Bloodletter

By K.W. Jeter

Starfleet Command has learned that the Cardassians are planning to construct a base on the other side of the wormhole to establish a presence and claim the rich unexplored territory. Now, it falls to Commander Sisko, Major Kira, and the crew of Deep Space NineTM to set up a Federation station there immediately.
Before Major Kira can deliver the new base, a fanatic from her violent past appears. Kira must engage in a life and death struggle with an enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy her, as the fate of Bajor, the wormhole, and possibly the entire Federation hangs in the balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
• Release date: May 23, 2000
• ISBN: 9780743412223

K.W. Jeter

K.W. Jeter is a science fiction and horror author. Some of his works include tie-in novels for Star Trek and Star Wars.

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BLOODLETTER

0-7434-1222-2

K.W. JETER

POCKET BOOKS

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

1993 Paramount Pictures

First Pocket Books printing August 1993

THE WORMHOLE SCREAMED …

Kira sensed rather than heard it, as though the spine inside her shivered at the same mute pitch. A living thing—its pain struck her once more.

Watching from the outside, Kira saw that there was no light—the wormhole drew darkness into itself, a writhing contraction of space itself.

Kira leaned over the viewscreen. Bashir is in there. The thoughts inside her head had contracted to one alone. Inside … somewhere …

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product 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 Chris and Lynn Hoth, with thanks

Historian’s Note

This adventure takes place before the STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE episode Battle Lines.

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

A CRY RANG through the engineering bay.

"Lousy piece of Cardassian crap!"

More words followed, in a vocabulary colorful enough to draw expressions of distaste from a Bajoran work crew nearby. Dressed in the drab gray of one of their planet’s more puritanical sects, they hadn’t yet become used to the rougher edges of station life.

Chief Engineer Miles O’Brien, still cursing, emerged from a thrust-device compartment’s access port. Blood threaded from the corner of his brow, gashed on one of the gantry chains running taut to the vessel’s exposed innards. It was only slightly redder than his sweating face.

Is there some difficulty you have encountered? O’Brien’s Cardassian counterpart inquired with mock solicitude. Behind him, curved panels of ship’s armor hung in the bay’s depths like brutalist stage scenery. If you will recall, I warned you that working on our equipment was a matter best left to experts—

No difficulty; nothing that I can’t handle, that is. He looked at the blood smeared on the rag he’d taken from his pocket. The wound was minor enough; a typical machine-shop accident that he could safely ignore for the time being. It was much harder to ignore the thin smile on the Cardassian engineer’s face. If lizards could grin—a major effort of self-control was required to keep from decking this one. I just need the right tools. He turned and headed toward the bay’s heavy equipment locker, ducking beneath the power cables looping overhead.

A satisfying expression of alarm showed in the Cardassian engineer’s eyes when O’Brien came back. What … what do you think you’re doing …

It was his turn to smile. He pressed the joystick on the control box in his hands; behind him, the ponderous articulated device that had followed him out of the locker clumped forward, the steel deck clanging at each step. I’ve been here long enough to be plenty familiar with the quality of Cardassian construction. He deliberately steered the jacksledge so that the uplifted striking weight clipped one of the bay’s structural girders; the resulting shock wave came close to knocking the Cardassian off his feet. "And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that your stuff responds to an old Earthly engineering principle—If it doesn’t fit, use a bigger hammer."

You’ve gone mad— The Cardassian scrambled out of the way as the device swung toward the drydocked vessel. This … this is impossible… .

Hammers didn’t come any bigger than the jacksledge. O’Brien and the rest of the DS9 tech crew had cobbled it together for smashing through whatever interior sections of the station had collapsed so badly that only brute force could clear a path. The striking weight was loaded with enough depleted fission material to punch a humanoid-sized hole between one deck and the next. Now, it followed O’Brien like a puppy on a leash as he clambered inside the open thrust-device compartment. The jacksledge’s servo-mechs allowed it to delicately pick its way into the space, the massive legs settling between the thrust chamber and the surrounding bulkhead.

The Cardassian engineer’s face appeared at the rim of the access port. He had recovered enough to begin blustering. The use of this device is totally uncalled-for— His voice echoed off the chamber’s wall towering above O’Brien’s head. This is a complete violation of the operational protocols agreed to by the administration of this station … it cannot be done—

Bet me. O’Brien thumbed the trigger button on the control box, and the striking weight swung through an arc close enough that he heard the rush through the air. The last he heard was the jacksledge hitting the bulkhead like the clapper of a monstrous bell. When the diaphragms inside his protective ear inserts opened up again, he could hear the ringing of the dented metal, and cutting through that, the ululating wail of the vessel’s security alarms going off.

He eyeballed the effect the hammer blow had made upon the bulkhead. If anything, the freight hauler wasn’t crap, but rather, overengineered for the research purposes to which it had been converted. It would take another dozen blows, at least, to bend the metal for enough clearance; then the buffer shields could finally be lowered into place.

The alarms didn’t shut off, but grew louder instead, shrieking from the violated core of the vessel. Before readying the jacksledge for another swing, O’Brien glanced out the access port and saw the Cardassian engineer running for the loading doors—whether from terror or to summon help, he couldn’t tell. The Bajorans looked up from the eyepieces of the assembly bench. They weren’t so puritanical, he noted, as to be able to resist smiling at the Cardassian’s discomfiture.

Let’s get a few more in. He patted the closest of the jacksledge’s legs. Before anybody comes to stop us.

After the DS9 security team had taken away the chief engineer—the head of security himself had snapped the hand restraints on—the Bajorans glanced around at each other. Events did not usually get so dramatic in the engineering bay.

He seems a decent enough man. One laid down the delicate tools and flexed his cramped fingers. This O’Brien—he has not been ungracious toward us.

A few of the others nodded in agreement. They had all expected the chief engineer to have greeted them with hostility, to have impeded their being made part of the station’s construction and retrofitting operations; O’Brien had been forced to take them on as part of an agreement hammered out between the station’s commander and the government authorities down on the surface of Bajor. But if O’Brien had not been exactly overjoyed by their arrival, he had at least been fair to them since.

Another of the crew pushed aside his magnifying optic. I will admit that, when the great time comes, I may even miss him. A bit …

The sympathetic comments were more than the group’s leader could take. None but the other Bajorans knew that he was in charge of their spiritual and moral welfare, charged with shielding them from the temptations to be found among the heathens. He bore no mark that would have indicated his hidden rank to the Starfleet officers. It was just one more thing of which they were unenlightened.

Perhaps, he said coldly, in your devotions you could strive to remember why we’re here; the purpose behind our coming to this place. The leader cast a stern gaze around the assembly bench.

The others, suitably chastened, looked down at the glittering components of their labors.

I only meant— The first who had spoken, the youngest of the group, now made an attempt to defend himself. Just that there’s surely no harm in being on good terms with the man. That’s all.

"Ah … harm. The leader nodded, making a show of mulling over the word. As if our people hadn’t suffered enough of that, already. From just such creatures as this chief engineer of whom you seem so fond. His own words lashed out, before the other could protest. It doesn’t matter that he’s not a Cardassian. He, as well as all the rest of them, is still an outsider. They are not Bajoran."

Silence wrapped itself around the group. None of them could raise his eyes to meet the harsh gaze of the leader.

From now on— He spoke softly, having vanquished all opposition. Keep company only with your brethren, and you will be shielded from falling into error.

No one spoke. One by one, they picked up their delicate tools and resumed their work.

He could hear them coming up the corridor outside his office—even with the door closed. For Benjamin Sisko, that was one of the unforeseen advantages of the Deep Space Nine station’s ramshackle state of construction. Aboard the Enterprise, or any of the other Starfleet vessels, acoustic isolation between one sector and another, between the public spaces and the private compartments, was total; you didn’t know who might be at your door until they announced their presence. Here, however, the ringing of footsteps on bare metal, the echoing of raised voices against the walls—all came clearly to him. Which gave him time, if only a few seconds, to put on his game face, the mask of calm authority that everyone expected from the station’s commander.

"… sabotage … blatant sabotage. On my world, that is a capital offense… . One voice had the grating tones of a Cardassian officer, the combination of overweening arrogance and innate hostility, without which all of them seemed unable to even order a drink in one of the station’s lounges. From the sound of it, this one seemed to have been pushed from mere annoyance to vibrating rage. We shall see what kind of justice can be expected from your Federation superiors… ."

Another voice muttered something in reply, too low for Sisko to make out the words, though he recognized his chief engineer’s accent. He had a vague idea of what this was all about; the station’s head of security had been able to give him a rushed comm call, with an indication of the mess that was about to land on his desk.

The desk … that was the other advantage of a bit of warning. These days, any interruption seemed to come while he was chin-deep in the intricacies of Bajoran diplomacy. Spread before him were things not meant for the prying, advantage-seeking eyes of a Cardassian officer. As the voices and footsteps approached, Sisko blanked the computer screen.

Enter. He settled back in his chair, expression composed so as not to show that he’d just painfully nicked his shin on the drawer’s corner. Every damned thing the Cardassians had built seemed to have sharp edges sticking out of it, waiting to draw blood; that seemed the way they liked things to be.

Worse luck—there were two Cardassian officers. One he recognized as the chief engineer for the vessel currently being retrofitted in the drydock bay; the other—he suppressed a sigh of aggrieved annoyance—was Gul Tahgla, the vessel’s captain. Tahgla, in his brief time aboard DS9, had already proved himself to be an apt pupil in the arts of obstruction and connivance practiced by his crony and superior, Gul Dukat. Sisko sometimes wondered if Dukat had sharpened the metal edges before vacating the desk at which he now sat; he wouldn’t put it past him.

For the love of— Behind the Cardassians, Chief Engineer O’Brien whispered to Odo, loud enough for Sisko to hear, then grimaced as he held up the restraints binding his wrists. Did you have to put ‘em on so tight? If you’re just trying to show these jokers you’re serious—

The security chief glared back at him. I do nothing for show.

The Cardassian captain nodded stiffly toward Sisko. "I believe we have a small … problem, Commander. A relishing smile lurked on his face as he spoke the word. Or perhaps not so small. A certain matter of deliberate and unprovoked sabotage on the part of one of your senior crew members—"

Bull. O’Brien snorted in disgust. I’ve been plenty provoked, thank you.

Sisko listened to the Cardassian engineer’s account of what had happened in drydock. Now, he had to work to suppress his own smile; he would have liked to have been there when O’Brien had fired off the jacksledge, just to have seen the Cardassian scurry for the bay’s exit.

I’m sure the commander will appreciate the ramifications of this incident. Gul Tahgla’s voice grew more icily formal. "The agreement with the Federation, by which your technicians are given access to some of the most crucial areas of our ships, was accepted by our council under duress. In your guise of protectors of the hapless Bajorans, you have obtained control of the stable wormhole, access to which is permitted only to those who meet your conditions. The formal tone was displaced by a sneer. Odd, isn’t it, how such deep altruism just happens to give the Federation the keys to the entire Gamma Quadrant."

Please. There’s no call to—

Hear me out, Commander. The Cardassian leaned threateningly over the desk. It has been long suspected by our council that the Federation’s requirements for travel through the wormhole are a pretext by which spies could be given free run of our vessels, in the guise of workmen installing these ridiculous, nonfunctioning devices—

Believe me, if they were nonfunctioning, they wouldn’t be so expensive. The Cardassian had hit a sore point with Sisko. A major portion of the station’s budget, the Federation resources devoted to keeping DS9 up and running, had gone into the on-site construction of the impulse energy buffers. Although no vessel, Federation or Cardassian or any other, would be allowed into the wormhole without the buffers in place, the reimbursement schedule that Starfleet had mandated covered only a fraction of their actual cost—at least until the next appropriations review.

In the meantime, DS9’s operations were being squeezed tight by the need to get craft such as the Cardassian research vessel ready for intrawormhole travel. It had been less than twenty-four hours ago that Major Kira had stormed into this office with the figures of the expected shortfall, rows of numbers on the screen of her data padd, as much as demanding that he immediately order a halt to any further retrofit work. Why should we go in the hole for the sake of Cardassians?—those had been her words. Kira had little experience with the subtleties of the Federation bureaucracy; he’d had a difficult time convincing her that running a deficit was the best way of persuading Starfleet to increase their budget.

As for doing things for the sake of Cardassians … he had his reasons for that, as well. And, for the time being, he was telling no one.

"—and you’d better get it straight, nothing leaves that drydock till I say so! You can be a friggin’ admiral for all I care—"

The sound of his chief engineer’s shouting brought Sisko up from the deep workings of his thoughts. Please, gentlemen. He held up a hand for quiet, then gestured to Odo. You can go ahead and take the restraints off. I hardly think they’re necessary.

Tahgla’s expression soured even further. Sabotage is treated so lightly by you?

I very much doubt that there was any criminal intent here; perhaps just a simple misunderstanding, that’s all. Mister O’Brien, if you could give us your interpretation?

The engineer left off glaring at Odo and rubbing his chafed wrists. It’s simple enough, Commander. We’ve gone back and forth with this bunch. We must’ve had twenty communiqués, at least—I could call up the archive from the data bank and show you—concerning the dimensions of the impulse energy buffers that were going to be installed on their vessel. Teeth-gritting frustration showed in O’Brien’s face. It’s just a matter of how much clearance they’d have to leave us so we could fit the damn things in around their engines. We finally get it worked out—or so I thought—and then they show up in our drydock, and their engine compartments are almost a meter too narrow. He shrugged. So I fired up the jacksledge and went to make myself a little working room.

"The dimensions of those chambers are exactly as you stipulated. Tahgla jabbed a finger at O’Brien. Our technicians are not given to the sort of errors you seem to expect from your own—"

Sisko angled the computer panel toward his chief engineer. Let’s just take a look, shall we?

An interlocking display of construction diagrams appeared, with the words SECURITY—ACCESS RESTRICTED blinking in red at the top of

Reviews for Bloodletter

[daniexj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As with the other early DS9, Voyager and TNG novels as a reader you have to expect a bit of stuff that's wrong because the series is still in its infancy.Still, this book had a lot of errors, even compared to the Siege. They got Bashir's characterization entirely wrong. I'm not sure what was going on with the Wormhole Aliens. And even the relationship between Sisko and Kai Opaka seemed totally off.There also wasn't nearly enough Dax in the book, and she too seemed to be treated like a living breathing extension of the computer instead of her character, which in some ways is much more of Sisko's right hand woman than Kira is.I guess that the plot, and Bajoran religious intrigue was interesting at points, but it couldn't overcome the glaring mistakes. Not the worst Star Trek novel I've read, just not the best either.

[david.alfred.sarkies · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Hmm, it looks like nobody really liked this book all that much, particularly since the common thread through the reviews (both of them – though there are more now) is that the characters in the novel behave nothing like the characters in the series, and that the author obviously did not follow the guidelines in the Writer's Bible (a book, I suspect, that outlines a number of rules to follow when writing for the series). There is also a suggestion that they have decided to throw another killer onto the spacestation that Odo has to catch, and on top of that the Cardassians are trying to establish a space station on the other side of the wormhole to pretty much control who uses it.Well, that is all I will say about the novel because I really cannot remember much about it and it was a long time since I actually read it. I am not a huge trekkie, and in many cases only watch it to get a dose of science-fiction. It did enjoy the series tough, especially when the story arc about the Dominion began to develop. In a way it was better that the other series, particularly Voyager where the only goal was to get home. However I have noticed that the writers try to be as politically correct as possible, and that does get somewhat annoying (a Black Vulcan, woah, we really have come far).As for the series itself, I have begun watching them again (though how far I will get through them is yet to be seen), and though I am only up to episode six of the first season, there are a few things that stand out. First and foremost is the acting, it is quite annoying. While I would not necessarily call it bad, I would not call it outstanding either. I have also been watching the first season of Rome, and the acting in Rome is outstanding, though in parts the writers seem to switch between a more modern rendering of the dialogue and a Shakespearian form. That is something that does take a lot of skill, and I must say is completely absent from many of the other series that I have seen. In this series, and while it is only the beginning, it really does come across that the actors have not fully fallen into their roles yet, though it was also something noticeable in the first season of The Next Generation.One of the things that I do like about the series though is the relationship between Quark and Odo. In a way they are complete opposites but simply cannot exist without each other. They actually do develop a very strong relationship even though they tend to be a foil to each other. In fact I do like how the writers ended up developing the Ferengi through bringing Quark into the series. We get a much better idea on how they operate. In the Next Generation they were little more than traders who would always be out to earn a quick buck even at other people's expense. Obviously they really did not like the Federation's idea of equality and growing one's own character. To them the most important thing is money and making a profit. In a way it seems as if the writers are attempting to externalise human failings into other races to leave us as an enlightened and wise race.Babylon 5 was so much better in how they developed and explored human evolution, as does George Bernard Shaw in Back to Methusela. This series just seems to be humanity suddenly waking up one morning and saying, 'gee, we have been really bad, I think we need to change our ways or people (the Vulcans) won't like us'. I also pretty much despise the idea of tossing religion out of the window and blaming it for all our failings. To be honest, who has the right to determine that one religion (scientific materialism) is any better, worse, or more advanced, than any other religion. By determining that the only true religion is scientific materialism then you are doing exactly the same thing that you are accusing all of the other religions of doing, and that is being exclusive and insisting that the other person is wrong. When you then ban another religion in place of your religion, well, you have now become a persecutor, something that you objected against back during the Scopes Monkey Trial. How things come full circle (oh, and yes, Christians are also guilty of this).