The Mist Read Free Page A

a distress call. Sent in an ancient Earth code that had not been used since the early days of human interstellar travel.
    But perhaps the most intriguing feature of the distress call was that it originated in an empty area of space near the Klingon border. The area did not have a planetary system, or large space debris, and our equipment could not pick up any sign of a ship or space station for light-years around.
    A distress call was coming out of nothing.

    "Your equipment. Bah!" Sotugh said. His outburst startled Sisko and others around the table. "I do not think the fault was with your equipment. Your people do not know how to run a proper scan."
    Sisko slid his chair back slightly. "Your people had trouble as well."
    "Let him tell the story," said a humanoid woman who had been sitting at the end of the bar. She stood. She was tall and slender, with catlike features and peach fur. She kicked a chair away from the table with a dark boot, and then twisted it, so that it faced the bar. She sat on it backward, placing her arms on top of the seat, and resting her chin on her arms. "I think it's fascinating."
    "You would," Sotugh snapped.
    "Leave your conflicts outside," Cap said. Then he nodded to Sisko. "Please continue, Captain."
    Sisko nodded in return. "The report documented the anomalies I mentioned a moment ago," he said, with a glance at Sotugh, "but I felt they were strange enough to warrant another look...."

    I left my office and entered Ops.
    The day crew is my most experienced and efficient. My chief engineer, Miles O'Brien, had once served on the Starship Enterprise, and falls into that legendary category of Starfleet engineers, the kind who can make a starship out of spitballs and twine. Lieutenant Commander Worf, a Klingon ...

    Sisko looked pointedly at Sotugh as he said that. Sotugh scowled into his blood wine and said nothing.

    ... who had also served on the EnterpriseD under the captaincy of Jean-Luc Picard. Worf has the finest sense of honor of any Klingon I have ever met. He also values perfection and brings a level of detail to his work that I find rare even in the ranks of Starfleet.
    Jadzia Dax has been my friend through two different incarnations, and I find her wisdom and intelligence an essential part of our crew. I discovered later that she was the one, not Major Kira, who discovered the distress signal. But Dax has known me a long time, and she prefers to let someone else interrupt my morning routine. It goes back to the days when Dax was joined to Curzon, a rather surly old man who influenced me more than I care to say. But that is another story, for another time.
    "Major," I said as I walked down the steps to the main section of Ops. "Are you still reading the signal?"
    Kira balanced her glass of raktajino on her knee as she glanced at her console. "Yes," she said.
    "There is still nothing in that section of space," Dax said. "I have run every scan I can think of."
    "As well as some she shouldn't have," Chief O'Brien said.
    Dax smiled at him. "It didn't put any strain on the equipment."
    "This time," he said testily.
    This sort of interaction was common among my morning crew, and it rose out of their sense of perfection.
    "Notify Starfleet," I said. "I would like to investigate this further, but its proximity to the Klingon border could create problems that the Federation does not need."
    "Captain," Kira said, before she carried out my order. "This might be a trap."
    Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dax shaking her head as she stared at her board.
    "It may be a trap," Worf said from his security station, "but it is not a Klingon trap."

    "Worf knows his people," Sotugh said.
    Sisko took the momentary break to sip from his Jibetian ale. He wasn't used to talking this much; his mouth was getting dry already.
    "So then what happened?" asked a green-skinned woman in a blazing pink uniform. Sisko wondered how, with such colors, he had missed her when he first scanned the bar.
    "We notified