by Неизвестный
There, on the innermost moon--that had to be 'a forcefield. Smiling triumphantly, she brought up a subspace scan. They were definitely broadcasting, and the transmission was being beamed back toward Cardassia.
"I've found them," she announced. "There's a small base on the third planet's innermost moon. And I'm picking up a Cardassian transmission." She looked at Kira. "The computer can't read it. That transmission is security scrambled." Kira smiled wolfishly. "Bingo, as you might say.
Too bad Cardassian codes are such a devil to crack; I'd give a lot to know what they're saying right now." "So would I," Dax said. "Let's see what our records have to say about that moon. I loaded the Starfleet survey of all the local systems before we set out, just in case we needed them." She called up a readout on the Davon system and skipped ahead to the proper planetary body. "The gas giant is fourteen AUs from the sun," she read aloud.
"Its innermost moon showed real promise for mining exploitation. The preliminary survey team found traces of phlaginum, uranium, and several other heavy metals--and latinum. They didn't find any large deposits, but the Davon system was handed over to the Cardassians before a real survey could be done." "Latinum," Kira mused. "The Cardassians use it as much as the Federation does. This has to be the place they've taken Ttan." "It's a good possibility," Dax agreed. The mathe- matician part of her symbiont would have wagered heavily on it, she knew.
"Anything else?" Kira asked.
"Not in the report." She made a second sensor sweep of the moon. Knowing how paranoid Car- dassians tended to be, she suspected a few traps lay in store for them. This time she spotted an orbiting security satellite. It had been on the far side of the moon during her first scan. They would have to stay out of its reach--doubtless it had quite a few nasty weapons at its command. Now it was just a matter of calculating their approach.
She brought up the survey again. "The innermost moon has a seven-hour orbit around the planet," she said. "The third moon is much faster... one point seven seven hours. It laps the first moon every two hours, give or take a few minutes." "I know what you're thinking," Kira said. "As soon as the moon with the Cardassian base is behind the planet, we head for the third moon." "That's in roughly twenty minutes," Dax said, rising. She could already feel the start of an adrenaline rush. "I'11 wake the others."
Ttan burrowed frantically through the rock wall, searching for the elusive taste of latinum. The trace elements she associated with the crystal were present everywhere she went. She hit a vein of quartz that seemed to run deep into Davonia's core and veered away; it wouldn't be here, she thought. It would be surrounded by nickel and iron, by perglum and co- balt.
Perhaps it lay deeper, she thought, tunneling down- ward. The rock surrounding her felt cool against her skin, like a healing salve after the endless hours of falling she'd felt aboard the Dagger. Fifty meters below the level where Gul Mavek and his soldiers waited, she found a pocket of perglum. Latinum crystals--some as big around as a human hand-- lined the node.
Success! she thought. At once she turned and headed for the spot she had left Gul Mavek.
She burst through the wall behind Mavek's men.
They scrambled out of her way, keeping their weapons trained on her. She ignored them and surged forward to stand before Gul Mavek.
"Well?" he asked mildly. "What did you find, Ttan?" "Latinum, as you requested." "Where?" She told him. "Now, let me see my children!" "I think not," Gul Mavek said. "You took longer than you were supposed to. Perhaps tomorrow, if you prove more... cooperative." Ttan shrieked in rage, in betrayal. She barely man- aged to contain her anger. She wanted to leap on Mavek, to burn him with her rock-chewing acids until he let her have her children back.
He seemed to sense her reaction. His lips turned up in what Ttan had come to know was a humanoid gesture of amusement.
"You realize, of course," he said, "that if anything happened to me, all of your eggs would be destroyed at once." Ttan said nothing for a long moment. At last she said, "Yes." "Go with these guards," he told her. "They will take you to a place where you can rest. Remain there until I send for you. If you cooperate, perhaps I will even let you see your children tomorrow." He turned and strode up the tunnel, leaving her there alone. Ttan felt the same hollow helpless rage that the last Prime Mother must have felt when humans first burst into the sacred Vault of the Ages and destroyed hundreds of eggs.
Only these are my eggs, she thought. These are my children.
If anything happened to them, she swore she would see Gul Mavek dead, even if it meant the loss of her own poor life.
Kira leaned forward, trying to quell the anxious fluttering in her stomach. This was the first place where something could go wrong, she knew. Her palms had begun to sweat.
As she watched, the inner moon disappeared com- pletely behind the gas giant. Now the window of opportunity opened for them. She exchanged a quick glance with Dax, who nodded with more cool self- assurance than Kira felt.
"Here we go," she muttered. She activated the thrusters and moved them out from behind the as- teroid.
An alarm light began to flash on Dax's console.
"What is it?" Kira demanded, a thousand possibili- ties-all bad--flashing through her thoughts.
"We're being scanned!" Dax said.
"Get me the coordinates!" Kira snapped. A strange calm descended over her. It was just like the old days, back in the Resistance, dodging and burning through Cardassian traps.
"There is a small device sheathed in duranium about fifty thousand kilometers away. Twenty degrees, mark four." "Got it!" Kira said. She altered course. It had to be a bullet-probe, she thought. The Cardassians used them around Bajor--each one activated when it sensed the runabout's power emissions.
"I'11 see if I can beam it aboard," Dax said. "Per- haps I can deactivate its--" "No!" Kira said. She armed and fired the run- about's first torpedo. "It's mine!" She braced herself. On her monitor, she watched a glowing white ball of plasma energy home in on the bullet-probe. When the torpedo detonated, throwing off ring after ring of brilliant energy, the resulting force waves rocked the runabout like a leaf on a Bajoran ocean. It felt glorious. Kira had almost for- gotten how alive you felt during a battle. She turned proudly. "Got it!" Dax sank back in her seat. "I'm not sure that was such a good idea, Kira," she said. "As soon as the Cardassians discover their probe is missing, they'll know something is wrong." "It's not a problem," Kira said. 'Tll change the asteroid's course so they think it caused the damage." She nosed the runabout toward the asteroid once more. That should take care of everything, she thought.
"And you've lost one of our torpedoes." "They're meant to be used," Kira said, a little annoyed. She was getting tired of having to justify her every move to Dax. "That's why we brought them, remember? Besides," she said, "if you'd brought that thing aboard, it would have destroyed the ship. Bullet- probes blow up if you tamper with them. Believe me, I know. I've lost several friends that way." "Ah," Dax said. "In that case, thank you, Kira." "No problem," she lied. "No problem at all." She fired the thrusters again, and the runabout touched the asteroid with a soft thud. Slowly she applied thrusters once more, shifting its course toward the wreckage of the bullet-probe.
"I only want a little more teamwork, okay?" Dax said. "This is supposed to be a rescue team." Kira took a deep breath. Sometimes the three- hundred-year-old symbiont in Dax made Kira feel like an unruly child being gently lectured by her grandmother. "All right, I'm sorry. I acted instinc- tively." Dax smiled. "Those may well be the instincts we'll need to keep us alive." "They've worked for me all these years," Kira muttered.
With the asteroid now on its new course, she pulled the runabout away and steered for the third moon.
She had no intention of wasting time now. If Dax wanted teamwork, she'd give it to her by the book-- whatever book Starfleet used.
Dax said, "I estimate our arrival in thirty-two minutes at this speed. That will give us forty minutes before the moon with the Cardassian base clears it
s primary, and fifty-two minutes before it's in trans- porter range." "Good." Kira's thoughts raced ahead. Teamwork. If that's what they wanted, that's what she'd give them. At times Dax--and for that matter Sisko--seemed to think all Bajorans were gun-crazed loners out for personal glory. If she played things close to her chest, what of it? The fewer people in a command chain, the fewer links that could break. All Bajorans had learned that lesson in the Resistance.
Let them think what they wanted, she finally de- cided. She knew exactly what she was doing and called it taking responsibility. That's what came with rank on Bajor. And if some Cardassian bastard happened to come between her and Ttan... well, a team could kill just as well as an individual.
CHAPTER 8
HABITAT SUITE 959: The little Horta had no name as yet, but she was growing restless. For months, her world had been dark, snug, and sustaining. Now that snugness seemed cramped and confining, and the remains of the hard shell around her no longer satisfied her appetite. She yearned for more, and somehow she knew that what she wanted lay beyond.
Acid seeping from her pores, she flexed and pushed against the boundaries of her world. Suddenly, the barrier dissolved away and, to her amazement, every- thing was bigger and more open than before. She wriggled forward, drawn by instinct and the lure of this strange new universe. Already she sensed exciting, different tastes and sensations on the air; the high black plateau that supported her tantalized her ten- drils with intriguing mineral flavors that only height- ened her hunger. Her secretions freed the flavors from the floor, melting and loosening them so that her avid tendrils could suck them up.
There was motion all around her, too. Other beings --beings like her--emerged from their own eggs. The dark and open space surrounding her was filled with the crimson glow, and smoky fumes, of burning shells.
But above the odor of the fumes, and the delicious taste of the platform, she sensed something even better, something irresistible, something distant but enticingly nearby.
With her brothers and sisters joining her, the new- born Horta began to burrow downward into the platform itself. Beyond the exterior casing, she found other delicacies inside the pedestal: crystalline lattices and minute, often microscopic appetizers made of various combinations of different elements and al- loys. Though intriguing, these intricate confections were, she quickly discovered, more frustrating than fulfilling; her hunger was such that she wanted to feast on something rich and substantial, not nibble on tidbits that she digested almost as soon as she detected them.
Her hatchmates tumbled past her, jostling her on all sides, their cries echoing her own hunger and excite- ment. By the time she reached the floor of the suite, less than ten minutes after escaping the confines of her egg, the entire platform had been devoured by the Hortas. Only a smoking triangle of blackened residue marked the former location of the eggs' resting place.
But where to go now? The little Horta found herself distracted and disoriented by a bewildering array of tastes and sensations. Where to dig next? What to consume? On the tip of her tendrils she still felt the lure of a nectar more savory than anything she had sampled so far, but her senses were confused by her alien surroundings and she could not locate her treat so easily. Gravity itself seemed somehow unnatural in this place. And she was so hungry, and there were so many other things to eat... !
All around her, the Horta's siblings sounded just as confused. They spread out in every direction, shun- ning the open air to burrow instead into the walls and floor. The heat of their various passages released still more tangy odors into the environment, stimulating the Horta's appetite and masking, almost but not entirely, the diffuse traces of the food she craved most.
She smelled polymers and plastics, processed metals and compounds, isotopes and rare earths. It was more stimuli than any newborn Horta could hope to cope with; it was both too much and, strangely, not enough.
All at once, the Horta felt an absence, and a yearning, that had nothing to do with the hunger of her body. Someone should have been here for her, she realized, to guide her and care for her and protect her.
A sense of loss came over her then, as if she'd been hatched with it: Mother. Where was Mother?
The floor beneath her vibrated as the Horta howled for her Mother, a desperate cry that sounded like an emergency siren blaring. But no one answered, and after a seemingly endless minute the little Horta felt the feeding urge rise up again within her, so she trusted her instincts and did what any Horta would do when puzzled and provoked and left to her own devices. She dug deep into the substance of Deep Space Nine, devouring everything she encountered.
She tunneled beneath the floor, adding to the cra- ters left behind by her departing hatchmates. She burned through open conduits and solid apparatus.
Strange energies tickled her hide as she interrupted the directed flow of electrons and ionized particles.
The Horta barely noticed the radiation; she was only interested in solids, and there were so many new flavors to relish, one after another. She couldn't tunnel fast enough.
Keiko O'Brien's classroom was crowded that morn- ing. She suspected that many of the tourists now visiting DS9 had decided to use her school as a free day-care center. Students from over a dozen different species sat at their desks, behind their tray-sized personal computers. A hubbub of speech, growls, squeaks, and chirps filled the room, as the kids exchanged jokes and gossip in the last few minutes before the class commenced. (Homework and notes, Keiko knew, had been exchanged earlier, out on the Promenade.) Jake Sisko was absent, she noted. Proba- bly off hanging around with that Ferengi pal of his.
She wondered if she should mention this no-show to Jake's father. She'd hate to bother him about it; certainly, Commander Sisko had enough things to worry about without her bringing up his son's poor choice of friends. Maybe Miles would have some idea about how to broach the subject. She resolved to discuss the matter with her husband as soon as he came home.
In the meantime, she had a class to teach. She squinted at the padd in her hand to check on today's lesson plan. "Good morning," she said cheerfully, giving her students a friendly smile that also served to silence the general chatter. "Yesterday we discussed the moon that will be passing by DS9 in a day or so.
Does anyone remember what that moon is called?" Seated at a desk in the front row, little Molly raised her hand. Keiko wasn't surprised; her daughter always raised her hand, whether she knew the answer or not.
Only three years old, Molly was technically too young to be attending school already, or even to understand most of what went on in the class, but she enjoyed sitting in on her mother's lessons, and reliable baby- sitters were, like so many other amenities, in short supply on the station. Thankfully, Molly usually behaved herself, playing games and drawing pictures on her computer.
Keiko grinned at Molly, but called on a ten-year-old Bajoran girl in the third row. "The Prodigal," Yelsi answered proudly. A ceremonial earring peeked out from behind the girl's dark brown pigtails.
"Good," Keiko said. She addressed the rest of the class. "Now, can someone tell me why it's called that?" A fuzzy-faced Tellarite youth, his bristly yellow mane indicating the approach of puberty, raised a three-fingered hand. "Yes, Gann?" "It's from an old Bajoran fairy tale," he said with a smirk. Keiko saw Yelsi, and the other Bajoran chil- dren, fix venomous stares upon Oann.
Oh, no, Keiko thought. Ever since Bajoran funda- mentalists bombed her classroom, supposedly for offending their religious sensibilities, she had become cautious whenever the subject of Bajoran culture and beliefs came up; worse, she hated feeling that way.
True, that particular incident had turned out to be merely a cover for an assassination plot against a rival religious leader, but Keiko was all too aware that the underlying issue, of Bajoran spiritualism versus Fed- eration science, remained unresolved, and liable to explode again at any moment. Still, despite her con- cern, she tried not to censor herself---and hoped she was succeeding.
"Now, Gann, y
ou must know that's an unnecessari- ly disrespectful way to describe Bajoran... religion." She started to say "mythology," but caught herself in time. I'm speaking from the heart, she assured her conscience, and not trying to appease the Bajorans.
"This moon is named after a figure from ancient writings that many Bajorans hold sacred. How would you like it if one of the other students made fun of the Tellarite Scroll of Eternal Feasting?" Gann looked uncomfortable; he stamped his hooves in embarrass- ment. "We have to remember, the wormhole is a wonderful opportunity to bring together people from different civilizations all over the galaxy. But if we're to take full advantage of this opportunity, we must be open-minded about people who look or think differ- ently than we do. Tolerance and understanding are what Deep Space Nine is really all about.
"The Vulcans have a saying," she started to say; then, without warning, the floor beneath her rippled.