by Неизвестный
The Bajorans held their posts. Unbroken streams of scarlet energy washed over the Hortas, breaking apart in flashes of faint blue light wherever the phaser beams intersected with the Hortas' armored plating.
The Hortas' cries diminished in volume, as if, having been startled at first by the phaser fire, they were now growing used to it. If boulders could shrug, O'Brien thought unhappily, eyeing the Hortas, this is what they'd look like. Overcoming the phasers' force, the Hortas pushed forward against the beams.
"Up settings," O'Brien ordered. "One notch only." The red glow of the beams grew brighter, and he had to squint to shield his eyes, but the Hortas, unafraid now, pressed on. The closest Horta was now only a yard away. Lifting his arm, O'Brien added his own phaser to the assault on the Hortas. Indigo flashes burst and crackled over the creatures' shells. The hum of active phasers competed with the muted grinding of the Hortas. Slowly but surely, though, the unstoppa- ble little juggernauts kept inching forward. "Hell," he muttered under his breath. Gradually, by fractional degrees, he upped the power on his phaser--to no noticeable effect.
How much was too much? He had already set his phaser for just short of what would have been a killing blast for humans, yet the Hortas treated the beam like a heavy wind and kept right on going. The faces of Keiko and Molly, possibly already dead because of monsters just like these ones, flashed through his mind. He seized that anger, tried to use it to strength- en his will enough to set the phaser on its maximum setting. His arm trembled. His fingers tightened around the weapon until his knuckles turned white.
The Hortas came toward him, only a few feet away now.
Suddenly, he remembered the massacre on Setlik.
The children--the babies--murdered by the Cardas- sians. And the first time he had been forced to kill.
Not again, he thought.
Switching off his phaser, he let his arm drop to his side. "Back off," he told the Bajorans. He'd seen what the Hortas' acid could do to solid rhodinium; he had no desire to watch it go to work on Bajoran flesh and bone. O'Brien stepped aside and let the Hortas pro- ceed. They trundled toward the tower door, passing within a few feet of O'Brien. He could feel the heat radiating off their rocky bodies. Instinctively, he backed farther away, as if he'd been standing too close to a blazing fire. He activated his comm. "Tower personnel, evacuate Tower Two. Do not, repeat, do not engage alien life-forms. This is Chief O'Brien.
Out." Gaysd and Battes ceased their fire, and joined O'Brien behind the Hortas. They watched in silence as the creatures burned through the heavy metal door protecting the phaser station. There go our defenses, O'Brien thought. He prayed he had made the right decision, and hoped that the other two weapons towers were still safe.
Frankly, he doubted it.
"Careful," he told the two security men. "Watch the holes up there. Something else might fall on our heads."
"The towers are under attack, Commander," Lieu- tenant Eddon reported. An Andorian recently as- signed to DS9, her blue antennae twitched nervously as she spoke. "All weapons systems reported inopera- tive." Damn, Sisko thought. He paced back and forth on the causeway overlooking Ops. And less than twenty- four hours after an attack on a Federation vessel.
Aside from the weapons built into the remaining two runabouts, DS9 was a sitting duck for any other raiders who wanted to try their luck against the station.
"Shall I notify Starfleet?" Eddon asked.
"No," Sisko told her. "Gul Dukat may be monitor- ing our communications, and I don't want to tempt our Cardassian neighbors." He paused to consider all possibilities before issuing new instructions. He didn't wait long, however; half the trick of good leadership, he'd decided long ago, was making deci- sions, right or wrong, and sticking to them. Then you hoped for the best.
"Order maintenance teams to the towers are soon as security reports them safe. I want at least one tower up and working as soon as possible. Priority on Tower Three." That was the one, Sisko knew, that faced Cardassian territory--and the direction into which Kira and the others had headed.
"Second," he said. "I want both runabouts manned and ready to depart on a moment's notice." "For evacuation purposes?" Sanger asked. He was a young human, fresh from the Academy, who usually assisted Dax in her research. He'd clearly realized that a runabout could only transport an insignificant per- centage of DS9's total population.
"For battle," Sisko explained. If the Cardassians, or anyone else, attacked the station while the towers were down, the runabouts would have to carry the fight to the enemy. As warships, they were nowhere near the class of an Enterprise-model starship, but, for now, they were the only game in town.
"What about the Puyallup?" Sanger asked.
Sisko shook his head. "No time," he said regretful- ly. "Divert all repair crews currently working on the Puyallup to the weapons towers as well." In an ideal world he would have liked to have had a Starfleet cruiser at his disposal in this crisis, but his first priority had to be the station itself. As usual, DS9 was on its own.
"Warning," the computer blared suddenly, inter- rupting Sisko's musings. "Direct sabotage of military facilities. Regulations call for immediate execution of alien saboteurs. Recommend death by teleportation." Some programs never give up, Sisko thought.
"Computer," he said harshly. "Bite your tongue."
"They're leaving, Chief," Gaysd told O'Brien. The Bajoran officer stood outside the tower doors, direct- ing his tricorder toward the smooth, circular hole the Hortas had left behind.
"What?" O'Brien said. Preoccupied with his con- cerns for his family, as well as his failure to protect the towers, O'Brien was caught off guard by the Bajoran's remark. Had he heard what he thought he heard?
"Report," he ordered, snapping to attention.
"The Hortas," Gaysd explained. "They're leaving, both of them. Motion sensors detect two large moving objects tunneling away from the weapons station." "Where are they heading?" O'Brien asked. "The Promenade?" His fist tightened around his phaser. I shouM have disintegrated them when I had the chance, he thought.
"No, sir," Gaysd said, and O'Brien breathed a sigh of relief. "They're staying on the habitat ring, heading toward Level Sixteen." O'Brien nodded to Gays& "Report to Ops. Update them on the situation, if they aren't already aware of these Hortas' movements. Tell them we need a repair team here immediately." O'Brien didn't know yet how much damage the Hortas had done to DS9's defensive capabilities, but he knew Sisko would want the towers functioning again as soon as possible, if not before. He turned away from the two Bajorans, and rested his back against the wall of the corridor. Level 16, he thought, scratching his curly red hair in puzzle- ment. What were the Hortas up to now; surely they couldn't have consumed all the inorganic goodies in the towers so quickly? This tower's supply of photon torpedoes alone would constitute a banquet by Horta standards. Something must have lured them away from their feast.
But what?
He needed a mouth, Odo realized, to communicate with his security team. Still disguised as a Mother Horta, he formed a tongue, a larynx, and a pair of human lips on the underside of his shell, conveniently near his comm badge. The flock of smaller Hortas trailing faithfully behind him did not notice or react to the extra orifice their "mother" had suddenly developed. Good, Odo thought. Speaking in low tones, he whispered terse instructions to security.
So far everything had proceeded even better than he'd planned. He had led the Hortas all the way from the Promenade out to the habitat ring, accumulating more and more Hortas as he drew nearer to his destination. The noisy parade following him seemed to be attracting the destructive creatures from all over the station, or so he hoped. And, almost as good, this sector of the habitat ring was blissfully devoid of civilians, who were presumably crowded like Terran cattle elsewhere. He glided down the empty hall, listening to the hungry babies chirp and scrape in his wake. A ghastly idea forced its way into his thoughts: What if Hortas nurse their young? He should have checked that point with the computer earlier. Fo
rtu- nately, he recalled, they were an egg-laying species, so he'd probably escape that embarrassment. Thank goodness for the consistencies of parallel evolution!
Still, the Hortas were bound to catch on to his imposture eventually.
Damn it, he cursed silently. I'm a security chief not a baby-sitter.
On Odo's orders, a large suite had been cleared out and prepared for the Hortas. A Bajoran woman stood at attention outside the suite, ready to open and close the doors that Odo could not easily operate in his present form; he recognized Lieutenant Moru, the same officer who had led O'Brien's family to safety.
Fine, Odo concluded; if he'd had a head, he would have nodded it in approval.
Moru unsealed the door as Odo approached. His tendrils wiggling in what he hoped was a convincing manner, Odo rumbled into the luxury-sized accom- modation. A window on the opposite wall displayed a view of the Bajoran system. A large Cardassian bed had been removed to make room for the growing Hortas; in theory, Odo mused, we should be able to contain all twenty here. Then Sisko, not to mention the Bajoran government, could figure out what to do with them until Kira returned. IfKira returned.
Odo didn't like to think about the latter possibility.
Curiously, despite her past as an outlaw and terrorist, Kira was possibly his closest acquaintance on DS9.
(Well, he admitted grudgingly, I spend more time trading barbs with Quark, but that is strictly business.~ He respected Kira and understood her, as much as he understood any humanoid. For that reason, however, he refused to waste too much time worrying about her; like him, she was a professional and she knew the risks. Odo also knew that Kira could take care of herself when the going got rough.
Bashir was another story altogether, although Odo had to concede the young doctor was more than competent within the narrow parameters of his medi- cal practice. Too bad the fool had to keep sticking his eager nose where it didn't belong, in pursuit of some ridiculous, romantic notion of "adventure." And Dax? The Trill scientist remained something of an enigma to Odo. At times she seemed admirably mature for a humanoid. On other occasions, she struck him as alarmingly frivolous, even going so far as to willingly fraternize with Quark and his kin. It was puzzling, but he had reserved judgment on her.
Sisko thought highly of Dax, which counted for some- thing. Odo had come to respect Sisko, even if he often disagreed with the naive Starfleet policies Sisko felt obliged to promote. That~ one more thing, Odo acknowledged, Kira and I have in common. Maybe the most important thing.
Gradually, the baby Hortas entered the suite, jos- tling and crowding against each other in their deter- mination to follow their mother. They would have all made it inside already, Odo noted, except for their tendency to bunch up in the doorway, locking their bumpy hides together so tightly that they were, mo- mentarily, unable to pass through the entrance. With much squeaking, and the occasional playful spray of acid, they managed to work their way into the suite, one by one. They were, he had to admit, significantly curer than the average humanoid infant; was this what his own people's offspring looked like?
In all, Odo counted about twenty real Hortas, although it was hard to keep an accurate tally with their constant milling around; like a litter of newborn razorcats, the baby Hortas tended to crawl over and under each other. They scraped together like minia- ture tectonic plates in a museum diorama until it was hard to tell where one Horta ended and another began. Assembled in one place, they made an impres- sive pile.
Got them all, Odo concluded smugly. That wasn't so hard after all.
As soon as the last Horta wriggled its entire body into the chamber, the door slid shut at once. A
turquoise light flashed over the door, indicating that the door had been locked from the outside. Lieuten- ant Moru at work, as instructed. Besides the door itself, force fields should be in place throughout this sector. Mission almost accomplished, Odo thought with satisfaction. He'd make sure the Hortas were settled, then have Ops beam him back to the Prome- nade. With any luck, the rest of the station had not gone completely to hell while he'd been occupied with the Hortas.
Maybe he'd even look into Quark's missing furni- ture, but not before he rewarded himself with a much-needed nap in his bucket.
Screeching like rusty buzz saws, the baby Hortas crowded around Odo, surrounding him and almost smothering him in their desperate need for attention or whatever. I wish I knew what they needed J?om me, Odo thought, as his inundation in Hortas became increasing oppressive. Time to get out of here, he decided.
Then he heard a sizzling, slurping sound directly behind him, from the far end of the suite where the window looked out on the stars. Turning his senses in the direction of the noise, Odo saw a single Horta, apparently too hungry to even look to its mother, melting away the several layers of wall that separated the suite from the deadly vaccum of space. A warning siren pierced the room, drowning out the cries of the Hortas. Already, the Horta's voracious appetite had excavated a terrifying hole in the structure. Micro- wave nodes and life-support systems flared briefly, then fell dark, the sparks and energy surges almost lost amid the incandescent red glow generated by the tunneling Horta. Odo's Horta-like body stiflened in alarm. From the look of the damage, they were only seconds away from a blowout.
"Emergency," a computerized voice announced overhead. "Hull breach imminent. Isolating endan- gered sector now. Emergency..." The voice dis- solved into a hail of static as another bank of circuitry vanished, fueling the glow and the rising steam.
Odo tried to shake off the Hortas clambering over him, every one of them clearly panicked by the siren and the static, but they seemed to be everywhere, hampering his movements and obscuring his vision.
Swiftly, he abandoned his pose, dissolving into a thick viscous liquid and oozing around the mass of Hortas, who collapsed upon each other, shrieking in fear and confusion. Like a cascading wave of golden mucus, he flowed after the renegade Horta, unsure how to stop it, but knowing he had try something, for all the Hortas' sake, not to mention his own.
But it was already too late. A sudden wind of hurricane strength tugged fiercely at him, alerting him that the outer hull had been penetrated, as all the air in the suite rushed toward open space. He saw a glimpse of stars directly ahead of him, and watched helplessly as the baby Horta was sucked into the void.
The wind grabbed his liquid substance, almost shred- ding him into a splatter of drips and flying streaks of gold. He felt the temperature dropping by the instant.
He found himself flying helplessly toward the deadly hole that had already consumed the careless young Horta. Instinctively, he struggled to maintain cohe- sion. If he could solidify fast enough, add enough mass to weigh him down... ! But the icy torrent of air carried him onward, tumbling toward the black- ness of space.
Somehow, he could still hear the rest of the Hortas screaming.
CHAPTER 11
"Do WE ATTACK in one wave or two?" Julian asked softly. He felt his pulse quicken at the thought of combat. "What about setting up a cross fire--" "Slow down, Doctor," Major Kira said. "I have no intention of rushing in and attacking blindly. First we're going to need a plan. This is a team mission. I need a map of the tunnels on this level and the level below. Wilkens--" "Let me take care of the map," Julian said quickly.
That was one thing he could do quickly and easily.
"I hardly think you're qualified to scout--" Kira began.
He raised his tricorder. "I can find the walls faster and more accurately with this. Remember the inter- ference? The walls are fused silicon. My tricorder is already calibrated to pick it up." "Good idea. Sketch a big map on the floor," Kira said. "Something easy to see." "Right." He opened his bag and rummaged around, looking for a marker of some kind. Silicon plaster, neurostimulator, there had to be something he could use q
"Major," Ensign Parks said. "I'm picking up an internal communication." Julian glanced up at her.
She had her tricorder out and had plugged in some kind of earpiec
e. Her gaze grew distant as she listened to whatever they were talking about. "Something called 'Central' is talking about ore quotas," she reported slowly. "They have Cardassian freighters due sometime today." "How many freighters?" K_ira asked.
"They didn't say." "Great." Kira turned and gazed up the tunnel.
Julian could see a range of emotions playing across her face. "Hurry with that map, Doctor," she said. "I think we may be running out of time." He bent back to his bag. The tube of antiradiation jelly would probably do best for a marker, he finally decided. It had a thick, oily texture. Squeezing a little onto his index finger, he took an experimental swipe at the floor. It left a greasy black line.
Nodding, he adjusted the sensitivity on his tricorder again. The reflections from silicon in the walls showed plainly now that he knew what he was looking at. Bending, he quickly sketched the level they were on, then the one under it. According to his tricorder, there were eight entrances to the cavern on the ground level, plus six on their current level. It should be possible, he thought, to completely sur- round the overseers.