CHAPTER 2

Sisko, Dax and O'Brien sat in Sisko's office. Sisko touched a control panel to activate measures that would assure their conversation would be private.

"From this moment on," Sisko began, "we are all deemed to be cleared for confidential information, designated special level Gold. That's basically the same as Starfleet's third-highest security clearance. I trust I don't need to remind you of the consequences of breaking confidence. All communications related to the Observer are to be secure. All reports we make are to be secure. Other than the three of us and Dr. Bashir, we talk to no one on this station about Observer. Fortunately, since the majority of inhabitants of the station have been evacuated, there is a reduced risk that we might let something slip."

"Not everybody has evacuated. Quark hasn't," said O'Brien, referring to purveyor of refreshment and entertainment on the station's Promenade.

"Oh? I thought he would be one of the first to leave." Sisko had spoken seriously, but as he heard his own remark, it sounded like a joke.

"No; and Quark says you can't make him leave, either. Personally, I think he's got his eyes on stealing one of the Observer's probes and selling it on the black market. Thing won't detonate, and disassembling it won't show anyone how to generate Upsilon, but I expect Quark could nevertheless find a buyer."

Dax was concerned. "Could he actually do that? Steal one of the probes, I mean?"

O'Brien dismissed the concern with a wave. "Impossible."

Sisko flinched. "Chief: impossible?"

O'Brien turned red. "Yes, sir. Sorry. I meant that Quark would have a very, very difficult time trying. He can't beam anything on or off the Observer, and he has no way to get to that ship. Wild Rose is now on guard, and she won't let anything approach. And Odo is remaining on the station; he'll be watching Quark all of the time, I'm sure."

Sisko thought that, with most of the inhabitants temporarily evacuated, Constable Odo might devote nearly all of his time to watching Quark. But Odo couldn't be watching one hundred percent of the time. "We'll keep an eye on Quark, as well, and on everyone else who has chosen to remain aboard the station. Now. Here is where it stands. The Commission on Specialized Planetary Studies is coming to Deep Space Nine. The Commission is the agency in charge of the Observer's Upsilon Radiation operations. The Commission will prepare a report of the incident for a Select Council of the Federation. The Commission, or at least, a quorum of the Commission, is expected to arrive here in about twelve days."

"Twelve days?" repeated O'Brien. "They're not exactly rushing to get here, are they?"

"According to Commissioner Young, they need to assemble the Commissioners and investigate some things before coming here. Twelve days may sound like a long time, but I think those days will go by before we know it, because we will be very busy. While we are waiting for the Commission, we have been formally given this assignment: we are to investigate the incident, and determine what happened, or at least, eliminate any avenues of investigation."

"We?" O'Brien wondered. "You mean, just the three of us?"

"Yes, and Dr. Bashir. But I expect he's going to be busy with other things."

"Why us?" Dax wondered. "Doesn't the Commission have people trained to deal with this sort of thing?"

"No, they don't. There is no incident investigation team. The Commission, quite literally, never thought anything like this would ever take place. News of the event has leaked out, however, and the Commission has stated publicly that the incident is in the process of being investigated. And since we are here, we have been selected to conduct an independent investigation."

"Has the Commission accepted that it was one of their probes that exploded?" Dax wanted to know.

Sisko took a moment before he could answer. "I think so, but officially, the Commission maintains that the cause of the explosion is unknown. The only cause the Commission has explicitly ruled out is that any alien interference was involved, saying that if there is any sign of any life forms in the vicinity, no probe operations would ever be conducted. Since probe operations were underway, there was almost certainly no outside interference, no act of war against Observer."

"Sir," O'Brien said, "how are we supposed to be able to investigate? Nearly everything Observer did is classified. Assuming we can figure out what they did, we have no way of knowing what they were supposed to do, or whether it was contrary to established practices."

"Commissioner Young has made certain materials available to us. And we will have access to the crew of the Surveyor, Observer's sister ship. They can tell us some of the details of operations, and maybe give us some guidance as to how this whole thing may have happened. The Surveyor, by the way, has been ordered to stand down until further notice."

"Can we talk to the survivors of the Observer?" Dax asked. "They might be even more helpful."

"Yes, you may talk to them; but don't expect them to be too helpful. According to Commissioner Young, none of the survivors was in any way involved with probe deployment. The only ones who know about probe operations are the eight members of the probe team, and there were no members of the probe team among the survivors."

"I'll download logs from the Observer," O'Brien said. "They ought to tell us a lot."

Sisko cleared his throat. "I hate to break this to you, Chief, but there probably aren't any logs to download."

"What?"

"According to Commissioner Young, all logs and records pertaining to probe operations are stored in a protected data archive, for reasons of security. That data archive is located in the Probe Preparation Bay."

"What? Why?"

"The Bay is highly secure. I've been told that, if a probe exploded in the Bay, the data archive was almost certainly destroyed. We'll have access to the ship's general archive and logs, but those records probably won't tell us much."

O'Brien sighed, and then another thought occurred to him. "It might be that the probe that exploded was defective. Are we permitted to contact the people who manufactured or assembled it?"

Sisko shook his head. "No. I asked Commissioner Young that very thing. She said the Commission itself would, before coming here, check into all aspects of materials and assembly and quality control. She said we are not to concern ourselves about those things. The Commission will also examine all of the probes aboard the Surveyor, to determine whether there is some systemic defect in them. The Commission will let us know what they find, probably."

"Probably?" O'Brien muttered. "This Commission is going to decide for us what evidence we can and cannot have? If so, this is going to be a difficult 'independent' investigation."

Sisko nodded. "We have the Surveyor probe team as a resource, and whatever we can glean from the Observer herself, and the materials that Commissioner Young will send us. And if there's anything else we need, we can ask for it." Sisko paused. "That said, I think we ought to recognize that our requests for additional information will likely be denied. Our security clearance is high, but most of the information about Observer's probe operations is classified at an even higher level. If we ask for any confidential information that is above our clearance level, that confidential information will be released to us only if we have a 'need to know.' I suspect that the Commission will think that there are a lot of things that we don't need to know."

"How can they expect us to do our job, then?" O'Brien demanded.

Sisko didn't know how to answer that. "Here is what I propose. We should all do as much background work on Upsilon Radiation and the Observer as we can, before we talk to the Surveyor people and go over the materials that the Commissioner gives us. Then we'll see where we are. I expect that I'll have the two of you learn whatever you can from the Observer. Document everything, look for anything that might be out of place, no matter how insignificant. Meanwhile, I will be going over the personnel records. Maybe one of the people who worked with the probes had a grudge or dispute of some kind, or had reason to be depressed."

"I find it hard to believe that someone would kill all of his or her shipmates because of a grudge," Dax said.

"It's a long shot," Sisko agreed. "But I have to check. So, there's our work for the next day or so. Let's all get up to speed on the technology, then see whether we can help the Commission understand what happened."