no, it’s still a nonmilitary courier, Captain. Overloading the shields and then knocking out the warp drive could have easily had an effect on some of their other systems.”
“Are they receiving us?”
“They seem to be.”
“All right, send this: By order of the Federation, all occupants of your ship are to be detained for questioning in the matter of more than two hundred and seventy deaths on the planet Bajor. You’re to offer no resistance. We have your vessel targeted. Stand by.” Kira made a cutting motion across her throat with her thumb, and Bowers closed the channel.
“We’ll do this in two teams,” she told him. “Have Gordimer take three security people to secure the bridge. DeJesus and Nog will go with me to secure engineering and assess the warp engines. I’ll take Doctor Tarses, too, in case there are injuries. Have them all meet me in the transporter bay in two minutes. You have the bridge, Lieutenant.” Kira started for the exit.
“Sir,” Bowers said. “Request permission to lead the team to engineering.”
Kira stopped and looked at him. “You know I can’t grant that request, Sam. Not this time.” She nodded toward the command chair. “You keep her warm until I get back.”
Bowers frowned, clearly unhappy with her decision. “May I respectfully remind the captain that Starfleet regulations call for the ship’s commanding officer to remain on board, not to lead away missions.”
Kira smiled at him. She knew what he was trying to do, and appreciated it, so she kept her tone light as she strode out of the bridge. “Sorry, Mr. Bowers, I guess I haven’t gotten to that part in the manual yet.”
As the Besinian ship materialized around her, Kira swept her drawn phaser around the dim corridor into which Transporter Chief Chao had deposited Team One. Kira trusted her people to cover her back, but as team leader, she was their first line of defense against anything in front, and she was determined that none of the killers on this ship would take any more lives.
Fortunately, sensor reads of their beam-in point had proven true: the corridor outside the engine room was quiet. It wasn’t until Kira looked at the deck that she saw why.
At her feet lay a dead man.
He was an Arkenite: the distinctive swept-back skull, domed forehead, and large, elegantly shaped ears were unmistakable.
Tarses bent to one knee, held his tricorder over the corpse for a few seconds, and delivered his verdict. “Shot by a phaser during the last thirty minutes,” he told Kira, pointing out the dark bloodless burn on the back of the head, which was visible even in the ship’s dim purple emergency lighting: the telltale sign of an energy weapon fired at point-blank range.
“Sir, another one,” DeJesus said, crouching next to a prone Ktarian male. Both bodies, Kira noted, wore drab paramilitary clothing. Tarses moved to scan the second corpse, and reported the same findings.
What the hell—?Kira thought. She’d seen enough brutality in her life to recognize executions when she saw them. But if Tarses was right, both of these men had been killed while the Defiantwas chasing down this ship. Which meant…what?
She tapped her combadge. “Kira to Defiant.”
“Bowers here, Captain. Is everything all right?”
“We’re in, Lieutenant. But we’ve come across a couple of bodies, very recently killed by weapons fire. Tell Team Two they can beam to their target site, but to proceed with caution.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Kira out.” She gestured with her phaser toward an elliptical door at one end of the corridor. “According to Chao, that should be engineering. Stay alert. I don’t want any mistakes.”
The door, not unexpectedly, refused to open. Nog unsealed an access panel and went to work on the locking mechanism, DeJesus covering him while he applied the skills developed during his misspent youth together with what he’d learned under the tutelage of of Chief O’Brien over the last few years. Kira and Tarses watched and waited on the other side of the doorframe, backs against the corridor wall, phasers at the ready.
After a few moments, Nog looked up at Kira and nodded once. Kira nodded back, and her chief engineer touched a final contact on the exposed circuitry before hitting the deck. The thick engine-room door slid open, but there was only silence beyond. No voices, no weapons fire. DeJesus quickly peered inside and then withdrew her head. Finding nothing, she swung her entire body around and entered the room, her phaser pointing the way.
After several seconds, Kira heard DeJesus call out “Clear!” and the rest of Team One crossed the threshold, spreading out as they did so. Kira saw at once why they had encountered no resistance. Four more dead bodies littered the deck: two Tellarite females, a male human, and a male Romulan, all fallen where they’d been shot, as Tarses quickly confirmed, by phaser fire. The last two had been shot in the back; the others bore chest wounds, and still held hand weapons of their own, as if they were preparing to fight back against whoever had felled their shipmates. Like those out in the corridor, they were dressed in paramilitary garb of no discernible affiliation: mercenaries. Judging from the absence of phaser burns anywhere else in the room, Kira concluded they’d never had a chance to return fire. Whoever did this had gotten the drop on all of them.
The warp core stood silent and dark.
“Any life signs?” Kira asked Tarses.
“Just us,” the doctor answered, his small eyes and straight, slightly upswept eyebrows enhancing the scowl he wore as he reported his findings. “Wait. I’m picking up something in that direction,” he amended, pointing to starboard. “It’s Bajoran.”
“Maybe it’s the one who killed the crew?” Nog said. “A survivor taken from the village, getting their revenge?”
Kira was reluctant to draw any conclusions yet, though she had to admit Nog’s guess seemed not an unlikely possibility.
“Dr. Tarses and I will check it out,” she decided. “Ensign DeJesus, you’ll stay to assist Lieutenant Nog while he assesses the ship’s engines. Contact me if there’s anything new to report. Which way, Doctor?”