Free Lost Time by Ilsa J. Bick

drive. To do that, they fuse material and create energy. In theory, you concentrate enough mass and energy you create the conditions for a wormhole by deforming space-time sufficiently to open it. Think of it as breaking down a gated door. The wormhole is there but closed off.”
    “You mean, input enough energy to bind all that plasma together, or maybe just a sizable chunk?” Duffy stroked the side of his chin with his thumb. “Well, theoretically, we could do it.”
    “How?” asked Gold and Kira at the same time.
    “We generate a massive pulse of combined anti-chroniton and tetryon particles, then follow with a spread of photon torpedoes. The release of that much energy ought to be siphoned off by the denser tetryons, resulting in a collapse of matter into a highly compressed, dense mass and concomitant release of SEM gamma rays.”
    Kane rolled her eyes. “What the hell did that mean?”
    “It means we can do it,” said Gold. “Except there are only a couple problems.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, all that plasma, we’ll be lucky we don’t go up with it. Second, we don’t know if this isn’t what the Androssi want us to do.”
    “Why would they allow us to steal a device that would tell us the location of a wormhole and not keep it for themselves?” asked Dax. She looked to be spoiling for another fight. “Clearly—”
    “Clearly, because they don’t want to get themselves blown to smithereens for no good reason,” said Gold. “Ever think of that? We sure as hell know that the Cardassians aren’t telepathic, and maybe the Androssi aren’t either. So they needed us—specifically, they needed the Bynars—to find it for them.” He looked at Kira. “I told you: Taking this thing was too easy.”
    Kira searched his face. “You think they’re waiting to ambush us.”
    “They’ll want all the glory. That’s what this is about. They know that if the religious sect delivers the wormhole, the treaty has no chance of being ratified. But if the Cardassians find the wormhole, then the religious sect drops their objections. So how I think it goes down is like this. We find the wormhole; we open it, or we start to—or maybe the Cardassians and Androssi have their own plans for how to open it, I don’t know—and then we get blown into subatomic particles. The Cardassians won’t want anyone slipping away, or getting a transmission out to contradict their story.”
    “There’s another problem, Captain,” said Gomez. The color had drained from her face; her skin was white as bone china. “Even if we survive the initial explosion, the shock waves might rip the ship apart.”
    “And if we somehow managed to live through that, there’s going to be a lot of gamma radiation out there, enough to penetrate shields in a matter of minutes,” said Duffy. “No matter how you cut it, it’s a suicide mission.”
    “Some things are worth dying for,” said Dax.
    “Yeah,” said Gold, and his eyes slid to Kira in a side-long glance. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
    Kira returned the look. “The Denorios Belt is far enough from Bajor and Terok Nor that it would take the Cardassians or the Androssi several minutes to reach us.”
    “Assuming they aren’t waiting for us. Assuming there aren’t patrols.”
    “Okay, then,” Kira said. “We wouldn’t have much time. One of us would have to discharge the pulse while the other fends off whoever comes after us. But it can be done.”
    “Care to lay odds on that?”
    “No.”
    “Me neither.” Gold planted his fists on his hips. He sighed. “Man, oh, man, this just keeps getting better and better.”
    “In truth, we’d need another ship to have a real shot at this,” said Kira. “But there’s no one close enough.”
    “Well,” said Gold. “That’s not entirely accurate.”

    “Will they do it?” asked Conlon.
    “I don’t know,” said Nog.
    “They have the information they wanted. They’ll have to decide how to use