Chapter 2

Jake hurried through the small replicator station. Mealtimes were about the only opportunity when the staff were actually willing and able to talk for a few minutes, and he’d learned to take advantage of the time. Normally, it was an opportunity to pick up information. Today, though, he was just hungry and looking for familiar faces.

He spotted some. It was a small group sitting around the table — Vak, the Bolian ensign, Aya Kato, the energetic microbiologist, the dedicated Andorian doctor Ptacek, Ibis, the Cardassian girl who’d nearly attached herself to the doctor, and Kehin, the girl’s friend, who’d been pivotal in the discovery of the Ferengi slavers.

Aya waved him over; already halfway there, he waved back and kept walking.

“Hi!” He slid into the last empty seat, setting his tray on the table.

Vak, Aya and Dr. Ptacek greeted him with more or less weary smiles; they were all overworked, these days. Ibis nodded with shy, formal courtesy, but Kehin didn’t even seem to notice he’d sat down.

Vak glanced around. “No cameras following you around today, Jake?” he asked a little archly.

“Nope,” Jake replied cheerfully. “Today I just wanna eat! And then I need to get over to see Trey.”

“Ahh! Will you be helping us out, or just looking for sound bites?” Vak teased, then sipped from his mug. With his technical hobbies, he’d been assisting Lausten nearly around the clock the last few days, rather than working in the hospital or one of the other relief stations. The shortage of personnel meant a lot of people were being pulled from their usual duties to assist in other, unexpectedly more urgent positions.

“A little of both, but actually, I want to see how his force field idea is working out.” He scooped up a spoonful of stew, but grimaced at the taste, wondering if the replicators needed tweaking or were just overworked.

“Does he think it’ll be ready before that dust storm hits?” Aya asked, leaning forward a little, glancing between the young men.

Before Jake could swallow and reply, Vak interjected, “He’s optimistic. We’ve got the emitter pillars set in place around the city, and we’ve had good results with our tests. With the power grid functional again, we should have the power we need. So assuming no unexpected surprises, we should all be safe and sound behind our force field while the dust blows around us.”

“That’s a relief.” She absently pushed back a long strand of red hair that had slid forward with her movement. “I’m not big on meteorology, but it sounds like the storm is going to be nasty.”

“Yes.” Vak nodded agreement. “It’s been building steadily for weeks, might be as bad here as it was in Lakarian City.”

“Not that there was really much left of Lakarian City for the storm to destroy,” Jake noted, having seen both the scans Lausten and his team had brought back, and images of the city after the Dominion attack there.

“Enough! Don’t disturb the children about the weather. They don’t need to worry about it,” Ptacek interrupted, then glanced encouragingly at the girl. “It will be fine.”

“We’re not worried about the weather,” Ibis replied in her quiet voice.

“It’s just a little weather,” Kehin spoke up, almost haughtily. “Who’s afraid of the weather? I’m done. Let’s go, Ibis.”

“I’m not finished.”

“You take too long. All right, stay here!”

The adults watched in surprise, while Kehin rushed off as though he had somewhere important to be.

Ibis very deliberately finished her meal while the others talked about lighter topics. It wasn’t until after Dr. Ptacek and the girl left that the other three came back to the storm.

“I’m surprised people haven’t left the city to try to get out of the way of the storm,” Aya said, toying with the last forkful of her lunch.

“That’s Cardassians for you,” Vak replied with a shrug, emptying his mug. “Can’t tell if they’re resigned to the storm coming to wreck what little they’ve got left, or if they just don’t realize what this storm could do, or if they’re determined to dig in no matter what, because that’s just what Cardassians do.”

“And here I was hoping it was a sign that they were starting to have faith in us, that they believed we could help them,” she said with a sigh.

“You gotta get out of the lab more,” Vak suggested.

“Not until I make some progress,” Aya said with quiet determination. “One of the new diseases seems to have gained a foothold in the refugee camp, and if we don’t get a handle on the vectors soon, we’ll have an epidemic.”

Vak’s combadge chimed. Scrunching up his blue features into a grimace, he tapped the small device on his chest. “Here.”

“Are you about done with lunch? I could use some help here.” Lausten’s cheerful tone belied the seriousness of his words. “The front’s been picking up steam; we need to be fully operational today.”

“Just finishing,” the Bolian replied, then grabbed his mug, peering into it as if hoping there was still something left.

“I’ll go with you.” Jake grabbed the rest of his sandwich, but gave up on the remainder of the bowl of stew. “See you later, Aya. Good luck!”

“Thanks. Bye, both of you!” he heard her call after them as he raced after Vak.

* * * *

Hidden away in his tunnels under the city, though at the moment feeling outcast and exiled, Mondrig was at least secure in the knowledge that he was safe from the coming storm, no matter might happen to those on the surface. This evening, after a sumptuous meal and genuine kanar, he intended to offer the beautiful, intelligent, valuable Rekel a sanctuary with him during that storm. It might be early in the relationship, but things would be happening fast over the next few days, and who knows, she might just be waiting for him to move. After all, she’d made her interest clear enough that morning—

Mondrig whirled at hearing steps behind him, biting off a curse.

It was the urchin he had set to searching out clues for him, the boy who seemed able to worm his way into any space. The boy’s eyes widened as he stared at the table, where the man had set out several sections of a stone mural.

“What are you doing here?” he barked, moving so the boy couldn’t see the valuable artifacts behind him. “I told you not to come here unless I asked you to!”

“But you said to come if I found out any information.”

His pulsed jumped and he stepped forward. “You learned something from the book?”

“No, but I heard something from the Federation people.”

Now Mondrig smiled. “Tell me what you heard.”

* * * *

Lausten was the only one at the station when Jake and Vak arrived. The entire team had been up most of the night and through the morning setting up the emitter arrays around the city, and the lieutenant had given them all a few hours off while he finished his fine-tuning. That was what he needed Vak’s help with.

Fortunately, to Jake’s way of thinking, Lausten and Vak didn’t need his help — he knew he’d studied this stuff, at some point, but he doubted he could have remembered the scientific details that underlaid the force field technology if his life depended on it. So while Vak focused on the power grid connections, Jake settled for pulling out his notePADD and asking the engineer to explain what he was doing, and why, “for the audience back home.”

Lausten was generous enough to comply.

"It's like I was tellin’ Dr. Bashir earlier. All this dust cloud cover isn't plain dirt and building bits blown into the atmosphere. Those Jemmies were more efficient at tryin' to wipe out the planet than a few random bombs here an' there. Rather, they were well-placed bombs.” Lausten paused for a second, looking thoughtful. “I think there was a plan already in place when the Dominion landed, in case the Cardassians ever started makin' too much trouble.”

Jake had a flashback to DS9 during the Occupation. He remembered Kira and Odo remarking on the in-fighting between Dukat, Damar, and Weyoun. Thinking about it, he could easily see Weyoun coming up with such a plan for Cardassia early on.

“What did they do? The Dominion, what was this plan of theirs?" He readied his PADD.

“They targeted fault lines … along sites sure to awaken volcanoes. Earth has a volatile area full of that kind of geological instabilities and shifting tectonic plates, called 'The Ring of Fire.' Cardassia has a whole jewelry box full of 'em." Lausten touched a few controls, reviewing the reactions to the minuscule changes in the settings. “A few megatons of force applied just-so blew tons of ash and toxic chemicals up into the stratosphere. Now you be sure to write that down, and right."

Jake nodded, entering short-hand notes to keep up.

“Now if they'd just done a bit of bombing, it'd be mostly in the troposphere where all the weather clouds hang. That dust'd’ve likely been mostly rained out by now. But no, the Dominion knew they had to get all that evil thrown up to the very top — the stratosphere — so it would linger. We're talkin' years. Big enough to cause a planetary climatic change. You won't notice too much now, seeing as it's only been a few months since the disaster, and me and my team's here so none of you ever will either. The Dominion's not the first to pull such a stunt, bless the poor galaxy."

“And what would the results of this climatic change be?” Jake asked briskly.

“Ultimately?” Lausten raised a shoulder in a shrug. “More storms like the one that’s coming, even bigger ones. More volcanic eruptions, with more poisons thrown into the atmosphere. Quakes to go along with ‘em. Temperature changes. Atmospheric changes. Extinctions of flora and fauna, especially the higher level, narrow ecological niche stuff. Soil poisoning. The deserts would spread. Changes in the composition of the few oceans this world has, with more extinctions and mutations in whatever life was able to hang on. Big parts of the planet might not be viable, more areas could wind up lookin’ like Lakarian City.”

Jake considered the ramifications of that, and could only conclude it would have resulted in the slow death of Cardassia, and probably a good many of its people. He knew the Dominion had done such things before, to make examples of worlds and species that defied them.

“So what will this force field plan of yours accomplish?” he asked.

“Accomplish?” Lausten chuckled. “Nothin’ much.”

“What? Then why—”

“It’s really just a stopgap, something to protect the city and the people here from the wind and the dust and the poisons for the time being, while we figure out somethin’ more permanent, that’ll undo in some way what the Dominion did. Like the transporter screening beams we’ve had the ships doing — taking the dust and ash outta little areas of the surface air. Wouldn’t add up to much unless we used ‘em for years, maybe not enough to matter even then. But it’s a start, the screening beams and the force fields. If it works, it’ll buy us time here and around the other cities and fields in the path of these kinda storms, while we keep working on our bioremediation program. And hopefully,” now Lausten grimaced, “we won’t have to resort to a complete planetary weather control grid, like they do on Risa and some other places. Those were years in the planning and testing and constructing, and we don’t have years.”

Remembering Vak’s comment about some Cardassians being determined to dig in, no matter what, Jake asked, “What about the people outside the city? The ones who can’t or won’t come in, for whatever reason? Who may not even realize what’s coming this way?”

The engineer’s expression became a little pained; Jake suspected he was remembering Lakarian City again. “We’re doin’ all we can, Jake, as fast as we can. But we don’t have the resources or the equipment in place to protect this whole planet. Not yet. But I tell ya this — I won’t be leaving ‘til I know we’ve done all we can, even for the ones who won’t have anything to do with us.”

As the young reporter opened his mouth to frame the next question, Vak yelled from the next room. “All connections show green! We’ve got power!”

Lausten stepped back from his console, looking satisfied.

“Good. Better let Doc Bashir know.”

* * * *

Bashir and Garak were taking a quick, lunch-settling walk around the outside of the clinic when the doctor’s combadge chirped.

“Bashir here.”

“This is Lausten, at the met-station.”

“Yes?”

“I think we’re ready.”

Bashir exhaled with a smile. “Good work. Your timing’s impeccable!”

“Wish you’d tell Eske that!” the man came back with a little wry humor. “But I wanna run a few more tests of the individual emitters. There were some erratic readings from the western array. I’d send Vak out to check it, but I need him here. I guess I’ll have to wake up the team a little sooner than I thought—”

“Don’t bother them,” Bashir interrupted. “I’ll do it.”

“They’ll appreciate that, doc.”

“Just download the coordinates and necessary technical information into my PADD, and I’ll get going.”

“Sure thing. Downloading ... now.”

“Got it. I’m on my way,” Bashir replied crisply, then turned to Garak. “Well, I guess that’s the end of our lecture for today.”

“Don’t be silly, doctor, I wasn’t lecturing you!” the Cardassian admonished with his somehow secretive-looking smile. “I was merely pointing out how the author’s comments on what he termed ‘fatal ground’ would have been valuable advice for your commodore at the Battle of Delta Ceti.”

“Very well, then,” Bashir accepted, “we’ll continue our discussion later. For now, it looks like I’m needed elsewhere.”

“Of course.”

Something in the knowing tone caught his ear. “All right, Garak, what does that mean?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing.... Merely noting that, for all your claims that you aren’t trying to do it all yourself, you certainly seem to be the one called for every situation.”

“Actually, I won’t mind the walk,” Bashir protested. “Considering what I’ve seen of Lausten’s work, I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but it’ll be a good chance for me to get out and away from the clinic for a bit. And aren’t you always telling me I need to do more of that?”

“I would hardly classify a tour of the force field emitters as relaxing!”

“You are welcome to join me, you know. I wouldn’t mind the company — and you could probably use the time away as well!”

Garak looked tempted, but shook his head. “Actually, Julian, I have ... a more important engagement this afternoon.”

“Oh....” Bashir smiled archly. “Would this have anything to do with that matter that may or may not be significant, that you alluded to at lunch?”

The Cardassian smiled briefly. “Perhaps. But it’s far too soon to tell. Will I see you for dinner?”

The human laughed. “Perhaps! If I’m not involved in something that may or may not be more significant!”

They separated, smiling and emotionally refreshed.