Finished with the first step, Yevir reviewed his mental checklist of the probable whereabouts of his closest Vedek Assembly colleagues. Vedeks Eran and Scio would be in services now, ministering to the faithful. Kyli and Bellis would most likely already be in private meditation. That left Vedeks Frelan and Sinchante as the two among his inmost circle whom he was likeliest to reach on the first attempt. Yevir keyed both names into his comm panel, and swiveled to face the screen. He reached out with his other hand to touch the jevonite statue on his desk.

Both women answered on the split screen within moments of one another, and Yevir could see that each appeared to be alone in her respective chambers. Incense burned in braziers beside ornate prayer mandalas in both rooms, in honor of the evening temple services, from which the busiest and highest ranking vedeks were understandably excused. It occurred to Yevir only then that he had gotten so sidetracked by his encounter with Mika that he had completely neglected his own evening prayer rites.

“Something has happened,” he said after exchanging perfunctory pleasantries with his two old friends. “I have been seized by a notion so… radicalthat I can scarcely defend my thinking. And yet, I am experiencing a clarity of mind that tells me this notion can only be the truth.”

As both women simultaneously raised their eyebrows, Yevir began to outline his plan.

6

Ezri was gratified to note that none of the shuttlecraft Sagan’s critical systems had sustained mortal damage during the encounter with the enigmatic alien artifact. But because the little vessel was limited to impulse power during the trip back from the depths of System GQ-12475’s Oort cloud, the return flight to the Defianttook nearly forty minutes. While they were en route, Commander Vaughn supplied a quick briefing about the Defiant’s intervention in the fight between the two local space vessels, as well as a summary of the gravest injuries sustained by the crew of the less well armed—and currently crippled—ship. With the help of several hastily dragooned corpsmen, Nurse Krissten Richter was struggling to keep up with the very worst trauma cases.

Ezri hoped that Krissten wasn’t fighting a losing battle. Although she was better than competent, Julian’s assistant was only a medical technician, after all, not a doctor. Julian’s obvious anxiety was perfectly understandable.

As the Defianthove into view on the screen, so did the battered alien vessel that was keeping station about two hundred meters off her port bow. Ezri forced down any outward show of apprehension as she noted the black rents in the other ship’s pitted hull, obviously the result of an unhappy encounter with a concentrated phaser or disruptor barrage. Most of the internal lights were dark, and only the exterior running lights allowed her to see the lines of the long, irregularly shaped hull.

Relinquishing the piloting chores to Nog, Ezri glanced up at Julian, who stood directly behind her flight chair, his expression anxious as he studied the alien ship. She took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze as Nog put the Saganon its final approach to the docking bay built into the Defiant’s ventral hull.

Julian returned the squeeze, though his expression remained grim. Ezri could tell at once that he was already in “triage mode.”

“Bashir to Defiant.Please beam me directly to the medical bay.”

The clear tenor voice of junior engineer Jason Senkowski responded, “Acknowledged.”

Ezri released Julian’s hand so he could take a step back. Noting that Nog’s attention seemed occupied, she mouthed a silent “I love you” to Julian just before the shimmering transporter beam took him. A moment later, the Saganfloated upward into the narrow shuttlebay in the Defiant’s belly and was maglocked into its parked position as the docking-bay door silently rolled closed beneath it.

Ezri’s stomach suddenly lurched up into her chest. For an absurd moment, she thought that the Dax symbiont was trying to escape from her body.

She became aware of Nog’s concerned stare. “Are you all right, Ezri?”

She opened her mouth to speak, and heard herself release an unflattering and uncharacteristic burp instead. I haven’t yarked on an instrument panel in over eighteen months. Why the hell should I be getting spacesicknow?

She assayed a weak smile as she started shutting down systems and putting her console into “safe” mode. “I’m fine. Lunch must not have agreed with me.”

“I warned you,” Nog said with a grin. “You should have had the tube grubs.” The thought made Ezri feel as green as the skutfish that plied the floors of Trill’s purple oceans.

Nog had obviously noticed. “Maybe I’d better run some diagnostics on the Sagan’s food replicators.”

Ezri’s stomach heaved again. “I’d rather not discuss food at the moment, Nog. Let’s just finish locking down this shuttle. And we have to get that alien document transferred to the bridge.”

Nodding, Nog thumbed a comm panel and called Lieutenant Bowers.

“Bridge. Bowers here.”

“Sam,” Nog said as he began scratching at his leg. “I’ve just started uploading a pretty big file to your station.”

“I see it,”Bowers said. “It’s coming through now. What is it?”

“Text. Alientext, and we’re going to need a translation and a cross-linguistic analysis of the thing.”

Now it was Ezri’s turn to stare at Nog. He hadn’t stopped scratching his leg.

His leftleg, she realized with some surprise. The biosynthetic one.

“That’s one big document, all right,” Bowers said with a whistle. “There’s megaquads and megaquads here.”Ezri heard Bowers crack a joke featuring the phrase “billions and billions,” an expression which apparently had been mistakenly attributed to the Sagan’s human namesake. She wished she felt like laughing, but decided instead that she’d settle for not feeling nauseated.

“Thanks, Sam. Nog out.” The engineer continued scratching his leg.

Ezri’s own distress melted away, at least somewhat, as she allowed herself to segue into her “concerned counselor” mode. Though she had spent three months on the command track, none of her nurturing instincts had dulled. Besides, focusing on something other than her own lurching insides seemed like a good idea just now.

“Phantom limb still bothering you?” she asked. She knew all too well that Nog didn’t appreciate any tiptoeing around the subject of his biosynthetic limb. It was usually best just to be up-front about such things, at least with Nog.

“No, not really,” he said, only now seeming aware of what he had been doing. “I usually don’t think much about it. I mean, it was a lot worse during the first few months after AR-558, but it still happens from time to time. The itching, I mean.”

Ezri furrowed her brow as the obvious solution came to mind. “I wonder…” She trailed off, lost in thought.

“Wonder what?”

“Nog, do you mind if I put my counselor hat back on for a moment?”

He bared his sharpened teeth good-naturedly. “Bearing in mind, of course, that free advice is seldom cheap.”

“No charge, I promise. But I wonder if your old psychosomatic symptoms might have begun flaring up again lately because of delayed stress.”

Nog looked skeptical. “From AR-558? Sure, that battle was hell, and it cost me a leg, but—”