The shimmering lights were as welcome to him now as a breath of air to a drowning man. He leapt to his feet, watching as they gathered into a series of tall, humanoid shapes before him. Behind him, Garak also turned to see.
"Look out--" The smallest of them - a thin, dark ensign with wispy clouds of ebony hair floating in a tangle around her face - reacted immediately to the sight.
"It's all right," O'Brien shouted hurriedly. "He's with me."
…I think. Certainly, ten years ago it had never occurred to him that he would one day be vouching for a Cardassian.
Garak gave no indication that the words had fazed him, but merely smiled like a congenial old uncle. "While I do admire your vigilance, young lady, I feel some obligation in this case to point out that Chief O'Brien is entirely correct."
The group's leader allowed no more time for continued doubts or delays. "You said there were three of you."
"In the back." O'Brien shied away from the still timid ensign as she looked down to the bandage around his wounded forearm. He pointed insistently with his other hand. "Look - forget about me. Just help our friend."
"It's all right," the tiny young woman assured him. She stayed behind in spite of O'Brien's resistance, and locked his eyes with an annoyingly stubborn gaze. "Your friend's in good hands - I promise. Now let's take a look at that."
With a frustrated sigh, O'Brien paid scan attention to her attempt to untangle the bandage that Garak had tied around his limb, but he submitted with only a little reluctance. He watched the small team make their way to the aft section, saw the doctor hesitate for only a moment, and noticed only distantly that he was frowning as well. Exchanging a glance with Garak, he discovered that the Cardassian also shared the same peculiar expression. The doctor's frown had not just shown the usual determined but merely professional concern.
No, he thought. It's more than that. We're strangers to this woman - Garak and I. But not Julian. She knows him.
The ensign glanced briefly over her shoulder, following the Chief's agitated gaze, and turned quickly back to face him.
"Really." She smiled - a practiced, deliberate expression to set wary strangers at ease. "The doctor's very good at her job. She'll do everything she can."
Benjamin Sisko did not doubt his impression that Starfleet Command had taken no pleasure from their discovery of the station's missing runabout. In the end it had been a chance encounter with a distress beacon, not any kind of comprehensive search, that had finally located O'Brien and the others. And if Starfleet's reports were to be believed, an entire starship had been diverted from its scheduled course - patrolling the outer border of the Federation. Certainly, no-one had seemed particularly happy about the circumstances of their rescue - the USS Destiny having to engage with no less than three Jem'Hadar ships before it was finally able to retrieve the runabout and its crew.
The Bolian commodore, whose lot it had been to deliver this news, looked positively ill - all the while insisting that the pale grimace on his face was no more than his reaction to a most dissatisfactory lunch. But his claims of indigestion were far too deliberate to be convincing. Bolians were hardly unaccustomed to eating half-stale meat. And surely this man's immune system ought to have been able to handle whatever he'd had the misfortune to have consumed.
"Are they all right?" was the first thing Sisko demanded of the commodore.
"No," the man responded. As he continued to elaborate, Sisko felt the muscles tense around his brow.
"I should prepare the Defiant." It was an instant, instinctive reaction, bursting forth as reflexively as he might snatch his hand away from the burn of an open flame.
"The Defiant isn't going anywhere, Captain." The blue-faced man answered firmly, deliberately, and with no more than a superficial display of concern. "We don't have the resources to defend your position should the Dominion choose to take advantage of your absence. Your orders are largely the same. Leave this matter to others."
What?! But Sisko held back his protest, pushing it to the depths of his gut before it had whatever chance it needed to emerge. Instead, he forced himself to acknowledge the commodore's order. He stepped away, pausing, seeking a better response. But just as suddenly, the sulphur-blue face of the Bolian had vanished from his view. Nothing remained in its place, save for the familiar - although relatively bland - standard UFP graphic spread across the screen.
Feeling cagey, desperate for the freedom of physical movement, he snatched his baseball from its place atop his desk and tossed it quickly from one hand to the other. His gaze passed beyond the jigsaw of transparent shapes arranged across the door of his office. None of the assorted faces at the main level of Ops were even so much as glancing back his way.
Silently, secretly, he paced the length of his desk like a captive panther in a zoo. Both hands stayed pressed against the leather of his baseball, tight enough for the stitching to leave an imprint on his skin.
Sliding back his chair, he positioned himself upon it, and paused for another deep breath through his nose. The anticipated conversation would demand a level of calm, which was more than he could bring himself to feel. "Computer…" he began, and focused on holding back his mounting agitation. As swiftly as he could, he summoned up the necessary connection.
A new face appeared on the monitor. "What is it, Ben?"
"Admiral." The reply was only half a greeting. Bill Ross stared back at him, tired blue eyes already troubled, and Sisko wondered how much of what he wanted to say had escaped the expectations of his superior.
The admiral listened attentively, without a word. But ultimately, his head was already starting to shake. Sisko found himself pleading. "Sir - I must ask you to reconsider."
"I'm afraid I can't," the admiral replied, an edge of disappointment creeping unavoidably into his voice. "Sorry, but this decision has already been made."
"There's been scarcely as much as a hint of a Dominion activity threat to our position since we re-took the station from them. Quite the opposite - they're already…"
"Captain."
It could be so infuriating, this ability the admiral had to interrupt him with a single word. Satisfied now that he at least had the captain's silence, Ross continued his same tired, but determined, speech. "Stop for a moment, and listen to what it is you're asking. You want to take the Defiant out on the exact same trip that has already caused three people to go missing? A mission you've already been ordered not to take in the first place. Let's say you're right, and the chance of losing the station is as minimal as you claim. That still wouldn't rule out the possibility of assault from a small-scale raiding party, or even a rogue battalion. The Dominion knows - and you know, and I know - that to allow the Defiant away from its post would leave DS9 too vulnerable by far."
"Those are still my troops out there," the captain persisted. It was true. Even Garak had proven on several occasions to be a valuable addition to his team, and especially when the station's Starfleet personnel had been temporarily ejected from their Dominion-occupied home. "You're telling me to abandon my own troops."
"I could equally point out that your men are no longer in any danger."
"That's not what I was told," protested Sisko. "The threat to this sector has lessened significantly in recent weeks, and no-one is missing any longer. All I'm asking for is a chance to make this rendezvous."
"I'm sorry, Benjamin. The answer's still no."
These were far more decisive words than the last ones had been - enough to silence every possible remaining protest. In less time than it took to blink, the Federation emblem was back on his computer screen.
Admiral William Ross had been so incredibly tired, ever since he'd severed that subspace connection with Deep Space Nine's commanding officer. And now, barely a minute later, he leaned back against his chair, shaking his head with an exhausted sigh. "This is wrong," he said.
"Not at all." A second, much steadier voice corrected his uncertain sentiments. The speaker, who had sat only inches from sight of his last communication, placed both hands together against his chin. "What it is, is necessary. And we both know besides that the captain won't stay on the station either way."
"Is that what this is - reverse psychology? I think you're underestimating Benjamin Sisko."
"Am I really?" was the response. "Or are you?"
Ross studied the face of the other man. It made the admiral's skin crawl, to see this man adorned with the snug red undershirt and bicoloured jersey of a lieutenant commander, especially with the knowledge that his visitor had most likely never been a Starfleet officer. But in spite of the bad taste at the back of his throat, Ross did not see any choice but to concede the stranger's point. This disguise was an essential one. Any other would have rendered him far too conspicuous on the busy Starbase.
So, the admiral had pushed his personal concerns to one side, forcing himself instead to focus on the course of their uneasy dialogue. "How can you be sure?"
"I understand people," the other man promised. "Trust me. Captain Sisko can only restrain his impulses for so long. But for you to change your position so easily would only make him suspicious. Soon enough, he will leave that station behind. You can count on it."
Cautiously, the Chief flexed his hand. It was still tender - right down to the depths of his muscles. What had started as a burning agony had finally dulled, now little more than a distant, blunt edged ache. A change so gradual that he hardly noticed it until finally realising that he had experienced little pain from almost the moment he'd entered the Destiny's sickbay. "I've given you a mild analgesic," the junior lieutenant - Belinda Chalmers - was telling him. "But it's going to be sore for a few days yet - so go easy on it."
But even the knowledge that he was healed did nothing to make him feel any better. The examination room was close to deserted, certainly emptier than O'Brien assumed such a place was accustomed to be. He scowled, irritated by the unceasing pastel-white illumination. Funny, he noted silently. He'd never imagined that he could one day miss the dull, semi-metallic grey and brown of Deep Space Nine.
And all the while, he had been unable to keep his gaze away from a closed partition at the far side of the divided space - semi opaque, with occasional blurred shapes moving like ghosts at the other side. Their actions were obscure to him, but he knew that it was the same medical team that had earlier beamed onto their runabout. They were still so close by - fighting for his friend.
Fighting in a way that he could not.
Lieutenant Chalmers paused with the broad-based, pulsing laser still held in one slender hand. "You know," she began as she noticed the frustration in O'Brien's eyes, the angle of his head, the tension that remained in his neck and back. "I'm willing to bet that your friend in there'll be all right. He's lucky to have had you two around."
"Yeah," the Chief muttered, a soft growl forming at the base of his throat. He didn't meet the lieutenant's eyes. "Right. Lucky."
With little thought for the visibly fading rough and thickened red marks along his arm, he glanced instead at the place where Elim Garak still waited and watched from the other end of the room. A cursory examination had revealed no cause for concern - in the Cardassian's case, at least. But still he lingered, as tight lipped and wary as ever, and O'Brien saw him tense as his focus intensified sharply on the opposite entrance.
There had been movement, unseen with O'Brien looking in the opposite direction, and heralded by the breath of a distant sliding door.
"Thanks," the Chief muttered to the young lieutenant, but was already on his feet and pushing past her. The weary doctor moved forward swiftly from the adjacent room, smoothing her hair with one hand, and reacting instantly to the question on both men's faces. Her sigh was quiet, tired, a little sad.
"Oh no…" gasped O'Brien.
"No - it's nothing like that." She responded quickly, words spilling from her like floodwater. But as quick as she had been to reassure them, she hurried to qualify her initial promise. Again, O'Brien was sure he'd heard something more than just distant, professional concern - the kind that she would show for any new patient. Uncertainty and sadness were quick to return to her eyes.
"I'd say it's touch and go from here," she told them quietly, and held back another sigh. "It's a good thing we got to him when we did. He's been hurt quite badly - and if that was all, then I wouldn't be this guarded in my prognosis. But I think the best thing is to watch, and wait. We've done everything we can, for now. It all depends on tonight."
She seemed to notice the worried glance that passed between both men. "But I will say this," she added, determinedly enough to regain their full attention. "Your friend doesn't strike me as the kind of man to give up without a fight."
O'Brien nodded, avoiding the sight of everyone around him. "You're right about that," he muttered under his breath.
Garak's assigned quarters were not as small as the fore section of the runabout had been. But the room was cold, enclosed - and decidedly lonely. He'd felt the walls press in around him from almost the first moment he'd entered. Raw, heart-clenching terror, and a cold sweat across his skin made no better by the chill in the surrounding air.
There was no real reason for him to trap himself within the boundary of his quarters. The Starfleet officers on board the Destiny had given no indication that they intended to hold him captive aboard their ship. But he had learnt one clear lesson from his experience in the universe: There was more than one way for a man to be a prisoner.
Certainly, these Starfleet people were not half as trusting as they were eager to have him believe. Not that he minded. Being trusted by strangers had always made him uneasy. It was a comfort, in a way, to find some degree of customary suspicion etched into their faces. Much as he had seen on Doctor Bashir's face, the very first time they'd met.
The good doctor had been the one to teach him that it was possible to get through any situation, without necessarily sacrificing oneself or one's friends along the way. And from what he recalled, it had been a lesson well learned - albeit from one of those ridiculously childish fantasies of his. Glad for a moment that there were no witnesses to his flash of nostalgia, Garak smiled at the memory. Lessons could be gleaned from the most peculiar sources, he reflected wryly. How strange that this one should have come from a Human.
No reason to stay… But somehow, no matter how he tried, the Cardassian could not gather enough impetus to move from his position. This was not the first time he had felt this way, not the first time he'd been so restless, so secretly unable to find the peace of sleep. He perched himself on one of those large, soft Federation sofas, clenching his hands across both knees, and looked around him. It was going to be a long night, spent doing nothing but sitting, and thinking. Perhaps he ought to step into the corridor - at the very least, find himself some company.
There might even be a chance… He had yet to convince Chief O'Brien to join him for a round or two of kotra. A brief diversion, just to pass the time. O'Brien had seemed as much in need of a distraction as he was.
Or not.
Sighing, he lifted an appallingly ugly Andorian sculpture from its place atop the nearest table, turned it around in his hands, and set it back upon the hard, sterile surface. He leaned back, staring into the shadows, and braced himself for what he knew would be a very long night.