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“Damn. Get us between them and the relay. Our priority is to protect the away team. Gold to Salek.”

“Salek here.”

“The Dominion just came to find out what happened to their beacon, Commander. How much more time do you need?”

“For a satisfactory repair, nineteen minutes, ten seconds. For a repair that will suffice until such a time as this star system is more secure, four minutes, thirty seconds.”

“Good.” Gold rose from his seat and headed toward the exit. “Transporter room, this is Gold. Get a lock on the away team and beam them back here—”

The doors closed on him, leaving Fabian with Corsi, 110, and 111. The security chief rose from her chair and headed toward the other exit.

“Uh, excuse me?”

Corsi stopped, turned, and regarded Fabian with a look that made the engineer want to crawl under the table for the next six months. “What?”

“Ah, I’m new—I don’t really know what my duty station is during red alert.”

In a tight voice, Corsi said, “Unless you’ve been given a specific duty assignment, which you obviously haven’t, you’re to report to your quarters.”

Without another word, Corsi turned on her heel and left.

“Is she always that—direct?” Fabian asked the Bynars.

“No,” 110 said.

“Usually she is worse,” 111 added.

“Lovely. Well, I guess I should go to my quarters.” Fabian hadn’t even been in his quarters since he came on board. And to think, I gave up Utopia Planitia for this….

* * *

“Captain on the bridge!”

David Gold rolled his eyes at the words of his tactical officer. “McAllan, knock that off and give me a report.” Since reporting to the da Vinci two months ago, McAllan had insisted on that bit of protocol even though the captain himself found it unnecessary at best and embarrassing at worst. Leaving aside any other consideration, the da Vinci bridge was tiny enough that Gold’s presence there would be patently obvious to anyone on it without the need for it to be blared from the tactical station….

“Enemy vessels closing in at full impulse. They’ll be in weapons range of the Appalachia and the Sloane in two minutes.”

Gold looked at the recent Academy graduate at the conn station and struggled to remember his name. Finally, it came to him. “Wong, position report.”

Wong turned to face his captain. He didn’t look old enough to shave. “Holding position at thirty thousand kilometers from the relay, sir.”

Turning to the redheaded Bajoran at ops, Gold asked, “Ina, what would be the effect of extending shields around the relay?”

Ina ran her fingers over her console, then said, “Shields’ effectiveness would be reduced to sixty-five percent.”

Damn. If these were just the Cardassians, that might be enough, but Jem’Hadar ships were just too damned powerful to go in with that much reduced shield effectiveness. “So much for that idea. Wong, keep your fingers nimble. We have to keep that relay intact, clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

“Good.”

“ Appalachia to da Vinci. ”

Gold had been expecting to hear from either Don Walsh or Ahmed al-Rashid before long. I guess Ahmed won the coin toss.“Go ahead, Appalachia.”

“We shall do our best to keep the enemy at bay, David. How soon will your team be finished?”

In response, McAllan said, “Sir, Commander Salek is signaling for beam-out.”

“There’s your answer, Ahmed. We’ll hold position, try to keep the relay in one piece.”

“Excellent. It would be more so with a Sovereign -class vessel or two at our backs, but we must make do with what we are granted.”

“Sad, but true. Go get ’em, Ahmed. We’ll watch your back. Da Vinci out. McAllan, lower shields.” He opened an intercom channel, then. “Transporter room, get the away team back here.”

“Aye, sir,” Feliciano said.

“McAllan, get the shields back up as soon as they’ve materialized, and put the tactical display on the main viewer.”

The screen changed from a view of the comm relay to a computer-generated overview of the battle arena. On the left-hand side of the screen, the two Steamrunner-class ships. Coming in on the right-hand side, two Cardassians