THE BIG GAME Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  To Nina

  for all those nights of pizza and Trek

  CHAPTER 1

  THE LIGHTS FLICKERED for the sixth time. The turbolift jolted, stopped for a moment, then kept climbing. Commander Benjamin Sisko breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The last place he wanted to get stuck was the turbolift, and with the odd problems that had plagued the station for the last hour, getting stuck was a distinct possibility.

  The flickering lights had him bothered, although not quite enough to give up his lunch with Jake; Sisko and his son rarely had enough time together. They had planned the lunch for days, fasting in the morning, so that they could overindulge in all Jake’s favorite foods: spaghetti, Norellian twist bread, chilled Ruthvian salad, and chocolate cake à la Jennifer. They had just gotten to the twist bread when the call came in from Ops. Maybe, if Sisko was lucky, this emergency would only take a few minutes and he would be back in time to eat half the cake himself. He would never admit it aloud, but he had a weakness for chocolate.

  The lift stopped at Ops. Sisko stepped out, glancing briefly, as was his custom, at the Cardassian architecture: the almond-shaped portals on the top tier that revealed stars, Bajor, and the docking bays; the multilevel operations area, and the prefect’s office—now his—straight across from the turbolift. He had never thought he would feel comfortable here, but during the last few months Ops had become the deck of his own personal starship.

  This afternoon the deck was nearly empty. But he could feel the tension, almost as if it had been etched on the walls. He sighed. He had a hunch the chocolate cake would have to wait.

  Major Kira Nerys stood behind the operations table, her gaze on the viewing screen. Hands clasped behind her back, feet spread in military precision, she looked all business. Lieutenant Dax sat at the science console, her fingers moving rapidly along its surface. Other than that, Ops was empty.

  “What’s so important about a Ferengi ship that I had to leave my lunch with Jake?” Sisko asked. He kept his voice low, but neutral. No sense being upset about missing time with his son if there was a true emergency.

  “The Ferengi ship seems to be suffering from the same power fluctuations that we are,” Dax said. “They requested a docking bay nearly two hours ago, but have made no movement in our direction.”

  “Power fluctuations?” Sisko said. “You mean, we’re having more serious problems than the lights?”

  Kira did not look at him. A sign that she probably should have called him earlier, but did not want to disturb him. He wouldn’t mention the lunch again.

  “The fluctuations go through all of our systems in a random pattern,” she said. “The computer locator is off-line; I have someone searching for O’Brien. The outages aren’t serious yet, but I’m afraid they will be.”

  Sisko walked down the steps toward the operations table. First things first. The outages were important, but Kira already had that under control. The Ferengi ship was the big question. Sisko glanced at the main viewer where the Ferengi ship hung motionless against the blackness of space. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought that the ship was crippled. “Open a channel,” he said.

  Dax moved to do so when the station rocked wildly as if it had been hit by a photon torpedo.

  Sisko lost his balance and fell against the operations table, banging his arm and sending shooting pains through his shoulder. Dax slid under the science console, and Kira cried out behind him.

  Alarms went off, their blaring cries of warning sending Sisko back to the day his wife had died. For a moment, he lost himself in those flaming corridors, lost himself in the feel of Jennifer’s dead body clasped against his breast. He swallowed the memory, hard, refusing to let it overcome him.

  He glanced around. Smoke filled Ops.

  The lights went out. Blackness overwhelmed him. The acrid scent of smoke dug into his throat. The backup generators kicked in, but the low-level lights only made the smoke more opaque.

  “The Ferengi ship is breaking up.” Lieutenant Dax’s calm, intent voice broke through the pandemonium. She clung to the science console as the station rocked again.

  The Ferengi ship was the least of Sisko’s worries. All the screens had jumped to life, reporting problems and outages throughout the station. Warning lights blinked all over the operations table. He pulled himself up to it, trying to loosen the pain in his shoulder, wishing he could see better through the smoke haze. The smell of burnt electrical wiring had him worried. “Tractor beam? Can you hold the Ferengi ship together?”

  He had to shout over the wail of the alarms.

  “Attempting that,” Dax’s calm voice replied.

  Kira had pulled herself to her feet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shadowy shape mount the rickety stairs and hurry to the engineering station. Where the hell was O’Brien?

  Sparks hissed from loose connections. Sisko crossed to a free console and did a quick run-through of the station’s life-support systems.

  “A few ships have been knocked off their moorings in docking bays ten and twelve,” Kira said. “Reports of jammed doors. Lights down all over the station. No serious damage to the station, and no casualties.”

  The constant rise and fall of the alarms served as counterpoint to the three officers’ staccato conversation. The smoke had grown thicker. Sisko held back a cough.

  “Life support is working,” he said. The system did not register any sustained hit. No telling what caused the entire station to rattle so.

  The main lights came back on, flooding the smokefilled room with brightness.

  “I’ve got the Ferengi ship,” Dax said, “if the tractor beam holds.”

  He scrambled up the short steps to the science console. Dax had returned to her chair, her rounded figure and bright eyes a testimony to the fact that she was no longer the old man he remembered. But just as competent. Maybe even more so.

  According to the readouts, the Ferengi ship was the largest Sisko had ever seen. It seemed to have sustained damage at the same time as the station.

  “Kira,” Sisko said. “Shut those alarms down and find out where that smoke is coming from.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Dax glanced up at him, her wide, calm gaze helping him focus. The Ferengi ship. The docking bays. The lights. “The tractor beam seems to be holding,” she said. “I’ll bring them into docking bay. . . .”

  “Make sure you stay away from ten and twelve,” he said, in case she had missed that bit of information. He twisted to see the main viewer. The Ferengi ship at a glance seemed to be all right, but he knew that only the tractor beam held it together.

  Sisko punched the console, moving his attention away from the station’
s interior functioning. Nothing anywhere near the station except that Ferengi ship. No ship that could have fired a photon torpedo, no record of a cloaked ship appearing at the moment of the shot. Nothing to show that anything had happened, except the damaged Ferengi ship and those damned alarms.

  Slowly, Dax eased the ship toward the station.

  The lights blinked again, but stayed on. Then, without warning the tractor beam quit.

  “What is going on?” Sisko snapped into the smokefilled air.

  “The ship is breaking up,” Dax said.

  Sisko reached for the board, but Dax’s hands flew across it, trying everything he could think of just a moment before he could say it. The board did not respond. The tractor beam was simply gone. Thirty seconds stretched into an eternity.

  “It’s no good, Benjamin,” Dax said. “I’ve done everything possible to reestablish the beam.”

  The alarms seemed to have grown louder, more insistent, demanding that something be done. The Ferengi ship appeared to bounce in space as if it were a sailing ship in a rough sea.

  He turned to Kira. She was still at O’Brien’s station, a frown marring her delicate face. “Get a lock on the crew of that ship and be ready to beam them here.”

  “Do it quickly,” Dax said. Her voice was very low and cold. “The ship won’t last much longer.”

  “Only three on board,” Kira yelled out just as the alarms stopped.

  Her voice echoed off the walls, demanding and impertinent. It grated on him almost as much as the alarms had. “Then get them out of there.”

  Her fingers danced over O’Brien’s board. On the main view screen the Ferengi ship broke up as if it had been hit by a hammer. Sections of the ship flew in all directions.

  Kira was shaking her head. They must have acted too late. Sisko steeled himself.

  Then three forms shimmered on the small transporter unit. They were close together and it took a moment for the shapes to separate into two Ferengi and a bald humanoid alien. The center Ferengi was ancient and huddled over. He had huge ears with hair growing out of the centers, and his wizened face looked as if it were about to melt at any moment. The other Ferengi was younger and had ears the size of Sisko’s palm—normal for a Ferengi. The younger Ferengi and the humanoid, an Hupyrian servant with pale skin and an overhanging brow, had a firm grasp on the ancient Ferengi who leaned on a staff with a gold-pressed latinum head.

  The Ferengi’s dark, intent eyes looked directly at Sisko and the Ferengi’s mouth turned down into an ugly frown. A shudder of distaste went through Sisko. Zek. Grand Nagus of the Ferengi. The closest the Ferengi had to a ruler.

  Sisko sucked in a deep lungful of the smoky Ops air and stood up straight to greet the guests. What was the Nagus doing here? And why?

  “Nagus,” Sisko said, bowing just slightly to show his respect, a respect that he didn’t feel. The Nagus typified all the elements of the Ferengi, good and bad. “I trust you are well from your ordeal?”

  “How dare you attack our ship?” The younger Ferengi—Krax, the Nagus’s son—let go of Zek and stepped off the platform toward Sisko. “We had no weapons and—”

  “We did not attack your ship,” Sisko said. He would not get into a fight with the leader of the Ferengi. “We had nothing to gain by doing so.” He swept his arm around Ops. The smoke had thinned a little. “And, as you can see, we suffered from the same problem you did.”

  “Really?” Zek said. “You haven’t lost a ship, Commander. A small fortune in gold-pressed latinum was on board.” Zek paused to let his words sink in. “Do we share a problem? Have you lost a fortune in gold-pressed latinum?”

  Heat rose in Sisko’s cheeks. He would have to act quickly on this matter. The Nagus could be lying, and he would try to make the Federation responsible for the money.

  “We don’t know the extent of damage here yet,” Sisko said. “But whatever hit your ship hit the station.”

  “So you may have lost money,” Zek asked as he eased himself down from the platform with the help of the bald humanoid. Sisko didn’t let the relief show on his face. As long as the Nagus thought they had the same problem, he would be less likely to blame Starfleet. “Have you located the culprit?”

  Sisko glanced over at Dax and she shook her head. “We don’t know what caused the disturbance yet,” Sisko replied. “But we hope to have some answers soon. Kira, find O’Brien, now.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  But before she could even turn back to her panel the lights again flickered and the entire station lost power and went dark.

  And the alarm sirens started again.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE LIGHTS FLICKERED as Quark mixed the last of the drinks and picked up his tray. He glanced up. That had better be the last time the lights even pretended to go dim. Quark needed lights. He needed cool air. He needed everything to be perfect.

  The Dabo girl swooped by Quark as she headed into the back room carrying a tray of drinks. Her slender nose was wrinkled and her lips turned down in disgust. Quark grinned and followed her, a tray of drinks perched on his small hand. He had given her the more noxious concoctions: a Hot Foaming Beer Dart, which smelled of fermented cat box, for the Meepod; a Klingon Cordial, made of wortweed and steaming pungent gray smoke; and a Falconian Licorice Slimmer, with baked grub worms (disgusting! they should only be served cold) and imported banana slugs, for the Sligiloid. The tray itself sent off an odor so foul that when Quark took the drinks off the replicator, Rom fled the bar with his hand over his mouth.

  Quark carried the more common drinks: saki, for the two humans in the corner; Romulan ale for the Romulans near the door; and Bajoran sipping sherry for the terrorist who had talked his way into the game. Quark slipped through the door just as the Dabo girl ran out, her normally pale skin green and her eyes watering. He paused for a moment to survey the room.

  It was set up for the largest Seven Card Hold’Em Poker Tournament ever held in the sector. Quark was not fond of poker. Dabo was his game. But poker brought the true gamblers, the ones willing to risk everything.

  Ten tables, each with eight chairs, filled the room, their green felt surfaces beautifully crafted to Quark’s exact specifications. He’d been planning this, the quadrant’s largest poker game, for years, well before the Federation’s takeover of the station. The takeover had delayed his plans for a short time, until he learned that humans—even humans who wore a Starfleet uniform—loved games of chance. Some of the best officers in Starfleet were known throughout the quadrant for their skill at poker. Quark had invited all of them. He had spread the word of the game to each ship that had docked at the station. He had hired, at great expense, professional dealers so that the professional gamblers would think the game was on the up-and-up. And it was, for the most part. No one would know that with the house take and his skimming, he was going to make more gold-pressed latinum than ten Ferengi could carry.

  The tournament was due to start the next morning and today Quark had invited players to enjoy the room and play pickup games, making sure, of course, that the house took its “fair” share. Three games were going on at the back tables. Quark hurried to the first, where most of his drink orders had come from. He set the saki down in front of Harding, a bald human with a well-chewed, unlit Ferengi cigar hanging from his mouth.

  Harding pulled his cards close to his chest and picked up the tiny bottle of rice wine. “Hey!” he said to Quark. “It’s not hot!”

  “You didn’t specify hot,” Quark said. “And your friend here”—he set the remaining bottle in front of the other human player—“requested his chilled.”

  Harding took the Ferengi cigar from his mouth and leaned toward his companion. The other man, Klar, was tall for a human and slender, with silver-white hair and cold silver eyes. Harding had spent most of the afternoon talking Quark into letting Klar play. Quark had wanted proof that Klar could play to tournament levels. Klar’s entry fee of one hundred bars of gold-pressed latinum, plus an extra 10 p
ercent, had convinced Quark.

  Klar picked up his bottle and pulled the tiny cup off the tray. Without saying a word he poured the rice wine into the cup and drank.

  Harding grimaced. “You will never learn, will you?” he asked, jabbing his unlit cigar in Klar’s direction. “The best tobacco is in Ferengi cigars. You ruin them when you light them, like you did this morning. The best alcohol is Japanese saki—hot saki, so that it goes into your system quicker—”

  “I don’t want it to go in quick,” Klar said. His voice was slow and measured, its tone as cold as his eyes. “I want to remain alert. We’re here to play poker, remember?”

  “Hard to forget after that little scene this afternoon.” The Romulan woman sitting next to them tapped her long, thin fingers against her chips. Her name was Naralak, and she had come alone. Quark set the Romulan ale in front of her. She ignored it and him.

  The other players at the table—the tall, thin Irits with its featureless obsidian face, and the round, orange Grabanster with its thick fur and wet-dog smell—pretended to be studying their cards.

  “I am the best player in the quadrant,” she said, her voice mocking as she quoted what Klar had said when he sat down. “ ‘You can’t have a poker tournament without me.’ ” Then she laughed. “We have had many tournaments without you, Mr. Klar. And I will wager, from that last hand, that we will have many more.”

  Quark glanced at the chips. Naralak’s pile was twice that of the others on the table.

  “I’m keeping my eye on you,” Klar said. He poured himself another cup of saki. “The kind of luck you’ve been having tonight is rare.”

  “Now, now,” Quark said, bobbing just a little, careful not to disturb the remaining drinks on his tray. “These are practice games. They should have no bearing on tomorrow.”

  “Trust me,” Naralak said. “The only bearing they’ll have is by showing us early how poorly our opponents play.” She smiled at Klar as she spoke. He did not smile back.