Time's Enemy

Sisko, Dax, and Bashir are called to Starbase One after a future version of the Defiant, embedded in an asteroid, is found near Earth. Aboard the ship, they discover the remains of the crew and something else they weren't expecting to find...

Summary

 * From the book jacket
 * Millenia ago, an apocalyptic battle was fought in the Alpha Quadrant. The losers were banished, but what became of the victors?


 * The Federation is threatened by this ancient mystery when a battered and broken version of the USS Defiant (2370) is found, frozen for five thousand years, in an icy cloud of cometary debris. Captain Sisko and the crew of Deep Space 9 are summoned to answer the most baffling question of their lives: how and when will their ship be catapulted back through time to its destruction? And does its ancient death mean that one of the combatants in a primordial battle is poised now to storm the Alpha Quadrant? Only the Bajoran wormhole holds the answer – and the future of the Federation itself may depend on the secrets it conceals.

Memorable Quotes
"I thought we were dealing with a nonmilitary emergency? Otherwise, wouldn't Admiral Hayman have asked us to come in the Defiant instead of a high-speed courier?"

"Admirals never ask anything, doctor."
 * - Doctor Bashir and Captain Sisko

"Constable, we've got Sisko gone for who knows how many days while the Bajoran Resistance builds a bomb right under our noses, and you're worried about an asteroid fragment that destroyed itself when it entered the star system? All our problems should be so easy."


 * - Major Kira to Odo

"So can I guess what level EM field you're scanning for?"

"Rom... Has it occurred to you that surveillance requires a certain amount of discretion?"

"I won't tell anyone!"

"If we stand here having this discussion much longer, there won't be many people on the station that don't already know!"
 * - Rom and Major Kira

"What have you got, chief?"

"Nothing. They used a security bypass to override the lockouts and access the main computer. I thought maybe I could backtrack their work and figure out what they'd been looking at, but they wiped the volatile buffer when they were finished."

"You Bajorans! You never listen! I told them they'd have to disconnect the bypass, then wipe the volatile buffer. Otherwise the backwash from the buffer imprints the last few megs of its memory onto the bypass circuit."

"Anything else about this group you'd like to tell us?"

"Uh... they're irritable about people being in their room when they're not here?"
 * - Major Kira, Chief O'Brien and Rom

"Antagonizing a Starfleet admiral isn't what most people would consider a wise career move, doctor."
 * - Captain Sisko to Doctor Bashir

Background Information

 * The third book in the Invasion! series.
 * This novel takes place between and.
 * This novel suggests that the Defiant's design was one of a kind and was not used as a standard starship class. This was later proved incorrect in and subsequent DS9 episodes. This is due to the book being published in 1996, before these episodes aired and during the 3rd season of Deep Space Nine where the Defiant was still considered a failed prototype.
 * In Voyages of Imagination, a tribute to 40 years of Star Trek, Julia Ecklar and Karen Rose Cercone state that they consider Time's Enemy to be their best novel.

Regular and recurring characters

 * Benjamin Sisko : Starfleet captain, the CO of Deep Space 9.
 * Kira Nerys
 * Odo
 * Julian Bashir
 * Jadzia Dax
 * Quark
 * Jake Sisko
 * Miles O'Brien
 * Rom
 * Winn Adami
 * Michael Eddington
 * Alynna Nechayev

External link


Time's Enemy Der Feind der Zeit