When the stars threw down their spears
And watered Heaven with their tears
Did He smile, His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
--William Blake, Tyger
They arrived, finding neither sanctuary nor hope. The Emergency Evacuation Station, a pre-fab spider of tritanium spinning like an errant top amid the waves of ships, was choked with staggering, limping malnourished bodies. Her power systems-fueled by a small reactor-were stretched to the breaking point, such were the demands of the environmental and replication systems. Her mass allowance point had already been exceeded by an alarming 47-percent (well past the redline that Starfleet R&D had determined) from the flood of bodies bottlenecked in the insubstantial auditoriums, corridors, docking areas, any free space. Every few Standard days another empty Starfleet transport would dock at the station, take on as many of the slight, grey-skinned bodies as it could hold, then depart, draining the ocean by a teaspoonful.
And still they came. And endless, shambling convoy of refugee ships-small, unsafe, barely warp-capable, remote-piloted. They docked mindlessly at the EES and turned equally mindlessly back toward the Chintoka System to pick up the next load. The refugees stepped off the ship and into the milling crowd, packed like chattel on a freighter. They did not do this mindlessly, but out of inevitability. There was nowhere else to go.
Sisko slid between the Chintokan refugees, feeling like a Galaxy-class starship plowing through an asteroid belt. The Chintokans were naturally smaller than humans, but years of Cardassian rule had left them smaller and lighter than biologically average. They had enormous, cow-like eyes, and heavy limbs, mostly bone and ligament wrapping undeveloped muscle. The Cardassians had implemented a dress-code, a uniform similar to Cardassian casual-wear, which accentuated the skeletal shapes of their bodies. They also made the Starfleet personnel even more conspicuous, and Sisko found Bashir easily. The doctor was, true to form, up to his elbows in Chintokan refugees, waving tricorders, administering hyposprays, passing around ration-packets. For anyone else, Sisko would have asked the doctor back to his ready room, then privately disemboweled him for running the risk of inciting a riot. The Chintokans, however, were not a riot-prone people. A civilization of builders and laborers, conflicts were few and far between in Chintokan history. Decades of Cardassian subjugation had beaten that little fight out of them. According to the haggard-faced lieutenant Sisko had spoken to upon arrival, they were the most orderly group of refugees he'd ever worked with.
Bashir caught Sisko's eye past a cluster of nearly hairless Chintokan children who fingered ration bars as if they were fine china figurines. Bashir rose from the bemused children and was lost momentarily in the broad, grey brushstrokes of the corridor before pushing his way past the closest huddle of refugees.
"The Defiant is leaving in three hours. I want you aboard for the preliminaries," Sisko told the doctor.
"I'm not sure I'd be needed for that, sir. Nurse Midori can do that just as easily, and if it's all the same I'd like to stay here."
"It's not all the same," Sisko replied evenly. "This blockade could get ugly. We don't know have reliable information about the strength of the Cardassian counteroffensive. We may need to tend to the casualties of other ships, not simply our own. If that happens, Doctor, I don't want Nurse Midori heading up the medical teams. I want you."
Bashir moved into Hippocratic Mode-Sisko could see it even before the doctor spoke. His head rolled back just a bit, and he drew a long breath as if facing down the very essence of the Universe. "Sir, these people..."
"I know, Doctor, but this isn't our detail."
"Sir, they don't even have enough room to sit down. Let alone enough rations or medical care, or a library-cataloging system to keep track of friends, family, loved ones..."
"I am aware of that, Doctor," Sisko responded, allowing only a note of testiness into his voice. "But this is not our responsibility."
Bashir's eyes widened with shock, and Sisko regretted his words. "These people have been displaced by our troops! They're driven off their homeworlds because they don't want to be in crossfire! We're bombarding their planets with torpedoes. Sir, this is our responsibility!"
"And what would you like to do, Doctor?" Sisko hissed through gritted teeth. "How many people are there here? One-hundred thousand? Two? What do you think your twelve-person medical team can do for them?"
Bashir rolled his eyes and took another deep breath. Sisko cut him off. "And what do you think the Defiant can do? It can't carry any more of them than the transports can. It doesn't have the medical or replicator capabilities to help these people.
"Now, Doctor, this station is already critically overtaxed. What do you think would happen if just one Cardassian ship made it here? Made it to the refugee ships? And they will. You know that the first chance they get, the Cardassians will exact a vengeance on the Chintokans vicious enough to prevent any other worlds of the Cardassian Empire from getting any ideas."
"So we're to do nothing?" Bashir asked the deckplates. His uniform suddenly seemed to heavy on him, pending his frame to a slight stoop.
"We defend these people," Sisko said quietly.
"And then what?"
Sisko looked out of the roiling, shuddering sea of starving, injured, sick bodies, exhausted, unconscious standing up. "I wish I could say, Doctor."
"They look good, don't they?" Larwin asked a moment after the sound of the swishing doors alerted Sisko to his presence.
"They'd better be. If a Cardassian counteroffensive succeeds, we could easily lose all the ground we won. And this ground was paid for with no small amount of blood." Sisko looked beyond the attack fleet at the reddish cloud of refugee ships.
"No two ways about that," Larwin said. "Drink?"
Sisko turned and waved him off. "Will it be enough, Captain?"
"I don't know," Larwin confessed and called up some files on his computer screen. "Reports have been sketchy. It looks to me like the Cardassians are using some basic evasives to conceal their numbers. That tells me that we hit them even harder than we thought. But that's speculation. Informed speculation, but speculation all the same. How's the Defiant?"
"We're going through the preliminaries, but we'll be in fighting shape."
Larwin nodded coolly. "We took our lumps from a Jem'Hadar squadron back in the Temmex Sector, too. But I think that ours are the only two ships which saw combat. The rest are fresh out of the box."
"Then I pity the Cardassian fleet," Sisko growled.
"Me too, Captain," Larwin replied in an equally low voice as he considered the fleet out his viewport. "Refugees," he muttered. "I wonder if there's any end to them."
"Not soon."
Sisko saw it begin to fall apart after a searing, synchronized assault between the Galaxies, Akiras, and Vor'chas and the Cardassian Kelvin's and Galors. When the capital lines began to crumble, Sisko saw the end of it all. The fighters harassed the Federation ships to no greater purpose and were quickly hunted down by the Klingons and the Defiant. When the assault was finished, the Cardassian battleships were destroyed or crippled, and the thirty or so fighters were left without support. They fought to the death, though, perhaps an effect of fighting beside the Jem'Hadar.
He did something unusual, something he'd never before done while sitting in the center seat. Sisko let a small part of his mind access the EES and the waves of refugee ships. The Chintokans. Their worlds now battlegrounds, their homes lost, their families separated, perhaps never to be reunited, and now they were being warehoused in a poorly-constructed starbase, and still they were grateful.
Sisko thought about the Chintokans as he made the Cardassian ships burn.
"Warp core just cleared the hull, sir," O'Brien reported. "No sign of her going critical, though."
"Grab her, Chief," Sisko ordered. "We'll pull her clear and detonate her at a safe distance."
"What about the Evacuation point?" Bashir asked from the deck where he was tending to a lacerated ensign whose console had exploded in her face. Both Sisko and O'Brien glanced down at him. "We could use the warp core to power the station. Carry it back."
"There's no room for a secondary reactor," O'Brien explained. "There's no provision for it."
"Come on, Miles! You could do something! You always do." He turned his gaze to Sisko, who felt his hackles rise at re-fighting this battle on the bridge. "Sir, even if we simply substituted the one for the other. The Baldwin's must be much more efficient than whatever's running that thing."
"It is," Sisko conceded flatly. "But we're not bring it back with us."
"It would be possible to refit the station," O'Brien thought out loud.
"Sir?"
"I don't want to have to drag that thing through warp with us," Sisko growled.
"If we keep our velocity below warp seven and hold it in our shields..."
Sisko threw O'Brien a burning glance and the Chief sheepishly turned back to his console.
"Sir, we could at least improve conditions there..."
"See about your business, Doctor," Sisko said in a low rumble.
"But sir..."
"I don't intend to tell you again!" Sisko lashed out, and the bridge went silent. Bashir took a few seconds before turning back to the unconscious ensign. Sisko let the moment pass. What did it matter? He'd won.
the sudden, explosive failure of overstressed engines. Some of them surely had exploded on the journey here. To this promised land... Sisko thought blackly.
The door chime interrupted his dark thoughts, the interruption making them darker. "Come," he said to his reflection and the endless convoy of ships. The doors sighed and a moment later, he heard Bashir's voice.
"Sir?"
Sisko didn't turn. "Yes Doctor?"
"I...I'm sorry for my conduct on the bridge, sir. It was...unbecoming, sir."
"Yes," Sisko said, still not looking at him. "It was."
There was a moment of technical silence, but Sisko imagined he could hear Bashir's rage gathering like a summer storm. "Sir," he heard the Doctor's controlled voice, "we could have brought it back."
"Yes."
"Miles could have installed it."
"Yes."
The rage was gathering. "These people deserve more, sir! I'm a doctor. I can't simply watch this happen and pretend that it's less important that daily duties and responsibilities. The preservation of life and alleviation of misery are the things that I swore myself to. It's why I joined Starfleet."
Sisko swivelled in his chair and motion for Bashir to sit in the one beside him. The Doctor reluctantly did. Then Sisko called up the station schematics on the panel between them. "Take a look at that, Doctor." As Bashir did, Sisko synthesized a mug of raktajino. He placed it on the arm of Bashir's chair.
"I'm afraid I don't understand, sir," Bashir said as he threw questioning glances at the steaming coffee, then nodded his thanks to Sisko.
"The structural-support beams," Sisko said, sipping from his own mug, then pointed to their spidery shapes on the schematics. "An increase of power such as the type you'd get with a Type-Fifty-Two-L warp core would tear them apart. The station would never survive initialization."
Bashir opened his mouth but said nothing.
"I told Starfleet R&D this when I first saw these plans." Sisko called up a second set of schematics and smiled gently at them. "This was my design. Reinforced substructure, universal components, docking mechanisms on all sides so that they could link in orbit and create a makeshift colony..."
"But they didn't build it," Bashir concluded.
"They put it on the back-burner," Sisko said dryly, then sipped his coffee again. He caught Bashir's gaze for a moment, but neither wanted to hold it, and so they looked out at the beleaguered EES and the flood of refugee ships.
"I joined Starfleet to build things," he continued matter-of-factly.
"Yes, sir," Bashir said awkwardly, then added, "It's easy to forget that, sir."
"It is for me as well, Doctor. I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined that I'd be on the front lines of a war. That I would...destroy a thousandfold more than I'd ever built."
They sat in silence again and watched the ships. It was a comfortable silence this time, everything necessary having been communicated. Bashir broke it after a few minutes.
"Do you think there's any hope for them, sir?"
"I don't know. I can't access any Starfleet information from here. But even if the war ended tomorrow, there'd still a hell of a lot of work to do for these people."
"Yes, sir," Bashir smiled tightly. "And we'd be in the thick of it. Healing and building."
Sisko nodded and tapped his glass against Bashir's.