CHAPTER 21

“NOW, where were we?” Weyoun said.

Sisko opened his eyes. He focused blearily on the stained metal plates that formed the roof of the ore hauler's cargo hold.

“Ah, yes,” Weyoun said. “Back to the beginning. Where everything ends. Poetic, don't you think?”

Sisko sat up, queasy. A wave of post-phaser nausea rumbled through him, though he couldn't remember when he had last eaten.

“Captain, how are you feeling?” Bashir asked.

Sisko looked away from Weyoun and saw Kira and Bashir, still tied up, sitting with their backs to the far bulkhead.

“I'll survive,” Sisko said.

“Now, now,” Weyoun cautioned him. “Let's not have that conversation again.”

Sisko took a deep breath and slowly registered the fact that his own arms and legs weren't tied. He wondered why Weyoun would trust him not to make another escape attempt.

Then he heard a slight scraping sound behind him, looked over his shoulder, and answered his own question.

Obanak and Lorem were there, phasers in hand.

“I am the Sisko,” Sisko told them. It was worth a try.

But Obanak looked unimpressed. “A Sisko, perhaps. Not the Sisko.”

“That would be me,” Weyoun explained for Sisko's benefit.

Then all the loose baffle plates in the ore hauler began to rattle at once.

“So,” Weyoun said with great satisfaction, “it really has begun. That will be the transports leaving. We're in the final hours of the Day of Withdrawal.”

Sisko made an attempt to construct a list of what few options remained to him but came up with none. Rushing Weyoun, or Obanak and Lorem, was out of the question. Before he even got to his feet, he'd be blasted by Pah-wraith energy or by phaser fire. And even if the blasts were meant only to stun, Sisko estimated that in the hour or two remaining before all time would end, he might never wake up.

“Are you satisfied yet, Benjamin?” Weyoun asked solicitously.

“How can I be? You're not dead.”

“Droll, Benjamin. Droll. I was referring to your escape options. Are you satisfied that you have none?”

“Oh, I have at least one.”

Sisko enjoyed seeing the brief flash of apprehension on Weyoun's face. “And that would be . . . ?” the Vorta asked.

“All I have to do is to convince one of you three to turn against the other two.”

Weyoun chuckled in relief. “You are a rare and singular being. The twenty-five years in which you were missing from the universe were dull indeed.”

Sisko looked back at Obanak. “How well do you know your texts, Prylar?”

Obanak shook his head. “This discussion isn't necessary.”

“But it is. I want to know what your texts say will happen in the next thirty-one years. I'm from that time. I experienced the Reckoning. I can tell you about—”

“Benjamin!” Weyoun said sharply. “You can be conscious for the end of the universe, or you can be dead. The decision is yours. And the way you're talking now is one way to make it.”

Sisko was encouraged that Weyoun didn't want him describing the future to Obanak and Lorem, who still had to live through the next thirty-one years. If he could say the right thing, maybe these two could make changes in that time.

“You won't kill me,” Sisko challenged Weyoun. “You need an audience. And when the three Red Orbs of Jalbador were opened in Quark's bar six—”

A bolt of red energy crackled against the deck plate beside Sisko.

Weyoun glared at Sisko.

“It's all right, Captain,” Obanak said unexpectedly. The prylar's thick-soled boots rang on the bare metal deck of the ore hauler as he walked around Sisko so they could see each other clearly. “If you think about it, there is nothing you can say to convince either Lorem or me to act against the Emissary. After all, in five days, we will capture your friends—” He glanced over at Kira and Bashir. “—and deliver them to Weyoun. If you had changed anything with what you say here, then they wouldn't be captives.”

Sisko fought the growing surge of desperation swelling inside him. “Not in this timeline. But in another! Another time!”

Weyoun sighed. “Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin . . . haven't you realized it yet? There are no other times. No alternate realities. No mirror universes. Everything is interconnected and intertwined—like tributaries branching off from the main river. Some fall over escarpments, some dry up in thirsty ground, others rejoin the river again. But in the end, all that water, all those different ebbs and currents of cause and effect, they all spring from the same source and empty into the same sea.

“What we're about to experience isn't the end of just a single timeline in which the True Prophets have just happened to win. It is the end of everything. Oh, I grant you, other timelines might have arrived at the same moment with different timing, some sooner, some later. But just as all the pockets of space-time in the restored Temple will finally converge on the same exact eternal moment, rest assured, Benjamin, that every universe that ever was or ever might be will reach that moment at the same time, too.”

Obanak respectfully moved to one side as Weyoun came forward until he stood over Sisko. The Vorta's gaze was full of pity. “You really must accept it, Benjamin. You simply must accept there is nothing you can do, nothing you will do, and nothing you might have done to change the inescapable fact that this is the end of everything.”

Sisko kept his eyes locked on Weyoun's. “I don't believe you.”

Weyoun clapped his hands together in frustration. “Honestly. The one negative aspect of the end of everything is I won't be able to see the expression on your face when you realize I was right.”

Sisko made up his mind then. Attack Obanak. Even if Weyoun struck him with a lethal blast of energy. Perhaps the blast would also be lethal to the prylar, and that would certainly prevent his capturing Kira and Bashir five days from now. That, along with the fact that the Red Orb would go missing from Quark's, still might be enough to change everything.

“May I stand up?” Sisko asked, then started to get to his feet anyway.

“No, you may not,” Weyoun said crossly.

With a gesture from the Vorta, Sisko felt his legs go numb and he fell backward, to the deck.

“Accept it, Benjamin,” Weyoun said with finality. “Who knows? You might even find it enjoyable.”

Sisko vigorously rubbed his legs to bring back feeling. He wouldn't give up. There had to be something . . . something he could do, or might do, or had done . . .

And then he looked up as a transporter harmonic chimed in the close air of the cargo hold and a handheld communicator resolved from quantum scintillations in the middle of the deck.

Obanak and Lorem stepped forward and aimed their phasers at the device.

“It's Klingon,” Weyoun said, perplexed.

Then the communicator buzzed to life. And with that sound and the voice that followed it, new life—and hope—took hold in Sisko.

“O'Brien to Sisko. Can you hear me, sir? I can't beam you off the station, but we have figured out a way to shut down the wormhole in Quark's before it can open. All I need from you are your personal computer override codes. Are you there, sir?”

Weyoun gave a soft laugh, leaned down to pick up the communicator, then turned it around in his hand until he found the transmit control.

“Miles O'Brien,” Weyoun said sweetly, “however did you survive the destruction of Bajor, you clever, clever man?”

“Is that Weyoun?” O'Brien asked in shock.

“I prefer that you think of me as the last voice you'll hear,” Weyoun said with a chuckle. “As for Benjamin, he won't be giving you any codes, because he never gave them to you in the first place. Don't any of you understand that—”

And then Weyoun looked up in indignant outrage as he began to dissolve into a stream of sparkling light.

Sisko was on his feet in seconds. He wanted to cheer even as Obanak and Lorem rushed forward but were unable to do anything but watch their leader disappear.

Except he didn't disappear.

For just as the transporter effect reached the final moment when all within it should have vanished, the glittering light began to intensify again.

Sisko didn't wait to see more. He jumped Obanak and fought for the phaser. If he could fire one blast through Weyoun's still forming body, it would be enough to disrupt his rematerialization.

But Obanak would not relinquish his grip and even as Sisko wrenched the powerful prylar's arm around to try to force him to fire the shot that would kill Weyoun, Sisko abandoned the struggle.

The figure in the beam was not Weyoun.

It was O'Brien.

“Chief!” Sisko shouted in joy. Then he remembered the Bajorans. “Look out!”

But the two prylars with phasers did more than alarm O'Brien. They rushed to Kira and Bashir. And untied them.

“What's going on here?” O'Brien asked Sisko as the prylars helped Kira and Bashir to their feet.

“I'm . . . not sure, Chief.”

Obanak approached Sisko. “The events that are occurring,” the prylar said, “are exactly those which are supposed to occur.”

“I don't understand,” Sisko said, now completely baffled, convinced that more than physical timeshifts were responsible for the utter confusion in this nightmare existence he was in.

“Your understanding isn't necessary, Captain.” Obanak beckoned to Lorem. “You merely have to play out your role and do exactly what the false Emissary wanted us all to do—make no changes.” Then the prylar left Sisko to go with Lorem to the hatch that led up to the hauler's flight cabin.

“The false Emissary?” Sisko called after Obanak. “Then you knew he wasn't the Sisko?”

The prylar paused before ascending the hatch's short ladder. “Of course,” he said. “But in case you're wondering, neither are you.”

As Lorem started up the ladder ahead of him, Obanak delivered a last message to Sisko. “Your friends will be with you soon. Leave this time; make no changes.” Then he followed Lorem.

But Sisko didn't want them to go. He still had so many questions for them. “We will meet again,” he called up after them.

He could see the prylar pause in the opening to the flight cabin. Obanak was in shadow, and Sisko couldn't be sure, but it almost seemed as if the grim prylar was smiling as he said, “Another time, Captain.” Then he and Lorem were gone.

“What was that all about?” O'Brien asked as Sisko turned away from the hatch and walked toward him.

“I don't know,” Sisko said. He gave in to impulse and gathered the engineer into a bear hug. “Where's Weyoun?”

Clearly discomfited by Sisko's show of emotion, O'Brien mumbled, “Um, Dax did a sensor scan that told us he was here. So I made up all that nonsense about stopping the wormhole from opening so he'd pick up the communicator. And as soon as he did, I did a transport swap, used the same beam pathway. He'll be on the Boreth now, all by himself, and . . . the transporter coils . . . they should be shorting out right about now.”

Sisko beamed. “Chief, you're a genius!”

“Thank Dax. She talked me through it.”

“Where is she?”

“She's up in Dukat's hideaway, right under the Prefect's office, still shifting through time. You know how the transporters were always so touchy when we first got here?”

“Yes?” Sisko said encouragingly. He was so pleased to see O'Brien, he just wanted to hear him talk, even if the chief's timing for reminiscing was not entirely appropriate.

“I think it was because of all the modifications Dax is making to them now. I didn't understand it back then, but it's starting to make sense.”

“What kind of modifications?” Sisko asked sharply, his attention now firmly on O'Brien, whose ramblings had suddenly become much more relevant.

“Well, software changes, mostly. And if it works the way Dax says it will, she'll be able to adapt to the wormhole distortions and beam us six years into the future, to just before the station got destroyed. Then we can all evacuate, and as long as we don't interact until after the station's swallowed by the wormhole, we'll be stable in this timeline and be able to change the future.”

“We can all evacuate! Even Jake?” Sisko's heart soared with the unexpected change of fortune.

But his all-too-brief exhilaration was quickly crushed as O'Brien painfully added, “I lost contact with the Defiant, sir. Jake, Worf, Arla, the two agritechnicians from Deneva. They were still onboard.”

O'Brien continued his explanation, but Sisko had already begun walling off his heart again. He barely heard the Chief's next words.

“Captain—Dax is still scanning for them. I . . . would have kept trying from the Boreth, too. But Dax ordered me to get rid of Weyoun and not risk being on the same ship with him.”

Sisko nodded like an automaton. “You did the right thing, Chief. Dax knows what she's doing. And we did need Weyoun off the station.” He turned to Kira. “It's what you wanted, Major. What we both wanted. Now nothing will change but the future.”

But Kira's haunted expression stopped Sisko and he remembered then the one detail he had forgotten in the excitement of seeing O'Brien and the torment of losing his boy once again.

“Six years from now,” Sisko said, “the red wormhole won't open.”

“Why not?” O'Brien asked, looking from Sisko to Kira.

“The Red Orb in Quark's bar,” Kira said quietly. “Two weeks from now, we went looking for it. But it was gone.”

O'Brien couldn't accept that. “Well . . . we have to find it. Unless everything goes as it originally went, we'll get snapped back to the wormhole when all the different timeframes converge.”

“Where's the Orb now?” Bashir asked. “In this timeframe, I mean?”

Sisko had the answer, but it wasn't reassuring. “This is just about the time Terrell told me she sent her men looking for a Ferengi—to enter her lab and retrieve the Red Orb.”

“Quark,” Bashir exclaimed, his eyes alight with realization. “He doesn't remember anything that happened on the Day of Withdrawal. And neither do Odo or Garak.”

Sisko was getting used to thinking in terms of effect and then cause. “Then let's hope it's because the three of them were helping us,” he said.

O'Brien checked his tricorder. “Well, if they are going to help us, they've only got fifty more minutes to do it,” he said.

Sisko looked over at the ladder that led out of the ore hauler. “Then let's give the Cardassians a hand leaving our station,” he said.

The last day of the Occupation had begun.

Quark was awash in déjà vu.

A mad Cardassian was dragging him through the crazily tilted, deserted Promenade. By his throat. Which was almost crushed. He could hardly breathe. And worst of all, there was absolutely nothing he could do except wait for the final darkness to descend. So he would once again bribe his way to the doors of the Celestial Treasury and—

The sudden memory of the Pah-wraith hell in which he had seen the face of the Divine Nagus inspired Quark to struggle anew. He couldn't die. Not if it meant he'd spend eternity charting profit-and-loss statements for Rom.

“Settle down!” Dukat snarled at Quark, digging his long, black-nailed fingers even deeper into Quark's bruised throat.

“Ehcanbreef,” Quark gasped.

Dukat's exclamation of disgust was still ringing in Quark's ears as his cruel captor threw him to the steps in front of his own establishment.

“My bar. It's still here.” Quark nearly sobbed in relief.

“For seven more hours.” Dukat sneered. He kicked Quark as if to keep his attention focused. “Now, show me where the Orb is hidden.”

Wincing, Quark stood up, looked up and down the Promenade, but saw no one. It was the middle of the station's night, and all the excitement with Dal Nortron and the Andorian sisters had inspired his idiot brother to close early. Just when people needed a chance to relax most, Quark thought, still indignant at the lost opportunity for profit.

“Now!” Dukat commanded.

Quark pushed slightly against the closed doors of his bar. “Oops. Locked. We should come back—”

A bolt of red energy traced the frame of the doors, and they slid open noisily.

“—or go in right now,” Quark said.

He stepped inside, looked around his beloved bar, so peaceful, so quiet, almost everything in it paid for. “Can I offer you a drink?” Quark asked cheerfully, desperate for any type of delay that might help him think what to do next.

But he was suddenly looking into eyes like dying suns and breathing the air of a charnel house.

“O-on the house,” he added weakly.

Dukat's slap hurled Quark five meters across the main room, until he collapsed in a heap beside the covered dabo table.

Quark sat up more slowly this time, heart racing, limbs trembling, unsure how much longer he could keep up this foolhardy attempt to laugh in the face of danger, and absolutely furious at Rom for squandering latinum on a new cover for the dabo table when the old one was perfectly serviceable as it had been for the past eleven years. But for the matter at hand, Quark was sorry for everything bad he had ever said about time travel. More than anything, he longed for a blue light or a red light or any color light the Prophets might choose to scoop him up and put him down in any time other than now.

“Are you that eager to die?” Dukat shrilled at him angrily.

“Of course not,” Quark snapped back, surprised anew by his own impressively inexhaustible temper. “But . . . but I don't know what you want from me!”

Dukat advanced on Quark, forcing the Ferengi to back up until he hit the dabo table and could go no farther.

“In approximately six and half hours,” Dukat thundered, “history records that your Captain Sisko discovered the third Red Orb of Jalbador in a hiding place in your bar. When that Orb was found, it was brought into alignment with the other two, and the doorway to the Second Temple was opened.”

“I'm with you so far,” Quark whispered nervously, holding his hands over his ears.

“That cannot happen,” Dukat hissed, spraying spittle. “That will not happen. Do I make myself clear?”

Quark turned his face away, closed his eyes, and nodded.

“Because the denizens of the Second Temple don't deserve to be free,” Dukat intoned. “When the time came to battle the False Prophets in their Temple, when the Pah-wraiths rose in vengeance, where were those of the Second Temple?”

Eyes still tightly shut, Quark shook his head, not wanting to do anything but agree with the madman, wishing he knew how.

“They hid,” Dukat spat at Quark, who distinctly felt drops strike him but was too frightened to wipe them away. “Cowered in their Temple as Kosst Amojan fought the good fight and lost. Lost for the many because of the cowardice of the few.” Dukat put a hand on Quark's shaking shoulder. “So there's really only one thing left for us to do, isn't there?” he asked.

“What-whatever you say,” Quark agreed tremulously.

“We find the third Orb. We destroy the third Orb. And the Second Temple will never open.” Dukat leaned in close to Quark, his frightful breath hot in Quark's ear. “Can I have an Amojan from you?”

“Amana-Amana- . . . what you said.”

Quark moaned as Dukat's hand began crushing his shoulder. “Then tell me where you hid the third Orb, Quark. Because I've already looked in this timeframe, and it's not where Captain Sisko will find it.”

And that, Quark told himself, is that.

There was nothing more to say. No other options to explore.

A mad Cardassian from the future, possessed by who knew what kind of evil alien being, was set on killing him, and there was nothing more Quark could do to save himself or the universe.

There was only one last thing to do, and that was to go out like a Ferengi.

Quark opened his eyes and faced his adversary.

“Dukat,” Quark said, beginning to recite the traditional last words of a Ferengi facing certain death. “This is my final offer . . .”

Dukat stared at him as if he had no idea what Quark meant.

And then, with pure Ferengi aplomb, Quark brought up his hand, extended two fingers, and poked Dukat in his red glowing eyes as hard and as fast as he could.

Dukat's otherworldly screech of shock and rage stung Quark's ears as the Ferengi ducked down and dove away from the dabo table, not sure of where he was going but determined to run away till the end.

Ahead of him, a hellish red glow crept up the walls and was reflected in all the glasses and bottles on the shelves behind the bar. Feeling most ill used, Quark braced himself for a final bolt of energy, and then—

—as quickly as if a curtain had been drawn, the red glare faded, disappeared.

Quark had bolted to the entrance but sighed, unable to help himself, and looked back.

“Huh?” Quark said.

The brand-new dabo table cover now fully covered the fallen form of Dukat's body.

And then the cover rose up by itself.

Quark drew back in horror.

But the cover re-formed into Odo.

The changeling ran at Quark. “Hurry! We don't have much time!”

“Tell me something I don't already know!” Quark wailed, horridly confused and upset.

But as usual, Odo didn't show any concern for how Quark felt, and Quark groaned as the changeling grabbed his arm to drag him back along the Promenade. Uphill against the slope of the malfunctioning gravity generators. In the opposite direction from the way he had just come.

As far as Quark was concerned, it was déjà vu all over again.

Jake had one last hope.

He looked up at the ceiling of the transporter room and called out, “Computer! This is an emergency!”

“Please state the nature of the emergency,” the calm computer voice replied.

“The commander of the Defiant has been attacked by an intruder.”

“No intruder alert has been authorized.”

Jake struggled to think of some way to get through to the system that had the ability to control almost every piece of equipment on the ship.

“Can't you hear the screaming on the bridge?” He could. The vibrations from the tiny speaker in his combadge were awful.

“No request for specialized security functions has been received from an authorized member of the ship's crew,” the computer replied.

Jake looked at the technician by the transporter pad on which Worf lay in his stretcher. The technician looked even more frightened than Jake felt.

Jake pounded his fist on the side of the transporter console, as if that might make it easier to get the computer's attention. “There are no more authorized members of the ship's crew! Worf's dying! Arla's infected by nanites. And everyone else is a civilian!”

“Civilians are not permitted in the transporter room without authorized personnel. Please leave at once.”

The screams from Jake's combadge stopped. “If we go out there,” Jake said, “Arla will kill us!”

“No request for specialized security functions has been received from an authorized member of the ship's crew.”

“Because they're all dead!” Jake shouted. “Now, help us!”

“Please state your command authorization codes.”

Jake uttered a strangled cry of rage.

“Your response was not understood. Please state your command authorization codes.”

“Jake?” It was Arla on the combadge now. “Are you still there?”

“Computer, please . . .” Jake pleaded. “Use your scanners or your sensors or whatever you have to examine Commander Arla for yourself. She's infected by nanites! She tried to kill Worf!”

“Bioscan facilities are not available on the bridge of this vessel.”

Suddenly, a curtain of sparkling blue energy sprang up around the transporter pad, cutting Worf's body off from the technician.

Jake stared at the shimmering blue barrier. “Computer—what did you just do?”

“A class-four security screen has been erected around the transporter pad.”

“Why?”

“Authorization codes were received from Commander Arla Rees, now in command of this vessel.”

Jake didn't want to give up. He couldn't just sit down and wait for Arla to kill him. But what was the point of trying anymore when not even the ship would back him up?

In desperation, he looked down at the transporter console. At least the emergency transporter beacon was still operating. If O'Brien was out there, maybe he could—

“Jake! Look!” the technician cried out.

Past the security screen, Worf's prone body was dissolving into light.

Jake looked back to the console. None of the Defiant's transporter systems was in use.

“It's the Boreth!” Jake said. “O'Brien saw the beacon!”

“What do we do now?” the terrified technician asked.

Jake thought wildly, knew they couldn't get through the security screen to the pad where O'Brien could find them. He caught his breath. There was another option. “Transporter room 2!” he said. “Deck 3, forward!”

The technician started for the door, but Jake ran to him, stopped him, pulled off both their combadges. “This is how the computer tracks us!” He sprinted back to the aft bulkhead, pulled open the Jefferies tube access hatch, then leaned in and threw the combadges as far down the tube as he could.

“Now,” he said. He raced back to the doors. They opened. Jake looked directly to the left and saw the aft ladderway that linked all decks. He waved the technician down first, checked for any sign of Arla in the corridors, found none, then followed.

They reached Deck 3 in seconds. Transporter Room 2 was only a few dozen meters ahead. Breathing hard, Jake slowed as they ran past the escape-pod hatches.

“Go ahead!” he urged the technician. He had just thought of the perfect diversion to distract Arla. Just in case she saw the second emergency transporter beacon switch on and decided to try to stop it from the bridge.

Working as fast as he could, Jake armed three escape pods with two-minute countdowns, then raced off to catch up with the technician.

Jake saw him waiting outside the transporter room, clearly afraid to even try to open the doors.

Jake ran up to them. They opened. He rushed in first.

“Get on the pad,” he ordered the technician, then called up the same basic command menus as he had before.

Jake held his finger over the control that would activate the second beacon. He sent his thoughts to Chief O'Brien on the Boreth. Keep scanning for the beacon . . . keep scanning . . .

Then the deck thudded with the launch of the first pod. Then the second and third. Jake hit the control. The beacon began transmitting.

“Get up here!” the technician called out in a panic.

But Jake shook his head. “Worf said the Chief could only handle one at a time. I'll jump up as soon as—” Jake whooped with victory. The technician was already dematerializing. The Chief had come through again!

Jake ran for the pad as soon as it was empty.

And fell back as the security forcefield hit him.

“Very clever, Jake,” Arla said from the overhead speakers. “I can see that you know this ship better than I do. Unfortunately, I have the command codes, and you don't.”

Without stopping to argue, Jake was out of the transporter room before Arla could think to seal it off as well.

He ran aft again, remembering the time-honored truism every Starfleet officer he had known had insisted on quoting: Whoever controls engineering controls the ship. Chief O'Brien called it Scott's First Law.

By the time Jake reached the antimatter storage facility and ran between the frost-covered, supercooled magnetic field generators, Arla's voice was coming over every speaker in the ship. But that only improved Jake's spirits. It told him Arla had no idea where he was. With any luck, she might even believe he had already beamed off with the technician.

But luck was not completely with him.

“I know you're still onboard, Jake,” Arla's voice echoed around him. “Worf got away. But I raised full shields in mid-transport—only half of the technician got through to Chief O'Brien. I ran a DNA analysis on the other half. It wasn't you.”

Jake found another ladder, took it up a deck and crossed into the Jefferies tube that connected with engineering.

“You can't stop what's going to happen, Jake. So why be alone?”

Jake squeezed through the last hatchway, then shut the cover behind him and ran to the master console.

“I was alone,” Arla said. “But then I found out I didn't have to be.”

Small droplets of sweat fell from Jake's forehead to spatter on the glossy control surface. At least these controls were familiar to him. Thanks to O'Brien and Nog, he knew at least half a dozen different tricks to disable a starship—until now, strictly research for his novels. The Chief had cautioned him that any good engineer could work around the tricks in a minute or two. But Jake was confident that Arla wasn't any kind of engineer, good or bad.

“Ah,” Arla's voice said. “I see excess computer activity in engineering. Is that where you are, Jake?”

Jake hit the controls that activated trick number one and vented a small amount of radion isotope gas into the air feed for engineering. The gas was slightly radioactive, used for calibrating the engineering tricorders that tested for leaks. The gas was also harmless, but in the words of Chief O'Brien, the safety systems onboard a Starfleet vessel jumped to warp first and asked questions later.

“Warning!”

A siren began wailing, and red flashing lights appeared on the room's cavernous ceiling.

“Radiation leak detected in engineering. All personnel must evacuate.”

Within seconds, all possible entry points into engineering had been sealed, and Jake knew they would remain that way until the ship's Chief Medical Officer instructed the computer that there was no more danger of contamination. Now Arla couldn't come in after him.

“Jake?” Arla said over the sirens. “What have you done? What sense is there putting yourself in danger so close to the end?”

Jake initiated trick number two: He forced a primary bus overload.

A heavy shipwide thud announced the initial cutoff of direct power to every part of the ship except engineering. Jake knew that batteries would instantly provide backup power and could do so for days. But he also knew that a side effect of the process was that the bus overload had to be reset manually. And until it was, Arla would not be able to switch engineering control to the bridge.

Unless she knew exactly which Jefferies tube to go into, and exactly how to manually reset a bus, Jake had just effectively cut off Arla's control of propulsion, weapons, and life support.

Arla's voice was almost plaintive on the speakers. “Jake? What are you doing? It doesn't matter if you have control of the ship. There's no place to go. Nothing to do with it.”

But listening to her, feeling breathless, exultant, determined, Jake knew Arla was wrong. Everything he had just done had a very specific purpose—to protect him from her. And now, undisturbed, he intended to do everything he could to figure out how he could create an emergency transporter beacon. So Chief O'Brien could find him in engineering instead of a transporter room.

And from this console, Jake had the resources of one of the most powerful starships ever built by Starfleet and access to the ship's complete engineering library.

He knew the answer he needed was in there.

Somewhere.

But he had less than one hour to find it.