Author's Note: Almost everything I learned about stars for this chapter I learned from Wikipedia. Some stuff I made up. I take full responsibility for any errors.

2

"Captain's log, stardate five-two-three-four-three-point-seven. We've made it safely back to the station, and the convoy ships to Bajor, without running into any Dominion ships. I consider us lucky, and don't want to push that luck again.

"We transfered the four survivors of the Kejada to the infirmary here. Doctor el Naser believes they would all be better off somewhere more stable than a ship, and I'm inclined to agree with him, although I do share Julian's concern that Deep Space Nine is not the safest place to house recuperating guests. I'm grateful that the Blessing Way hasn't been reassigned yet; we have four survivors from a crew of seventy-five. I doubt any one counselor alone could manage the feelings of survivor guilt these four will have. The Blessing Way's counselor has offered his services as long as his ship remains here.

"Two of the four of them have regained consciousness: Lieutenant Vael, a Vulcan engineer, and Ensign Houni, a human man from Mars. The Enterprise will be passing through here shortly, to pick up the Kejada and tow her back to Starbase seventy-five. From there, my understanding is that she'll be returned to Earth. I imagine the two recovering officers will join the Enterprise. The two who are still unconscious, in the meantime, will remain here.

"Julian tells me that it looks like Commander Dredan Raza will make a full recovery; nonetheless, I have alerted the Symbiosis Commission on Trill that we have him here and he is badly injured. They are sending a joining candidate to the station as a precautionary measure. We don't have any unjoined Trills around like the last time we desperately needed one. The other patient, Lieutenant Sedtha, remains in critical condition, under the constant care of three very competent doctors.

"My science and engineering crews are working with those from the Blessing Way to bring the Kejada's computers back on line. The chief assures me that they weren't attacked, which is a relief, but doesn't change the fact that eighty people, including the ship's small civilian population, are dead. It must have been one hell of an ionic storm.

"For now, we have no real answers. I don't suppose anything we find out will be much consolation to our four survivors anyway."

Ezri Dax sat in her office, staring blankly at the low, round table in front of her. She was alone, sitting in the dim, calming lighting. The table's surface was blue with specks of black and white. The white specks were far less numerous than the black ones. They reminded her of stars. Scattered stars in the vast, empty plain of space.

She had just finished a session with Lieutenant Vael, who, all things considered, was dealing very well with the loss of her crewmates. But then, she was a Vulcan and was pragmatic to the core about everything. Ezri knew that Vulcans generally reacted to this type of emotional stress in two ways: one, by simply accepting it and working through it with their typical aplomb, or, two, by losing control of their minds and emotions. Thankfully, it appeared that Vael fell into the first category.

Nonetheless, the session weighed heavily on Ezri's mind. She felt old. Stretched. Like the entire existence of the universe was pouring into her.

It wasn't an entirely new feeling. She had been coping with similar experiences ever since being joined. It was sometimes a struggle to keep the previous Dax personalities from overwhelming her. She hadn't been prepared to be joined, and the Symbiosis Committee had been excellent in their support, but some days, like today, it felt like too much.

Where's the real Ezri?, she asked herself, chewing on her lower lip. Is there really an Ezri anymore, or am I just an echo of all the rest?

Today, the unease was stronger. Ezri felt sure there were more memories hiding in her mind than she'd previously noticed. It was almost as if having another joined Trill on board had given her a whole new panorama of past host lives. He was unconscious, so was she trying to compensate for that somehow? Ezri had no idea; she doubted any Trill would. Her situation was unprecedented.

Except for that one human Starfleet officer, Riker or Ritcher, who had taken on a Trill symbiont in order to keep it from dying. Jadzia or Curzon remembered that, and had passed it onto Ezri. The man had almost died but had saved the symbiont and, in the end, a Trill had been found in time to keep the human alive. She wondered how he had dealt with the sudden, unwanted influx of memories.

It was Riker, she suddenly remembered. Jadzia had met him here on the station and he had told her about it. He was the first officer on the Enterprise. That ship was scheduled to pass through here in several days. Maybe she would ask him then.

With a sigh, Ezri pushed herself to her feet. She put away Vael's file and left her office, heading down to the infirmary.

Inside, it was quiet, an enforced silence for the recovering patients. Ezri went to Raza's small room and found him in exactly the same state as he had been since being rescued. He didn't seem to want to wake up from the coma he was in. Bashir and Doctor el Naser from the Blessing Way had puzzled over this for awhile, consulting with Trill medical authorities, then had decided to let Raza recover in his own time. Ezri felt this was the best way, and had confidence that Bashir knew what he was doing. After all, Jadzia had always had confidence in him and Ezri saw no reason to doubt that.

The other patient, a half-Andorian, half-Aenar woman, was in more serious condition and neither Bashir nor el Naser wanted to risk reviving her. They had her under constant monitoring, so much so that both Blessing Way doctors were taking rotating shifts with Bashir, so that there was always someone keeping an eye on Lieutenant Sedtha at all times.

Ezri pulled up a chair and sat down beside the unconscious Trill man. She stared at him blankly, as she had been staring at the table, not really seeing him. His image blurred slightly and she felt her head nodding toward her chest. With a start, she jerked herself back awake, then sat in the silence of the room, trying not to think. On days when she felt threatened by the tide of memories from previous lives, she found it best not to dwell on it.

She let her eyes close again, the rhythm of the monitoring machines lulling her to sleep. A brief memory flashed through her mind as she nodded off, of an exhausted Bashir, slumped in a seat beside a biobed. That was Jadzia's memory, of a time when one of Bashir's good friends from the Academy had ended up here, injured and unconscious. Ezri dismissed it; it wasn't her memory and now wasn't the time for it.

She awoke sometime later at the touch of a hand on her shoulder. Ezri blinked her eyes open and found herself looking back into Bashir's eyes, which were twinkling with amusement. She sat up straight, glancing around, and remembered where she was.

"Oh, Julian," she replied, then yawned, shaking her head. "How long was I asleep for?"

"I don't know," Bashir replied, amused. "I just got here."

Ezri nodded, shaking away the last vestiges of sleep. She felt much better now, the uncertainty over who she was settling again. Jadzia's memories, always the strongest when Ezri felt her weakest, returned the background, where they belonged.

"Any change?", the counselor asked, nodding at the patient.

Bashir shook his head.

"But if there is, I promise you'll be the first to know."

"How's Lieutenant Sedtha?", she asked.

"Still hanging in there," Bashir replied. "She's passed the worst of it. I'm trying to get Starfleet to agree to have the Enterprise transport her to Starbase seventy-five as well, so she can be in a real hospital. Once the Blessing Way leaves, I won't be able to monitor her twenty-six hours a day."

Ezri nodded. She knew Bashir did his best, but he was one doctor for a station of a few thousand people, not to mention new patients who might be transfered here from the fighting. Someone as critically injured as Sedtha needed attention he couldn't spare on his own.

"Maybe you can convince Doctor el Naser to accept a transfer here," she suggested with a smile as she stood.

Bashir grinned and chuckled.

"As much as I'd love to have him and Shan around, it would be like trying to get latinum from a Feringi, I think. The sickbay on the Blessing Way is his sickbay. I'd be no more willing to leave this place."

"Well, at least they'll be around for awhile," Ezri said.

"There is that," Bashir agreed easily.

"I'll see you later, Julian," she said and left the infirmary, heading for home. There was a now-familiar moment of indecision as she fought superimposed memories of home. Relying on instinct wouldn't work anymore; Ezri waited until the feeling had subsided and headed for her own quarters, instead of where Jadzia and Worf had once lived.

Commander Shannon Tanner heard the whoop of triumph from the bridge, although no one else around her did. She was in the Kejada's astrometrics lab, trying vainly on her end to get the computer system back on line. Although she and her science staff, and the few science officers from DS9, were familiar with Starfleet computer systems, they weren't engineers. It was the engineering crew on the bridge, led by the highly skilled Chief O'Brien, who seemed to have solved the problem.

Tanner resisted the urge to tap her combadge and ask O'Brien how it was coming. T'Sarak would disapprove. She would probably disapprove just to know that Tanner was listening with her mind's ears. Vulcans didn't have the ability to tune themselves in and out of their mental surroundings without physical contact, but Tanner did.

Not that it meant much. At first, Bashir had wanted to tell Starfleet Medical and she had adamently refused. When the war with the Dominion had broken out, Tanner would have gone to offer her services in person, exposing her genetic abnomally and effectively ending her normal life, but for the fact that she was useless as a telepathic spy. As far as she understood, naturally telepathic species, like Vulcans and Betazoids, had mental abilities that transcended language. Tanner did not. She could reads minds if the thinkers spoke English. She was passable in Vulcan; she had been on a Vulcan science ship for eleven months and it would have been difficult, not to mention ignorant, not learn to speak their language. But Vulcans had tight mental shields and she couldn't communicate with them mentally unless linked by a mind meld. She enough Arabic now to understand el Naser when he thought in Arabic, but that was almost always laced with some English. She could say about two things in Klingon, and spoke not a word of Romulan, Dominionese or Cardassian.

And she had learned that speaking a language was, for her, nowhere near close to understanding it mentally, with all the jumpy, half formed thoughts that passed through the minds of most people.

So instead of calling up to the bridge, she waited until the call came through to the astrometrics lab.

"O'Brien to astrometrics."

Tanner tapped her combadge.

"This is Tanner."

"Commander, we've got the main computer back on line. See if you can get any of your stations up and running."

Tanner gestured to her team and turned to the console in front of her. At her command, it came back to life, flickering for a moment at first, then stabilizing itself. She smiled, then glanced around. T'Sarak shook her head, as did Ensign Pokal, an officer from DS9. The rest of her staff nodded.

"We have two consoles that still aren't working, Chief."

"All right," came the Irish accented voice over the com, "I'll be down there in two minutes."

True to his word, the Chief and two of his staff showed up a few minutes later. They set to work with the two Vulcan officers whose consoles were still down. Tanner turned her attention back to her own console, and began pouring through the Kejada's immense data set. It looked to have been broken down, and much of it studied, by the ship's science team, for which Tanner was grateful. But, and she knew this first hand, they would have collected far more than they could have analyzed by now, and with their entire science crew dead, save the comatose Lieuteneant Sedtha, Tanner had no real idea how much work she was facing. The very first task she'd set for her staff was figuring that out. She began searching for their most recent data; if she knew anything about fellow science officers, she could say with confidence that the ionic storm they'd hit probably would have been registered and subjected to at least a cursory examination. That meant there would be data for her to use, and probably information on the system in which the storm had raged.

She had just found the information from the few days prior to the Kejada's downfall when the doors to the lab hissed open. Tanner, caught off guard from her concentration on her task, looked up, expecting another engineer to help battle the uncooperative consoles. Instead, she found herself facing DS9's Trill counselor, the one who was the new host to the Dax symbiont.

O'Brien had looked up from his work as well.

"Counselor!", he said in surprise. "What can I do for you?"

"Actually," the short, dark haired woman said, "I came looking for Commander Tanner."

"That's me," Tanner replied, stepping away from her console.

"I remember," Dax said, then shook her head. "At least, Jadzia remembers, so I do, too."

Tanner smiled, holding out her hand and the other woman shook it.

"That must be confusing at times," she commented.

"You have no idea," the counselor replied with a smile. "Jadzia remembers meeting you, so I know what to expect from you, but you prob ably have no idea what to expect from me."

Tanner grinned. That was true. Language barriers aside, she had one experience with a joined Trill she did not wish to repeat. She kept her mental barriers, the ones T'Sarak had taught her to build, firmly up, guarding against Dax's mind. The first time she had met a joined Trill after her genetic abnomally had been triggered, she had nearly been overwhelmed by the memories. She had not understood any of the words, of course, but the flood of images from one mind had threatened to consume her. That had been prior to fully developing her defenses. Now, she knew better than to let her guard down around a joined Trill. She had no idea how they managed it; the training must be intense. But she remembered Bashir had said this woman had had no training, no preparation, and no warning.

"What can I do for you?", she asked.

"Actually, I came to offer my help, if you need it," the counselor said. "Jadzia was a science officer, so I thought I could be of some assistance."

A sharp cry made them both look up and one of O'Brien's engineers was holding his forearm, wincing, while Ensign Pokal was holding up her right hand, one eyebrow raised, showing no sign of pain despite her singed skin.

Both Tanner and O'Brien sighed in unison.

"Go see one of the doctors in the infirmary, both of you," Tanner ordered. As they left, Tanner looked at O'Brien questionningly.

"This could take about an hour," he admitted. "These consoles are shot."

Tanner turned back to Dax.

"I think it might be helpful if you could get us access to DS9's science lab," she said.

Dax smiled.

"I can definitely do that."

Tanner nodded.

"Good. Then whatever help you could give would be welcome. T'Sarak, you're in charge here. Soran, you're with me and the counselor. Everyone else, keep at it."

Like a dam bursting, all of Jadzia's memories poured into Ezri's mind as she stared at the information displayed in front of her on one of the science lab's console.

"Commander," she said, catching Tanner's attention, and that of Soran, "Come look at this. This can't be right. It's impossible."

It was fairly like being beaten with a hammer, Tanner thought, defensive shields or not. It was the expressions on the faces of the two captains seated before her. Neither of them was happy, and neither was timid about showing it.

She wasn't happy, either, but was far better at dealing with her emotions. Soran's presence helped; half of her science team were Vulcans, a fact for which she was grateful.

Tanner could tell that Dax was displeased as well. This was just another complication. They were in the middle of a war, which was already going badly enough as it was. They didn't need this. And the captains didn't even know what it was yet.

"This," Tanner said, bringing the screen at the front of the ward room to life, "Is a spectral class chart. It's a basic one, but it suits our purposes. These are the most common type of stars in the galaxy. Types F, G, and K are are the ones around which life is most likely to form. For example, Earth's star is a type G2, and Vulcan's star is a type K1(1). The differences are determined by mass, luminosity, temperature, and constituent elements. This also contributes to the visible colour spectrum light from the star produces. Type G stars are yellow; type K stars are orange.

"The variables, of course, are ranges. I've shown the temperature ranges here, because this is where Counselor Dax discovered the problem. The star in the system from which we rescued the Kejada is a type G0 star, so it's whiter than Sol and should be slightly hotter. The problem is that it's much hotter. It has a coronal tempeature of 8,000 Kelvins, which puts it right in the middle of the A-type temperature range. The G-type range, as you can see, stops at 6,000 Kelvins."

She paused a moment, and Sisko filled in the pause.

"I take it you're not going to tell us that this is a type A star?"

"No, sir," Tanner said. "It's a type G0, definitely. In everything but temperature. It's the right mass, the right luminosity, it has the right constituent elements, and it gives off the right visible spectrum. I have never seen or heard of anything like this in my life, and I can't give you any reason why this would happen. In terms of astrophysics, it's impossible." She swallowed a sigh. "What I can tell you, however, is that this kind of stellar disturbance is probably what causes the particularly violent ionic storm we saw in that system. I'd be willing to bet that those storms are very common there."

She was interrupted by the comsystem.

"Bashir to Dax."

Dax looked slightly startled, glanced briefly at Sisko, who gave her a nearly imperceptible nod, and replied:

"Dax here, go ahead, Julian."

"Ezri, Commander Raza is regaining consciousness. I think you should come down here."

The Counselor gave her commanding officer another questioning look and he nodded again.

"Dismissed, Counselor, thank you."

Ezri nodded curtly and disappeared into the corridor. Tanner picked up again as the doors hissed shut.

"It's also worth noting that the habitable zone for this system is less than one hundred kilometers across. There's no way any complex life could ever form here. The distance of the habitable zone from the start depends on the type of the star. In the case of a normal G0, it's slightly farther out than Earth is from Sol, for example. I reviewed the Kejada's scans of the system and there are no significant bodies in what passes for the habitable zone and nothing where the habitable zone should be, if this were a normal star. There are two charred inner planets, and two ice giants between the thirty and fifty AU range. That's it."

"And this means?", Sisko asked.

"All I know, sir, is that it means the star is probably responsible for the ionic storm that destroyed the Kejada, and that the ionic storm was a highly unusual one in terms of strength. I can't tell you why this is happening, or what's causing it. I wish I could. I doubt more questions are going to be of any interest or relief to the survivors."

Both Sisko and Yusumi sighed.

"Commander," Yusumi said, "If I could send you back there to figure this out, I would. I have every confidence that you and your team could do it. Unfortunately, I can't."

Tanner gave a small smile, but a genuine one. Yusumi's confidence in her crew's capabilities was very much acknowledged and appreciated by all who worked under her. She had helped build a solid, dependable team that way, and had been rewarded by a crew who worked all the harder to meet her expectations.

"I wish I could go out there, too, sir, and get some answers. We'll do what we can from here, and keep you both informed, but I can't say I'm expecting much."

(1) Our name for this star is 40 Epsilon.