“I’d put it closer to three, but if we shut down all nonessential systems, we might be able to squeeze out a bit more time.”

“Do it,” he ordered. He returned to the captain’s chair. “Mr. Bowers?”

“Yes, sir,” Sam responded.

“Send out a broadband distress call—”

“Sir,” Cassini said, working from a sensor display. “There’s a ship approaching, four-hundred thousand kilometers and closing.”

“On screen.”

The viewer sputtered reluctantly to life, and Dax’s first thought upon seeing the starship was that it looked like a fat metal wheel preparing to roll over them. An oddly configured drive unit formed two flat slabs mounted on the aft curve of the wheel, one atop the other. The part of Ezri that was Torias and Tobin, a pilot and engineer respectively, began to appraise the ship’s design for visible signs of its strengths, weaknesses, and functions. How fast can it fly? Are those weapons ports? Friend or foe?

“They’re deliberately skirting our trajectory, sir,” Bowers reported. “My guess is that they’re trying to avoid triggering the sensor web that got us. That may mean they’re the ones behind it.”

“They could have seen what happened to us and are just looking to avoid the same fate,” Cassini pointed out.

“Except that they’re closing on us. Down to one hundred fifty thousand kilometers and slowing.”

“Hail them,” Vaughn ordered.

Sam tapped in commands, waited, and tapped in more commands. He slammed his fist into the console. “Our transmitters are off-line, Captain,” he said.

“We’re being scanned, sir,” Ezri announced, watching the Defiant’s internal sensors register the probe.

“What’s our tactical situation, Sam?”

“Phasers and torpedo launchers off-line. Cloaking device and deflector shields nonfunctional. I’d have to say we’re sitting ducks, sir.”

Vaughn scowled and tapped his combadge. “Bridge to engineering. This would be a good time to tell me our propulsion systems are back on-line, Nog.”

“Eighty-five percent of our EPS system is shot, sir, and power levels are plunging. We’re doing what we can, but the truth is, we’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

“Unknown ship now ten thousand kilometers and closing,” Bowers said. “They’re hailing us. Receiving a message, but I can’t make heads or tails of it. If we have the algorithms necessary for decoding, the universal translator can’t find them.”

“Audio,” Vaughn ordered.

The guttural gibberish blaring over the comm system sounded like no language Ezri had heard in any of her lifetimes. Intermittent static contaminating the stream didn’t help matters.

“Unknown ship is coming to relative stop above us, z-plus three hundred meters away, matching our momentum. Distance is now constant.” Bowers suddenly cursed and announced in a rising voice, “Transporter signal detected inside main engineering!”

Phaser in hand, Vaughn was headed for the door before the word “engineering” had escaped Bowers’ lips. “Dax, you have the bridge. Sam, you’re with me.”

Cold and dark as a tomb,thought Nog, wishing he could trade his hypersensitive hearing for better night vision. Between the plasma coolant leaks and the EPS system, Nog had enough work to keep his entire staff—hell, the whole crew—busy for a week.

“I need more light here,” Nog said, up to his elbows inside an access panel alongside the main engineering console. If he could get the primary EPS junction functional, the Defiantmight stand a chance. Flat on his back, he gazed up at the singed circuitry, searching for reasons to be optimistic. A sharp, barky cough caused his hands to shake; the hyperspanner clattered to the floor. “Dammit!”

Lying beside him, Ensign Permenter flashed her own light in his direction. “You doing okay, boss? That last burst of plasma got you in the face,” she said, concerned.

He coughed. “Without power, coolant is the least of our problems. Pass me that laser drill.”

She slapped the tool into Nog’s hand, retrieved the hyperspanner from where he dropped it and replaced it in the toolkit. “Heard from Nurse Juarez. Mikaela’s gonna be fine.”

“One piece of good news,” Nog sighed deeply. “See if Senkowski and his team have managed to shore up the auxiliary power.”

“Yes, sir,” Permenter said, scrambling to her feet.

In the midst of the hum of tools and engineers speaking in hushed whispers, a shimmering light appeared, emitting a metallic buzz.

“Transporters!” Permenter shouted, slapping her combadge. “Intruder alert! Security to engineering—!”

Two tall alien figures in luminescent environmental suits materialized, carrying a coffin-size box between them. Nog peered in the half-light, trying to see behind the dark-tinted face shields.

One of the aliens panned the room with what to Nog’s eyes looked like a scanning device, then pointed at the primary EPS junction where Nog had been working. They lifted the box between them and started forward.

“No you don’t,” Permenter said through gritted teeth. She held her phaser threateningly before her and stepped in front of the aliens, blocking them from approaching the junction. “Drop that thing and back up. Now.”

The aliens stopped and looked at each other. One of them jabbered something incomprehensible to Permenter. He unhooked something from a utility belt and pressed a button, causing the device to glow green.

“Turn that off!” Permenter shouted.

Dammit!Nog stepped forward, drawing his own weapon. “Stay back,” he warned. “Take another step and I’ll fire.” The alien continued to speak in its unknown language as it eased closer to Nog. I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this,he chanted in his mind.

The alien kept coming.

He fired his phaser. The intruder approaching him jerked and collapsed to the ground.

The shot distracted Permenter, giving the intruder she was covering the opportunity to lunge forward and spin her around. The alien hooked an arm around the engineer’s neck, pulling her head back against his shoulder, using his free hand to wrestle the phaser out of Permenter’s hand. Suddenly the phaser was pressed against her temple. Nodding his head toward Nog’s phaser, the alien made a guttural noise. The message was clear. Drop the weapon.

Unwilling to risk Bryanne’s life, Nog complied, then kicked his phaser off to the side.

The main doors suddenly opened and every face turned.

“Stand down!” Vaughn barked.

Bowers pivoted into the room after Vaughn, holding his phaser out in front of him. Three security officers and Dr. Bashir came racing in after Bowers. Perhaps overwhelmed by the superior numbers, the intruder threatening Permenter dropped the phaser, released her, and dove for cover behind the warp core.

Dropping to his knees beside the wounded alien near Nog, Julian Bashir opened his tricorder and performed a scan. “Our environmental conditions are suited to his physiology,” he reported, easing off the alien’s helmet. “Their biology is…” Bashir frowned and trailed off, looking as if he’d just seen something on the tricorder that puzzled him. The doctor abruptly removed a hypospray from the medkit, applying it to the alien’s neck.

“Will he be all right?” Nog asked, crouching beside Bashir.

“Should be. I’ll know in a minute,” Bashir replied.

Okay, so who or what did I just shoot?Nog wondered. From what little he could discern in the half-light, their alien guest had leathery, hairless brown skin, a mouth as wide as his eyes were apart, and filmy membranes over his eyes. He looked amphibious, down to the ridges of cartilage where humanoid ears would be. Weird.Earless humanoids always looked odd to Nog.

“The stun hit him pretty hard,” Julian announced to his shipmates, all of whom watched him intently. “It was close range, but fortunately his environmental suit diffused most of the blast.”