The Long Night Read online

  Traces of the Caxtonian's body odor still filled the constable's small office. The ventilation system functioned well but couldn't work with an odor that overpowering. At least the stench would clear soon. Sisko doubted that after this he would ever forget that smell.

  A door hissed as Odo emerged into his office.

  "Trouble, Constable?" Sisko asked.

  Odo shook his head. "Nothing we haven't seen before."

  Sisko was about to ask more when Dax entered. She glanced at both men, sniffed, then looked at the monitor. The Caxtonian sat on his bunk, arms crossed over his thick chest.

  "Nothing is ever easy, is it, Benjamin?" she asked.

  "I learned that from you, old man," he said. And he had, over many years and many adventures.

  Major Kira Nerys strode in. Her shoulders were back, her face determined. She had been in the middle of something and clearly wasn't pleased about being interrupted.

  "This had better be good," she snapped. "And what is that smell?"

  "Caxtonian." Quark spoke from behind her. "I would like to make this quick, too, Commander. Your friend started a riot in my bar. I have a mess to clean up and a brother's pay to dock."

  "Your bar can wait," Odo said. He pulled back his chair and sat in it, still commanding the room even though he was the only one sitting down. Sisko always admired the way he managed to do that.

  "I take it you got nothing from the Caxtonian," Sisko said.

  "On the contrary," Odo said, "he proved to be very talkative when I reminded him of your threat and added a few of my own."

  "Then what's he doing in the brig?" Dax asked.

  "Let's just say I didn't believe he would stay in his assigned quarters without help." Odo folded his hands on his desk. "I'd offer you all chairs, but I'm afraid I don't have enough."

  "It doesn't matter, Constable," Sisko said. "Let's have some answers and then we can move on." The sudden appearance of that statue had tied his stomach into a tight ball, and that ball was making him want to hurry.

  "Do you think Quark should be here?" Dax asked.

  Quark shot her a nasty look. "I'm the one who found the Caxtonian—"

  "Actually, he found you," Dax said. "I was there, remember."

  "I don't care who was there!" Kira said. "I have fifteen log sheets to process from those arrivals, two dead docking clamps, and five more ships due in the next hour. I would like to know what this is about."

  "It's about a statue, Major. A priceless one," Sisko said. "It's from the Nibix."

  "We have no proof of that," Quark said. His tone carried worry.

  Sisko pinned him with a look. He wasn't going to let Quark have the upper hand here. "I recognized it. Dax verified it. Are you saying that you have more expertise than we do?"

  "I'm not saying anything," Quark said. He looked down.

  "Good," Sisko said. "We'll keep it that way."

  "I don't see any statue," Kira said.

  "And you won't," Sisko said. "It's in safekeeping." His safekeeping. He'd placed it under a protective force field in his quarters, with two makeshift alarms around it. Quark knew the access codes to most of the station's safes. Besides, there were a lot of strangers on the station at the moment. Sisko didn't want to take any chances, so he hadn't told anyone where it was at.

  "If that's all then," Quark said, "I have a bar to clean up."

  "That's not all," Sisko said. "The constable is going to tell us what he learned from the Caxtonian, and so will you."

  "He didn't tell me anything," Quark said.

  "You were talking a long time," Dax said.

  "About value," Quark said.

  "Haggling?" Kira asked.

  "No!" The force of Quark's denial made Kira raise her eyebrows, and Sisko made sure he didn't even let a hint of a smile on his face. Dax put a hand over her mouth to hide her smile.

  "But he did imply," Quark said, "that there was more where this came from."

  "He said as much to me," Odo said. "The statue is not an heirloom as he originally claimed. He found it in an old wreck crashed on an asteroid."

  "What asteroid?" Quark asked.

  Sisko could almost see the drool of greed dripping from Quark's mouth. "I thought you weren't interested in the Nibix," Sisko said softly.

  "Don't be silly," Quark said. "Everyone's interested in the Nibix."

  "I'm not," Kira said. "I don't even know what it is."

  The conversation stopped. Everyone stared at her.

  This time Sisko let himself chuckle. The Nibix had been such a passion for him for so many years, he couldn't comprehend anyone not knowing about the most famous lost ship. But since Kira had spent her years fighting the Cardassians, she would never have had the chance to learn or even hear about it.

  "What's so funny?" Kira demanded as Sisko's chuckle spread lightly through the others in the room, easing the tension that had started to build.

  Sisko took a deep breath, forced himself to get control, and held up his hand for the others to stop laughing. "Major," he said, "the Nibix is one of the most famous lost ships in the history of the galaxy."

  "So you're laughing at my ignorance?" She raised her chin, clearly angered at the thought. "I don't find this at all amusing. What's so important about a wrecked ship?"

  "A great deal, I'm afraid," Sisko said. The least of which were the thousand bodies that had to be scattered among the wreckage. Except for one body. One body that might or might not be recognizable. But if something as delicate as the statue survived, then perhaps the wreck wasn't as bad as it sounded. "I'll download some information on the Nibix for you after this meeting. You will need to read it at once."

  Kira started to object, but Sisko stopped her with a sharp look. He had to have her up to speed on this. He had to have all his people working on it. It might turn out to be the most important thing they did with their careers.

  "We really should know what asteroid it's on," Quark said again.

  "That information is privileged," Odo said. "It's against Federation law to touch the Nibix. That statue alone could cause an intergalactic incident. And I won't let you make things worse, Quark."

  "I didn't ask him to bring the statue to me!" Quark said.

  "Maybe not," Odo said, "but you're not going to make any profit off of anything to do with the Nibix, do you understand?"

  Quark opened his mouth, but Sisko interrupted before the situation got out of hand. "You're here, Quark, because I want you to have the information we give you instead of starting rumors by trying to discover what we know. You promised you would say nothing about the Nibix, and I expect you to say nothing, to do nothing, and to pretend everything is normal until I tell you otherwise. Am I clear?"

  "You were clear earlier," Quark said sullenly.

  "Good." Sisko crossed his arms. "Because I will not hesitate to shut the bar down and to place you in the brig with the Caxtonian."

  "Now wait a minute—"

  Sisko made sure his gaze never left Quark. He wasn't kidding, and he needed to make sure everyone knew it.

  "Quark," Odo said in his most menacing voice.

  "He can't shut me down," Quark said. "It will hurt the station. Do you know how many people stop here just for Quark's?"

  "Too many," Odo said.

  "I can and I will," Sisko said. With one final hard look at Quark, he turned toward Dax. "We have a trip to take, old man."

  Dax grinned. That grin didn't belong to Jadzia. It was pure Curzon, and Sisko ached for the friend he used to know. "I've been waiting for this for a long time."

  "I know," Sisko said. He hadn't been waiting quite as long, but he felt a rumble of excitement all the way to his toes. "Have Chief O'Brien make sure the Defiant is ready. I want her shipshape and fully armed."

  He didn't want to tell them why he wanted the Defiant fully armed. He'd let that worry stay with him for the moment. Dax nodded her understanding. She, of all of them, knew why the weapons might be important.

  Sisko turned t
o Kira. "Major, you and Odo will take charge of the station. I want all communications monitored, all public conversations noted, and all suspicious personnel watched. If anyone mentions the Nibix outside of this room, I want to know about it. Anyone who sends communications about the Nibix will be sent to the brig until I return." He glanced at Quark as he said that. "If this wrecked ship actually is the Nibix, I want to be the one to release the information through Starfleet channels. And I want us all to be ready when I do. Understood?"

  "Your orders are clear, sir," Kira said. "But I don't understand how a lost ship can cause so many problems."

  "You will after you read the files," Sisko said.

  Sisko knew his answer wasn't enough, but he just didn't have time at the moment. Dax put her hand on Kira's arm. "The Nibix is full of priceless art. That would be enough to cause problems. But the main problem comes from the ship's most famous passenger."

  "Who's dead, right?" Kira asked.

  "I'm not sure if alive or dead matters," Dax said.

  "What does matter is that the Nibix carried the religious leader of eighty worlds. Worlds that are now about to enter the Federation."

  Kira shook her head. "I don't get it. Won't they be happy that we've found the guy?"

  Odo stood. "Major, for the past hundred years there have been thousands of books discussing that question. Starfleet has issued nearly that many communiqués about the ship ever since they outlawed scavenging for it. The issues are these: What will happen to the Jibetian culture if the Nibix is found? Will it bring on a civil war? Will the discovery finally settle the eight-hundred-year-old conflicts? Or simply refuel them? These questions are not idle speculation."

  "At least, not any more," Sisko said. He ignored Major Kira's wide eyes and turned to Dax. "We leave in two hours."

  CHAPTER

  4

  THE END OF the Promenade was deserted. The noise from Quark's had died down long ago, and Nog had sneaked out while his father was dealing with the last of the disgruntled customers. Jake had watched that from the stairs, hoping to catch Nog before he went to their rendezvous point.

  But Nog's reaction to the proposed plan was not what Jake had hoped for.

  "I don't care about some dumb panel," Nog had said, and Jake experienced a half second of déjà vu until he realized that Nog had just said the sentence for the hundredth time.

  Jake's hands were covered with dirt. He had the tiny all-purpose tool that the chief had given him long ago and was removing the ancient bolts. It was mindnumbing, sweaty work—for Jake. Nog had to hold the bolts so that they wouldn't get lost, not exactly the toughest task he'd ever had.

  "An Academy cadet should not be sitting in the dark, playing with the wall," Nog said.

  "You're not a cadet yet," Jake said.

  "I am, too."

  "No." Jake untwisted another bolt and dropped it into Nog's full hand. "You're a candidate. You don't become a cadet until you actually arrive."

  "Cadet. Candidate. What's the difference?"

  Plenty, Jake wanted to say but didn't. He had made a point of supporting Nog's attendance at the Academy since his uncle was so opposed to it. "Four letters," Jake said.

  "I thought jokes were supposed to be funny," Nog said.

  "I thought friends were supposed to be helpful," Jake said, removing another bolt.

  Nog sighed. "It's just that it's been a long day."

  "The afternoon started out fun."

  "Yeah, and then I went back to my uncle's bar just in time to watch the customers go nuts." Nog's voice was soft. "I wish he wouldn't blame my dad for everything."

  So did Jake, but Jake also believed that Nog's dad could learn to stand up for himself better. Rom did stand up once in a while, like when he supported Nog's decision to attend the Academy. But those occasions were too rare to keep Quark's bluster from affecting Nog's day-to-day existence. And Jake's.

  Once Jake complained to his father. His father had remained silent for a long moment afterward, something Jake learned meant that his father actually agreed with the things Jake said but couldn't express that agreement because of his leadership role. Finally, he had said, "The Ferengi are different from us, Jake. Their customs may seem wrong to us, but they have worked for the Ferengi for a long time." His dad's way of saying that he hated the way Nog was treated, too, but he could do nothing about it.

  Maybe that was the hardest part of being a space brat and traveling from port to port with his dad. Jake saw a lot of things he didn't like and would never have the power to change. At least, not directly.

  "What do you think we'll find back there?" Nog asked.

  "Probably nothing," Jake said.

  "Then why are we doing this?"

  "Because." Jake grimaced as he worked the last bolt. "This is really close to the Promenade. And all kinds of stuff used to be for sale here. Some stuff was smuggled in. Some stuff was lost. Maybe this is one of those secret safes that the Cardassians made to hide things from each other."

  "You mean we could be rich?"

  "I doubt it," Jake said. "My father would probably make us try to find the original owners if we found something."

  "But what if we couldn't find them?"

  Jake shrugged. "Then maybe we'd get to keep it." He braced the panel with his shoulder, then dropped the last bolt into Nog's hand. "This is the part that the chief warned me about. We have to take this off carefully because they might have a charge around the opening."

  "Oh, great," Nog said. "How do you propose to do that?"

  "We need to let the panel fall toward us, then stick that wooden rod in before we go in."

  Nog scowled at him.

  Jake grinned. "You don't expect to find treasure without doing some work, do you?"

  "A Ferengi always expects to find treasure without doing any work," Nog said. He carefully set the bolts down and heaped them into a pile so that they wouldn't scatter.

  "What Rule of Acquisition is that one?" The panel was getting heavy against Jake's shoulder. He wished Nog would hurry.

  "It's not a rule," Nog said, bracing his hands against the metal. "It's too obvious to be a rule. It's common sense."

  Jake laughed as he moved away from the panel. He put his hands out, too, and the panel fell against them. It was heavier than he expected. Thicker, too, than most of the panels he had worked on around the station. That surprised him, given the hollow sound it made when the ball had hit it. There had to be an empty space behind it. There was no question in his mind now.

  Together the boys eased the panel back and then leaned against the opposite side of the wall, away from the bolts. Jake shined a flashlight inside. Behind the plate was a dark, empty square area, barely big enough for Nog to stand upright and not much wider than Jake's shoulders. And it only went back in about two meters. It was just an empty space in the wall.

  "Nothing," Nog said. "What a waste of time."

  "You don't know it's nothing," Jake said. "The space has to be here for a reason."

  "Yeah. A reason no one remembers any more." Nog reached toward the darkness, but Jake blocked him, remembering the chiefs warning.

  "Use the stick."

  "Or what?"

  "Just do it," Jake said.

  Nog picked up the stick and waved it through the hole as if he were stirring a bowl of punch in his uncle's bar. "See? Nothing."

  He reached for the panel, but Jake grabbed his arm. "Not yet. I promised the chief we'd measure this."

  "Great. All I need is more work."

  Jake bit back his irritation. Clearly Nog wasn't as excited about this adventure as Jake was. "All right," Jake said. "I'll measure it."

  He bent over and went inside the small opening. About a half meter of the ceiling was missing. Jake had to duck to reach the inside wall, but when he got there, he could stand, his head and shoulders up inside the opening in the ceiling.

  "Hurry up," Nog said, but his words sounded hollow and seemed to echo off into a distance.

 
"Hand me a light," Jake said. He could hardly contain his excitement. So far they had found nothing, but he had a feeling there was more. Much more.

  "The tricorder can measure in the dark," Nog said.

  "I don't want to measure. There's a passage in here." Jake's voice echoed upward, reverberating around him, throwing his words back at him until they faded.

  "A passage?" Nog finally sounded interested. Jake could hear the rustle of fabric against metal as Nog climbed inside. Then a flashlight appeared beside Jake, the beam pointing upward. A shaft about a meter high led into a much larger area that disappeared deeper into the wall. Jake could barely reach the edge above with his outstretched arm.

  Nog was under him, looking up. "Is there treasure?"

  "There's just dirt," Jake said. On a starship the lack of dust would be normal, even in a closed-off tunnel like this. But here, Jake always expected things to be dirty. His first image of DS9 always stuck in his mind: the mess of fallen ceiling beams and debris left in the Cardassian evacuation. Cleanliness on DS9, while the norm, still felt odd to him two and a half years later.

  "Do you think there's treasure?" Nog asked.

  "Look, Nog," Jake said, finally letting his irritation show. "If you don't want to come, just say so. I'm going to go exploring whether you come or not."

  "I didn't say I wouldn't come," Nog said in his I'm about-to-pick-a-fight voice. He often got into this mood after he'd had a bad day.

  "Good," Jake said. He handed Nog the flashlight. "If you change your mind, just tell me."

  Then Jake used both hands to reach up, grab onto the edge, and pull himself up the metal chute into the dark area above. Once there, he turned around and looked back down into the beam of the light Nog was shining upward into his face.

  "Hand me the light before you blind me," Jake said, and Nog did as he was told.

  "You're not going to leave me here in the dark, are you?" Nog asked. He wouldn't be able to lever himself up as easily as Jake did.

  But Jake didn't want to dwell on that problem at the moment. He shined the light at the area around him. It felt like a hall of some sort. By stretching out his arms in both directions he could almost touch the walls. The ceiling was an arm's length above his head. The passage went off into the distance before it turned.