Chapter 15:
"Dammit," Sheridan muttered, glowering at his now-silent Starfleet pin. Glancing at Garibaldi, he shook his head and heaved a long-suffering sigh. "I would love it if just once he'd tell us something useful."
"Fat chance," Garibaldi grunted, smirking.
Henry Pleasants stared at them both for a long moment, then turned his attention back to the other occupants of the small building, and met their own wide-eyed stares with the same basilisk gaze that had melted the major. "Get a move on!"
Shaking themselves out of their immobility, the four men raced around the room, collecting pieces of their uniforms, scrambling for rucksacks and recently issued leather pouches, specially designed to hold AK-47 magazines and replace the heavy old cartridge box that served during the war. The major meanwhile had dived into the cabin's only other room, and was fumbling through his finely-sanded trunk for his own weapon.
Turning unmistakably towards Caudell, Pleasants commanded with deliberate volume, "First Sergeant, see to the weapons locker, we'll need at least six rifles."
Nate Caudell, dredging up the behavior drilled into him years earlier, snapped to a posture that could be forgivingly called "attention," and stomped over to the heavy oak gun cabinet in the corner. Little to his surprise, it wasn't locked or secured, and he pried the doors open, whistling at what he saw within. Propped up in a pair of neat rows within the cabinet, twelve repeaters were resting atop a large ammunition chest, oiled barrels gleaming in the orange glow of the wide hearth.
Pulling one out for inspection, Caudell worked the action, reacquainting himself with the once-familiar feel of the smooth wood stock and grip, its strangely light weight, and the cold metallic click of the action as he worked it. The workmanship was unmistakable. The Rivington men had brought a hundred thousand of the weapons back with them, but after the war, the army had been mostly reequipped with the Confederate model, which was being produced as quickly as the growing manufacturing capacity of the Confederacy could manage, while the much superior originals had been deemed too valuable to be left in service. Except here, apparently. "Hen… ah, Colonel," he said, "these are the real things."
"Good, I expect we'll be needing them." Pleasants turned to the four poker players, who had managed to pull themselves into some semblance of uniformity. "I hope you boys have been practicing with these. From the looks of those guns, I doubt it. Prove me wrong."
Caudell thrust the weapon he was holding into the hands of the nearest man, then ushered him towards the door, where Sheridan, Garibaldi, and Bashir were crowding back through to the outside. Moving faster, Caudell tossed the next gun at the next man, the one called Hawkins, who now wore a sergeant's stripes on his sleeve, and then the corporal behind him, and the private beyond.
Pleasants helped himself to one of the rifles, then scooped out the ammunition chest and began tossing loaded clips to the men, and stuffing several more into his pockets wherever they fit. The last he snapped into the receiver of the AK-47 in his hands just as the heavyset major bustled out of the back room, attempting to hook the holster of his Colt Navy revolver to his wide belt.
"Major," Pleasants said bluntly, "you will remain here."
The round-faced major's protest died sputtering on his lips as Pleasants turned to regard him evenly, jacking a round into the chamber of his rifle with a startlingly loud click. "That's an order, Major. If this post is under enemy observation, they'll know something's afoot if the lights go out and the fire burns out."
He was being denied a place in whatever action was about to take place, but the thought of sitting by a warm fire in a safe, comfortable cabin and still being involved in some small way balanced out in the major's mind, and he nodded thoughtfully. "A deception. Stonewall would approve, sir."
Pleasants smiled thinly. "I hope so." Closing the door behind himself as he left, he shook his head wonderingly, and stepped into the circle of people forming on the path. His eyes were just starting to be re-accustomed to the dark, so he nearly jumped when from over his shoulder, Garibaldi asked, "Did he really buy that? You know, and I know, that if whoever's out there is watching this place, we're sunk already."
"Doesn't matter much to me," Pleasants replied. "What does matter is that he's not stumbling along behind us with a loaded weapon."
Garibaldi winced at the thought. "Point taken." Then he grinned, and added, "I take it that he's what they used to call a REMF."
"Mr. Garibaldi!" Sheridan's mock reprimand only made the security chief's grin widen.
Caudell squinted at Garibaldi through the darkness. "A what?"
Bashir looked confused, which gave him something in common with the rest of the 1871 natives.
Garibaldi explained.
"By God if that ain't the truth," Pleasants forced out between laughs. Sheridan could only roll his eyes, and try to stifle a smirk. Caudell and the four soldiers joined the laughter, even if it was a bit nervous on the soldiers' part. Bashir still looked slightly confused, and Garibaldi gave up on him.
"It's your mission now, it seems, Colonel," Sheridan offered with a shrug, glancing around at the suddenly mismatched numbers. "If Marcus was whispering though, I'd recommend stealth."
"Certainly," Pleasants agreed easily enough. "Nate, you're the senior sergeant here, so I want you to take these boys on ahead. You do remember how to run a skirmish line, don't you?"
"A skirmish line of five men? I think I can manage… sir," Caudell retorted dryly. Now he jacked a round into his own gun, turned to the four soldiers, and said, "Sergeant Hawkins, you heard the colonel. We'll be takin' the lead, but ya'll keep it quiet, understand? Just like a deer hunt. And keep an eye on the ground; they dropped a buncha damn torpedoes around the town a few years back."
It was obvious by now to the younger man that something serious was going on, and the hand clutching his rifle shook slightly as he answered, "Yes sir, just like a deer hunt. Me an' the boys can do that."
Caudell nodded in return, raised a hand, and stealing off into the woods, waved them to follow.
The speed at which the five men vanished into trees amazed Sheridan, who turned to regard Pleasants with raised brows.
The colonel laughed. "It is something, ain't it? I can't do it myself, but you should've seen the fellers in my old regiment. Some of them were from the back woods of Pennsylvania, and they could shoot like the devil and move like Injuns." Looking into the woods, his eyes unfocused in memory, he added, "They were a lot like these boys here. If things had gone a little differently, most of 'em could have been friends. God damned shame." Then he shook his head reflexively, taking stock of who was left of their little group in the light still pouring from the windows of the small cabin.
"We've given them enough of a head start, I think," he said. "Everyone just remember to keep quiet, and keep low." With that admonition, he set off a short distance down the trail back to the wider road, then cut into the woods, following the road from the shelter of the tall brush lining it.
Wordlessly, Sheridan stayed on his heels, motioning for Garibaldi and Bashir to follow a short distance behind, and to keep alert. Garibaldi didn't need to be told even once and already crept along with PPG in hand, eyeing the forest around them watchfully.
Feeling their way forward, and unable to make use of Garibaldi's flashlight, their movements were slow and careful. Even so, the lighted windows of the cabin were quickly lost in the trees behind them, and the road became little more than a pale slash in the woods on their right.
Thunder rumbled ominously overhead, and a sudden gust of wind whipped branches and leaves into their faces. Bashir stopped to wipe away a large raindrop that plopped into his face from above, and Garibaldi prodded him forward again. "Keep moving," he murmured, "little rain never hurt anybody."
"Speak for yourself," Bashir returned in a low, sardonic tone. "You aren't wearing a wool shirt. Do you have any idea how much I'm going to itch?"
Garibaldi was prevented from responding that he not only didn't know, but didn't care, when Sheridan hissed at them to be quiet.
A taut whisper to their left brought them to a halt finally, and Sheridan was relieved to spot the glint of light off a familiar Ranger brooch, incongruous against the clothes it was pinned to. Raindrops spattered occasionally off the leaves around them, and Marcus's smile flashed white in the gloom. "Glad to see you made it, Captain. This is quite a batch you've picked up. Some of these chaps wouldn't make half-bad Rangers, you know."
"Don't get any ideas," Sheridan warned. "Now, what are we looking for here?"
"Just up ahead a few steps. The ground drops off up ahead and the road follows it down into a clearing. I think there used to be houses or something there, but they're gone now. If we get away from the road though, the hill runs right up to the edge of the open ground, and that's where I was looking down on them from. And that's when I saw it."
Pleasants gestured sharply. "Take us up there, man!"
The vantage point Marcus spoke of was just a short distance uphill from where they crouched, and crawling over the top of the low rise, they were startled by the sudden glare of a blue-white light through the trees.
Blinking to clear his eyes, Garibaldi peered down into the illuminated clearing below. Almost immediately, he saw the object to which Marcus must have been referring. Squatting in the center of the open space in the glow of halogen lights from a distant year, a railroad hand-cart was being guarded by a pair of stony-face sentries. Armed with AK-47's themselves, the camouflaged sentries periodically paced around the cart, warily glancing into the encroaching forest. A few dozen yards behind it, several small tents, and a larger camouflaged one were pitched beside what appeared to be yet more burned-out ruins; a house from the size, and a generator chugged along a short distance from the largest tent.
The rain began to fall in earnest now, visible in the glare of the spotlights posted around the perimeter, and soaking the watchers concealed in the trees. There was a single outwardly unremarkable-looking crate sitting atop the hand-cart, lashed into place with nylon straps, and the cart itself was flanked by piles of new-looking steel railroad trestles and smaller crates. One side of the crate atop the cart was still opened, however, and the snub-nosed metal object within draw Garibaldi's eye to it immediately. Through what was rapidly becoming a steady and uncomfortable downpour, the singular black and yellow insignia emblazoned on the side was unmistakable. "My God, they're not going for the subtle approach, are they?" he muttered aloud. "You seeing this, Captain?"
Beside him, Sheridan nodded grimly. "I see it. We've got a problem."
"It's bloody overkill, if you ask me," Marcus commented.
"I didn't," Garibaldi said archly.
"Well who asked you?" Marcus quipped.
"Quiet!" Sheridan and Pleasants commanded in unison.
"So just what the hell is that thing?" Pleasants asked impatiently.
Sheridan grimaced. "A weapon."
Exasperated, Pleasants glared at him reproachfully, and said, "I can see that, Captain. I want to know what kind of weapon it is. It sounds to me like you know." The whirring hum of Bashir's tricorder underscored his words.
Sheridan hesitated, wondering how much to tell, but resolved the issue quickly. Might as well tell him. Anyway, it'll be another seventy or eighty years before they have the technology to even start making a guess about how it works. "It's some kind of a nuclear weapon: a bomb, actually. A very big bomb."
Eyebrows knitted, Pleasants stared at him. "Why would they bring something like that? It's not big enough to hold more than a few tons of powder, and we used more than that to blow their lines open just a few miles from here. You can't fight a whole country with that!"
"Hey, don't you get it?" Garibaldi snapped, appalled by the other man's apparent unconcern. "They didn't just cram some powder in there and hope it cooks off. When that thing goes off, you'd be looking at the same thing as a few million tons of TNT!"
"Mr. Garibaldi," Sheridan reminded him sharply, "I don't think they've even invented TNT yet." He shook his head, turning back to Pleasants. "Colonel, what Mr. Garibaldi means is that this is no ordinary bomb. If they set this thing off in a city, there won't be a city anymore."
Pleasants stared at them all dubiously before answering carefully. "As a matter of fact, Captain, we do have TNT. You'll have to excuse me if this is a difficult pill to swallow. Captain, I'm an engineer, and everything I know about explosives says you're both lunatics." He licked suddenly dry lips, continuing, "But so far tonight I've seen a ray of light that can make people disappear and come back, wireless telegraphs smaller than a snuff box, and guns that shoot honest-to-God fireballs… so you'll forgive me if I'm disinclined to say what is or isn't possible.
"But that'll be my next question," he told them. "Say they've got this super-bomb of yours. What are they planning on doing with it, and how can we stop 'em?"
Sheridan could only shake his head and scowl through the rain at the rickety rail-cart and its deadly cargo. "I can't answer the first," he admitted. "From what you've told us, they don't stand to gain anything simply by blowing up Richmond. They may be furious with you, but they did steal another time machine and a nuke, so they aren't stupid. There's something more going on here. As to the second question though, I think we can help you there." Almost grinning with anticipation, he yanked the Starfleet chevron pin from his vest pocket, and pressed it. "Sheridan to Enterprise. We need you to beam something up for us."
He waited, his grin starting to slip away, as the pin remained silent. "Sheridan to Enterprise," he repeated, "Please respond."
"Captain," Bashir put in, "I think our problems are more complicated than that." He waved his tricorder, sending water droplets beaded on the case flying in all directions. "I've been trying to scan this thing for the past few minutes." He shrugged helplessly. "As far as my tricorder is concerned, there's nothing there."
"An illusion?" Sheridan asked.
Bashir shook his head vigorously. "Definitely not. Even if it were a hologram, I'd be picking up radiation signatures, ambient light, biosigns from the guards, power sources… but I'm not even reading air anymore. All the tricorder can see anymore is some kind of energy field. I'll try and narrow down what we're looking at, but I can't tell you how long that'll take. If I can get close to the bomb, the tricorder might be able to cut through the interference," he offered dubiously.
"Man," Garibaldi muttered testily, "do you people build these things specially designed to be as temperamental as Ivanova on a bad hair day? I'd better not find out there's some kind of fragging rock that's making that thing act all haywire."
"That hardly ever happens," Bashir sniffed defensively.
"We're being jammed," Sheridan grunted, hoping he was wrong. "That's why I can't get ahold of your ship."
Bashir nodded reluctantly. "That does seem to fit the facts. But how?" He glanced sideways at Pleasants, soil that was rapidly turning to mud squishing beneath him as he moved. "I thought you said they came from the early 21st century? They shouldn't be able to do that!"
"Maybe they came from further in the future than we thought?" Garibaldi hazarded.
"It doesn't matter right now," Sheridan said, ending the conversation. "We'll just have to take it into account until we can figure this out. We can't afford to send anyone back to reestablish contact with the ships, and we can't count on our handlinks either. We have no idea how far this jamming field goes, and now we have no way of knowing just how many more people they have in those tents, so we need every extra hand here. Including yours, Doctor."
"We'll have to do things ourselves," Pleasants said, clearly following the exchange to at least some degree. "Just the way we always have." The last was a pointed reminder to the men from the future. "We'll need to remove those guards if we intend to gain a closer look at that bomb, but we can't do that with those damned lights." He glanced around, quickly spotting the two other people he needed to speak to, and as luck would have it, within earshot of a low call even over the sound of the rain. "Nate! Get over here, and bring Sergeant Hawkins with you."
It didn't take long before Caudell slithered up alongside the others through the muck, with the sergeant at his back. He didn't much care for crawling through the mud, but clothes and bodies could be washed: it was a different story if a careless head wound up in a Rivington man's gun sights. "Right here, Henry. Uh, Colonel Henry."
Pleasants shook his head, more amused than anything else. He turned his attention to the other man first, however. "Sergeant, what's the layout of this place, and why the hell wasn't it reported?"
Wide-eyed, Hawkins seemed speechless for a moment, but he gathered his wits quickly and responded, "Sir, the major, he sends out a patrol through here every day. I came through here myself just yesterday morn', and there weren't nothing here! I swear, Colonel!"
"That explains why there aren't any of those double-damned endless repeaters set up yet," Caudell said thoughtfully. "To tell the truth, I was half-expecting to get myself chewed apart by one of 'em on the way here."
"I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind either," Pleasants confessed quietly.
"That sounds like one of those things you should have mentioned before we came this far," Garibaldi grumbled.
Sheridan continued scanning the encampment, keeping an amused eye on Bashir, who was smacking his tricorder into the palm of his hand, as if a display of stress could jar it into activity. They were in a position of strength despite their small numbers and uncertain technology, he recognized at once – it had been so long since he hadn't been the underdog that he'd forgotten what it felt like to have the advantage. Now that he did have it though, he intended to make full use of it.
"Colonel, you were right. The first thing we need to do is knock out those lights. Those guards down there don't have night vision of any kind, so darkness is our friend right now. And that means we have to take out that generator. With a bit of luck, it'll also knock out their jamming device."
"A phaser hit should more than suffice, Captain," Bashir offered, finally pocketing the useless scanning device.
Garibaldi shook his head furiously. "No way. We don't even know how many of them are in those tents, and the racket your phasers make would have every last one of them crawling up our butts in a second."
"Garibaldi's right," Sheridan said, "we need to shut that thing down, but it has to be quietly. If they think it's just a break down, it'll buy us some time to check out that bomb." He was laying out a plan of action in his head, but Pleasants wasn't content to wait. He also knew he was out of his league when it came to a single bomb that could supposedly level an entire city.
"I can manage that, I reckon," the Pennsylvanian engineer said. "Sergeant Hawkins, collect your men, you're with First Sergeant Caudell here. Mr. Garibaldi, I'd be appreciative if you'd join them as well. Nate, that thing's all yours."
"You don't know how that generator works," Sheridan pointed out.
Caudell grinned. "Seeing as how I'm just supposed to break it, that doesn't strike me as such an obstacle."
Sheridan returned the expression, nodding slowly. "All right. The minute those lights go out, we're making our move. If we can do it without being spotted, all the better. Good luck, Colonel."
But the Confederate soldiers were already gone with Garibaldi in tow, leaving only a faint rustle of leaves and undergrowth to mark their departure.
Less than five minutes later, the gentle chugging of the generator stopped cold, and the entire clearing was plunged into pitch darkness. Sheridan had no idea how Garibaldi and the men with him had silenced the machine so quietly, but Marcus's movements were suddenly audible below him on the hill.
A rustle of leaves. A faint footstep and snapping twig. Then nothing for several heartbeats.
Someone down in the clearing said something, a note of concern clear even in the Germanic-sounding tongue it spoke. The voice almost muffled a short rush of air and compressed metal that had become a familiar sound in recent months, and though the men arranged on the hill above could never guess at how the Ranger had retained his night vision, the results were swift and certain. The sounds of two bodies striking the dirt reached their ears as if through cotton.
"That's our cue." Sheridan directed the comment at Henry Pleasants, who licked his lips, and nodded. Sounds in the darkness ahead hinted at men boiling out of the tents in response to the sudden power outage.
Raising his right hand, Pleasants brought it down in swift chopping motion pointed in the general direction of the rail cart below them. "Skirmish order, men, hold your fire until I give the word. Move out!"
The men scattered, making the short rush down the hill as fast as any of them could manage without light. Aside from several stifled exclamations and curses as some of them collided with trees, roots, or thorny brambles, or slipped down the increasingly muddy slope, the charge into the clearing was nearly silent.
The ruckus on the other side of the clearing, amid the encampment there was growing, and flashlight beams stabbed the night, searching for targets as other men ran to the generator to restart it. The scene was all the more eerie due to the muffling rain, the odd shadows produced by waving flashlights, and the oddly-accented shouts of men.
Marcus was waiting beside the rail card and its deadly cargo when Pleasants stormed into the clearing in the lead of the small group emerging from the woods at the foot of the hill. Two limp bodies at his feet said all that needed to be said of how well he had performed his task.
Sheridan pointed at the bomb on the cart, and waved Bashir over to it. "Doctor, get up there and find out what it is, and if we can shut it down! Everyone else, find some good cover here. We don't have much time."
While Bashir smoothly hauled himself to the top of the cart, and went to fiddling with his tricorder, Sheridan stabbed a well-used button on his handlink, figuring it was worth a try before he sent someone to go looking for them. "Garibaldi, get back over here, we're expecting company any time now."
"Copy that, Captain," Garibaldi replied. "Something tells me they were expecting this. But that generator's out for good. Garibaldi out." Sheridan breathed a silent prayer of thanks that their handlinks didn't seem affected by the jamming.
Pleasants rested his rifle across a rain-slicked pile of steel rail trestles, and crouched behind it, keeping a careful watch on the camp in front of them. At his feet, a walkie-talkie suddenly crackled to life, and he nearly leapt the pile.
A tinny, thickly accented voice bawled, "Josef, come in Josef! We may have been discovered. Report in immediately!"
"Ah hell." Sheridan, who had taken a position behind the same rail pile, turned his gaze up at the rail cart. "Doctor, you don't think you can hurry that along, can you?" The ragged voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie began blasting imprecations at the unconscious guard, and Sheridan yanked the small box from the man's belt and ground it under his heel with an aggravated growl.
"That jamming field's still up, Captain," Bashir's tense, preoccupied voice said, floating down from above. "If you think you can do better, be my guest!"
Figures running towards them from the general direction of the camp dissuaded Sheridan's response, as did the chip of his handlink. Silhouetted by the flickering and probing lights behind them and obscuring rain, a clear identification was impossible.
"Captain, hold your fire, that's us!" Garibaldi exclaimed, panting into his own link. "I think we've been made!"
After spending the past hours creeping through a forest, only the background drone of insects to break the silence, the shouting of the Rivington men in their camp had seemed loud. But that was as next to nothing when the first shot was fired. Garibaldi and the men with him threw themselves down and scuttled into the dubious shelter of the railroad cart, steel rails, and tool crates, breathing heavily. The first flat crack of a rifle was followed by several more, and there was no doubt about who they were aimed at.
"Hurry up, Doc!" Garibaldi shouted, no longer bothering to keep his voice down.
"What do I look like I'm doing?!" Bashir yelled back, ducking down and using the bomb itself as a shield. He'd seen enough combat against the Dominion, the Cardassians, and more others than he cared to remember, so he knew the value of cover. That didn't mean he had to like it, though.
Pleasants meanwhile made a quick head-count and breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright boys, give 'em hell! And aim carefully, dammit!" He hoped that Sheridan knew what he was doing, because the whole situation was rapidly going to hell. He'd seen the accuracy of these weapons first hand, and even in the darkness he doubted that they could retreat up the hill behind them without at least half of them being picked off.
One of the Rivington men flopped to the ground shrieking, and another simply dropped where he stood before the rest managed to find cover. Their initial panicked reactions had ended, and now they were coolly returning fire.
Sheridan held his fire for the moment, keeping his head out of the line of fire. It was amazing, he thought. Here I am armed with a weapon so advanced that even the engineer thinks it shoots fireballs, and I feel practically naked. By any measure, this was nothing like any firefight he'd ever been in, if simply because it was happening somewhere other than a back corridor of Babylon 5.
Bashir suddenly shouted triumphantly. "I've got something, Captain!" He was still shouting, but over the constant rattle and stuttering of gunfire and the thrumming rain, Sheridan still had to concentrate to make out the words.
Just then, one of the soldiers who'd joined Bashir atop the rail cart toppled backwards to the ground, heaving the foamy wet breaths of a lung-shot. Nate Caudell swore violently, and pointed at the position held by the Rivington men. "Shoot for the lights!" After one of the Rivington men stopped a bullet directed towards his flashlight, the others caught on quickly, and most turned theirs off, leaving only the bold flickers of muzzle flashes to pick targets by.
Bashir leaped from the cart to the wounded man, and cursing, Sheridan left the cover of the trestles long enough to scurry to a spot behind the cart.
"We need to get this man back to the ship!" Bashir yelled when he turned and saw the Earthforce captain behind him.
"And we can't do that until we take out whatever's jamming us!" Sheridan returned hotly. "Now what hell did you find?"
Chagrined, Bashir gestured to his tricorder. "I think I found the source of the field." He motioned Sheridan to the end of the cart, and leaned around one of the big wheels, pointing through the downpour. "See that small tent off to the side there? I'm pretty sure whatever it is, is in there."
Looking for himself, Sheridan stared unhappily where Bashir had indicated. The tent, more of a Quonset hut, was located to one side of the camp… and directly behind of a line of sand bags that concealed who knew how many well armed Rivington men.
Sending several rounds downrange, Pleasants threw himself down behind the steel again, and shouted, "I hope like hell you've got a plan, Sheridan!"
Garibaldi, alerted by the shout, scurried across to the rail cart with Marcus following closely behind, occasionally hugging the ground as bullets hissed overhead. Coming up behind Sheridan, he called, "Captain, we can't stay here! They've got more men, more ammo, and at this range, once it gets light we won't be able to pull out."
Sheridan pulled the security chief over, and pointed out their target in the scattered light of the remaining flashlights. "If we can take that hut out, we can just ask to be beamed out. Problem is, just shooting it up probably won't work, and I wouldn't care to try hitting it with a PPG at this distance."
Nodding in agreement, Garibaldi pulled back behind the cover of the cart's nearest wheel. "Maybe if we had a PPG rifle, Captain. But if we start shooting off our pistols here, we're just asking to eat lead, and we still would be lucky to hit it, and even then it'd take more than one hit to guarantee taking it out." He started to give a defeated shake of the head, when his eyes suddenly snapped to Bashir, who was once more crouched over the wounded man.
"But one of your phaser guns on the other hand…" Garibaldi said speculatively. The small, overly-ergonomic shape on the doctor's waist was a far cry from the big rifle Worf had tutored him in on the holodeck, but it was basically the same kind of weapon. "Hey Doc, how many shots can you make with that gun of yours at full power?"
Looking startled by the question, Bashir rocked back on his heels, drawing the phaser. "Why? You planning on knocking down a building?" Garibaldi's sudden grin answered him, and he blinked. "You're not serious. No, wait; forget I asked that, of course you would be."
Sheridan motioned him over. "We need that jamming field taken out, now, Doctor. Can you hit it at this range?"
Bashir managed to look insulted, but braced the phaser against his forearm, leaned up against the cold steel of the cart wheel, and depressed the trigger.
And pressed it again when nothing happened.