COUNTDOWN TO CATASTROPHE!

Commander Sisko has made Jake an offer he can’t refuse—the chance to attend Starfleet Academy Summer Space Camp on Rijar, once home to an ancient civilization, now an archaeologist’s dream. Jake is looking forward to the adventure and maybe finding something in the ruins to write a story about. But from the day they arrive it’s a disaster!

The best friends are on their way to becoming worst enemies—until an accident triggers the countdown of a megabomb that threatens the entire planet! Jake and Nog lead an expedition into the catacombs under the base in a desperate race against time. Their only hope is a terrifying voyage into cyberspace to gain control of the ticking bomb that is about to explode….

Cover art by Alan Gutierrez

Interior Illustrations by Todd Cameron Hamilton

“It’s...coming!”

But what was coming? Jake could see nothing, but then he felt it. The tunnel started to shake. Earthquake!

“Quake!” Professor Kala confirmed. “Take cover!”

There wasn’t a lot of shelter in the tunnels, but Jake managed to squirm under an overhanging ledge next to Nog, both hoping the ledge would not collapse on top of them. It was only seconds, but it seemed like eons. Jake and Nog huddled together and rode out the planetary upheaval.

Then, when the worst seemed to be over: “Jake!”

Jake suddenly felt himself falling backward into empty space….

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For Ken and Bev,

with love

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE

Cast of Characters

JAKE SISKO—Jake is a young teenager and the only human boy permanently on board Deep Space Nine. Jake’s mother died when he was very young. He came to the space station with his father but found very few kids his own age. He doesn’t remember life on Earth, but he loves baseball and candy bars, and he hates homework. His father doesn’t approve of his friendship with Nog.

NOG—He is a Ferengi boy whose primary goal in life—like all Ferengi—is to make money. His father, Rom, is frequently away on business, which is fine with Nog. His uncle, Quark, keeps an eye on him. Nog thinks humans are odd with their notions of trust and favors and friendship. He doesn’t always understand Jake, but since his father forbids him to hang out with the human boy, Nog and Jake are best friends. Nog loves to play tricks on people, but he tries to avoid Odo whenever possible.

COMMANDER BENJAMIN SISKO—Jake’s father has been appointed by Starfleet Command to oversee the operations of the space station and act as a liaison between the Federation and Bajor. His wife was killed in a Borg attack, and he is raising Jake by himself. He is a very busy man who always tries to make time for his son.

ODO—The security officer was found by Bajoran scientists years ago, but Odo has no idea where he originally came from. He is a shape-shifter, and thus can assume any shape for a period of time. He normally maintains a vaguely human appearance but every sixteen hours he must revert to his natural liquid state. He has no patience for lawbreakers and less for Ferengi.

MAJOR KIRA NERYS—Kira was a freedom fighter in the Bajoran underground during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. She now represents Bajoran interests aboard the station and is Sisko’s first officer. Her temper is legendary.

LIEUTENANT JADZIA DAX—An old friend of Commander Sisko’s, the science officer Dax is actually two joined entities known as the Trill. There is a separate consciousness—a symbiont—in the young female host’s body. Sisko knew the symbiont Dax in a previous host, which was a “he.”

DR. JULIAN BASHIR—Eager for adventure, Doctor Bashir graduated at the top of his class and requested a deep-space posting. His enthusiasm sometimes gets him into trouble.

MILES O’BRIEN—Formerly the Transporter Chief aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, O’Brien is now Chief of Operations on Deep Space Nine.

KEIKO O’BRIEN—Keiko was a botanist on the Enterprise, but she moved to the station with her husband and her young daughter, Molly. Since there is little use for her botany skills on the station, she is the teacher for all of the permanent and traveling students.

QUARK—Nog’s uncle and a Ferengi businessman by trade, Quark runs his own combination restaurant/casino/holosuite venue on the Promenade, the central meeting place for much of the activity on the station. Quark has his hand in every deal on board and usually manages to stay just one step ahead of the law—usually in the shape of Odo.

Historian’s note: The events of this series take place during the first and second seasons of the Deep Space Nine television show.

CHAPTER 1

No, Jake! Absolutely not!”

“Come on, Nog. It’ll be fun.”

Nog leaned forward and his large Ferengi ears seemed to flap. For a moment Jake recalled that old tale about the little elephant with the huge ears, who kept tripping over them. “Fun? Dressing up and playing stupid Starfleet games. You call that fun?”

Jake thought about it as the two friends sat in their favorite corner of the balcony overlooking the Promenade. The prospect of spending his summer at the Starfleet Junior Academy on Rijar was not exactly his idea of fun either. “But I promised my father,” Jake replied finally. “He’s already enrolled me.”

“Without asking you?”

“Well, he kind of did … I just didn’t know that was what he was hinting at.”

“Ah, deception. That, at least, is admirable,” Nog said approvingly. “He tricked you into going.”

Jake was going to argue that it was his decision, but thinking about it, he realized the main reason he was attending Space Camp was to please his father.

Commander Benjamin Sisko was in charge of Deep Space Nine, the former Cardassian space station that guarded the entrance to the Bajoran wormhole, gateway to the uncharted Gamma Quadrant. It was an important post that the elder Sisko had worked hard to achieve. And he made it obvious to everyone that he hoped his son would follow in his footsteps and choose to become a Starfleet officer.

While the idea appealed to Jake, he still harbored a certain lack of enthusiasm that made him wonder if Starfleet was really what he wanted to do with his life. This summer at Space Camp would provide an opportunity to explore the possibility without actually having to commit to it. But Jake did not want to go without his best friend.

“Nog, you have to say yes. I don’t want to go away for the summer without you.”

“Then stay here on the station. We can take that camping trip down to Bajor like we planned.”

“You hate camping,” Jake said. “The only reason you want to go is that Major Kira told us about the ancient artifacts we might find in the area.”

“Making a profit while having fun is the best way to spend your vacation.”

“Is that another one of your Ferengi Rules of Acquisition?”

“No. I just made it up,” Nog said, adding, “but it should be.”

“If you stay here by yourself, you won’t get to go to Bajor. And, with no school, your uncle, Quark, will have you working overtime in his place.”

Jake noticed Nog’s ears quivering as he thought about it. He had struck a nerve, or at least an earlobe. Nog was silent for a long time. Then, finally, he came to a decision: “Okay. I’ll go.”

Convincing Benjamin Sisko to nominate Nog to Space Camp proved more difficult. Jake knew his father had probably used Federation favors to get him admitted, and would be reluctant to do it again—especially for a Ferengi who probably couldn’t care less about ever joining Starfleet.

“The Academy is no place for a Ferengi,” Sisko said in response to Jake’s suggestion.

“It’s not the Academy we’re talking about,” Jake argued. “This is only Space Camp. It’s like a vacation.”

“Not as I recall it.” Jake could tell from his father’s glazed-over look that he was recalling his own summer at an Academy Space Camp. Jake never understood why adults always held such fond memories of past events that they probably hated at the time. It’s one of the mysteries of getting older, he decided.

“If you want me to go,” Jake said finally, “then you have to send Nog. I won’t go alone.”

“Is that an ultimatum?” Commander Sisko, like any Starfleet Commander, did not react well to confrontations.

“That’s not what I meant,” Jake added quickly. “It’s just that I—”

His father raised his hand to cut off Jake’s speech. “I know what you meant.”

Jake grimaced, expecting another father-to-son lecture. But instead he was surprised. “You and Nog are best friends, and this school vacation is your time together. You may find this a bit difficult to believe, but I was a teenager once myself. And I think I know how you feel.” There was a long pause, and then: “Okay, Jake, I’ll nominate Nog to Space Camp.”

Jake beamed. “Thank you.”

“No promises. I’m not going to pull strings, but I will recommend him. We’ll leave the decision up to Starfleet.”

For the next few days Jake worried that Starfleet would turn down the request. After all, there were only so many spaces available at Space Camp and Nog was not exactly prime officer material. And if Nog was rejected, then Jake felt he had put himself in the position of having to go on his own.

But Jake learned his concerns were unfounded when his father called him up to his office in Operations.

“This just came in,” Commander Sisko said as he handed Jake a message from Starfleet Headquarters.

Jake quickly read through the message and let out a sigh of relief. “Nog’s application was approved.”

“Surprisingly, Starfleet almost seems eager to have a Ferengi participating in Space Camp.”

Jake thought about it and realized it was not really that surprising. While the Ferengi were not great space warriors in the class of the Klingons, or even the Cardassians, they were a race that relied on wit and cunning (plus an ample dose of deception) and to have a Ferengi in Starfleet might actually prove beneficial.

Whatever Starfleet’s reasons, Jake was just happy that Nog had been approved. Excited, he rode the turbolift down to the Promenade to break the good news to Nog.

“Just because I’m attending their silly Space Camp doesn’t mean I’d ever consider dressing up in a Starfleet uniform for real,” Nog said when Jake told him the news over Java Cones at Quark’s.

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Jake replied. “You might even like it.”

“No chance,” Nog said as he slurped the sweet honeylike nectar coating off his cone. He threw a cautious glance over his shoulder at Quark, who was totaling up the morning’s profits. It was early afternoon and business was slow. “I’d better tell Uncle Quark.”

“Shouldn’t you tell your father first?”

Nog shook his ears. “No. He won’t care. If I want to go, then he’ll accept it. He’s my father. But my uncle’s another matter. He’ll probably consider this an affront to Ferengi tradition.”

When Nog had finished his cone, he got up and slowly walked over to face Quark. Jake accompanied him for moral support, certain that Quark would do his best to talk Nog out of going.

But Quark’s reaction turned out to be the exact opposite of what Jake had anticipated.

“I’m delighted.” Quark grinned broadly as he clapped a hand on Nog’s shoulder after Nog had blurted out his intentions.

“You are?”

“Of course I am. To be invited to Space Camp is a real honor.”

“You don’t mind that I’m going?” Nog asked, still in obvious shock.

“Why would I be? A Ferengi’s presence is just what Starfleet needs to shake them up a bit.” Quark poured three large Solarian shakes and set them on the bar. “Commander Sisko already informed me that Nog had been accepted.”

Jake wasn’t surprised at that. His father would have expected Quark to pop his ears over the prospect and probably wanted to smooth Nog’s path. But that didn’t appear to have been necessary.

“By the way,” Quark told Nog, “before you leave, stop by my quarters. I have a little going-away present for you.”

And then the three toasted the coming summer adventure over Solarian shakes. This was going to be exciting, Jake thought—not yet realizing just how exciting.

CHAPTER 2

Six days later, like a sleek silver arrow, a station runabout sped away from Deep Space Nine and, the Bajoran star system. Silently it streaked through the dark interstellar night en route to Rijar.

Chief Engineer O’Brien was piloting. Jake and Nog were the only passengers.

“You’re going to have a great time,” O’Brien told the boys.

“That’s what my dad keeps telling me,” Jake replied.

Nog remained silent and from the look on his face. Jake wondered if his Ferengi friend wasn’t already regretting his decision to come. And they hadn’t even arrived.

“I’m surprised Commander Sisko didn’t want to fly you to Rijar personally,” O’Brien said.

“Professor Kala is in charge of Space Camp. He was my father’s teacher when he was at the Academy. I think he wanted to make sure I didn’t get special favors.”

“From the stories I’ve heard about Kala you don’t have to worry about that,” O’Brien replied. “He’s a strictly by-the-book man.”

“Unfortunate,” Nog mumbled. “I could have used a few extra favors.”

“Come on, Nog,” Jake said. “It’s not going to be so bad.”

“You were saying,” Nog whispered to Jake. “About it not being so bad.”

“Quiet in ranks,” a loud voice boomed. The Senior Cadet, who had introduced himself as Wingate (he hadn’t bothered to give his first name), glared at Nog. This was not exactly the reception Jake had anticipated.

There were eight of them standing under the sweltering Rijarian sun. They had been assigned to one of four cadet-novice teams. There were thirty-two “campers” in all, making up a diverse collection of races. They were all teenagers, though that fact wasn’t apparent from the look of some of the alien types. Twhat, the squat boy from Algeron, had skin that reminded Jake of rusted iron and a physique that was more rhinoceros than human. Fortunately he had a gentle disposition.

But even if Twhat hadn’t, Wingate, who was a stocky Terran only a few years older than the rest of them, would not have been intimidated. Nothing would intimidate him, Jake thought as he marveled at the force of will Wingate exercised over the group. He was a second-year Academy cadet—a real cadet—but he acted almost like a Starfleet officer. There was a quiet strength about him, much like his father’s, that Jake admired and hoped to emulate. Maybe Jake was Starfleet material in spite of his doubts.

“Stargazing again, Mr. Sisko?” Jake snapped out of his thoughts and found himself looking into Wingate’s steel gray eyes.

“Ah, no … yes, sir. I was.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Wingate replied. “But I’d rather have your attention.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wingate threw a quick glance at the others. Anyone who wanted to snicker at Jake’s distress quickly swallowed that impulse. Wingate stepped backward and paused to contemplate the eight teenagers who stood uneasily in front of him.

“At ease,” he said. With an almost uniform sigh they did. But Jake noticed that no one was too much at ease.

“I’m not sure why any of you are here,” he continued. “some of you want to become Starfleet officers. Others are probably here simply to please their parents. Some of you may not have wanted to come here at all. Well, let me assure you that before the first week is out, all of you will wish you weren’t here.”

While Wingate described the hardships they were about to face, spending very little time on the fun and adventures that awaited them, Jake took the opportunity to study the rest of his team.

There were five males and three females in their group. In addition to Nog, Twhat, and himself, there was a tall skinny Orion youth named Hajar, and K’am, a young Klingon who looked, like most Klingons Jake had encountered, as though he’d started body-building exercises in nursery school.

The three females consisted of a tall Andromedan named Sorex, and Missy, the daughter of a Sri Lankan Starfleet lieutenant. And then there was Dyan from Betazed.

Jake was intrigued—attracted would have been a better word—by this pretty young Betazoid. She wasn’t what would, by human standards, be considered a ravishing beauty or even a Dabo girl. Yet she radiated a kind of serenity that Jake found strangely unsettling.

From the glances that Nog threw her way, it was obvious he was rapidly becoming infatuated, which was a seemingly constant state among Ferengi males when it came to females—of almost any species.

“She can chew my food anytime,” Nog whispered when he thought Wingate wasn’t paying attention.

“Care to share your comments with the rest of us?” Wingate turned and addressed Nog. He must have a third eye in the back of his head, Jake thought, or else his hearing is acute as a Nakorian swamp cat’s.

“Ah, just telling my friend, Jake … how lucky we are to be here,” Nog mumbled.

“You think you’re being sarcastic,” Wingate replied, then turned his gaze on the entire group. “But you are lucky—all of you. Though I suspect it will be a while before you believe that. When you leave Space Camp each of you will be a much different person.”

“And a better person. Or so I sincerely hope.”

The speaker who suddenly appeared on the scene was a short, bald, elderly man with a thick white beard who might have been the model for Santa Claus. There was even a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

Cadet Wingate snapped to attention and saluted. “Good morning, Professor Kala.”

“Good morning to you, Cadet,” professor Kala said as he returned the salute. “And to the rest of you.”

Jake was surprised at Kala’s height, or lack of it. From the stories his father had told, he expected the professor to be at least six feet tall. But this man looked like anything but a Starfleet legend.

“Appearances can be deceiving, young Sisko.” Professor Kala stepped over and looked straight into Jake’s eyes and smiled as though he knew exactly what he was thinking. “I’m not what you expected.”

Jake wasn’t sure how to reply. Fortunately he didn’t have to as Kala continued. “Your father was one of my best students.” He paused a moment, then added quietly: “He was also one of the worst.”

Kala walked up and down the line and stopped in front of each of them for a moment, as though reading their minds. Even Dyan, who actually was telepathic, seemed intimidated by the professor. And while Kala’s smile was disarming, Jake sensed solid steel underneath his almost comical exterior.

After Kala had quietly assessed the group he turned back to Cadet Wingate. “They’re all yours, Cadet. Try to make them feel welcome.”

“My pleasure, Professor. I’ll make this a summer they won’t forget.”

CHAPTER 3

Jake had to admit their personal quarters, although a bit spartan compared to those on Deep Space Nine, were more comfortable than he had expected after their initial welcome. While the three females and the other three males in their group were assigned to two larger rooms, he and Nog were given a smaller space to share.

Still the room was more than adequate. There were two foldawaybed units on opposite walls. Next to each of them was a closet-desk combination they could use to store their personal effects or use as a work space. Each desk had a touch pad that was linked into the camp’s main computer.

“Looks like they expect us to do schoolwork,” Nog remarked as he sat down at his desk and removed a crystallike holocube, about the size of a tricorder, from his bag and placed it next to the touch pad.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Jake commented.

“Uncle Quark gave it to me to record my experiences here. When we get back, he’s going to put it into a holosuite program.”

“I should have known,” Jake said. “The only reason Quark didn’t object to you going is because he’s planning on making a profit out of our summer vacation.”

“It’s the Ferengi way,” Nog replied as he activated the holocube by touching one of the sides. The crystal face glowed with a faint yellow shimmer for a moment and then abruptly turned itself off.

“Maybe it’s not working,” Jake said.

“No. Uncle Quark said it’s been programmed to automatically retrieve my activity records from the touch pad. But I haven’t done anything yet to record.”

At that moment there was a knock on the door, followed by Wingate’s voice. “Report to the auditorium in ten minutes.”

Space Camp was designed as a cluster of low dome-shaped buildings formed in the shape of a wheel. In the center was the auditorium and staff offices. Extending out from the eastern and western spokes were the student quarters. On the northern spoke was the communications and operations dome. In the south were the staff quarters, which included the Federation archaeological team. While the digs were no longer active, a small group remained on the planet to catalog the finds that had been discovered.

The students straggled in and sat in a semicircle around a small raised platform where Professor Kala stood waiting for them to get settled. It was an act of patience, probably because of their unfamiliarity with the layout of Space Camp, that would not be repeated.

Finally, when everyone was assembled, Kali began his introductory lecture. His voice was gentle, almost soothing, but Jake could sense a hard undercurrent. He was certain that the professor was not someone you wanted to provoke.

“Today you’re new and not yet accustomed to the rules around here. From now on being tardy to any session means you’re locked out. There will be no excuses for being late.”

Professor Kala clicked a switch on his podium and a holographic image of the planet Rijar appeared and rotated above the platform.

“You’re probably wondering why Starfleet chose a barren hunk of rock like this for its Space Camp. The reason is simple. Rijar has something to tell us … if we bother to listen. This is a world where an ancient war between two cultures totally obliterated its civilization.”

The professor paused and looked out at his young audience. “Starfleet is not a military organization, though you will, by necessity, learn the art of war, which is required for defense of the Federation. But to ever become a Starfleet officer, you must learn that the art of peace is of far greater importance.”

Professor Kala looked at the holographic image of Rijar as he concluded his remarks. “This planet is a grim reminder of that fact, and the reason that Starfleet chose to build its Space Camp here.”

Then, as if on cue, four Starfleet cadets, including Wingate, stepped up onto the platform, two standing on either side of Kala.

“You’ve already met your cadet leaders,” Kala said. “During the next two weeks they will be your guides. Listen to what they say and learn from their experience. It could save your life.”

Suddenly Jake felt the ground beneath him shake. Not violently, like in an earthquake, but more like someone had slammed a door very hard. It lasted only a second and was gone.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Professor Kala spoke quickly to reassure the cadets. “We’ve been getting occasional tremors recently. You’ll probably experience a few more while you’re here. But it’s nothing to get concerned about.”

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with testing and orientation. Jake was subjected to poking and probing by Space Camp’s sophisticated med machines in as thorough an examination as he’d ever received from Dr. Bashir back on Deep Space Nine. While each candidate had to submit a preliminary health profile from their home world doctor before arriving on Rijar, Starfleet wanted to confirm that nothing had been overlooked. All of the candidates tested normal physically.

Exhausted, Jake joined his teammates for dinner. After their exams they had been put through a grueling two hours of exercises, whose sole purpose seemed to be to convince them that they were not the pictures of youthful health that the med machines claimed.

Jake had just enough time to use the ’fresher and change into something clean before dinner. Which was why he now found himself wondering if coming to Space Camp was such a good idea after all.

Conversely, Nog seemed to be actually enjoying himself. The fact that the teenage Betazoid, Dyan, was sitting next to him and smiling, if not actually laughing, at his jokes was no doubt responsible for his Ferengi friend’s disposition.

That Dyan was seated beside Nog surprised Jake. He knew that Betazoids were normally uncomfortable around Ferengi. The four-lobed Ferengi brains made it impossible for most telepaths, including Betazoids, to scan their minds.

But since Betazoid telepathy is not inborn and almost always emerges during adolescence, it might be that Dyan was not yet completely proficient in her skills. Which might explain why Dyan did not shy away from Nog. Jake was certain that she could not be captivated by Nog’s charm, which was on the heavy-handed side. On the other hand, as Nog had aptly demonstrated in the past, he knew that Ferengi were skillful manipulators.

Being the last to arrive, Jake had to take the only open chair at the opposite end of the table, squeezed between Twhat from Algeron and the Klingon, K’am. Neither species was particularly noted for their social skills, though Twhat seemed to be a nice guy and K’am was a lot more subdued than the average Klingon.

As it turned out, K’am was also a proficient conversationalist. “Comes from my mother,” he said. “She’s assigned to the Klingon Embassy on Earth. I’ve learned the art of walking softly from her. Though I still carry a ‘big stick’ thanks to my father.”

Jake smiled, then seeing Twhat’s puzzled expression, explained. “It’s an old Earth saying. From one of our ancient presidents.”

“You’re from Earth?” K’am asked.

“I was born there,” Jake said. “But I grew up on Mars, and on the starships where my dad was posted. Deep Space Nine is my first real home in a long time.” Even as Jake spoke he had a momentary twinge of longing for his mother. During the battle against the Borg at the Wolf 359 star system, his father was on one of the thirty-nine Starfleet vessels destroyed in that conflict, and she was one of the eleven thousand lives lost.

That had been a long time ago and although he had reluctantly come to accept the loss of his mother, Jake knew he would never forget her.

“Excuse me,” Jake said as he got up and headed out of the dining hall, no longer very hungry.

CHAPTER 4

Rijar was a desert planet. It had not always been such. Once it had been a fertile green garden, but that had been eons ago. Since then it had decayed into the bleached bones of a world, baking under the relentless heat of a dying yellow sun, becoming a domain of bronze sand and chalk white stone, with an occasional oasis. Space Camp was situated on the edge of one such oasis in the planet’s northern temperate region.

Starfleet had built its facilities near the ruins of an ancient city. Not far away, he knew, there were Federation archaeologists working to unravel the mysteries of the planet’s past. But to date they had found little to show for their efforts. Here the only visible artifact was a series of nine stone monoliths that rimmed a hill east of the camp.

Jake stood in the thin evening air and stared at the weathered stones that remained as silent sentinels to the civilization that had once existed on the planet.

“You wonder what they’d say if they could speak.”

Jake had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed Dyan approach. Up close he could see that she really was quite pretty.

“Maybe they’d tell us what happened to the people,” Jake answered. “Did some of them leave when their planet was devastated and go off to other worlds?”

“Or maybe they’re still here.”

“Rijar’s been uninhabited for centuries,” Jake said.

“Perhaps,” Dyan replied. “But I feel ghosts still walk here.”

“I’m not sure I believe in ghosts.”

“Oh, I think you do, Jake Sisko. Everyone believes in ghosts, or at least in things that can be felt but not seen. It’s just that we’d rather not acknowledge it.”

Jake had to admit the planet was kind of eerie. He had the sense that he was standing in a graveyard, but there weren’t any graves. At least none that could be seen. Perhaps, Dyan—being a telepath—was able to sense feelings that to him were only cloudy perceptions of something that was not quite right.

“I think I’ve touched a nerve,” Dyan said, breaking Jake out of his thoughts.

“Reading my mind?” he wondered.

“No. Betazoids are forbidden by heritage and training to intrude in someone else’s thoughts without permission.”

“Even if you’re curious?”

“Even then.” Dyan laughed, then became more serious. “Betazed is a small, crowded planet,” Dyan replied. “On most worlds, if you want privacy you can go somewhere else.”

“We’re pretty cramped for room ourselves on Deep Space Nine,” Jake said.

“Then you have some idea of what it’s like on Betazed. But on your space station you can at least shut the door and be alone. On Betazed a telepath has the ability to come through the wall and into your mind.”

“Sounds kinda scary.”

“It can be. Which is why, over centuries, we’ve developed an internal self-discipline that prevents us from trying to scan another mind.”

“Nice to know I still have some thoughts that I can keep private.” Jake smiled, but it still bothered him a little bit that someone could read his thoughts if they really wanted to—even if that someone was as pretty as Dyan.

“Is this a private party or can anyone crash?”

Jake turned to see that Nog was coming up the hill toward them. The Ferengi was an unwanted interruption, but Jake managed to smile. “Hi, Nog. We were just talking.”

“Please join us,” Dyan said. “We were wondering about what might have happened to all the people who used to live here.”

Nog reached the top of the hill and managed to slide in between Jake and Dyan. “Wherever they went, they didn’t leave much behind.”

“No artifacts to dig up here,” Jake said, referring to their aborted trip to Bajor.

“No, but there are other attractions,” Nog looked at Dyan and grinned.

Jake thought that whatever else Ferengi were, being subtle was not one of their predominate traits. It was probably also a good thing that the four-lobed Ferengi brains could not be scanned by telepaths. It might send Dyan rushing back down the hill rather than returning Nog’s smile.

“Do you mind a personal question?” Dyan asked Nog.

“Ask me anything,” Nog replied.

“Well, a Ferengi is the last race I would have expected to find Space Camp. I was wondering why you’re here.”

“I’ve always been curious about what it might be like to become a Starfleet officer,” Nog said.

“What do you think, Jake?” Dyan asked. “Would your friend make a good Starfleet officer?”

Jake was about to say that Nog was here only because he had dragged him, but he swallowed the words. It was none of his business to undermine his friend, but it still bothered him that Dyan might take Nog’s words seriously. The thought of a Ferengi in Starfleet was … ridiculous. “I never really thought about it,” he said finally.

“It would be interesting,” Dyan said. She turned to Nog. “Think about it, Nog.”

“I promise,” Nog said.

Dyan smiled at him, then looked up at the night sky. Rijar had only a single pale moon that did little to illuminate the darkness. “It’s getting late, and I’m sure we have a big day tomorrow … so I’ll say good night.”

She turned and started down the hill. Jake and Nog lingered and watched her cross the field and disappear into the shadows at the edge of the compound.

“She really likes me,” Nog said as he nudged Jake.

“Betazoids are extremely polite,” Jake replied, not wanting to commit himself.

“No. She really likes me,” Nog repeated. “A Ferengi has a special sense when it comes to these things.”

Jake tried to change the subject. “It’s getting late.” He started down the hill.

“You know,” Nog said as he walked after Jake. “I think you’re jealous.”

That’s ridiculous, Jake thought to himself, not wanting to admit that just maybe he was.

CHAPTER 5

Back on Deep Space Nine, it was Saturday night and as usual it was crowded and noisy in Quark’s. Commander Benjamin Sisko and his Bajoran counterpart, Major Kira Nerys, found a relatively quiet corner table away from the commotion surrounding the Dabo wheel.

“So any news from Jake?” Kira asked.

Sisko shook his head. “Starfleet seals off Rijar during Space Camp. The participants aren’t allowed to communicate off-world.”

Kira caught a look in Sisko’s eyes. Having worked beside him in Operations through several crises, she had come to recognize that look. “You’re worried.”

“Not about Jake. He’ll do fine.”

“He’s had a good teacher.”

“It’s … you know how much I want him to join Starfleet.”

“Like I said, he’s had a good teacher. He’ll make a good officer.”

“What if it isn’t what he really wants?”

“If it isn’t, then he’ll tell you.” Kira sipped on her Bajoran spice tea. “He’s you, Benjamin, And like you, he’ll make up his mind … find his own path.”

Sisko leaned back in his chair and pondered his inner feelings. Whatever he wanted for his son, most of all he wanted him to be free to choose his own life. Whether it was Starfleet or something else wasn’t really that important, as long as it was what he wanted. He only hoped Jake realized that.

The next morning on Rijar arrived much too early for Jake. It was still an hour before sunrise when the wall intercom began beeping, followed by a soft female voice informing them that it was “Time to greet the dawn. Assembly at the west entrance in fifteen minutes.”

“I thought you told me this was going to be a vacation,” Nog grumbled as he rolled over and pulled the covers over his head.

Jake, who was not all that eager himself about getting up this early, especially after being awakened during the night by one of the Rijarian earth tremors that frequented the area, slid out of his bed and grinned at Nog. “Getting up early is good for you.”

“Good for you maybe,” Nog said as he reluctantly gave into the inevitable and sat up in his bed. “Not for a Ferengi. We have a different biological clock.”

“But it’s the early bird who catches the worm,” Jake said, reciting an old Earth expression as he put on his blue Space Camp outfit.

“Make that tube grubs and I’ll bite,” Nog replied, getting out of bed and putting on the same nondescript uniform that all the cadet-novices wore. “This place is run like a Cardassian labor camp. But at least there are females.”

“Which is about the only thing besides making a profit that would get a Ferengi excited.”

At that moment there was a light knock on the door. It then slid open a crack and Cadet Wingate looked in. “Coming, fellows.”

It was not a question.

Outside, there was still a chill lingering in the morning air. But the sun was already starting to break over the distant dunes and Jake knew it was going to be another sweltering hot day. Probably the only kind that Rijar ever had. He had read that when temperatures rose above a certain point, people began to get irrational. Little things became big things and a simple argument could turn into a fight or even a riot. Maybe that was what had happened here: The Rijarians couldn’t take the heat.

While the dawn came up and the sky turned from midnight black to a pale azure blue, the eight members of Jake’s team exercised in the traditional way military apprentices have done for centuries. It was not just for their bodies, Jake’s father had once explained to him, but it was a kind of group bonding in which the soldiers learned to follow orders instinctively.

Jake understood the necessity for this, but something inside balked at having to blindly obey, even when his mind told him that obedience was required. It was one of the conflicts he had with Starfleet, and one he hoped this summer would resolve.

The last element of what would become their morning ritual was a brisk run around the perimeter of the camp. Jake, in an effort to show up Nog, set an early pace. He was winded and puffing, but unwilling to show it, when K’am jogged up and fell in stride next to him.

“You don’t do much running on Deep Space Nine,” K’am commented.

“Only on the Promenade to grab the latest hologame off the racks,” Jake admitted, swallowing a deep gulp of air.

“You should jog every morning. Good for you.”

Jake looked over his shoulder and saw Nog bringing up the rear. If Jake was tired, the Ferengi was obviously exhausted. “Tell that to Nog.”

“He tries,” K’am said. “This must be very hard for a Ferengi.”

Great, Jake thought. I’m stuck in the middle. Not good enough to be cheered as a winner, and not bad enough to be empathized with as a loser.

For the rest of the morning Jake and the others were stuck in the auditorium listening to lectures on starship functions. Most of it Jake already knew, having spent several years living on various starships. At least he thought he did.

Wingate and the other real cadets managed to introduce some topics into the lectures, particularly in learning to improvise, that caught Jake’s interest. It wasn’t so much that Jake was interested in operations and engineering. Chief O’Brien he wasn’t. But learning how to adapt to emergencies when one doesn’t have the resources of a spacedock was interesting.

“You learn to eat what’s on the plate in front of you,” Wingate said. “Or else you starve.”

Later,in the afternoon after the lectures, the team tried putting into practice what they had learned.

Jake found himself standing on the bridge of a small starship that orbited Rijar. The ship, Gremlin, was far from a Galaxy-class craft like the Enterprise, but it was significantly larger than one of Deep Space Nine’s runabouts.

What Jake particularly liked was that this was not a holosuite simulation, but the real thing. They were actually in space which provided an element of real dinger, minute as it might be,

Wingate was in command while the others on Jake’s team performed subordinate duties. Jake had been appointed First Officer, a role he enjoyed. Nog was assigned to the communications terminal, a task Jake could tell the Ferengi did not particularly cherish. Especially since it didn’t give him much of an opportunity to show off for Dyan, who was acting as the ship’s counselor.

“It’s always been my ambition to join Starfleet and follow in the steps of Lieutenant Troi,” Dyan had told Jake when she was assigned her role for this flight.

Jake had met Deanna Troi once when the Enterprise visited Deep Space Nine. He thought she would make an excellent role model, particularly for another Betazoid.

Turning his attention back to the present, Jake thought this was just a milk run. But he was also convinced that Professor Kala would have something unique to spring on his unsuspecting students. His father had warned him that Kala was always doing the unexpected, and he insisted that his candidates be equal to the challenge. Well, he’d be equal to whatever they threw at him. He only hoped it would happen soon.

But for the past two hours there had been nothing to do except the normal starship routine, which was a bit boring.

“Keep alert, Sisko,” Wingate said.

“Yes, sir,” Jake replied. But alert for what?

“Picking up something on long-range scanners,” Nog yelled.

“Identify,” Wingate said.

“Starship. Freighter class. Coming out of warp drive. On a rendezvous course with Rijar.”

Jake was amazed. Nog was taking all this seriously, even more than he was. Or, more likely, he was just putting up a good show for Dyan’s sake.

“That’ll be the Enya, coming in with supplies,” Wingate said as he reviewed the data on his terminal.

Jake looked at his own terminal. There was something wrong, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then he realized what it was. “Captain, the Enya’s not braking properly. She’s coming in too fast.”

“Hail them,” Wingate told Nog. “On screen.”

The Enya appeared on the main viewscreen. It was on an obvious collision course with the planet’ --

“No response on any Starfleet hailing frequencies,” Nog replied.

“Plot the ship’s probable impact zone,” Wingate ordered.

Missy, the “camper” from Sri Lanka who was acting as Science Officer, punched the data into her terminal. What she came up with shocked her as she revealed in a wavering voice: “It’s going to splash down almost dead center on Space Camp!”

This has got to be a test, Jake thought. But when he looked at Wingate’s expression, he wasn’t so certain of that.

“Still no contact,” Nog said.

“Estimated time before impact?” Wingate asked.

“Twenty-six minutes,” Missy replied.

Wingate threw Jake a look. “Mr. Sisko, what’s your recommendation?”

“We can use a tracking beam to grab on to it,”

“I wish we could,” Wingate answered. “But the Enya’s eight times our mass. We’d be hauled down to the planet with her.”

“We have the firepower to stop the ship before it hits.” K’am stepped forward. He was acting as Security Officer. That’s a typical Klingon response, thought Jake, precise and effective … though not very humanitarian.

“As a last resort, we may have to do that,” Wingate said.

“Can’t we beam over and try to fix the problem, or at least change the ship’s course?” Dyan asked.

“Nice thinking, Counselor. I’ll lead the away team.” He looked at Jake. “You’re with me, Sisko. Plus Nog, Dyan, and K’am.” He looked over at Twhat who was seated at the engineer’s station. “Will you do the honors, Mr. Twhat.”

Twhat entered the coordinates from the ship’s master computer, then activated the transporter controls. “Five to beam. Now!”

They beamed directly onto the bridge of the Enya. Jake hadn’t known what to expect, but he wasn’t prepared for what he saw.

Something terrible had obviously occurred here. The control panels were smoldering as if they had been burned by phasers. Smoke filled the room like a sinister fog, obscuring much of the deck.

“There’s no one here,” K’am pronounced.

“Excellent observation, Mr. K’am,” Wingate replied as he stepped to the captain’s terminal. “The question is, where is the crew … and what happened?”

“There’s obviously been some kind of battle,” Jake said, using his tricorder to analyze the burns on the consoles. “Hand phasers caused this damage.”

“An attack by raiders,” suggested K’am.

“We’re running out of time,” Nog interrupted. “Twenty-two minutes before impact.”

Wingate punched a code into the terminal where he was standing. “I’ve set the automatic destruct sequence for eighteen minutes. We have that long to gain control of the ship.”

“What about the crew?” Dyan asked.

“Hopefully they’ve managed to get to the escape pods,” K’am said.

“Determine that,” Wingate told K’am. “Dyan will go with you and check for any signs of life. Your task is to get anyone you find off this ship before it explodes. Whatever you find—or don’t—you need to beam back to our, ship in seventeen minutes. “Without a word, K’am and Dyan exited the control deck.

“What do we do?” Jake asked.

“What do you think?”

Jake quickly ran over the possibilities in his mind. He could see Nog doing the same. The controls were severely damaged and repairing them in time appeared hopeless.

“The engine room,” Nog said. “There will be duplicate controls. We might be able to shut down the warp engines from there.”

“Do it,” Wingate ordered. “Both of you, I’ll monitor the situation from here.” He looked at his tricorder. “You have exactly sixteen minutes left.”

The engine room was three levels below and the turbolifts were malfunctioning. Jake used his tricorder to plug into the Enya’s database, which was damaged but still on-line, and found a work shaft that led directly down to the engine room.

“Got a problem here,” Nog said when he and Jake had climbed a third of the way down the shaft.

“We’re running out of time,” Jake replied anxiously. “We can’t go back.” Then he looked and saw what Nog saw.

The ladder that led down the shaft on their side was broken. Whatever had caused it was unclear, but there was no way they could continue.

Jake looked across the shaft. The ladder on the opposite side was still intact. But it was a long jump to reach it, and an even longer fall if they missed.

“It’s too far,” Nog said when he saw Jake preparing to jump.

“Not that far. We can do it.” Without waiting for an answer, or his nerves to fail, Jake leaped off the ladder on his side and across the gap to the opposite wall.

He overestimated the distance and hit the wall hard, almost losing his balance before he grabbed on to the nearest rung and pulled himself onto the ladder. He looked over at Nog. “Jump!”

The Ferengi hesitated only an instant, and then pushed himself off awkwardly and leaped across the chasm.

Jake stretched out his free hand to help Nog, but it wasn’t necessary as Nog grabbed on to the ladder rung just above. Quickly, they climbed down the rest of the way until they reached the engine room.

What they discovered there unleashed a flood of buried memories from Jake’s worst nightmare. For a moment, he was back on the deck of his father’s starship at Wolf 359 in the midst of the battle with the Borg.

The twisted metal and smoke of the Enya’s engine room was a grim reminder of the shattered beams that had held him prisoner until his father had rescued him. And it was where his mother had not been so lucky—and had lost her life.

“It’s no use,” Nog said. “The controls are a pile of sludge. We have to get out of here.”

“There may be survivors,” Jake yelled. “We have to make certain.” He started to feel his way through the thick smoke, feeling the heat from the damaged core.

“There’s no time,” Nog yelled after him.

Jake knew Nog was right. The Enya was going to self-destruct in minutes—and they didn’t want to be on board when it happened. “You go ahead, Nog. I’ll follow.”

“But—”

“Do it!” Jake shouted.

Nog hesitated a moment longer, then pressed his Space Camp insignia. “One to beam.” And then he was gone.

Jake figured he’d go a few steps farther and make one final tricorder scan to ensure no one was there, then he’d beam out. He still had two minutes before the self-destruct sequence was completed. He had time.

He wasn’t doing this out of bravado, but it was something he had to do. If his father hadn’t taken that extra step, Jake would have never survived the battle in Wolf 359. Perhaps if someone had waited a moment longer, his mother might have survived.

His eyes burning from the smoke, Jake stopped and reached to touch his insignia to beam out of harm’s way. There was no one there.

Then he heard it.

A small cry from the far corner of the engine room. Someone was still trapped.

Maneuvering through the twisted metal and heavy smoke, Jake tried to locate the source of the sound. “Where are you?” he yelled.

“Here…” It was a small voice, weak and in obvious pain.

Another moment and then, through the smoke, Jake saw her. A woman, in an engineer’s uniform, lay on the ruptured deck, trapped under a thick iron beam. She was obviously injured.

Jake ran to her. He tried to lift the beam. But it was impossible. It would not budge.

“You have to leave me,” the woman said.

Jake looked at her, and for an instant she looked like his mother. He thought of how her last moments might have been, and he knew he couldn’t leave this woman to die alone—not even if he had to die with her.

“Don’t worry,” Jake lied. “I’ll get you out.” But all his efforts were insufficient to move the beam even a nanometer.

“You can’t stay.” The woman looked up at him, her words slurred through the haze of pain. “There’s nothing more you can do.”

Jake knew that she was right, and he knew he was afraid. But something kept him from touching his comm badge. In an instant he could beam safely out of danger. It wasn’t because he was brave that he remained. He wasn’t brave. He was as frightened as he had ever been in his life. But he couldn’t leave.

Silently, because he couldn’t think of any appropriate words to say, Jake reached out and took the woman’s hand in his own.

And at that moment the Enya exploded.

CHAPTER 6

Amazingly he was still alive.

That much Jake knew.

He was standing alone in an empty room. Then a door slid open in the wall and Professor Kala entered. Suddenly Jake realized that this was a holosuite in Space Camp and he had been beamed off the Gremlin not into a real ship, but into a simulation.

“The Enya wasn’t real.” Jake was angry. He had been thrust into a terrible situation just to test his reactions. The whole battle with the Borg at Wolf 359, and the death of his mother. “You did this on purpose,” he yelled at Kala. “It’s not fair!”

“No,” the professor said evenly. “It wasn’t fair. I was deliberately pushing you to the extreme.”

“Why me?”

“I’m not singling you out, Jake, for some vendetta against your father. He was a lot of trouble, but he turned out to be well worth the effort. I wanted to see if his son was up to the demands of Starfleet command.”

Jake looked over at the spot on the floor where the Bajoran woman had been pinned under the beam. There was nothing there now, but he could still see her in his mind. Or was it his mother he saw? “Sorry if I disappointed you.” His voice shook from the flood of emotions that racked him at the moment.

“You didn’t.” Professor Kala stepped over and put a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “You acted like a compassionate human being. But, unfortunately, if you ever decide to put on a Starfleet uniform, you will not always have that luxury.”

Jake looked at him. “I’m not sure if the trade-off is worth it.”

“Perhaps in your case it isn’t. That’s a question I hope you’ll be able to answer before Space Camp ends.”

Nog was waiting for Jake when he came out of the holosuite area. It was obvious that his friend was upset. “What happened in there?” Nog asked.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Jake replied sharply, then headed off.

Nog started after him, but a hand on his shoulder restrained him. It was Professor Kala. “Let him be alone for a while, Nog, He has things to work out in his own mind.”

Humans are a bundle of unresolved emotions, Nog thought. Actually it was something his uncle, Quark, had said. Show me a human with a lot on his mind, and I’ll show you someone ready to be taken advantage of.

Of course Nog didn’t want to take advantage of a friend, but it comforted his sense of Ferengi pride to know that he could if he wanted.

Nog started to leave the holosuite area when another tremor rumbled through Space Camp. Like all the others he had experienced since arriving on Rijar, this one quickly passed. But they were still unsettling.

Earlier he had overheard a conversation between Professor Kala and Wingate. No one knew what was causing the tremors, since there didn’t seem to be any pattern. But if something serious did happen, Wingate had assured the professor that there were shuttlecraft ready to evacuate Space Camp.

Somehow that did not particularly reassure Nog.

The next day, the four teams were each given command of a simulated starship and were put into competition with one another. For Jake and Nog it was not unlike one of the Space Patrol hologames they played on Deep Space Nine’s Promenade.

Each of the teams took turns rotating between different assignments. What was good about the exercise was that each member of a team had to depend upon at least one other teammate. That was also what was bad.

After missing for the third time with his aft phasers, Jake began to suspect that Nog might be deliberately feeding him faulty data. When he mentioned it, after their ship had been destroyed, Nog emphatically denied it.

“You’re just a poor shot,” Nog explained. “I always beat you at the arcade.”

That was not exactly true, Jake thought. He had won his share of hologame encounters, but he had to admit the Ferengi did have more of a “killer” instinct when it came to battle games.

Although Jake let the incident pass this time, he remained suspicious.

It was later that same morning, after a short shuttle ride to the canyon country south of Space Camp, that Jake’s next encounter with Nog occurred.

The team was rock climbing up a gnarled stone monolith that bordered the craggy canyon beyond. This was a physical exercise and Jake felt confident he could easily outperform Nog.

Without either Jake or Nog acknowledging it, they were now competing with each other in every test. One was always trying to one-up the other—particularly if Dyan was present.

The rock climb was a good example. Jake went first, using his athletic talents and the skills he had learned from his father during similar climbs on Mars. This terrain was similar to that of the Red Planet, particularly since terra-forming had boosted the oxygen content and created a mini “hothouse” environment to make the Martian winters less frigid and the summers, if not exactly summer, at least like a mild spring.

Dyan was second on the rope, followed by Nog and then K’am bringing up the rear. Each climb consisted of half the team, and these four had seemed to evolve into a habitual group.

The climb, like many of the Space Camp exercises, was designed as a test of teamwork rather than individual competition. But that didn’t deter Jake from wanting to show off his climbing skills a bit.

“You’re very good,” Dyan said after Jake had traversed the underside of a large rock that blocked their path to the peak.

“I did a lot of climbing when we lived on Mars,” Jake answered as he helped Dyan climb onto the top side of the overhanging rock. From here it was only a few more meters to the peak. Anxiously, Jake started to climb upward.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others?” Dyan asked.

“Ferengi aren’t very athletic. We’ll meet him at the top.”

Reluctantly Dyan followed Jake. There were an abundance of footholds and this last part of the climb was almost easy compared to what they had already endured.

Down below them, Nog and K’am continued up the almost vertical side of the monolith where the climb was anything but easy. Nog, in particular, was having a hard time.

“Do you want to stop?” K’am asked as they paused on a small outcropping about halfway up.

With sweat dripping from his ears, Nog looked down at the ground which was a lot farther down than he had imagined when he had been looking up. Heights were not something he was very keen on. But then he glanced back up to see that Jake and Dyan were almost at the peak. “Never.”

With renewed energy, Nog attacked the rest of the climb with a ferocious determination. K’am skillfully followed. This type of exercise was child’s play to someone who had been born Klingon, but he had the courtesy not to make it seem too easy.

They had almost reached the top of the overhanging rock when Nog made a misstep, lost his footing, and tumbled from the rock face out into space and toward the ground.

Fortunately, safety precautions had been rigidly enforced. All that happened to Nog was that he found himself dangling in midair from the end of his security line and doing a lot of yelling, as his bravado momentarily left him. He was humiliated, but not hurt.

“Relax,” K’am yelled at him as he pulled him back up on the line. “You’re perfectly safe.”

“Easy for you to say,” Nog grumbled. He reached out and grasped the Klingon’s hand as he let himself be pulled up.

When he was safely back on the overhanging rock, Nog paused and looked up at Jake and Dyan. Was it his imagination or was Jake silently laughing at him?

CHAPTER 7

Can I speak to you?” Nog asked as they were returning to the shuttlecraft for the trip back to Space Camp after the rope-climbing exercise.

“Sure,” Jake answered, sensing the seriousness in Nog’s tone. Ferengi were never serious about anything except gold-pressed latinum and…

“Females,” Nog said.

“Females?”

“Well, one female. The Betazoid, Dyan.”

“Definitely a female,” Jake tried to joke.

“You have to stay away from her,” Nog declared.

“What’re you talking about?”

“I think you’re trying to show me up in the field tests so you can steal my girl.”

Jake stopped short and looked at his Ferengi friend. “I don’t believe this. I’m not trying to steal Dyan from you by showing you up. It’s just that humans are better athletes than Ferengi. Everybody knows that.” He started to walk away, then stopped to add: “And, one more thing. She’s not your girl.”

The rest of the afternoon went badly between Jake and Nog. Each retreated to a separate corner of their shared quarters and tried to pretend the other wasn’t there.

Nog busied himself with his holocube. He downloaded the events he had previously recorded into his touch pad and edited them so that his role became central and magnified. He cut out those parts that showed him in a less than favorable light. It wasn’t cheating, but creative manipulation, which was a most admirable Ferengi trait.

As he worked, Nog thought about how he had originally considered the whole “miniature Starfleet” style of Space Camp stupid. At first he had gone along with the games only to impress Dyan. But something changed over the past few days. He was beginning to like it—at least a little bit.

And, he thought, that was very un-Ferengi.

Jake was also gaining new insights as he recorded his thoughts in his private diary on his touch pad. He had grown up as a “space brat,” with “home” being wherever his father had been stationed, on ship or planet. Starfleet was the only life Jake had ever known, but it was not the one that he necessarily wanted to embrace.

He had to admit that Deep Space Nine was an exciting environment. Being so close to the wormhole and the unknown Gamma Quadrant which lay beyond it, there were new experiences every day. But, strangely, Jake found the process of writing about the experiences in his journals more rewarding than the actual doing. Alone, interfacing with only his computer and his imagination, was what Jake enjoyed best.

That evening, after dinner, Jake took his touch pad outside and sat in the gathering dusk and wrote. Not so much about what was, but about what could be. He loved stories, remembering the times when his mother read to him when he was much younger, and later how he enjoyed listening to his father’s enthusiastic tales about life among the stars.

And now Jake was learning to spin his own stories. While his father may have imagined him as Ulysses sailing a futuristic set of stars, Jake thought of himself more as the blind teller of those tales, Homer.

“A strip of latinum for your thoughts,” Jake looked up to see Missy, the candidate from Sri Lanka on Earth.

“Ah … just my journal.” Jake’s attention had been focused so much on Dyan that he had almost ignored the other two girls in his group. Missy was brown skinned with features that spoke of a Southeast Asian heritage.

Missy was soft-spoken and kept her own counsel, but her skills in science tests were more than impressive. Her goal, he remembered from an earlier conversation, was to become an engineer.

“I wish I could put my thoughts on screen so easily,” she said as she sat down next to Jake. “I can think of what I want to say, but the words never seem to match the vision in my mind.”

“That’s a universal dilemma,” Jake said. “I have the same problem. I see the world around me, but it’s difficult to translate so that someone can read my words and see what I see.”

“There was a writer who lived in my country several centuries ago,” Missy told him. “His vision of space still survives, even if it is a bit technically out of date. His books inspired me to work on getting into Starfleet.”

“Arthur C. Clarke,” Jake said. “I’ve read his books myself.”

Missy looked over his shoulder at the words lingering on Jake’s touch pad screen. Normally Jake was terribly shy about sharing his writing, but something about Missy’s attitude proclaimed that she was a colleague—even if his tool was words and hers was a microprobe.

“Do you like to write?” she asked.

“When I get it right,” he replied. “Which isn’t that often.”

Missy smiled and he knew she understood. “I feel the same way about adjusting a core drive.”

“I’ve always thought of words like stars,” Jake said. “They’re like the lights in the sky that show us the way.”

“Such a beautiful way to put it, Jake. It sounds to me that you’ve found your vocation.” With those words, Missy got up and walked away, leaving Jake sitting under the stars and wondering if she might not be right.

The encounter with Missy had put Jake in a better mood. When he returned to his room, Nog was already asleep, which he was glad of, not wanting to increase the hostility that had sprung up between them.

They had always competed with each other, but in the past few days at Space Camp, their rivalry had taken on a harder edge.

As Jake slipped into his bunk he noticed the crystal face on the holocube on Nog’s desk was glowing. It reminded him of a sponge that was soaking up everything it could find. But then that thought passed and he fell asleep.

In his dreams he thought about Missy and her words, but then she morphed into the image of Dyan. It was a tranquil scene, with the two of them exploring a green velvet world.

But somewhere in the depths of the long forest, Jake sensed an intruder. Something or someone was prowling there—and he had very big ears.

CHAPTER 8

Jake remembered learning in school about the ancient Roman Empire that once existed on Earth. Rome had been a great nation, ruling most of the known world at its height. But, as all civilizations eventually do, Rome had fallen from its pinnacle of glory, devastated by civil unrest inside and wars outside.

Now, walking through a holosuite replication of ancient Rijar constructed by the archaeological team working there, he thought that much the same thing must have happened here. This city, or what remained, was only a pale reminder of what had once been a mighty empire. Based on Starfleet’s archaeological digs on the planet, this was probably how it had looked after the final wars and before the ravages of time and the environment had destroyed it.

“Perhaps there are still other cities here buried beneath the sand, frozen in time,” he said to Dyan as the team paused in front of a large monument of an armored soldier astride a ferocious lizard beast.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Maybe we’ll even discover one before our summer here is over.”

“Not sure I’d like to meet that fellow in a dark alley,” Jake quipped as he studied the statue of the warrior astride the beast.

“He doesn’t scare me,” Nog said, joining them. Jake noticed that his Ferengi friend had this increasingly annoying habit of interrupting any time Dyan was around.

“That’s because a Ferengi would be so intent on stealing the stranger’s purse, he’d forget the stranger might be holding a weapon in the other hand,” Jake said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“For good friends, you two always seem to be at odds,” K’am noted as the other cadets joined them.

“All in fun,” Jake said, trying to soften his early barb. But he noticed that Nog was still scowling.

“What’s in that building over there?” Missy asked, as much to lighten the mood as to gain information.

“Let’s check it out,” Dyan said. She started walking and the others accompanied her. K’am, ever the diplomat, made a conscious effort to walk between Jake and Nog.

K’am checked his tricorder. “That’s the main hall. It’s where the government conducted their business.”

As the quartet strolled toward the building, Jake noticed how little remained of what must have once been a beautiful city. What had caused such differences between the people of this planet that their only recourse was total destruction? Then Jake remembered that even on Earth, in the late twentieth century and into the early decades of the twenty-first, individual and nationalistic passions had nearly brought his home world to the brink of destruction.

But to allow petty differences to escalate into warfare that threatened the destruction of their entire planet seemed absurd to Jake, who had been born into a much more enlightened age. And yet he knew that even today on Deep Space Nine there were still those survivors of the Bajoran-Cardassian conflict who harbored such deep hatreds that they gave no thought to the consequences of their revenge.

Inside the building Jake saw that the walls were decorated with icons that must represent the people and places from the planet in happier days. Each of the icons was framed in a blue border. That must symbolize the sky, Jake thought. And there was always a green base. That was the ground beneath them. Those two colors were a pattern that seemed to appear in not only their pictures, but their structures and machines.

“I have a feeling, looking at these pictures, that this may have been a race of latent telepaths,” Dyan observed as she stood in front of a wall of images.

“Quite likely,” Jake agreed. “Perhaps what you’ve been sensing is a residual effect of that telepathy.”

“An interesting hypothesis,” Dyan replied. “But I think it’s something else.” She stepped back and looked around the room.

The room was incomplete, a virtual reality replication with key pieces of information missing. Space Camp had done their best to make this simulation as real as possible, but there was still much that remained unknown about Rijar and the people who had lived and died there.

What Jake could tell about the room was that it had been some kind of meeting place. No, he thought, it was more of a control center, like Ops on Deep Space Nine. This was probably the nerve center of the city. Or it had been once.

As he wandered around the room, Jake saw open portals where equipment had been. Perhaps it was missing because of the incomplete data Space Camp had to work with. Or, more likely in his opinion, it had been moved to a safer place as the city continued to be attacked by its enemies.

“I think the people who were left must have gone somewhere else,” Jake said, voicing his conclusions.

“Deserted their posts.” The snarl in K’am’s response indicated to Jake that beneath his diplomatic exterior there beat the heart of a true Klingon. Duty onto death, no matter what.

“No,” Jake said. “I think they went to another place to continue the war.”

“Such a waste,” Dyan mused. “All this death and destruction … and for what purpose.”

“Does seem senseless,” Nog agreed. “The Ferengi would never do this.”

“No,” Jake agreed. “There would be no profit in it.” Then he quickly turned and exited the building before Nog could come up with a retort.

Outside in the plaza the sun was bright and Jake imagined how the city had been so long ago. It would have been a lovely place to live.

Slowly, one by one, the others followed him out. Each was in a somber mood from the experience. Exactly what Professor Kala intended, Jake thought.

“Hope you enjoyed your shore leave.” Cadet Wingate appeared out of nowhere and paused beneath the statue of the armed rider on the beast. “For tomorrow you die.”

They all looked at him. Wingate continued to smile. “It’s solo combat tomorrow.”

Solo combat, thought Jake. He knew from his father’s stories of his time in Space Camp what that meant.

They would be dropped into an alien environment, each with a single weapon. Not to defend themselves against whatever alien threats they might encounter, but to use against one another.

This was Space Camp’s version of the ancient Roman circus in which gladiators were thrown into an arena to battle each other—until only one of them was left standing alive at the end.

CHAPTER 9

The landscape surrounding Jake was primeval. He saw that this was a world in the process of being born, or, at best, in its early childhood. It was still raw and unformed. Molten bursts spewed out of crevices that were ripped open by almost continuous quakes. There were no trees to be seen, only gnarled rock formations. It was a planet of smoke and fire.

While Jake had to admire the rugged beauty, he knew this was also a very dangerous place. The fact that it was a holosuite simulation did not diminish that danger. Not only from the simulated planet, which was hostile enough, but from his teammates.

In this exercise the group was about to put to use the skills they had been learning in hand-to-hand combat training.

Each of them had been given the opportunity to select a single weapon to take with them. For safety, each of the exercise weapons had been set so that it could not do any actual physical harm. Phasers were set to low stun, and vibro-blades produced only a mild stinging sensation and could not penetrate the skin.

Jake had chosen one of the phasers, even though he saw Professor Kala eying his choice with obvious disapproval.

“You understand, young Sisko, that the phasers are programmed to only fire three times.”

“I wasn’t planning to miss,” Jake retorted. “I’m an excellent marksman.”

“As you wish,” Kala said softly.

Jake was pleased to notice that most of the team had also selected phasers. The two exceptions were K’am and Missy. K’am chose a bat’telh, the Klingon sword of honor and ritual weapon of combat. Missy selected a traditional archer’s hunting bow and a trio of arrows.

Going in order, determined by lot, each entered the playing field in two-minute intervals.

“But what’s to prevent someone from waiting just inside and ambushing the others as they enter?” Nog asked.

“Nothing” was Professor Kala’s simple answer.

Nog gave a hard look to Jake as he stepped past him. “Fortunately I go before you.” Nog had drawn the third spot, while Jake had the luck to go last. “So watch your back.”

I’ll do that, Jake thought to himself.

Hesitating a moment when his turn came, Nog then dived at the entrance and went in low and ready for an ambush.

Jake waited as the others took their turns. There was no way to know what had happened to them on the other side. If a candidate was “eliminated,” he or she would be immediately beamed out to a holding room until there was a final victor and the “game” was over.

Now, moving stealthfully through the smoldering terrain, Jake wished desperately to be that victor, feeling it would enhance his standing in Dyan’s eyes.

There was no sign of the others and the hard rocky surface left no tracks. There was no way to know how many of his seven teammates still survived.

Jake almost hoped that Nog was a survivor. He wanted to personally eliminate him and show up his Ferengi friend, though he knew it would not be so easy in here. While the Ferengi lacked physical prowess, their cunning and deception would make Nog a skillful adversary.

Jake heard a noise behind him. There was something moving in the rocks. It must be one of the others. But who?

Not K’am. The Klingon would have made a more obvious approach, confronting him directly and challenging Jake to battle.

Or would he? Klingons are brave and filled with honor, but they are not stupid. Jake carried a phaser, while K’am had only his bat’telh. A formidable weapon in close encounters, but no match for a phaser at a distance. Jake couldn’t understand why the professor disliked choosing phasers for this test.

Realizing he was standing out in the open, Jake quickly moved toward the shelter of the rocks. In his haste, he stumbled. And that freak accident may have saved his life—or at least his hololife.

Something whizzed past his ear. If he hadn’t stumbled, he realized, it would have hit him squarely in the neck.

Shattering against the rock behind him was an arrow. At the instant of contact the arrow vanished. Had it struck him, he would have been eliminated from the game.

It was Missy who was hunting him. And, except for a stroke of dumb luck, she would have claimed him as her victim.

Cautiously Jake crept along a rocky ravine in an attempt to get behind the spot where he thought the arrow had come from. Maybe he could turn the tables on his opponent.

Slowly and, he hoped, silently Jake edged his way around the rocks, careful to avoid the lava pools that bubbled up through the cracks in the ground. A misstep here would also eliminate him from the game.

Professor Kala had told them that falling victim to “an act of nature” was as fatal as being hit by a pseudo-phaser beam. “You have two opponents in this test: your friends who have become your sworn enemies for the duration, and the planet itself.”

The smoke created by the fissures would help to hide him, Jake thought, as he cautiously approached the place where he thought Missy had been.

She wasn’t there of course. He really hadn’t expected to find her—but he definitely hadn’t expected to find what he did.

Jake could see that it was a Space Camp insignia. He recalled Professor Kala remarking that when they were “eliminated,” then their insignia would be left behind as a kind of marker, or a trophy for the victor to collect.

But no one had collected this trophy. Why not?

Jake started forward to pick up the insignia, then paused. Something about the ground it rested on was wrong. He picked up a stone and tossed it at the insignia. The stone fell through the ground, which was not solid rock but quicksand. Someone had set up a very nasty trap and Jake had almost walked into it.

And he was certain he knew who that someone was.

“Nog,” Jake shouted. “I know it’s you.”

He listened but there was only the rumbling of the planet. But he knew it was Nog, and that Nog wanted to make sure he claimed Jake as his victim.

Jake stepped back to where the smoke would hide him. He was equally determined that he would win this game. No matter if he defeated the others or not, he wanted Nog’s insignia in his hand before this day was over.

Down among the smoldering rocks, there was protection, but he couldn’t sit there all day and hope that Nog would come by. Cautiously, Jake began the climb up to a higher position.

There was a small ridge that overlooked the immediate area. From there Jake could see in all directions. That was his destination.

But the others would probably have the same thought, so he decided to take a back approach to avoid an ambush. Jake chose a rather perilous route that followed a narrow lava flow. No one in their right mind would go this way, or so he hoped the others would think.

It took almost an hour of difficult climbing to reach the ridge. Twice he had nearly slipped, but those weekend trips with his father on Mars paid off. Finally, nearly exhausted, he made it.

Unfortunately, as he climbed up onto the ridge, he discovered he was not alone.

“I knew you’d come up this way,” Nog said as he pointed a phaser at Jake’s chest. “You always like to do things the hard way.”

CHAPTER 10

So,” Jake said angrily. “Are you just going to stand there or are you going to fire?”

“Ferengi love to gloat. I’m gloating.”

Jake had counted on that. He knew Nog would want to see him squirm before claiming victory. It was a brief moment, but Jake seized the opportunity.

With a lunge, Jake leaped to one side and rolled.

Nog fired his phaser—and missed.

Jake ducked behind a large rock. If Nog had ambushed Missy, as Jake was certain, then he had only a single phaser blast left. And Jake had all of his.

But, as he reached for his phaser, Jake realized to his horror that it wasn’t there. He must have dropped his weapon during the ascent. If this wasn’t a game, he’d really be in serious trouble. Some Starfleet officer he’d make.

Personal recriminations could come later, he told himself. Nog was his immediate problem. Whatever else, he didn’t want to be defeated by the Ferengi.

He knew Nog would probably try to circle around behind him. There were only a few rocky clumps on the ridge, with a lot of open space between, so that would be difficult. He would have to slip over the side and come along one of the cliffs to be unseen.

But he also knew that Nog would be expecting him to do the same, and it was more than likely that the Ferengi would sit and wait for Jake to sneak up on him.

So Jake decided to do the unexpected.

With a sudden burst he ran across the open area toward the clump of rocks where Nog had been.

Nog heard Jake coming and leaped up with his phaser, but he was a nanosecond too late. Jake plunged into the Ferengi at top speed, knocking the phaser out of his hand, and they tumbled on the ground.

Now all their pent-up frustrations spilled out as they wrestled. This was no longer a game but had become a real fight.

Jake was bigger and stronger, but Nog was cunning. And he had sharp teeth.

“Oww,” Jake yelled as he pulled away from Nog, feeling the blood trickling from his ear. “That hurts.”

“It’s gonna hurt a lot more before I’m through,” Nog yelled and then put his head down and ran straight for Jake.

Head down, the Ferengi charged like an enraged animal, and Jake had no time to get out of the way. Down they went again, rolling around on the ground like a pair of angry Callistian pronto beasts. Although kicking and gouging, they really couldn’t inflict serious harm on each other, because they were fighting amid the boulders and tight spaces. They struggled until, finally, sheer exhaustion broke them apart.

For a long silent minute they stared at each other, neither knowing what to say. Each, perhaps, afraid to speak because angry words might forever damage their friendship, which was already severely wounded.

“Thanks for making it so easy.”

They both turned to see Dyan standing on one side, and K’am on the other. The Klingon held his bat’telh at the ready, while Dyan aimed her phaser.

Dyan, who had spoken, smiled at Jake. “Game’s over.” And she pulled the trigger. In his last instant in this simulated world, Jake saw K’am bring the bat’telh down on Nog in a symbolic death arc.

Then Jake was in the holding room … and an instant later Nog appeared next to him. Everyone else but Dyan and K’am was present. Professor Kala sat in a chair in a corner of the room and keyed something into his touch pad.

Dyan and K’am materialized in the room. They were both smiling in their apparent victory.

“No fair,” complained the young Orion, Hajar. “They worked as a team.”

“Nothing in the rules said that was illegal,” Dyan said, looking at the professor for confirmation.

“Pairing up was not specified,” Professor Kala admitted. “But neither was it specifically forbidden. This was, after all, a test of initiative as well as courage. I declare Dyan and K’am the victors.”

Nog passed by Jake as he moved to the exit and whispered in a low voice, “This was all your fault, Jake. I could’ve won if you hadn’t interfered.”

“In your holodreams,” Jake retorted to Nog’s back.

As he left the holding room, Jake thought with some sorrow that the once best friends were fast on their way to becoming worst enemies.

The next day, while leading a field trip into the desert south of Space Camp, Jake had no time to reflect on his deteriorating relationship with Nog.

At that moment the only thing he realized was that he had somehow made a wrong turn. He was hopelessly lost—and caught in a blinding sandstorm. Even wearing goggles it was almost impossible to see anything through the swirling grit. Worst of all, unlike yesterday, all of this was the real thing and not a holosuite simulation.

“Nice going, Jake.” Nog was right next to him, but his words were garbled as they came out of his mouth filter.

“We need to find shelter.” It was Dyan talking. At least everyone was still together. Getting lost in this storm could have serious results. Suddenly Jake realized that one of them, the Klingon, K’am, was missing.

“K’am,” Jake yelled through his filter. “Report.”

There was a long moment. The only sound he heard was the relentless howl of the storm. Jake was frightened. Not for himself, but because he was in charge of this mission and one of his team was missing. He was responsible.

“K’am,” Jake yelled again.

This time there was a faint response: “Over here.”

Jake looked, but he could barely make out the shapes of Nog and Dyan who were standing beside him.

“Here…” Jake heard the faint voice again. But where was it coming from? He hesitated, afraid to make the wrong decision. But the storm was getting worse. He had to do something fast.

“This way.” Jake pointed in the direction he thought the voice had come from. “Hang on to each other so we don’t get separated.”

Slowly, as though trudging through waist-deep water, the trio moved through the swirling sand.

“K’am! Where are you?” Jake yelled into the storm. If he had his tricorder, it would be simpler to locate the missing Klingon. But this field exercise denied them the use of any sophisticated technology.

Jake’s only comfort lay in the fact that if they were in real danger, Kala could transport them back to camp immediately. In the meantime, the professor apparently was of the opinion that a little discomfort would do them good. Adults seemed to revel in putting the next generation through the same hardships they had to endure as kids. It didn’t seem fair, but as his father had told him on more than one occasion, “Life is never fair, Jake.”

“K’am,” Jake yelled again as he trudged through the sandstorm, with Nog and Dyan holding on behind. He could only hope he had chosen the right direction.

“Here.” The voice was now loud and clear. But where was it coming from? There didn’t seem to be anyone in front of him.

Suddenly, in a single misstep, Jake found out where K’am was. He fell through the sand and into the pit that the Klingon had stumbled into. Fortunately it was a short drop, but its coming unexpectedly made Jake hit the bottom of the pit hard.

“Hurt?” K’am asked as he helped Jake to his feet.

“Only my pride. That was a stupid mistake.”

“It was,” K’am said. “Even more so for a Klingon.”

Jake smiled. K’am had a way of defusing situations, which was a very un-Klingon trait.

“Jake,” Nog yelled from above.

“Stay where you are,” Jake yelled back. He moved to the wall and tried to climb, but the sand was loose and it was impossible to scale even the short distance to the surface.

“That’s why I didn’t climb out,” K’am said as he stepped over beside Jake.

Jake surveyed the situation. The last thing he wanted was for Nog to have to pull him out of the pit, especially in front of Dyan. There had to be another way. The pit wasn’t very deep, only about one and a half times his own height. But the walls were smooth and sandy and impossible to climb.

“Together I think we can get out,” Jake suddenly said to K’am, having thought of the solution.

Climbing onto the Klingon’s shoulders, Jake was able to emerge from the pit. Nog and Dyan were standing only a short distance away, but barely visible through the swirling sand. At least in the pit I was out of the storm, Jake thought. Maybe that’s where we ought to stay until the storm subsides.

“Over here,” Jake yelled.

Cautiously Nog and Dyan moved through the sand until they reached Jake.

“Give me your rope,” Jake said to Nog.

“To pull K’am out?” Nog asked as he uncurled a length of rope and handed it to Jake.

“No, to help us into the pit. Until the storm is over.”

Jake held the rope as first Dyan and then Nog slid down into the pit. Then, knowing they could get out again the way he had, he let the rope fall into the pit, and he finally slid down the sandy walls himself.

This time he knew what to expect and he hit the ground standing up.

“Interesting…” Dyan was saying as she looked around the pit.

“What’s so interesting about a hole in the ground?” Nog asked.

“It’s not really a hole,” she replied, moving over to the corner. “It’s like an entrance.”

Jake looked and saw what she saw: a small depression in one wall. Dyan swept aside some sand, revealing an opening just large enough for someone to squeeze through.

“Perhaps we should explore and see where it goes,” K’am suggested.

“That’s not part of our mission,” Jake said. “But we can record our find for the Space Camp archaeological team. That is, we could, if we had a tricorder.”

Nog reached into his backpack and pulled out his holocube. “I can record it on my holocube, and we can transfer the data when we get back.”

“We weren’t allowed to carry tricorders.” Jake thought about it. “I doubt if personal recorders are permitted.”

“On the other hand,” Dyan said, “without recording it now, chances are we may never find our way back again.”

Jake had to admit to himself that she had a point. The pit had opened up because of the storm shifting the sand, and it might well vanish again with the next storm. And this just might be an important archaeological find. “Go ahead and record,” he told Nog.

“What’da you think I’ve been doing,” Nog replied as he swept the area with his holocube. “There. Tagged and identified for prosperity.”

Suddenly there was another ground tremor. This one was sharper and lasted a second or two longer than the others Jake had felt. Rijar was such an old world that these tremors seemed unnatural here. He wondered what could be causing them.

K’am was standing under the opening. Above him the storm was subsiding. There was even a patch of sunlight. “Then let’s get out of here and find our pickup point: I, for one, have eaten enough sand for one day.”

CHAPTER 11

Far away in another part of the quadrant, Deep Space Nine floated like a tarnished jewel in the darkness of the galactic sea. Inside the space station the inhabitants went about their daily tasks.

Some, like the changeling Security Chief Odo, were charged with maintaining order on what seemed like a frontier boomtown similar to those that had sprung up in the Old American Wild West on Earth. But rather than seeking gold, most of those who passed through Deep Space Nine sought the treasures that awaited them on the other side of the wormhole in the dangerous and unexplored Gamma Quadrant.

And then there were those who sought to separate the lucky fortune-seekers from their new fortunes. It was those that Odo kept a close eye on.

“Quark!”

“What is it now, Odo?” Quark grumbled as he sat at the empty bar running numbers through a touch pad.

Odo stepped over next to the Ferengi, tossing a look at the calculations as he sat down on the adjoining stool. “How’s business?”

“Are you making polite conversation, or really interested?” Quark glanced up for a moment, then continued with his calculations.

Odo reached over and deftly removed the touch pad from Quark’s grasp and pulled it over for a closer look. “I see your Dabo wheel is turning a handsome profit.”

The Ferengi grabbed for the touch pad but Odo held it out of reach. “That’s private,” Quark yelled. “There’s nothing illegal about making a profit.”

“Depends on what you’re doing to make it.”

“Odo, you check the Dabo wheel at least three times a week. Has it ever been off balance by even a nanometer?”

“No. The wheel is quite stable.” Odo handed the touch pad back to Quark, then looked across the room to where the Dabo wheel was located. “It’s the environment surrounding it that concerns me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Quark said, but the way he rubbed his lobes indicated that he just might.

Odo got up and strolled over toward the Dabo wheel. Quark followed.

“You wouldn’t try to tamper with the wheel itself. While you might fool station security, the professional gamblers who frequent the place would be quick to catch on to any tricks.”

“They’d also be a lot less understanding than you if they caught me doing anything unethical,” Quark replied. “Which they haven’t,” he quickly added.

“The wheel is fine,” Odo said. “It’s not the problem.” He stepped over to the nearby wall where several large containers were stored. They were each marked with Cardassian Export stamps.

“Cardassian rock wine,” Quark said. “Would you like me to open the containers to prove it?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Odo said, standing in front of the containers. “I’m surprised you do a big business in Cardassian rock wine … with all your Bajoran customers?”

“So, I got stuck with a bad deal. Sue me.”

“I suppose you keep it out here because it’s not a high-profit item, and you don’t mind if it spoils.” Odo looked at Quark. “You do know it’ll spoil out here in the open?”

Quark appeared to be shocked at this news. “It’s Rom’s fault. I leave the storage up to him.”

“Everything that happens in this place is up to you. No Ferengi would have it otherwise.”

“Odo, I really am busy. Unless this all has a point, I’d like to get back to work.”

“The point is that Cardassian rock wine turns slightly magnetic when it spoils.” Odo looked over at the Dabo wheel and then back at the containers. “I suppose these containers are close enough to the Dabo wheel to alter the odds … just enough to give the house an extra edge.”

Quark gasped. “You can’t possibly be accusing me of doing something like that deliberately?”

Odo smiled. “Of course not. I just thought I should bring it to your attention. If this became station news … well, there might be some people who might get the wrong idea.”

Quark yelled over his shoulder, “Rom! Get out of here right now!”

“I knew you wouldn’t have gotten away with this, brother,” Rom said after he had managed to carry the last of the wine containers into the storage room.

“You should have removed the labels, then Odo wouldn’t have known.”

“If I did that, then our Security Chief might have had proof I did something wrong,” Quark replied.

“Didn’t you?”

“I simply let nature take its course.”

Tired from all his work, Rom sat down and wiped the sweat from his ears. “By the way, thank you.”

“Thank you?” Quark asked. “For what?”

“For giving Nog that holocube to take to Space Camp. He’ll bring back great images.”

“I’m hoping he’ll bring back more than that.”

Rom looked at his brother. “I don’t understand.”

“The holocube,” Quark explained in a hushed voice. “It’s programmed to tap into any computer systems within a two-mile radius.”

“You mean you’re going to try and break into the Starfleet computers?” Rom was impressed at his brother’s cunning, which seemed to have no boundaries.

Quark made a noncommittal smile. “If Nog happens to bring back some … ah, additional images … well, so much the better. The information can be sold for a nice profit—making up for losing Nog’s services for two weeks.”

Back on Rijar, unaware of the holocube’s real purpose, Nog stared at the swirling images in the crystal and pondered what to do. Jake, who had been his friend, was now doing everything in his power to undermine him. He obviously wanted Dyan for his girlfriend and it didn’t matter that Nog had selected her first.

He would have to do something drastic to level the playing field. Actually he wanted to tilt it to the point where Jake went sliding off. But what could he do to embarrass his rival?

Looking at the images in the holocube, Nog suddenly came up with the perfect plan. He knew even his uncle, Quark, would have been proud of what he was about to do.

Sometime later, Jake sat with Dyan in a meadow of warm summer grass. They were in Old England in the days of that master bard, William Shakespeare. It was the perfect location for unveiling Jake’s own poetry.

He was proud of his work, having never attempted something as complex as this: his first holographic poem. Jake had borrowed Space Camp’s holosuite for the performance and invited Dyan as his solo audience.

“This place is lovely,” Dyan said. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

“Not exactly,” Jake replied, taking out his touch pad and bringing up the program. “I thought you might enjoy this.”

“I love surprises.” Dyan smiled. “But didn’t you want to invite the others?”

“Well, I wanted your opinion first. I trust your comments.”

“Thank you, Jake. I feel honored.”

Jake sat back on the grass and leaned against a tall oak, as close as he could get to Dyan without seeming too forward. Most girls Jake felt completely comfortable with. It wasn’t until he was with someone special like Dyan, who he was really interested in, that he felt all thumbs.

“I’m ready any time you are,” Dyan said.

“Oh…” Jake stammered a moment, until he realized she was waiting for his holopoem to start.

“Computer, begin special program Jake-One.”

He had already uploaded the program from his touch pad into the holosuite’s computer. His holopoem would be added to the current program as a plug-in.

There was a moment, and then the sky began to slowly darken. It was midsummer in Old England, and out on the lawn strange and magical things were about to happen. Or so Jake had written in his poem.

It began with a pair of tiny winged silver fairies who darted out from the trees and began sprinkling magic pixie dust over Jake and Dyan.

“How cute,” she said when she saw them.

“They’re called fairies. Little flying creatures from Earth’s mythology. The magical pixie dust they sprinkle brings happiness…”

Dyan sneezed.

Not quite the response Jake had anticipated. Then he sneezed.

The fairies were not sprinkling pixie dust, but Odronix swamp extract-sneezing powder.

“Fairies, begone,” Jake managed to shout between sneezes.

They vanished, but the aroma of the Odronix swamps continued to pervade Old England, and their sneezing fits got worse. Jake had to do something to wash away the awful dust.

“Rain, fall gently from above.” Jake had put a hint of a soft summer shower in his poem. He hoped it would be enough to wash away the irritating dust.

It was more than enough.

A gentle rain became a horrendous downpour. Jake and Dyan stopped sneezing, but now they were getting drenched. Even under the protective branches of the giant oak they were unable to escape the relentless torrent.

“Rain, stop!” Jake shouted.

The rain stopped, but they remained soaked to the skin.

“Maybe you should terminate the program,” Dyan suggested.

“This … isn’t what I planned. There must be a glitch in the holosuite computer.”

“Someone mention my name?”

The voice came from somewhere deep in the woods. It was a familiar voice.

Jake had also programmed the mischievous Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream into his poem. But the creature who materialized out of the trees did not come from Jake’s imagination—though it might have emerged from one of his nightmares.

Green and small, dancing across the wet grass playing out of tune on a huge harp, he kind of looked like Puck—except for the big Ferengi-shaped ears.

“This isn’t happening,” Jake groaned as he witnessed the disaster his holopoem had become.

The Ferengi-Puck creature danced across the grass over to Dyan and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Then he danced over to Jake and was about to duplicate the deed.

“Computer! Terminate program! Now!”

CHAPTER 12

Jake was angry enough to do something he knew he would regret later. But that was later; at the moment he wanted only one thing: to pay Nog back for ruining his poem—and his evening with Dyan.

Brooding alone in the room he shared with Nog, Jake went through several possibilities, almost all of which were either illegal or might inflict physical harm on the little Ferengi. Mad as he was, Jake wanted only to humiliate Nog, not hurt him.

Then Jake saw it—the perfect solution. Sitting on Nog’s desk was the holocube given to him by his uncle, Quark. It was programmed to download data from Nog’s touch pad, and probably had no way of determining whether that data was accurate or not.

Well, Nog had ruined one story, so Jake would write another—one that would expose the “real” Nog when it was replayed back on Deep Space Nine.

Jake sat down and was about to begin reprogramming Nog’s touch pad with new data that would be downloaded into the holocube. But that seemed to be an extra step, and so he simply reversed the touch pad’s sensors so that he could reprogram the holocube directly.

Although he was angry now, Jake wanted to be able to undo his practical joke later. So he connected his own touch pad to the holocube and began to download the cube’s data into his own system. After Nog had been sufficiently humiliated, then Jake could replace the corrupted data. Perhaps they might even be friends again.

“What’re you doing?” Nog had come into the room while Jake was working. He was enraged at what he saw.

“I … was only…” Jake sought for some reasonable explanation of his actions.

“You’re messing with my holocube,” Nog said, noting the obvious. “Uncle Quark’s cube,” he added, as if that fact would carry more weight.

“I was doing exactly what you did to me,” Jake admitted, fearing the admission would sever their friendship forever.

But Nog stopped at that point, and he actually smiled. “Now you’re acting like a Ferengi,” Nog said. “I never knew you could be so devious.”

“I must have learned it from you,” Jake replied. While he didn’t intend it as a compliment, he was certain Nog would take it as one.

There was a long moment of silence as the two friends turned foes stared at each other.

Jake realized their confrontations were getting out of hand, and he hoped Nog felt the same. But backing down is one of the hardest things to do. Professor Kala had lectured them about that: “Once a fight starts it can escalate until it becomes almost impossible to stop. The trick is to prevent it from starting in the first place.”

Jake wondered what his father would do if he were here. Then, as he thought about that and considered what to say to Nog, he noticed the holocube out of the corner of his eye.

“Nog,” Jake exclaimed, pointing to the holocube. “Look!”

Scrolling across the crystal face were strange images and icons. Nog looked and couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Did you do that?” he asked Jake.

Jake shook his head. “That stuff on the crystal is alien—real alien.”

“But what is it?” Nog approached the holocube.

“Those icons … I’ve seen them somewhere before.” Jake stared at the scrolling data, trying to recall where he had seen something like that. “In the city,” he said.

“What?”

“We saw those same icons in the holosuite replica of the alien city.”

“That’s where my tricorder must have picked them up,” Nog said.

“You didn’t have your tricorder with you when we were there,” Jake reminded him.

Jake suddenly had a hunch. His father had told him that hunches were insights that happened when a lot of seemingly unrelated and divergent data collided in the brain. Trust your hunches. Jake remembered the advice and was about to put it to use. He stepped over and scooped up the holocube.

“Come on,” Jake said.

“Where are we going?” Nog asked, even as he started to follow. The differences that had almost brought them to blows a minute ago were forgotten in the heat of the challenge to solve the puzzle.

“You get Dyan and K’am. I’m going to pick up Professor Kala.”

“And then?”

“Then we’re going back to that pit K’am found. The answers may be there.”

“Answers? To what?”

“I think Dyan was right when she sensed ghosts on the planet,” Jake said. He looked at the holocube in his hand. “And I think you may have awakened them.”

The pit that K’am had accidentally discovered when he fell into it was located several kilometers from Space Camp. They traveled in a land rover vehicle that skimmed across the sand, a half meter above the surface, on antigrav thrusters.

“Couldn’t this have waited until morning?” Professor Kala asked Jake, who drove the vehicle, while Kala sat next to him. Nog, Dyan, and K’am were crowded into the rear compartment.

“I think time might be important,” Jake said. He didn’t want to try to explain his theory until they were actually there. He was almost hoping it would be proven wrong.

Through the windshield Jake could see the sky was turning black and the stars were blinking on one by one like tiny lights. In Rijar’s thin atmosphere they barely twinkled and it was almost like being out in space.

By the time they reached their destination it had become night. Leaving the vehicle, the group put on night vision filters to see. Cautiously, with Jake in the lead, they approached the hole that led down to the pit.

“Just what’re we doing back here?” Nog asked.

“It’s because of your holocube,” Jake answered.

“I’ll explain when we’re in the pit … or, I hope I will.”

K’am carried an extendable ladder that allowed them to climb down into the pit. In spite of his age and extra weight, Professor Kala went down the ladder with the athletic prowess of a junior cadet. He never ceases to amaze me, Jake thought with admiration.

“So now, young Sisko, will you explain what brought us here so urgently.”

Jake took out the holocube and placed it into a niche in the wall. “Nog’s uncle, Quark, gave this to him to record his experiences at Space Camp.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Nog argued.

“No,” Jake admitted, then added, “if that was all he intended. But Quark is known to be devious. Even more so than the average Ferengi.”

Professor Kala stepped over and took a closer look at the holocube. “You suspect Quark had another motive than simply to record his nephew’s accomplishments for the family holoalbum?”

Jake nodded. “I think this holocube has been set to tap into local computer systems to steal information which Quark could later sell.”

“If so, he would be disappointed,” Kala replied.

“Starfleet computers are much too secure for this kind of simple Ferengi infiltration.”

“Yes, but there might be another computer system that is vulnerable.”

While all eyes were fixed on him, Jake activated the holocube. The strange alien images appeared in the crystal’s face. But now the images were much sharper than they had been back at Space Camp.

“Nog used the holocube to record us when we first found this pit. Which is what it did. But I think it also found something else.”

“Amazing.” Professor Kala was looking at the images scrolling rapidly on the holocube’s crystal face. “This looks like the Rijar language samples we’ve previously discovered.” He moved closer to the holocube and studied the images. “But these are different than anything we’ve found before.”

“You mean I’ve discovered the secret of the aliens who lived here?” Nog asked. Jake could see him calculating the potential profits in his mind.

“I’m afraid you’ve done more than that,” the professor said, and then he looked at Jake. “You’re obviously thinking what I am?”

“The people who lived—and battled—here would have worried about enemies infiltrating their systems. They would have installed a security element.”

“What kind of security element?” K’am asked.

“My guess would be that they deep-mined this whole area,” Professor Kala answered. “If someone penetrated their system, it would trigger a self-destruct mechanism to activate those mines.”

“But why haven’t the mines gone off?” K’am asked.

“They would probably have given themselves time to evacuate,” Professor Kala replied. “I also suspect that a final initiation would not occur until invaders gained physical access to their control center.”

“Which we might be on the verge of doing,” Jake said, realizing that coming here might have been a mistake.

“You may be right, Jake,” said Professor Kala. “In any event, we must disarm those mines.”

“But we have no idea where the mines are located,” Nog said.

“I think we do.” Dyan stepped forward with her tricorder. “I’ve been running some interface scans. Some of the alien images form a map.”

Dyan held out her tricorder so the rest of them could see. It was indeed an image of this area of Rijar, or at least how the area had been centuries before. There were dozens of blinking red dots.

“I didn’t think there would be so many mines,” Jake gasped.

“They obviously intended to destroy the entire city,” K’am observed. “But it’s no longer there.”

“No,” Professor Kala said. “The city has gone—but it’s been replaced by Space Camp.”

The four faces of the cadets were mirror images as they realized what that meant.

“We must return at once,” Jake said. “There are a lot of mines to find and deactivate.”

“Too many.” It was Dyan who spoke. They all turned to look at her. “My calculations indicate we have less than two hours before the destruct signal is initiated. There’s no way we can return and find all those mines in time.”

CHAPTER 13

No one in the pit spoke for what seemed to Jake an eternity. They all stared at the holocube, watching the alien images scroll rapidly across its crystal face.

“We have to do something!” Jake said to no one in particular.

“Excellent observation,” Professor Kala agreed. “Do you have a suggestion?”

From the tone in his voice, Jake thought that the professor was already devising a plan. He was waiting to see if one of them would come up with a similar solution—or, perhaps, an even better one.

It was Dyan who came forward with the first suggestion. “Since Nog’s holocube infiltrated the alien computer, maybe we can reverse the process and stop the destruct signal from being sent.”

Nog looked at the holocube. He didn’t like the implication that it was his fault. Not even his uncle, Quark, would have expected what was happening now.

“I don’t think the holocube is capable of that,” Nog said.

“Maybe we can boost the power through our tricorders,” K’am suggested.

“No.” Jake’s voice was loud and clear in the pit. “That’s too dangerous to try from here. We might even speed up the self-destruct sequence. We have to get to the alien computer if we want to shut it down.”

“And how do we accomplish that?” Nog asked.

Jake picked up the holocube, then stepped over to the opening that led into the bowels of the planet. “This will lead us there.”

Professor Kala thought a moment, then smiled. “I think you may have something, Jake. The signal in the holocube is very strong here. I suspect the aliens’ computer is not that far away.” He looked at the time they had left on his tricorder. “Or let us hope not.”

Quickly the professor punched some codes into his tricorder. “I’m sending an evacuation alert to Space Camp. We can rebuild the site if necessary, though the destruction of the historic artifacts would be a tragedy. But I don’t want to lose lives in case we fail.” Now he turned to Jake. “Lead the way, young Sisko.”

Jake began to move into the tunnel, thinking that while no lives at Space Camp would be lost if they weren’t in time, theirs might be forfeit by being so close to the source.

The initial descent was easy. Almost too easy, thought Jake. It shouldn’t be this effortless. His father had always warned him that when it seemed there were no problems, there was bound to be a really big one.

The tunnel shaft, which was extremely narrow at first, soon grew larger and came into what must have been an ancient series of underground tunnels. Jake could imagine that as the battles on the surface increased, the survivors would have sought refuge in these deep caverns.

It was like being inside a maze. As they progressed farther into the tunnel, there were multiple branches, and the single tunnel became many tunnels. Fortunately the holocube was able to keep them on the right path by dimming if they chose incorrectly. Without it, Jake was certain they might become lost forever.

But surprisingly they encountered no obstacles to impede their progress other than the complexity of the tunnels themselves. This continued to concern Jake. He looked over at Professor Kala who was walking next to him, while the others followed, and was about to mention his anxiety.

“You’re worried because it appears so easy,” Kala said before Jake could speak.

“They must have security traps to prevent invaders from reaching their control center,” Jake said.

“I’m sure they do,” Kala said. “We must be alert to discover them—before they discover us.”

They had their tricorders, but the alien technology was ancient and their modern probes might not function in here. Indeed Space Camp’s computer had not detected the alien presence even though the Starfleet base had been there several years.

“There’s something up ahead,” Dyan whispered to Jake and the professor. “I can sense it.”

“Nothing on the tricorder,” K’am said.

“I have a feeling our tricorders are not going to be of much use in here,” Kala said.

“You have a theory, Professor?” Jake asked.

Professor Kala stopped and the others gathered around him. “The evidence indicates that the Rijarians may have had latent psionic capabilities.” Dyan nodded and Jake remembered her suggestion of this in the holoruin.

“You mean they’re telepathic?” Nog asked.

“Not exactly. They did not seem to have the mind-reading abilities of a race like the Betazoids. But they do seem to have developed some kind of mind-enhancing devices. Which can effectively mask out tricorder scans.”

“That would explain why this underground base was never found,” Jake said.

“No!” Dyan’s voice echoed in the cavern. They all turned to stare at her.

“Dyan, what is it?” Jake asked.

“It’s … coming!”

But what was coming? Jake could see nothing, but then he felt it. The tunnel started to shake. Jake realized they were in an earthquake.

“Quake!” Professor Kala confirmed. “Take cover!”

There wasn’t a lot of shelter in the tunnels, but Jake managed to squirm under an overhanging ledge next to Nog, both hoping the ledge would not collapse on top of them. The others quickly found safe spots as the rumbling increased—and then the tunnel shook violently.

It was only seconds, but it seemed like eons. Jake and Nog huddled together and rode out the planetary upheaval.

Then, when the worst seemed to be over: “Jake!”

Jake suddenly felt himself falling backward into empty space.

The rock wall that he and Nog were crouched against had collapsed—and a great fracture opened onto a yawning abyss below.

Unable to react in time, Jake felt himself sliding down into the terrible black pit far below. He thrashed out, trying to grab on to something—and then something grabbed him.

Nog had managed to grab on to Jake’s outstretched hand. “Hold on, Jake!” the Ferengi shouted. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m too heavy, Nog. I’ll pull you down too.”

But Nog refused to release his grip, and kept Jake from falling only through sheer willpower. But the Ferengi wasn’t strong enough, and Jake could feel them both slipping.

“Got you!” It was K’am who had a hold of Nog and was pulling him back up to safe ground. Professor Kala and Dyan appeared and helped, but the Klingon’s strength was enough to enable Nog and Jake to escape from the fracture created by the quake.

For a long moment Jake sat on the ground in silence. Nog had risked his life to save him. Whatever differences they may have had, when it came to crunch time, they were friends—would always be friends.

“I didn’t think this planet had major quakes,” K’am said.

“This is an old world, and, in spite of the occasional earth tremors, they are extremely rare,” Professor Kala admitted, then added, “I think one was caused by a sensor-bomb. That’s why Dyan was able to sense it before it happened.”

“Maybe the tremors you’ve been feeling near Space Camp were caused the same way,” Dyan suggested.

Professor Kala thought about that a moment, then nodded. “You’re probably right. The scanning by the archaeologists probably set off smaller security bombs, causing the tremors we’ve been feeling.”

“But we walked into a major booby trap here,” Jake said as he got to his feet.

“So it would appear,” Professor Kala agreed.

“It also appears that the way to the Rijarian controls has been blocked.” Dyan, who had been examining the results of the quake, now joined them.

Jake looked and saw that in addition to opening the fracture that almost swallowed him, the quake had caused a barricade of fallen rocks to block the tunnel ahead of them.

“We’ll never get through there,” Nog said.

“Then it’s over,” Jake said. “There’s no way we can save Space Camp.”

It seemed hopeless. They had come so far, but now could go no further.

“Starfleet cadets don’t give up.” Professor Kala looked at the four cadet-candidates.

Jake was reminded of the manager in one of his father’s baseball hologames whose team was going into the ninth inning down by three runs. He used to say “It isn’t over until the fat lady sings.” But this game seemed to be lost, and he couldn’t prevent the coming chaos by simply saying, “Computer, terminate.”

“Over here,” K’am shouted to them. He was standing at the edge of the fault opened by the quake. The others quickly joined him.

Jake, still a bit nervous from his near-death experience, hesitated, then moved forward to the edge and looked out over it in the direction K’am was pointing. He saw a narrow ledge that snaked its way along the chasm and disappeared past the blocked entrance into a tunnel.

“Can we make it?” Nog wondered.

“We have to,” K’am said determinedly. And, without further hesitation, the Klingon let himself down onto the ledge and began to move along it, clinging to the rock outcroppings on the wall as he proceeded.

Jake summoned up all his courage and lowered himself down onto the ledge behind K’am.

Squeezing himself flat against the wall and doing his best to ignore the long drop to the molten river that snaked far below, Jake slowly made his way. When he was about halfway to the end, he glanced back to see that Nog, Dyan, and Professor Kala were following.

The professor, in spite of his size and bulk, was as agile as a Tau Ceti cat as he maneuvered along the ledge. If an “old man” could do that well, Jake was determined to prove his own mettle. He stepped up his pace, being careful not to get reckless, and soon reached the tunnel opening.

K’am helped Jake up into the tunnel, then waited to assist the others. Realizing time was precious, Jake decided to venture on ahead.

The tunnel walls became smoother and almost artificial as he progressed. He carried the holocube to determine his direction, but there was only a single passage. Not that it mattered, Jake thought. If this did not lead to the Rijarian control center, then they wouldn’t have time to backtrack and try again.

When he traveled a few more meters, Jake came to a sharp turn in the tunnel. He stepped around the turn, and saw it.

Jake found himself standing on the edge of a vast cavernous room. This must have been where the last of the city dwellers had retreated. Their final sanctuary—and their last battlefield.

On the perimeters of the room (Jake thought of this as a “room” even though it was big enough to hold the central living quarters of Deep Space Nine) were what seemed to be living cubicles. Starfleet archaeologists would have a field day down here, he thought—if we survive to tell about it.

Near the center of the room was a “machine.” It was like Ops back on Deep Space Nine, but different. There seemed to be very few traditional control panels. Instead there were stations, which appeared almost organic, that were hooked into a huge core. The core pulsated with energy.

“It’s alive.” Jake turned to see Dyan standing beside him. “I can feel it.”

“Definitely a psionic machine,” Professor Kala said. He was examining readings on his tricorder. “An artificial intelligence … all that remains of those who once inhabited Rijar.” Jake noticed a sense of sorrow in the Professor’s words.

“We’re here. How do we stop the bombs?” Leave it to Nog to cut to the chase.

Dyan and K’am were examining the control stations. There were four of them, and they looked identical.

“How do we manipulate these?” K’am wondered as he looked at the alien images on the controls.

“We can’t,” Dyan said. “At least not from out here.” She looked up at the pulsating core. “We have to go … inside.”

The others quickly crowded around her, wanting to know what Dyan had discovered. “I can feel the intelligence inside the core,” she explained. “It’s something not human, but more than a machine. In order to shut it down and defuse the bombs, we must enter the core.”

“How is that possible?” Jake asked.

“Through these, I believe.” Professor Kala was standing in front of one of the stations. “These appear to be receptacles that enabled the Rijarian engineers to enter the core for maintenance and other tasks.”

Dyan appeared to understand, but the rest of them were still puzzled, so the professor elaborated on his theory. “The core is organic and mechanical and can only be controlled from inside. Using these stations, one can enter the core as though entering a holosuite.”

“And once inside we can shut down the machine?” K’am asked.

“Yes.” Professor Kala nodded. “Inside it’s an alien environment, but I believe Dyan’s Betazoid abilities can translate the basic functions.”

“Then we can reprogram it so the bombs won’t detonate.” Jake was smiling. Maybe they could do it after all.

“There’s no time for that,” Kala said. “It might take weeks—even months—to reprogram the system. No. You must do something else … you must unplug the core.”

“Yes,” agreed Dyan. “It’s our only chance.”

“Time is running out,” Nog interrupted. “So whatever we’re going to do … let’s do it!”

The plan was simple. Jake, Dyan, K’am, and Nog would each use one of the stations. It wasn’t certain that all of them had to enter the system, but since there were four stations Professor Kala believed they should all be used. He would remain outside, in telepathic communication with Dyan, and try to guide them as best he could.

“But how do we start these things?” Nog asked as he approached the station assigned to him.

“They appear to be self-activating,” Professor Kala replied. “On my mark each of you step into the station.”

In preparation each of the four stood directly in front of their station, which were like small shells. Jake hoped the professor was right about the self-activation. There was no way they’d figure out the alien controls if he wasn’t.

“Now,” the professor said. “And good luck.”

We’ll need it, Jake thought as he stepped into his station in unison with the others. At the last moment he had a terrible thought: What if we can’t get back out again?

CHAPTER 14

A trillion shades of nothing.

That’s what it seemed like as Jake felt himself being swept along by a mighty current in a river of pure energy. It was an incredible rush.

And then he was standing on a plain. It was a vast geometrical surface that stretched in all directions to infinity. All the colors were gray.

In the center of the plain was a platform that held a large crystal which glowed with the same pulsating yellow fire as the core in the cavern. Several transparent multicolored tubes were protruding from each of the four sides of the crystal. The platform itself was circled by a ring of pulsating beams.

“I would suggest that those beams are part of the security system,” K’am said. Then, to prove his point, he pulled the buckle off his belt and tossed it at one of the beams. There was a sharp zap as the buckle sparked and dematerialized.

“I think you’re right,” Nog said. “So how do we get to the tubes?”

“There’s a gateway,” Dyan said. “We must pass through it to gain access to the controls.”

“If we knew the frequency, we could use a tricorder to send out a disabling pulse,” Jake said.

“True,” K’am replied. “But in order to do that, one of us must attempt to pass through the gate. And the instant it discovers an intruder, that person will suffer the same fate as my belt buckle.”

Dyan looked at Nog. “There might be a way to buy enough time for a tricorder scan.”

Nog rubbed his ears anxiously, knowing what Dyan was about to propose. “You think whatever-it-is won’t be able to read my Ferengi brain.”

“I’m almost positive of that,” Dyan said. “You only need to step into the gateway for a second, then step back out.”

Jake stepped forward. “You said almost positive. If you’re wrong, Nog could get hurt.”

But Nog wasn’t listening and stepped toward the gateway. He stopped when he was directly in front of it. “It’ll be okay.” He gulped. “I think.”

Then Nog stepped into the gateway and was engulfed in a green wave that wrapped around him like an electronic mist.

K’am immediately set his tricorder to scan. “Got it!”

“Get out of there, Nog!” Jake yelled, but Nog had already stepped backward out of the gateway.

“I’m okay,” Nog said. “Except for a headache. I feel like I’ve been put through a Vulcan mind-probe.”

While Jake and Dyan helped steady a wobbly Nog, K’am adjusted his tricorder, then placed it on the ground in the center of the gateway. There was a moment, then the security beams vanished.

“We’re in,” K’am said.

Quickly the four of them stepped through gateway.

Those must be the controls.

The thought was in Jake’s mind, but it did not belong to him. Dyan was communicating with him—with the others—telepathically. We must remove the green and blue tubes to shut down the machine.

Jake wondered how she knew that. Then he realized that blue and green were dominant in all the Rijarian icons and artifacts. So it made sense that they would be the control colors.

Slowly he approached one of the tube sets.

Together. Dyan’s thought came to him. We must do this at the same time. Professor Kala thinks there is a fail-safe that will be triggered if one of us is too fast or too slow.

With Dyan to guide them telepathically, that should be no problem, Jake thought. But then he realized that one of them was not part of her mind link. Nog would be the weak link in their chain. Dyan couldn’t communicate with his four-lobed Ferengi brain.

“You’re going to have to work the device closest to me,” Dyan said aloud to Nog. “I can’t communicate with you telepathically, so I’ll repeat everything by voice as well as thought.”

“This is one time I almost wish I had a normal brain,” Nog said as he stepped up to the tubes that were next to the group Dyan had chosen.

Under other circumstances Jake would have made a cutting remark. But this was not the time or place for a joke, though he wondered if a bit of humor might not lighten the heavy atmosphere that hung over them.

“We must extract the tubes in the precise order—and simultaneously.” Dyan’s words echoed in Jake’s mind, the combination of receiving her thought images and hearing her voice.

“Which one first?” Jake asked.

You don’t have to speak. It was Dyan’s mind-voice. Think, and I will hear you.

Then, Jake thought, which one is first?

There was a pause and then Dyan replied, both telepathically and vocally for Nog’s benefit, “Professor Kala believes it is the blue one. I agree.”

That makes sense, Jake thought. All the Rijarian icons have blue borders. It seemed a reasonable assumption that the pattern held true here. At least that’s what he hoped.

“It’s what we all hope,” K’am said, and Jake realized that not only was Dyan reading his thoughts but she was passing them on.

“Shall we begin?” Nog said. He seemed a bit irritated at being left out of the telepathic loop. Dyan leaned over and spoke softly in his ear, giving him instructions.

Blue it is, Jake thought. He reached out toward the blue tube. It seemed to pulsate as his hand neared. He was careful not to touch it. The Rijarians had probably set up some kind of protection so that any wrong move would terminate the process—and probably them as well.

Jake found himself sweating. Curious, he thought, that I can sweat in a virtual world. But then this was like being in a holosuite. He was always sweating when he played hologames with Nog. Nog. How was Nog doing?

He’s doing just fine. Having Dyan’s voice inside his head was both reassuring and disquieting. Jake was sure he could never get used to telepathy. It might be a great gift, but it could also be a burden.

You’re learning, Dyan mind-spoke to him. Then: Nog is ready. When he begins, we’ll all follow his lead and go with him.

Nog in charge. Jake thought it would be Dyan who would lead, but this made sense. Nog couldn’t be mind linked so he really had to be the initiator.

Close your eyes and become one with me. Jake heard Dyan in his mind and obeyed. And then it seemed as though he were standing beside Dyan and K’am. They were linked together and each moved in complete unison with the others.

Nog began to slide out his blue tube. At first it resisted, almost as if it were protesting, then—as the others began to move their own tubes—it became easier. In a moment, all the blue tubes had been removed.

Jake expected something to happen—either good or bad—but nothing did. There was only a deafening silence.

One more tube to go. Dyan mind-spoke to them, then said aloud to Nog, “Whenever you’re ready.”

The second tube, which was the green one, was not so easy. It resisted, even when all of them acted together. Something was fighting them. Something didn’t want them to succeed.

“What’s wrong?” Nog asked, saying aloud the question that was in each of their minds.

“We need to clear our minds,” Dyan said for everyone to hear. “The machine senses that perhaps we don’t belong here.”

How do you clear your mind? Jake thought.

You can’t, Dyan answered in his head. It was the wrong choice of words. As long as you’re alive, you think—but the trick is to choose what you think about.

“You can only hold one thought in your mind at a time,” Dyan said aloud so that Nog could hear. “It’s impossible to think about two things in the same instant. Think about the Pyxlanan puzzle we worked on yesterday.”

The Pyxlanan puzzle was a four-dimensional sphere that had to be taken apart and then pieced back together. Even with the entire team concentrating, it took three hours and they never did find the solution. That’s what they thought about as they removed the last tube.

And it must have worked, for this time the tubes did not resist and slid out easily.

“We did it,” Nog exclaimed.

But had it worked? Jake wondered.

We’ll have the answer to that in a moment, Dyan’s mind-voice answered.

Jake realized with a surge of terror what she meant. The explosions would be happening if they had failed—and they would know it in their last second alive.

There was nothing else to do. Jake closed his eyes and waited . . . and waited.

Nothing happened.

Slowly Jake opened his eyes.

He was no longer inside the alien environment, but back in the control room. He stepped out of the alien station and found himself standing with the others. They were all smiling.

Professor Kala joined them. He was also smiling. “Well-done, Cadets.” Jake noticed that he left off the word candidates, and was addressing them as Starfleet cadets who had just accomplished a difficult mission. “Starfleet can send in a team of experts to finish up. We’ve done our job. Now let’s get out of here.”

Jake was beaming inside as they departed. Today they had saved Space Camp. And tomorrow they would graduate.

CHAPTER 15

Two weeks ago, you were novices, playing at Starfleet games. But today you have become candidates worthy of applying to Starfleet for admission to the Academy.” Professor Kala looked out over the faces of the Space Camp participants as he addressed them on their last day on Rijar. “It is my fond hope that at least some of you will avail yourself of that opportunity.”

Jake sat with Nog, K’am, and Dyan in the front row of the auditorium. He expected that the professor would single them out for their success in disarming the alien machine and preventing the destruction of Space Camp. He was surprised that the assembly ended without even a public mention of last night’s activities.

“We’re heroes,” Nog complained as they walked outside after being dismissed.

“No,” Jake replied, after he had time to reflect. “We did what would have been expected of any Starfleet officer. It’s what comes with the territory.”

“An excellent observation, young Sisko.” Professor Kala was standing in the shade as they passed. He fell into step beside them as they crossed the exercise ground. “Have you reached a decision about Starfleet Academy?” he asked Jake.

Jake paused, trying to organize his thoughts. So much had happened these past two weeks, and yet his goals seemed even less clearly defined than they had been when he arrived. “I don’t know. Part of me likes the excitement and challenge of Starfleet. But another part of me wants … something else.”

Professor Kala smiled and placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “I think I understand you more clearly than you do yourself. Starfleet may not be in your future. The passion does not burn in you as it did with your father when he was your age.”

“I’m sorry,” Jake apologized.

“Don’t be. Starfleet is not for everyone. We all have different life paths to follow. I can see the passion your father felt for Starfleet in the words of the stories you showed me. Perhaps they are your destiny.”

“I don’t want to disappoint my father,” Jake said.

“You never will,” Kala replied. “Benjamin Sisko wants you to become a Starfleet officer only if that’s what you truly want. What he does want, above all else, is for you to follow your heart … to do what makes you happy.”

Jake thought about that and knew it was true. His father would accept whatever Jake did with his life—as long as it was an honest choice. Jake felt better about his reluctance to embrace Starfleet. Perhaps someday he actually would want to attend the Academy, though he was beginning to doubt it.

“And you, my young Ferengi.” Professor Kala turned his attention to Nog. “What are your plans?”

Jake thought he knew the answer to that, but Nog’s reply surprised him. “I would never say this in front of my uncle, Quark, but I had fun here.”

“Maybe you should consider taking the Academy entrance exams. I think you might do well, and you would be the first Ferengi in Starfleet.” Professor Kala smiled at some inner joke. “I think the experience would be good—on both sides.”

“To be the first Ferengi in Starfleet may not be all that outrageous,” Nog said. “At least it’s something I will think about.” Listening to him, Jake could tell that his friend was seriously considering the possibility.

“Good future to both of you—whatever your choices.” Professor Kala turned and walked back to Space Camp. He paused and called over his shoulder, “See both of you at the farewell reception this evening.”

The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. Jake and Nog packed for their return to Deep Space Nine, then said good-bye to the friends they had made during Space Camp. Friends they would miss, but whom they hoped to encounter in the future.

“We have only one thing left to decide,” Nog said as they stood on the hill outside Space Camp and watched the sun set over the dunes for the last time.

“Which is?” Jake asked.

“Which one of us takes Dyan to the party.”

“I think you’ve earned the honor,” Jake said, having decided his friendship with Nog was worth the price of any girl—even Dyan.

“No,” Nog replied. “I think you should be the one.”

Jake looked at Nog with amazement. For a Ferengi to surrender a prize he had won meant only one thing. They were indeed friends again.

“I have an idea,” Jake suggested. “Let’s both take her.”

“Share and share alike.” Nog smiled. “I almost like the sound of that.”

“It’s only fair,” Jake proclaimed.

And with that they shook hands, using their secret Space Warriors grip, from their favorite hologame, and headed back to Space Camp to break the good news to their lovely Betazoid.

The only problem was that Dyan did not share their enthusiasm for being escorted by two of Deep Space Nine’s finest.

“I’m really sorry,” she told them. “I wish you’d asked me sooner.”

“You’re going with someone else?” Jake asked, wondering who the interloper could be.

Dyan nodded. “K’am invited me.”

“I hate Klingons,” Nog grumbled under his breath to Jake when they were alone.

“You don’t mean that.”

“No. But we don’t have a date to the party.”

Determined to overcome that obstacle, Jake and Nog decided to invite Sorex and Missy to be their dates. By the time they reached the girls’ quarters they were even convinced that this was a better choice after all. Both were very nice girls.

But, as they learned to their sorrow, both were already spoken for. Twhat and the Orion, Hajar, had been there before them.

“Never a good idea to wait until the last minute,” was all Jake could say. He was disappointed enough almost to pass up the final party.

“We can’t do that,” Nog urged.

“You’re right. We’d just regret it later.” Jake smiled at Nog, happy that their differences had been resolved. Nothing would ever come between the friends again.

So, with no other possibilities, they arrived at the farewell party together.

“It’s going to be fun,” Nog said.

“Just don’t ask me to dance,” Jake replied, with a wink.

Space Camp has been fun, Jake thought. It had been a great adventure. But tomorrow he would be more thin happy to be heading back to Deep Space Nine.

About the Author

TED PEDERSEN began his career writing programs for computers in Seattle before making the long trek south to Los Angeles to write for TV. He has authored more than one hundred episodes for such landmark animation series as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Exosquad, X-Men, and Mummies. More recently he started writing books, and these include Internet For Kids, The Tale of the Virtual Nightmare in the Are You Afraid of the Dark? series, and two previous Deep Space Nine YA novels, The Pet and Gypsy World. He is currently working on his next contribution to the series. When not out wandering the World Wide Web, Ted hangs out in Venice, California, with his wife; Phyllis, and their menagerie of cats and computers.

About the Illustrator

TODD CAMERON HAMILTON is a self-taught artist who has resided all his life in Chicago, Illinois. He has been a professional illustrator for the past ten years, specializing in fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Todd is the current president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. His original works grace many private and corporate collections. He has coauthored two novels and several short stories. When he is not drawing, painting, or writing, his interests include metalsmithing, puppetry, and teaching.

Table of Contents

Back Cover

Introduction

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Station Diagram

Cast of Characters

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

About the Author

About the Illustrator