J-* Amberstar of Thunderclan does not own Harry Potter or Deep Space Nine*
"Major Kira, report." Sisko ordered as the odd alarm continued.
"We're getting reports of every sound system on the station, going off." she informed him, trying to cease the beeping that was coming from her console. "Wait, check that; we have reports coming in of all sound systems from here to Bajor going off!"
"By the sky!" a raptorian exclaimed, his ears pricking up with surprise.
"I agree." a black, middle-aged officer nearby said.
"How do we stop it?" Dax inquired, slamming a fist down on her console in vain.
"We don't!" Sisko looked towards the turbo lift in time to see Doctor Bashir stepping out of it.
"Doctor Bashir, what took you so long?" Sisko asked.
"What do you mean by that?" Kira asked at the same time as he came up to Sisko, ignoring her.
"Commander, Oswin says it's Morse code. It's an S.O.S." he told him, eyes unreadable and jaw clenched.
"Dax, is here any way to tell who it is?" Sisko asked.
"That would be aaaaaaa..." she banged on the console one more time"...negative sir."
"Any trace of magic in the signal?" Sisko asked the nearby OLIO. He was tall, with dirty blond hair and thick, black-rimmed square glasses. Contrary to most daywear for this century, he wore a dark gray turtle neck, and his denim jeans seamed out of place as well, not to mention his sand-shoes.
"None at all, that I can tell." he said nervously, double-checking the nearby consol.
"Who are you?" Bashir asked, stepping up to face the OLIO, who fumbled with the wire-covered device he was holding in an attempt to shake Julian's hand.
"Oh, I'm uh, Eric. Eric Caimo, of the uh, Auror's OLIO project." he stuttered when he had finally succeeded.
"OLIO? Lizza never mentioned that to me." Julian seemed to challenge. Oh, boy. Sisko thought. And Dax said he was acting pretty normal today... It seemed as if Julian's recently-acquired temperament was making another unpleasantly awkward appearance.
"It's, a, it's a new system. For the Aurors." Caimo explained." On-Line Intelligence Operative. The idea is to make it so that what happened to your sister, uh, doesn't happen to any other Aurors."
"How do you know about my sister?" Julian snapped. Rats.
"She's one of only three Aurors missing in the Gamma quadrant! I read all their files and Commander Sisko said your name so I assumed that you were that Bashir." Caimo explained quickly.
Julian seemed to settle down, but still looked at Caimo with narrowed eyes.
"That, and I was her assigned Rem contact for the halfway point of the Centurion's mission.
"The Rem what-now?" Kira asked.
"A Rem stone allows witches or wizards to contact someone in their dreams. Halfway through the mission, I was supposed to come to DS9 so she could contact me and give me a midway report. It was meant as a test to check her competence in dream visiting." he told her, his stutter leaving him as he went through the motions of sharing his knowledge. Good. Now that that stutter is gone...
"Doctor, you and Caimo wait in my office." he said. Julian bit his lip but did as he was told. Caimo followed him, looking worried about being in the same room as Bashir...alone.
"Dax." he addressed. Her head shot up again to look at him. He glared at the nearest speaker. "Shut that thing up."
"Yes sir!" she replied tiredly.
He turned to go to his office, adding as he did so "And somebody get me Chief O'Brian!"
He marched into his office, and he heard the volume of the beeping lower a little. The Ministry of Magic officials, Julian, and Caimo all looked at him expectantly as he sank down into his chair. It had only been a few minutes, but the alarm was starting to give him a headache.
"So? Can we begin now, Commander Sisko?" the foremost Ministry personnel inquired irritably. She was a stately-looking older woman, and there were several scars on her face that indicated her past as a Auror. The other official was a man of similar severity, with hawk-like blue eyes and white hair cut in military fashion. Not people he would want to cross if he were a dark wizard, Sisko decided.
"Yes, you can." he sighed. He glanced at his clock. It wasn't even 13 yet. 9 more hours to go. He groaned internally. All he wanted to do right now was sleep.
"What's going on, Sir?" Julian asked reproachfully.
"We believe we may have a way to contact Lizza Bashir. However, it will only work once, if all. It depends on whether or not she had the rem stone with her." the blue-eyed Auror informed him. At once, the doctor seemed to explode.
"And how long did you plan on keeping this to youselves!? You had the rem stone operation set up for her mission, and you've known she was alive for weeks! Are you telling me you've been making all this radio noise for nothing?!" he burst. The Auror just looked at him calmly.
"We were doing research. We've been asking around the station, and all witnesses seem to recall seeing our missing cadet with you and the local tailor. We weren't sure whether or not she would have had the rem stone with her, but at this point, all other operations have failed." The Auror continued, disregarding the outburst.
"Why the bloody ***** did you keep this from us?!" Julian continued. Sisko groaned inwardly again.
"Because we weren't sure if it would work." the Ministry woman told him, shrugging. "You have to understand, the rem stone is a highly complicated magical artifact. They are incredibly difficult to make, and they can only be used once."
"Do you mind explaining to me how they work?" Captain Sisko asked. The two officials looked at each other, and the woman took out her wand. She gave it a flick, and the glass doors of his office darkened along with the windows.
"Muffliato." she muttered, flicking her wand again in the direction of the door.
"Caimo, begin." she ordered. The blond nodded, and set his equipment on the floor before taking something out of his pocket. It was a stock-gray oval stone, attached to a leather string that was long enough for someone to wear around their neck.
"This is a rem stone." he told them." If a witch or wizard is competent enough, they can use it to contact people in their dreams. Obviously, though, it only works if the person they're trying to contact is asleep."
"Yes, we get that part. Tell us what we don't know." Julian snapped grumpily. I really wish we could do something about his violent mood swings.
"W-well," Caimo stuttered," it also only works if you've met the person. You can't have just seen them; you have to know them in some way or another. Talked to them, be able to remember certain behavioral patterns, stuff like that."
"As her contact, we went out for tea the day before the Centurion left. I was scheduled to arrive at DS9 a month and a half later, and take a heavy sleeping draught before going to bed, to be sure I didn't miss the appointed time. After we received news that the Centurion was destroyed, my travel plans, as you could imagine, got canceled." he explained further. Sisko held up one hand to stop him from continuing.
"Why Deep Space Nine?" he asked.
"The rem stone can only reach so far. About the same distance as the average patronus, actually." Caimo said, looking just a tiny bit proud at the extent of his knowledge." Lizza's patronus managed to make it back here from the Gamma quadrant, but depending on how far away she was from it in the days after casting, the patronus would have likely have faded away before reaching its final destination if the trip had been any longer than it was."
"That doesn't answer my question." He said, eyebrow raised. Darn these nerds and their elongated explanations!
"Actually, if you think about. With the wormhole, DS9 is the closest place to the Gamma quadrant. If the mission had been here in Alpha, Lizza would have been able to contact earth from practically any point in this quadrant. The mission would also have been a test to see if my theory would work." He told them, looking even more confident.
"And what theory might that be?" Julian asked accusatorily. Caimo seemed to melt once more under the doctor's rage. Sisko physically sighed. He knew that if he tried to talk Bashir into an attitude adjustment, he would just crossed arms and a tapping foot the whole time, along with a blank glare of "You're wasteing my time".
"That, uh, that rem waves can travel through the wormhole. If that didn't work, then I would go to another outpost near the edge of the Alpha quadrant, and the Centurion would send a signal through the wormhole to check in." he told them, his fidgeting starting to effect his hair, which was –or rather, had been- brushed back neatly.
"So you just went ahead and gave her an assignment without knowing it would even work?"
"Bashir!"
"What!"
"Keep in mind that this was a training run!" Commander Sisko resisted the urge to grind his teeth; the sooner they found Lizza, the better; he wasn't sure how long he could stand this new, grumpy Julian Bashir. "It was an exercise that ended up turning into a bloodbath. If they had known about their attackers, the Centurion would not have been sent through."
"We are not to blame for what happened. What matters now is that we may have a way to contact Lizza." The woman pointed out. Commander Sisko racked his brain, trying to remember what she called herself.
"We came here so we could gather all available known contacts of hers. Family, friends, fellow recruits. The number of those people that we've been able to get over here is, thus far, disappointingly low." The man said. Agent Libbs, Sisko remembered. Bit of an odd name.
"How many?" Julian asked, a hopeful tone to his voice. Finally, a mood other than angry.
"With you and Caimo? Six. Approximately. Maybe seven, if she was told enough about that tailor." Julian's face fell back to a frown. Seven people was better than none, in Benjamin's opinion. He couldn't help but imagine what it would feel like if Jake were in Lizza's position; lost, with only seven people that could help him, on the other side of the galaxy, with means only to contact them in their dreams.
It was a feeling that Sisko didn't like.
"We'll need to contact that tailor and debrief him. If Lizza tries to contact any of the people we have gathered, they need to know what to look for; they have to be able to tell dream from reality." The woman continued.
"Okay." Julian seemed to force the word out.
Sisko suddenly realized that the alarm had stopped. Thank goodness! The annoying beeping, combined with Bashir's mood, had started to give him a headache.
His relief was short-lived as the alarm turned back on, louder than ever. He was on the verge of swearing.
"Alright, you have what you need!" he yelled over the blare." Let's hope it works!"
The ministry official waved her wand, and the tint to the office faded as she and Libbs walked out of the office. Caimo let out a small yelp, scrambling to gather his wire-covered device as he realized that the meeting had been dismissed. He left the room promptly, casting Julian an ahpressive look before waddling oddly out the door with hi burden, trying to catch up with his associates before they went down the turbo lift.
"Bashir." he halted his officer before he could make it to the door. He didn't intend to give him a reproachful chat about his manners (which would fall on deaf ears)." Could you please tell Dax to trace the signal? And send Chief O'Brian up to help her if you see him."
"The Chief will be occupied for a little, I'm afraid." the doctor explained. There was an ecstatic note in his voice that betrayed his eagerness to search for his sister with this new information."He kicked a replicator. So did Garak. And Quark. And an alarming number of other people. Oh, and a cadet on the Destiny got her hand caught in an engine compartment. She's trapped in a closet with her boyfriend."
Sisko nodded." I'll send someone to help her, and I'll ask a few non-essential personell to help out around the infermary. "
"Thank you sir." He gave his commander a respectful nod before walking out the door.
420 days previosly...
The vorta walked stiffly into the transporter room. He had jerked the veiwing band off of his head so fast that the eyepeice had snapped back into his face, and he now doned a black eye for his actions.
However, it was a sickening, wrentching feeling in his gut that made cause for his retreat to the empty room, rather than the embarassment he had used to mask his true feelings. Upon putting the band on his head, he had seen hundreds of bodies floating in the open space, some of them with their lungs having been pulled through their mouths by the vacume.
The images flashed through his brain once more, and he stumbled to the nearest transport pad, throwing up. Still retching, he gripped his stomache, as if willing the nasea to not return. Mabye even greater than his stomache ache was his fear; no matter how he tried to confort his mind into thinking it wasn't true, he knew that it was.
He was defective.
And everybody knew what happened to defective vorta.
He wasn't supposed to pity the people they had slaughtered today, murdered, today. And yet, he did. It wasn't something that could be helped. He had helped them commit a terrible, terrible crime, and stood by, doing nothing, saying nothing, out of fear for his life. The was only room in the Dominion for perfection; horrible, merciless perfection, and he didn't meet the standards.
The red-headed vorta shut his eyes tight, as if by closing them he could whisk himself away to a place without fear or death, or fear of death. Soon, he opened them again, and made to back out of the transporter, so as to beam his vomit into the vacuum of space. Then the thought occurred to him that his vomit would be floating around with all the dead bodies, and he jerked forwards again, dry heaving.
And through his haze, stinging vision, his eyes caught on something most peculiar laying on the floor, at the very back corner of the transporter.
It was a rock.
There was nothing particularly special about this rock. It was an ordinary, blank gray stone, with a double strap of brown leather looped through a hole at one end.
Then again, not all things were as they seemed, not for the vorta, or for the rock. The vorta shuttered, just as he had fifteen minutes before, as if reliving a sensation that had not at all pleased him. He had, in fact, had been experiencing this feeling ever since coming near the transporter, but had not noticed it until now. He had had this feeling, as previously mentioned, not too long ago, during the very act he was so ashamed of.
A woman of thin build, black hair, and vibrant green eyes had caused this previously mentioned feeling, a feeling that was not a feeling but more like a sense of understanding, or recognition. He bent down and took the stone up, turning it through his hand and examining every aspect of it.
After a while, this vorta, whose name you might recall as being Avon, strode towards the control panel, and beamed his puke into space. All the while, something new now occupied his mind;
The impossibility of his seemingly new-found sixth sense.
So here we have Caimo, our brand-spank'n new nerd with glasses. And a turtle neck. Got to love that turtle neck. And I wonder whatever could be wrong with Avon? (dur, totally not obvious.) And oh dear, he has the rem stone. And yes, I was kind of inspired by the Dreamvisitors from Wings of Fire.
The word Rem actually comes from the Familiars series though. "Rem Walkers" are the denizens of the dream world in that series.
C-*Can I have a chapter all to myself?*
No.
C-* Why not? Everybody else has had their own chapter! Dax has had more credit than me!*
D-*To be fair, I have better hair than you anyway.*
C-*What's that supposed to mean?*
Oh dear, I better go intervene before things get too PG. See Ya!