Cathedral by Michael Mangels (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

“They could be temporally distorted by the artifact,” Shar said. “There’s no way to tell how long they’ve been transmitting.”

Vaughn was beside himself, but kept his emotions in check. “How many signals are you getting?”

“Two,” Bowers said, intent on both his earpiece and a complex wave-form display on his instrument panel. “No, three. And one subspace transponder.”

Dax’s transport pod. Vaughn grinned. It was about time for some good luck. Where better than a cathedral to go looking for a miracle?

“Good work, people.” Vaughn hit the intercom. “Vaughn to transporter bay one. Chief Chao, I want you to lock onto the away team. Shar and Hunter will feed you the coordinates.”

Chao took a moment to respond. “Sir? That last hit seems to have overloaded the entire transporter system. I can’t get a lock, either from here or with the secondary system.”

“Half the Nyazen blockade fleet is coming about in our direction,” Bowers said, not sounding a bit surprised. “Weapons powering up.”

“Shields?” Vaughn asked.

Bowers shook his head. “They’re still in pretty rough shape, sir.”

“We’ve still got warp power,” Tenmei said. “I can get us clear of these guys so fast they’ll think they’re hallucinating.”

So much for miracles. At my age, I ought to know better.

Vaughn summarily banished that train of thought. “We’ve also got an away team to rescue.”

“And no working transporters,” Tenmei reminded him.

Vaughn stared into the screen at the approaching ships. It had been a long time since he had recalled his rather unhappy Starfleet Academy Kobayashi Maru test so vividly. So it’s come to this.

“We don’t have much time,” Tenmei said. “Should I take us out, sir?”

Shar abruptly sat bolt upright in his seat, as though he’d just received a sizable electrical shock.

Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “Lieutenant?”

“We still have one working transporter,” Shar said, frantically entering commands into his console.

Tenmei scowled at the science officer. “Jeannette said the secondary bay was down as well.”

Vaughn suddenly realized what Shar meant: the Sagan.

“Do it. Fast.”

Shar nodded. “Remotely engaging the Sagan’ s transporter system.”

“Tenmei, lower the shields and keep them off our backs for at least a few more seconds. Then get us the hell out of here on Shar’s mark. Maximum warp.”

Tenmei flashed Vaughn her best I-love-a-challenge smirk. “I’ll do my best, Captain.”

As she refocused her attention on her console, Vaughn smiled gently. He expected no less from his only daughter.

Krissten received only a scant moment’s notice from the bridge before the away team members began materializing, one by one, in a great sprawl across the center of the medical bay floor.

The first to appear was Ezri, her skin looking as pale as death through the helmet of her environmental suit. An instant later, the transport pod containing the Dax symbiont shimmered into existence beside her; its liquid interior sloshed audibly, as though the small creature within had become greatly agitated. Ensign Juarez’s quick tricorder scan immediately revealed the reason for Ezri’s frightening pallor: Her body was rapidly shutting down because of the absence of the symbiont, which, luckily enough, appeared healthy. As she carefully laser-scalpeled the EV suit from Ezri’s body, Krissten breathed a silent prayer that host and symbiont could be reunited before the Trill woman expired.

But before either nurse could begin hoisting Ezri’s limp form onto a biobed, a second humanoid figure materialized on the floor: Nog, lying unconscious, his environmental suit’s left leg conspicuously flattened, folded, and empty. Krissten could see no punctures, blood, or other signs of trauma. But the regenerated leg was nonetheless gone, as though it had never been.

Through his helmet, she could see that Nog was smiling.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Juarez said, apparently thinking out loud. “Whatever that weird object out there did to them seems to have just un-happened.”

The ship suddenly rocked, then settled down. Under attack again, no doubt, Krissten thought as she and Juarez concentrated on moving Ezri very carefully onto one of the biobeds. Nog seemed stable enough for the moment. But even a mere medical technician could see that Ezri was dying.

Where’s Dr. Bashir?

Juarez monitored Ezri’s vital signs, shaking his head grimly. “We can’t wait for Julian to return. We’ve got to get the symbiont back into Ezri’s body now.”

“I agree,” Krissten said, swinging open the lid to Dax’s box. “Um, any idea how we go about doing that?” Assisting Bashir in removing the symbiont was one thing. Reversing the procedure without even a real surgeon’s supervision was quite another matter.

Krissten looked to Ezri’s chalk-white face, irrationally hoping to find guidance there. I’m not trained for this procedure, Ezri. Neither of us is. We can only guess at it.

Krissten looked up and studied the biobed readouts. Every indicator on the panel was steadily plunging. Several bio-alarms pertaining to blood pressure, respiration, and major organ functions had begun sounding shrilly. Hot tears of frustration rose in Krissten’s eyes, but she forestalled them with an exercise of pure will. There was far too much at stake right now to allow herself to fall apart. Determined to put forth her best effort, she turned back toward the symbiont’s transport pod—

—and collided with Julian Bashir, who must have just materialized behind her, the noise of his beam-in drowned out by the numerous medical alarms. She hadn’t even heard him remove the helmet from his EV suit. He caught her in his arms, steadying her before releasing her. She stared for a moment into his dark eyes.

He was in there. Restored. She smiled up at him, and this time she didn’t try to fight the tears.

She saw Bashir looking past her, first at Ezri, then at her bio-readings. He blanched when he saw how near death she was, but only for a split second. From then on, he was in full-on trauma-team mode.

“Ensign Juarez,” he said, glancing at the insensate figure sprawled on the floor. “Please see to Lieutenant Nog.” Falling back on her training, Krissten reached for her flame-colored trauma smock and began prepping Ezri for surgery. Meanwhile, Bashir stripped off his environmental suit and donned sterile