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    The Search
    The Search
    The Search
    Ebook254 pages4 hours

    The Search

    By Diane Carey

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The Dominion: The mysterious rulers of the worlds on the other side of the wormhole. The Dominion: a ruthless planet-conquering race unknown even to those they rule. The Dominion: the most dangerous foe the Federation may ever face.
    At the edge of the wormhole, the space station Deep Space Nine and the planet Bajor sit on what will be the front line in any Dominion attack. To try and prevent the conflict, Commander Benjamin Sisko ant his crew take a never-tested Federation warship through the wormhole to track down and confront the Dominion. If Commander Sisko fails, not only the Federation, but the Klingons, Romluans, Cardassians, and all the worlds of the Alpha Quadrant will face an interstellar war they cannot win.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPocket Books/Star Trek
    Release dateSep 22, 2000
    ISBN9780743420815
    The Search
    Author

    Diane Carey

    Diane Carey is the bestselling author of numerous acclaimed Star Trek® novels, including Final Frontier, Best Destiny, Ship of the Line, Challenger, Wagon Train to the Stars, First Strike, The Great Starship Race, Dreadnought!, Ghost Ship, Station Rage, Ancient Blood, Fire Ship, Call to arms, Sacrifice of Angels, and Starfleet Academy. She has also written the novelizations of such episodes as The Way of the Warrior, Trials and Tribble-ations, Flashback, Equinox, Decent, What You Leave Behind, and End Game. She lives in Owasso, Michigan

    Read more from Diane Carey

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    Reviews for The Search

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Excellent, pure genius. This is a true crime with probably some made up parts. Those made up bits are so important too, as Capote takes you to a very small town in 1950s Kansas farm country. Capote makes you feel the scene, the air, the smells, sounds, the country people and the way they live.
    • 3/5
      Great true crime / fictional account of a murder in the midwest. Intense.
    • 2/5
      I have recently started reading several books that I call "modern classics." While a page-turner, I skimmed much more of this book than usual. I was disappointed; I felt that the acclaimed author got carried away with character development, providing far too much detail about many of the people, even very minor ones. However, I felt that he handled the events surrounding the crime appropriately.
    • 4/5
      I don't know if this really was the first example of the new journalism, but it has a not quite objective quality that makes for an unusually riveting true crime story. I found the reading experience enhanced by whatever little familiarity I had with the author - mostly from his appearances on Dick Cavett in the 70s. I read the folio society edition.
    • 4/5
      2022 book #60. 1965. In 1959, 2 men killed a family in rural Kansas with a shotgun. Virtually no cash was in the house. Capote spent many weeks interviewing people, covering the trial and produced one of the first true crime novels. Good read for my book club.
    • 3/5
      This is an impartial, true life story, about the cold blooded murder of a rural farming family in Kansas.

      The Clutter family lived a hard, but uncomplicated, life, and were well respected in the community, and as far as anyone knew, had no enemies. One night they were tied up and murdered each with a single shotgun wound to the head. This shocked the local community to the core, and traumatised the people who discovered their bodies. The local KBI set about trying to establish a motive, as virtually nothing was stolen, and trying to find the killers of this family. The main lead was given by a guy who was serving time, who remembered a conversation with a fellow inmate, and passed those details onto the police. Smith and Hickock, the accused, were apprehended when they made the mistake of returning through Kansas. They were arrested for parole violations and then were accused of the murders.

      What Capote does here is to write a step by step account of the process. He does not judge the two accused, merely reports the facts, and lets you the reader make your judgement to the horror of the murders, the carefree attitude of the accused and the shock of the local community. The interrogation and the trial and subsequent convictions are covered in the same dispassionate style. At no point are you aware of his opinion or feelings towards the family and the accused.
    • 2/5
      This was just gruesome and nit a single likeable character. Well written tough.
    • 5/5
      Hands down one of the best books ever. But be warned: Based on the true story, this book goes deep into the heart of the killers, the victims, and the town itself, as those that look for the truth try to makes sense of such a senseless murder. Frightening and altogether macabre, at its core this book is about small town living and the people that inhabit that world. Capote is a brilliant writer, but more than that, a brilliant observer and research hound. I cannot imagine anyone else having written this book.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed reading this chilling account of the true story of the Clutter family which took place in Holcomb Kansas in 1959 seemingly with no rhyme or reason behind it. Capote's writing is superb, I found myself mesmerized by the reconstruction of the murder, the trial and the execution of the murderers. Capote writes of the factual events in such a manner that one could feel empathy for all parties involved.
    • 5/5
      This book is great written, even if the content takes your breath away. [[Truman Capote]] has the murder of the Clutter family meticulous, but not judgmental investigated. On the one hand he describes the life and the murder of the family, on the other hand he deals with the murderers. He points out what made them do it, the symbiosis of the two perpetrators and also that they do not regret anything in their own way.During reading, I often came to the thought that there are people for whom a human life does not count, but only their satisfaction. The realization is frightening, but unfortunately only too true.
    • 4/5
      story of the 1959 Clutter family murders in Holcomb, KS and the men who did it; it's about the writing which is stunning
    • 2/5
      More fiction than non. The prose is elegant and evocative, but the weakness and bias of the journalism really detracted from the reading (or in this case listening) experience.
    • 5/5
      Amazing work. A cut above other true crime novels like Perry's A Stranger Beside Me. Sorry I waited so long to read it.
    • 5/5
      Another instance in which a book prevented me from sleeping; I stayed up almost all night reading this one. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but it is a very compelling look at life in the American Plains in the late 1950s, as well as into the American justice system of the time.

      The dark corner of almost every bookstore is the True Crime section, shelved with scores mass-market paperbacks with dark covers and shocking fluorescent-lettered titles, promising true-to-life stories of murder and mayhem, complete with grainy black-and-white photos. Truman Capote's “In Cold Blood” is the diamond in the rough. With sharp psychological insight and sophisticated prose that doesn’t overdress the grisly subject matter, Capote writes as if he sincerely cares about not just the victims and the murderers, but everybody involved in the investigation of the case.

      The case is simple: In November 1959, in the western prairie town of Holcomb, Kansas, two ex-convicts, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, entered a farm house belonging to the Clutter family, one of the most respected families in the county. Hickock and Smith tied up Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie, his son Kenyon, and his daughter Nancy with cords and killed them with a shotgun. The motive is not difficult to deduce. From the outset, by introducing the killers early, Capote fashions the book as a study of criminal behavior.

      Leading up to the crime, the narration alternates between the domestic tranquility of the Clutter homestead, a picture so wholesomely American it belongs on the cover of Saturday Evening Post, and the sinister machinations and bizarre delusions of the killers as they travel hundreds of miles to Holcomb to do their deed. After the murders have been committed, the book follows Dick and Perry's cross-country trips in search of the next big score while special agents from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation examine the crime scene for evidence and interrogate the few witnesses who have anything to say. Capote manages to relate something valuable about every person the investigation encounters, from a gas station attendant to the woman who runs Holcomb’s post office;the book reads like a novel of rich characterization.

      The inevitable break in the case leads to the arrest of Hickock and Smith. From this point on, Capote examines the details of their trial, in which they are convicted and sentenced to death, and their appeals while they await execution on Death Row. To the very end, the reader is reminded that the book’s devotion is to its killers’ life stories. It provides clinical treatment during the trial in which we hear professional psychoanalyses that attempt to explain how men like Hickock and Smith became such monsters. Although Capote and “In Cold Blood” are often criticized for sympathizing with the killers, the book manages to acknowledge their humanity without attempting to justify their violent actions.
    • 5/5
      A compelling read.
      Capote recounts the senseless murder of the Clutter family and its devastating effect on their small community. The tale is told with incredible empathy for the victims and a startling understanding of the perpetrators who invoke both sympathy and revulsion simultaneously.
      A truly brilliant piece of writing.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. Capote is a great writer, and he chose a fascinating story to tell. He made me sympathize with the murdered family, but at times I also found myself empathizing a bit with one of the killers. I attribute that to Capote's ability to bring out everyone's complete humanity be it good or bad. This book is fantastic.
    • 4/5
      Chilling and intense. This non-fiction account of the murders of the Clutter family and the aftermath is incredibly detailed and reads almost like fiction. You can appreciate the detail and research that Truman Capote must have done in order to write this book. While I'm sure there were was some artistic license, you can't help but feel for the family and the horror of their experience. Fantastic read and a good reminder that terrible things can happen.
    • 4/5
      In Cold Blood is a first-of-its-kind true crime book where journalism was written in novel-form. In a small Kansas town in 1959, four members of the Clutter family were brutally slaughtered in their home. The book begins by personifying the members of the Clutter family and laying out the last couple days of their lives. It also brings to life (disturbingly) the two murderers, outlining their histories and motivations. This is a work of genius in real-life characterization. The author clearly had compassion for at least one of the murderers, so much so that he was accused of being "obsessed." I don't find this obsession as shocking as some people, I suppose, because I understand that psychopaths are generally EXTREMELY charming and are able to manipulate people into feeling empathetic towards them. I wonder, though, if Capote knew as much about the diagnostic criteria of psychopaths back then as a good journalist-doing-his-job would have today, would he have portrayed the two men the same way? While reading, I kept saying, "these men are psychopaths, and yet they are portrayed as having (very tiny!) consciences..." If the book were written today, I don't think it would be the same book. Regardless, I think it's a classic that will stay with us forever simply BECAUSE it portrays a world that was perhaps less complex and more innocent than today's.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful prose about disturbing events.
    • 4/5
      On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
    • 4/5
      I read this book when I was about 13 years old and it scared the bejeesus out of me. For a year or two afterward I was afraid to go to sleep.
    • 5/5
      On our recent drive to North Carolina, K read to me to pass the time. She'd brought with her In Cold Blood. We'd seen the Philip Seymour Hoffman movie recently and the Robert Blake version of this book even more recently. (For the record, I recommend the Hoffman movie and I recommend skipping the Blake movie.) I read this book back in high school, but it didn't make much of an impression on me. Perhaps it was all of that desensitizing that I was told the media was doing to me, but this was supposed to be a shocking murder, and the only thing that I took with me from the first reading was that it was your typical ho-hum murder somewhere in the plains.Since then, I guess I've changed. Between then and now, I've acquired an English Lit degree tucked neatly under my belt. I've lived in that part of the plains. And, I guess most importantly, I've seen Phillip Seymour Hoffman embody Capote and watched the story of how this book got written. That made a big difference. This time around, as I listened to K read it out loud, I could almost see Truman himself sitting in the cell with Perry asking him questions. I could almost hear him going around to get the minute details from the townspeople. It's impressive the amount of detail he gleaned and how he incorporated it all into his book. But I guess that's what you can expect from somebody with 94% recall.The thing that struck me the most, this time around, was how well written the book was. I'll admit, I got tripped up every so often on facts and statements that seemed to get repeated from earlier parts of the book. But then I remembered that this was first published as a serial in The New Yorker, and that explained things. (A few things were repeated so that each installment could stand on its own.)Besides that, everything was almost perfect. Every word choice. The plotting and pacing. Magnificent. I thought the end dragged on a little, but then I remembered from the movie that the ending of this story did, in fact, drag on, thus the book acutely mimicked real life.It's a great read. I can tell you from experience that it takes approximately 15 hours to read it aloud, so you should be able to whip through it on a lazy weekend.Next up for us: Capote, the memoir by Gerald Clarke, on which the Hoffman movie was based.Invisible Lizard's Unusual Oranges
    • 3/5
      An accurate account of the murder of a Kansas farm family, covering the trial and execution of the perpetrators. Chilling and quite well written.
    • 3/5
      Setting: This story about the consequences of murder is set in the region around Kansas during the 1950s.Plot: Detectives attempt to solve a murder mystery while the criminals wander around the country.Characters: Perry- short, tough, claims to be the murderer; Dick- white, enjoys being cruelSymbols: not a symbolic novelCharacteristics: a new genre of journalistic fictionMy Thoughts: The book is scary because it is so realistic. The randomness of the murders make it a nightmare.
    • 5/5
      I spent the first years of my life through second grade in Garden City, Kansas, the town where the trial and many events of this true story took place. We knew people who had been friends of the victims and it made it all the more powerful for me when I finally read it. Capote's masterpiece is a true life story that reads like a novel. Not to be missed.
    • 5/5
      In the town of Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959, Herb and Bonnie Clutter and two of their children, Nancy and Kenyon, were brutally murdered by Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock.This is their story, what preceded that fateful day and what transpired until justice was done.The book reads like a newspaper or court report, imparting the events with clarity. It is also sensitive. It is written in many voices.An enthralling read if sometimes disturbing read
    • 5/5
      Rating: 4.75* of fiveBkC13) IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote: As good as it gets. Only really good thing he wrote.The first statement being unassailable, I'll focus on the second.Breakfast at Tiffany's is fun, and a little bit risqué, but deathless literature? Even a well-made novella? Not so much. Other Voices, Other Rooms? A roman à clef that, because it dealt with hoMOsexuals (plural) in 1948, was much tutted over and hollered about. Reading it in the 21st century, one is struck at just how dreary adolescence as a subject of fiction almost always is, the queer factor being so very much less of an issue than it was back then when mastodons roamed Manhattan and giant krakens swam the seas.His short stories, A Christmas Memory in particular, are sometimes brilliant. It was his métier. He excelled at it, and In Cold Blood is the anomaly in his career. The fact that he reputedly had a sexual affair with Perry Smith, and the fact that his cousin Harper Lee was deeply involved in his creation of the book, make me wonder if he wasn't simply a front for Harper Lee's second novel publication. He would have been better able to benefit from it, being completely Lee's opposite when it comes to publicity, and his personal emotional stake in the tale and its outcome would doubtless appeal to Lee's apparent help-the-underdog bias. Speculation, and without insider information, I grant you. But I can't help feeling the beauty and the shimmering perfection of In Cold Blood, coupled with the complete absence of any further publications from Capote after this book, are...suggestive.None of which really matters a lot. In Cold Blood is excellent. Read it with the full expectation of readerly pleasure.
    • 3/5
      On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held at close range.This book was highly recommended to me by friends on my other book sharing site. On of them even has stated, repeatedly, that this is her ‘favorite true crime book of all time’. As you can see from the star rating, I thought it was O.K. nothing special. I’m almost afraid to go back there and say, “You know that great book? I thought it was meh.We get a brief history of the victims and murderers. Even why the murders were committed. A detailed account of the day leading up to the murders, what the victims and murderers did. Word for work reports of interviews, and letters written, auto-biograpies written by the defendants for a court appointed psychiatrist.The book seemed to move along as a measured pace, dragged in places and it never really drew me in, maybe it is the author’s style that didn’t attract me. It was informative and factual. I can’t really say I found it interesting.Not the worst, but definitively not a must read.
    • 3/5
      A few weeks ago, I saw the 1948 movie Call Northside 777, about a cynical reporter who gets caught up in unraveling decades-old murder case after coming across the convicted's mother's plea in the ads. It's a solid enough film, but also unremarkable, other than starring post-war James Stewart and using real New York locations. But there is one main difficultly in evaluating Call Northside 777 from the year 2012, and it's the same difficulty I encountered evaluating In Cold Blood: the year 2012 has "murder" saturation.I put it in quotation marks because, actually, in the United States, the rate of murders and other such violent crimes have been decreasing for two decades (2009 was declared the safest year since 1968). But it'd be hard to see that looking at the "true crime" and the "procedural" genres. Every violent crime that makes it onto the news results in a few book deals, there's whole channels dedicated to dissecting the trials of such photogenic crime, the procedurals that have occupied vast majority of CBS's primetime schedule for the past 10 years, and I could go on, but I will illustrate it with a single example: Law and Order. Law and Order is not only a show that ran on NBC for 20 years. It's a franchise— that promises the audience a murder, its investigation and trial, and a satisfying resolution in 45 minutes. And while the specifics are limited to the L & O franchise, the attitude is not. It's has indeed saturated the culture to become a genre, aka constructed of expected tropes— whether the genre is delivered through a segment on 60 Minutes or a Millenium novel.And from that context, it feels almost impossible for me to see either Call Northside 777 or In Cold Blood, which hails from 1965, on their own terms. There's actually a ten minute sequence in the middle of Northside dedicated to a lie-detector test, in which the film explains both to the wrongly-convicted man and the audience what a lie-detector is, how it is conducted, and its legal relevance. It's kind of amazing. In Cold Blood, hailing seventeen years later isn't quite so quaint, but it was still a mighty struggle to surmise what contemporary audiences saw in it. This was the book that scared people into locking their doors at night? This is "chill[ing]" and "harrowing"? This is the book that has "poignant insights into the nature of American violence"? Because it's rather hard to see any of that from the actual text. Having established what isn't there, what is there?The good: I appreciate that Capote spends time fleshing out the Clutter Family beyond their status as "victims", and his florid writing style is pleasant, if at times, rather long-winded. In Cold Blood in general is split fairly evenly between the townspeople (including the Clutters)/law enforcement investigating the case and the murderers (who are identified from fairly near the beginning of the narrative).The bad: Capote does with the journalistic conventions of acknowledging his own presence on the proceedings and citing his sources. Arguably this is acceptable "creative nonfiction" writing, is intended to "smooth" out the patchwork of information Capote used, and involve the reader more deeply in the storytelling. However, as I was reading In Cold Blood, I found the absence of these acknowledgments incredibly distracting— at one particularly laughable passage, Capote actually cites himself as "a journalist with whom [the convicted] corresponded and who was periodically allowed to visit" rather than acknowledge getting the interview personally. Furthermore, these omissions made me question how "creative" Capote was getting. Capote clearly shows a strong positive bias towards one of the convicted perpetrators over the other, and without acknowledgment of how that could've been a subjective factor in his writing process, it only serves to call into question all the supposed objective truth he was portraying. I haven't studied the case myself, so I cannot confirm these suspicions (but I have read complaints from those who have, who say Capote invented a few scenes and conflated several characters for storytelling convenience), but they all contributed to a rocky reading experience.And ultimately, it all circles back to my original difficulty. I didn't really see the point of In Cold Blood, outside of Capote's extreme empathy for one of the murderers (which as I have said, went unexplored and unacknowledged). It's not a particularly extra-ordinary crime; the narrative says itself there were several similar crimes happening around the country in that time period. It's not a particularly ordinary crime either; the perpetrators had mental health problems which were the primary motivators for the crime, and their victims were chosen largely randomly. It's not a very important crime; Capote throws in a last-minute "reform the insanity plea" appeal near the end of the story, but as it is thrown in rather haphazardly and goes against the grain of the narrative thread he has spun before, it is largely dismissible. It doesn't feel like much of anything, to be honest, and perhaps that is completely a side effect of murder-culture on my psyche.
    • 5/5
      Remember it as riveting when I read it when it first came out. Decided to read again because there is reason to believe they may have also killed a family in FL and that has been getting a lot of press down here. The bodies were exhumed recently to test for DNA. Reading it this time I am older and jaded but still, the title says it all: In Cold Blood these people were murdered

    Book preview

    The Search - Diane Carey

    CHAPTER

    1

    DIRECT HIT on the docking ring!

    Jem’Hadar. The new scourge. Here they came again.

    A venomous ship swung in on an almost head-on course, weapons hacking at open space even before they homed in on the command tower of the space station, and they loved what they were doing.

    They’re punching right through the new shields! Major Kira Nerys felt her throat burn with raw frustration. She was less announcing than grinding out a damnation.

    Clinging to his console at Engineering as another hit made the whole deck throb, Miles O’Brien bent forward to keep his balance. There’s a hull breach in sections twenty-three alpha through sixteen baker. Heavy casualties.

    Try boosting power to the interface. Maybe if we can—

    The Ops bulkhead exploded. Shrapnel whistled across the area, slicing a half dozen crewmen down like a twister through corn. Warning of hull breach howled in their ears.

    Transporters are out, O’Brien coughed. Forcing himself to spare two sore fingers, he tapped the nearest comm. Medical team to Ops.

    Kira saw him in the corner of her eye, and almost went for her own comm unit to call for medical help, then suddenly realized he had just done that.

    Under usual conditions she would’ve been the one to do that. But there wasn’t anybody here to give her orders. She was in charge of the disintegration of Station Deep Space Nine.

    At moments like this she wished she had some nice long hair to tear out. She would’ve gladly left auburn knots all over the deck.

    Just for a couple of seconds she wanted hair. Lots of it.

    The station rocked again. Plasma residue cascaded past the observation portals, creating fireworks almost celebratory. Their lights flashed on the bodies of the fallen Ops crewmen.

    Where the hell are the runabouts? Kira choked. "The Mekong’s supposed to be defending grid two-one-five!"

    "Mekong’s lost her port nacelle, sir, O’Brien said, his voice painfully calm. The Rio Grande’s been destroyed… and the Orinoco is still engaged with a Jem’Hadar ship near the wormhole—"

    He was thrown to one side by another hit.

    Incredible—these bolts that could shake the entire station—virtually punching a city with one fist. The lights wobbled. In the unsteady flickers of struggling conduits Kira could barely see O’Brien’s face.

    In the background the turbolift burped halfway open, then all the way. Julian Bashir and his medical team stumbled onto the command deck, were startled for a moment at the unrecognizable area that moments ago had been the neat, clean brain of DS9, then gathered their nerves and separated to triage the wounded.

    Kira blinked, flashing back to the moment she had watched Julian die on the holosuite. That had only happened in one simulation and it still plagued her to watch the doctor fall. He was the most innocent of heart among them, one of those of kind nature, and watching him die had made her mad.

    But all her friends and countrymen would die if Deep Space Nine failed to defend the only bridge to the Gamma Quadrant. If they only possessed the firepower, the wormhole was tactically ideal, but it was like waiting for the monster to come in the window.

    All right, Kira called across to O’Brien, concentrate our fire on the lead ship in each wave. Use defense pattern echo-one-five with torpedoes set to—

    The whole station shifted a full ten feet to her right, and she almost went down. Her hips cranked so hard beneath her that she bruised her own ribs, and that was the only way she stayed on her feet. Around her, almost everyone else went down. Some skidded along the deck and struck torn pieces of dislodged bulkhead and console facings.

    The lights flickered again, and this time went out. Darkness swelled like a wound.

    Main power’s off-line, O’Brien shouted, his voice weaker than the last time. Shields are gone, no power to the weapons—

    Kira was about to shout back that she didn’t want any more reports. She had to think about what she did have instead of what she didn’t. Of course, that was the basic idea behind those kinds of damage reports—to know what to use—but right now she didn’t care. Reflex kicked in and she started thinking like an underground fighter again.

    What could she use? Could she gather hand phasers and tap their energy stores? Were there welding torches on the station? Knives? Chemicals?

    She parted her lips to tell him what to do, though she had no idea what was going to come out of there. She trusted to her instincts to pop up with something.

    But she would never know whether or not she was up to that moment’s demands.

    Three bands of transporter energy seared into shape on the Operations deck. An instant later, three gray-masked aliens with weapons drawn opened fire on station personnel.

    Kira sucked a hard gasp as Julian Bashir and one of his medical aides were ground to death under Jem’Hadar energy beams. Another second, and the rest of the medical team was dead too.

    Across the deck, O’Brien shook his head and sighed.

    Kira rushed out from behind her station and leveled a kick and a half dozen punches at the nearest Jem’Hadar soldier, who took each blow stoically. He barely felt her assault.

    Another soldier leveled his weapon at O’Brien and fired. The beam passed through his body.

    Still kicking, Kira gritted her teeth then stumbled back a pace or two.

    The computer voice had a slight echo. "Unable to continue simulation. There is no data available on Jem’Hadar physical strength or endurance."

    The voice was so damned polite it might as well have said, Thank you for not spitting on the deck.

    Oh, shut up, Kira sniffed. End simulation.

    The entire Ops center winked out, leaving a velvet black holosuite. On the deck, Julian’s body and the forms of the other med staffers faded away.

    Eyes lingering on the places where they had lain slaughtered, Kira shifted back and forth. The damning reality of this thing plagued her. She could train and train, but would she be able to act when the real thing came along? She could experience the horrors of war firsthand, but was that good? Would she freeze when the real thing came along? Bravery was often born of spontaneous inexperience. She could be destroying that for herself.

    She certainly wasn’t getting anything out of this.

    O’Brien sighed again and didn’t say anything.

    Chief, Kira muttered, I’m getting tired of losing.

    He wandered toward her. Sorry, Major. I really thought we had it this time.

    Sorry’s not good enough, she snapped. The Dominion could have an entire invasion fleet sitting on the other side of the wormhole for all we know. We need a way to fight off a Jem’Hadar assault and we need it now.

    Fatigue blistered O’Brien’s otherwise affable expression, but he nodded as though he knew she was right. Yes, sir. I’ll begin working on some alternatives.

    He didn’t say the rest of what was lingering on that sentence—that there weren’t very many alternatives left, short of poison or witchcraft.

    For the thousandth time—today—she remembered her time in the underground and how since then she had thought those bad days were finally over. Now these new changes… did she have the fight left in her anymore?

    If the Dominion showed up and Starfleet backed off… what if Starfleet didn’t concentrate a fleet here? What if they came up with excuses to avoid defending her home planet, way out here by itself in the middle of deep space, without much in the way of value?

    What did the Federation value? Wheat? Iron? Latinum?

    She wasn’t sure. And it was possible she didn’t want to know.

    Starfleet could move, but Bajor couldn’t. Her home planet and its desperately poor people, clawing their way back up from oppression, just didn’t have much left to fight with. If push came to shove, Bajor would be back on its own again, and she would be a rat in the dirt again with pretty slim chances of survival if the Dominion took over this sector.

    Because she knew… she would never give in to them.

    And she knew other things, truths lurking in the back of her attempts to defend the station. Occupation forces, concentration camps, mass murder, the spare life of the underground, day-by-day sacrifice. There were factions in the Federation who measured the galaxy by whole star systems and whole sectors, not by one or two planets dotting a frontier.

    In her tactician’s heart of hearts, Kira knew where the planet Bajor stood on the roster of the critical. Starfleet would be foolish to sacrifice a whole fleet to defend a planet that just wasn’t important enough.

    If she were at Starfleet Command, given trust to scope out a defense plan for a quarter of a galaxy, what would she decide?

    Contempt for the distant hub was tempered as she thought of how hesitant Bajor had been to join the Federation, how resentful of encroachment, how some Bajorans had treated Starfleet’s liberation forces with as much acrimony as they had treated the Cardassians’ occupation. The desire to be completely independent had burrowed in too far, and even when they needed help to stabilize and rebuild, they had remained inhospitable and isolationist. They wanted to be Bajoran with a capital B, to strut for a while, to prove to themselves that they could stand alone and spit upon the hand held out to them by the Federation.

    Just for a while, just a tease.

    Now this.

    She had to find a way to defend Bajor from the station, or the station from Bajor. All she had to do was tip the odds in favor of her own planet and this station, and Starfleet might find it worthwhile to defend Bajor.

    She led the way down the narrow stairs to Quark’s bar, noting with a resentful shiver that the stairs were barely wide enough for two humanoids to walk down together and that the width was calculated to make those two humanoids bump each other tenderly with every step. Bothered by what the holosuites up there were most often used for—not exactly battle simulation—she leaned away from O’Brien, anticipating that a settled family man might be embarrassed to bump once too often.

    For her the whole technology of simulation was a double-edged sword. Simulations so real that soldiers could train for battle, yes; but so often true heroism was a product of naïveté, of not realizing how much battle really hurt, and how much it really hurt to watch friends die.

    The holodeck might make a training soldier too cautious. What eighteen-year-old would go to war if he had already experienced what war could be? So much heroism came from hard, fast lessons in danger’s jaws.…

    On the plus side, she said as they finally made it down the long stairway to the crowded, murmuring bar, your new runabout deployment plan seemed to at least slow them down before they could get to the station.

    She stopped, seeing the snaggletoothed Ferengi proprietor angling to intercept them, carrying a bill.

    Yes, sir, O’Brien said. I think if we open up the interval between the runabouts to five hundred meters, it might buy us another thirty seconds.

    Are you two finished up there? Quark interrupted. "I’ve been turning away customers—customers who paid in advance, I might add—for three hours."

    Good idea, Kira said to O’Brien, ignoring the twisted look Quark gave her when he thought she was talking to him. Quark liked to think that all women of all species were always talking to him.

    Speaking of paying, the Ferengi went on, who’s going to pick up this bill for three days of holosuite activity?

    O’Brien talked over Quark’s head. Well, over his ears. There might also be a way to boost our deflector field integrity if we run it through an antimatter processor.

    And I hope, Quark went on, you’re not going to tell me to charge it to the Bajoran government.

    Try it, Kira clipped. Annoyed, she tried to look past him to O’Brien and concentrate on the analysis of defense. They were all about to die and here was Quark yammering about getting paid as if he didn’t comprehend. This wasn’t casual conversation, and she wanted Quark out of it, even for his own sake. The Ferengi would be shaken if he knew what they had been planning, and what they anticipated.

    Because getting money out of them is like trying to get blood from a Tholian, Quark was saying.

    They’d managed to wander toward the door. Now, when Commander Sisko returns from Starfleet Headquarters, Kira went on to O’Brien, I want you to give him a full briefing on all the technical modifications that you and I—

    Major! Nervous that they might get out into the corridor without paying, Quark suddenly planted himself squarely in their path. I’m afraid I have to insist on an answer. Now, what am I supposed to do with this bill?

    He held it up in front of her.

    Kira’s elbow tingled with desire as she imagined it about four inches down his throat. No, that wouldn’t do. She was in charge of the station. Image to maintain and all that.

    Blast it.

    She managed a completely fake, completely sweet smile. I’ll tell you what you can do with that bill, Quark, she said. The smile melted. Or would you like me to demonstrate it?

    Quark’s expression wobbled and he dropped back a step.

    It wasn’t that unique a trick, but something about her was convincing. Kira leaned toward him to clarify her point, but the chirp of her comm badge interrupted her.

    The sophisticated voice of Jadzia Dax called, Dax to Major Kira.

    Kira touched the badge. Kira.

    Have you forgotten something, Major?

    She glanced at O’Brien. Forgotten what?

    You called a tactical briefing for sixteen hundred. It’s sixteen-twenty. We’re all here waiting.

    Oh—yes, I forgot! We’ll be right there—sorry.

    Noted. Dax out.

    I don’t believe it! Her mind preoccupied with the idea of invasion, Kira bumped O’Brien again as the two of them dodged for the exit, but this wasn’t the kind of bump that made her self-conscious.

    As they ran full-out down the throbbing deck, she heard Quark call after them.

    I’ll put it on your tab!

    We’re in trouble, people.

    Grim and somber, Kira Nerys scanned the reports on the sensor padd on the table before her at the operations station. She looked around at the other officers, people she had begun to think could do anything they put their minds to.

    Somehow she didn’t have that feeling today. Everyone looked vulnerable—was she imagining it?

    They looked tired. She certainly wasn’t imagining that part. She’d been driving them hard.

    We’ve run seven simulations, she said, and they’ve all come up the same. The Jem’Hadar overwhelm our defenses and board the station within two hours.

    Dr. Julian Bashir stood on the periphery of the command circle, his large eyes and tender expression pleated with concern. Two hours doesn’t even give us time to get reinforcements from Bajor.

    There must be something we’ve overlooked. Trying to sound encouraging, Jadzia Dax gave him a placating nod. Even she, the oasis of calm for all of them, couldn’t drum up a convincing possibility. She stopped talking, as if she understood that they’d be better off without statements like that. Nonconstructive hope was for children.

    Major, O’Brien said finally, after everybody had looked at everybody else, I’m the last one to say it’s hopeless, but given DS9’s structural limitations, our available power supply, and the difficulty of defending a stationary target against a heavily armed mobile force… I’d say two hours is optimistic.

    Kira buried her frustration in a few passes of pacing about the Ops deck. Ultimately she turned to their head of security, the man responsible for keeping peace on this boiling speck in space.

    Constable Odo looked at her, his incomplete face smooth as plastic, his demeanor cautious.

    All right, Kira began, let’s say we let them board the station. That still doesn’t mean we have to surrender.

    What are you suggesting? Dax spoke up from behind her.

    We can hide in the conduits… set up booby traps… prepare ambushes. Try to hold out until we can get reinforcements.

    We can try, Odo said, but I don’t think there would be much of a station left by the time they got here.

    Taking his pronouncement stoically, Kira paced again. Odo knew more about the innards of Deep Space Nine than any of them. He’d simply been here longer.

    Dax, as usual, absorbed the facts a little quicker than anyone else. That leaves us with two options. Abandon the station and make a stand on Bajor, or collapse the entrance to the wormhole.

    Kira turned to her. I want a third alternative. I refuse to believe that we can’t—

    Alarms broke over her words.

    At the science station, Dax’s beautiful eyes were fixed on her console. Some kind of large subspace surge just activated our security sensors.

    Glancing around at the other officers at their stations, Kira assured herself that everything else was stable and she could concentrate on Dax’s discovery. Where is it?

    Bearing one four eight, mark two one five. Dax’s voice was damnably calm. How the hell could she do that? Distance, three hundred meters.

    "Three hundred meters? O’Brien blurted. That’s almost inside our shield perimeter!"

    From the intensity and the harmonic signature, Dax filled in, it might be a cloaked ship, but I’ve never seen an energy dispersal pattern like this.

    Kira gritted her teeth. Muscles knotted and throat tight, bullied by thoughts that had driven her to the holosuites for a most unrelaxing practice, she bolted, Could it be the Jem’Hadar?

    O’Brien almost—only almost—rolled his eyes, except that he knew it wasn’t a paranoid question. Nothing’s come through the wormhole in the past two days.

    It’s too close for comfort, whatever it is, Kira said. Raise shields. Energize phaser banks. Stand by to lock—

    The energy signature’s fluctuating, Dax interrupted. It’s decloaking.

    In near space before them on the main viewer, a bulky, compact space vessel wobbled out of cloak, shedding the parcel of night

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