by Неизвестный
Now, what's this about a Horta?" "They kidnapped her from a cruiser en route to Deep Space Nine. We trailed their ship here." "What's Deep Space Nine?" the prisoner asked, looking puzzled.
Kira blinked in surprise. "Don't you know?" she said. "The war's over. The Cardassians withdrew from Bajor. DS9 is what we now call the old Cardassian space station. It's run by Bajorans.
with a little assistance from the Federation." He stared at her; then a huge grin split his face.
"Well, I'll be damned. The bastards never bothered to let us know." He stood, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted, "The war is over! The Cardassians have withdrawn from Bajor!" Cheers rang out from all sides of the cavern. Naka Tormak stirred happily on her cot.
Kira sprang to her feet and ripped the curtain aside.
"Quiet!" she cried. "Yes, they withdrewwbut that doesn't mean a thing here! Davonia isn't secured!
They'll kill us all if they catch us! Now keep quiet!" A hush fell over the crowd, but nothing could hide the jubilant expression on every Bajoran's face. The news seemed to give them new life, new hope. Per- haps, Kira thought, it would be enough to carry them even further beyond their normal breaking point.
Most looked on the verge of collapse.
"What sort of transport do you have for us?" Lapyn asked. "How soon can we beam up?" "You don't want to know." He pursed his lips, then nodded. "I should have figured. Since you weren't looking for us, you didn't come equipped to carry us away. There isn't enough room on your ship, is there?" "We'll make do somehow." "Don't be foolish. We'll have to take Cardassian transport." Kira paused. "You know, I hadn't thought of that." "It won't be easy," Lapyn said, a far-off look in his eyes. "We're going to need real weapons, and a lot of them, plus twice as much luck as you've already had." "You said there were sixty of them." "There's that many of us, now, too." Kira tried not to laugh, though she didn't think he'd be insulted. "I hardly think you're up to it. And we 0nly have seven phasers." "Plus the guards' stunners," he said. "Plus picks, sledgehammers, and our bare fists, if it comes down to that." "It won't," Kira promised.
I. "We're already dead," he told her. "We'll be fighting for a chance to live again. We will fight with whatever we have. Just like the old days." "Just like the old days," she agreed. Perhaps they really could do it, she thought. Perhaps they really could take the whole damn moon. Wouldn't that put the Cardassians in their place. "What about guard stations?" she asked.
"I know of one," he said. "They marched us past it once to show us off to some visiting officials." "Where is it?" Kira asked.
"Three levels up." "We'll start there," she said, the decision coming easily. It was their best hope for now. "You'll have to come with us as a guide. The others can wait down here and gather their strength while Dr. Bashir treats their injuries. We'll be back with weapons... or we won't be back. Tell them while I brief my team."
CHAPTER 12
AS THE VACUUM OF SPACE sucked Odo toward the breach in the hull, the beckoning black cavity seemed to widen like the expanding pupil of an enormous eye.
The lost Horta's passage had left a cylindrical tunnel with smooth, rounded edges, but Odo, hurled help- lessly forward by the explosive decompression, was in no position to appreciate the clean, cauterized nature of the wound. In fact, he would have preferred some- thing jagged to grab on to.
Behind him, he heard the remaining Hortas tum- bling after him, bouncing and crashing against the tunnel wall. His mind coolly assessed the danger at something close to warp speed. Hopefully, he thought, the Hortas would obstruct each other's progress, just like they had when they'd first crammed into the suite.
At best, however, that gave him an extra second or two; unless he acted immediately, they would all be blown into space before Ops even knew they were gone. Odo knew he could survive outside the station for short periods of time. He doubted the newborn Hortas could.
It was a race, then, between the gale-force wind and his own shapeshifting abilities. He stretched urgently in all directions, while hardening his substance from the inside out. The hole filled his vision now, growing larger and closer as he flew to meet it. Beyond it, he glimpsed distant stars amid the icy blackness of space.
He tried to match the hole's shape and size. The gap rushed toward him; he felt as though he were falling horizontally into a bottomless pit. This is it, he thought. Ready or not, here I come.
Odo currently resembled a huge pancake, black as carbon at the center but still moist and yellow around the edges. The tunnel ended abruptly, and his wet, sticky tendrils seized onto the rim of the hole and refused to let go. The cold became an advantage now; it helped him freeze himself solid over the entire breach, forming a patch in the ruptured hull. His grip started to slip, but Odo strained to hang on.
Then the first Horta collided against him, jarring him with the sudden impact. Another rocklike body slammed into his midsection, followed by several more blows. He'd heard of an old human punishment called "stoning." Now he knew what it felt like. The Hortas almost knocked him loose, but Odo focused on his current form, concentrating as hard as he could, until his entire body grew as stiff and unyield- ing as the strongest tritanium alloy. He fit over the breach like a dense, disklike, darkly colored scab.
Only after he had anchored himself securely, however, did a horrific image blaze to life in his imagination: What if the Hortas burned right through him? He waited anxiously for the searing pain to begin.
Nothing. Odo counted to ten, but nothing hap- pened, no acid came to eat away at him. With the breach sealed, the sucking wind had ceased, and the baby Hortas began crawling back to the remem- bered security of the suite. Doubtless they won- dered where their adopted mother was, Odo guessed, but perhaps they'd learned a hard lesson from their sibling's demise: Don't burrow away from the station! He wondered if enough air remained in the chamber to keep the Hortas alive; then he remembered that the atmosphere on Janus VI had been artificially created by its human colonists. Pre- sumably, the subterranean Hortas did not require oxygen.
Now if the automatic safety mechanisms operated the way they were supposed to and sealed the breach, he could slip out of this awkward position and get the hell away from here. Of course, he grumbled silently, that was probably too much to ask.
"Hull breach in the habitat ring," Lieutenant Eddon announced abruptly. "We're losing atmos- phere." "Get it closed, Lieutenant," Sisko ordered. He hoped desperately that the weapons towers had not been affected, and that Jake was nowhere near the rupture.
"I'm trying, sir," the Andorian said, "but the auto- matic safety mechanisms are refusing to activate.
wait!" She looked up from her monitor in surprise.
"Something has sealed the breach, but it's not one of the backup mechanisms." Slender blue fingers scram- bled over the controls. Eddon's eyes widened as they absorbed the flowing streams of data. "Commander, sensors indicate that the seal is organic. Or something close to it." Odo, Sisko realized, just as Sanger called out more information. "The breach is--was--in an evacuated sector. Security reports, though, that Constable Odo, and several of the Hortas, may have been caught in the area." "Thank you, Ensign, but I already figured that out." Sisko leaned against the guardrail. If this was a starship, he thought, I'd have a command chair to sit in. "Eddon, reroute the sealing mechanisms through the adjacent levels. We have to assume the Hortas have consumed the circuits in the immediate level. As soon as the breach is closed, lock on to that 'organic' seal and beam him directly to Ops. I assume the transporters are working?" "So far," she said grimly.
"Launch the runabouts," Sisko told her. Both ships had limited transporter capabilities; he wanted them out of range of the Hortas' appetite. Those shipboard transporters may be all I have soon, he thought, unless I can figure out some way to get Ttan's children under control. "Instruct the pilots to stay within beaming range of DS9." He took a deep breath, then continued to plan for the worst.
"N'Heydor," he instructed the Centaurian techni- cian,
"order DS9 evacuated of nonpermanent person- nel. I want all visitors back on their ships, and those ships away from the station, in forty-five minutes. If the Hortas block anyone's passage, have them beamed directly to their vessels." "Yes, sir," N'Heydor said. Like all Centaurians, he looked like he'd been born and raised on Earth, perhaps somewhere around Greece or Italy. He was a dependable and reliable officer who had been assigned to DS9 from the moment Starfleet took possession of the station.
"The Cardassians are bound to notice any emer- gency evacuation," Sanger pointed out. He'll make a good first ojficer someday, Sisko mused, if he doesn't annoy the wrong admiral. He wondered whether Kira had been giving the young man lessons in second- guessing his superiors.
"I think the Horta is out of the bag at this point," Sisko said wryly.
"Safety seals in place," Eddon stated. "Beaming the organic patch--I mean, Constable Odo--now." Sisko looked toward his right. The small transporter pad hummed with energy. He squinted his eyes against the sudden glare as a column of white light appeared above the base of the transporter. Then the light vanished, leaving a black, metallic disk flopping awkwardly on the pad like a beached jellyfish. The disk oozed upward into the more familiar form of Odo. The security chief glanced quickly around him, taking in his new surroundings. "About time," he said gruffly. "I assume the suite is secure?" "We're relieved to see you, too," Sisko replied.
"Did the Hortas survive as well?" "All but one," Odo told him. "A single Horta was sucked out into space before I was able to close the breach." His scowl softened into a look of genuine regret. "I should have reacted faster." "I'm sure you did the best you could," Sisko said softly. He knew how seriously Odo took his responsi- bilities. Then, in a louder tone, he gave an order to the Andorian lieutenant. "Eddon, see if you can lock on to the missing Horta. It should be drifting somewhere in the immediate vicinity of DS9. Beam it directly to the infirmary. Notify Nurse Kabo she may be getting another patient." "Do you think there's really a chance the Horta might have survived?" Sanger asked.
"With a Horta, who knows?" Sisko said. "Nothing else seems to hurt them." He joined Odo by the transporter. The shapeshifter looked none the worse for his unplanned excursion outside the station. Then again, Sisko reminded himself, Odo could smooth over any cuts, scrapes, bruises, or even torn clothing with a moment's thought. Presumably, he didn't even need to comb his hair. "Constable, what about the other Hortas?" "They're confined in an unoccupied suite. I believe I rounded up all of them, although I can't guarantee that. My circumstances were not ideal for counting heads." "Understood," Sisko said. He started to tell Odo about the damage to the weapons towers, but Sanger spoke first.
"I'm afraid they're not confined at all," he blurted, then blanched in the face of Odo's fierce, disapprov- ing glare. "The Hortas are on the move again." "But the shields... ?" Odo began.
Sanger shrugged nervously. "They don't seem to be stopping them, sir." Sisko clenched his fists, but maintained a con- trolled, masklike expression. "Where are they now?" N'Heydor answered first. The Centaurian kept his gaze glued to the screen before him. "All the remain- ing Hortas are heading straight from the habitat ring to Crossover Bridge Three. Commander, I believe they're coming back to the core. En masse." I've never been face-to-face with a hungry Horta before, Sisko thought. Looks like I'll get my chance sooner than I planned.
Damn.
Miles O'Brien hated jogging, but he rushed back toward Ops at something between a walk and a run.
Huffing roughly, his broad face red from exertion, he felt a pain growing in his side. Still, with the Hortas wreaking havoc on DS9's already none-too-reliable innards, he didn't feel like trusting his molecules to the station's transporters. The problem in working so closely with transporters, as he had on the Enterprise, was that you learned too well what can go wrong.
Doctors must feel the same way about major surgery, he figured.
Caught up in his gloomy ruminations, interrupted by spikes of hot agony under his ribs, he didn't see Keiko and Molly until he nearly collided with them.
"Miles!" Keiko cried out. Wearing her favorite tan jacket over a tasteful violet jumpsuit, with a thin belt cinching the jacket around her waist, she clutched little Molly to her chest. Despite the anxious look on her face, O'Brien thought she'd never looked more beautiful. Suddenly, he forgot all about the ache in his side. He enveloped his family in an immense bear hug that nothing short of a disruptor blast could have torn apart.
"Thank God," he gasped, still short of breath.
"When I heard that the Promenade had been at- tacked... l" "We're fine," Keiko assured him, stroking her baby's hair. "Molly saved the day, actually. She kept a Horta at bay by feeding him everything in sight." O'Brien laughed out loud, feeling, for the moment, an astronomical quantity of tension slip away. "I told you she needed a dog," he joked lamely.
A tiny smile lifted the corners of Keiko's lips. Then, reluctantly, her expression grew grave. "Oh, Miles, what now? Where should we go?" "Just stay in our quarters until you hear otherwise." He tried to look more relaxed than he felt. "I'm sure Commander Sisko has the situation well in hand." His badge beeped, and O'Brien forced himself to release his grip on his wife. He took a few steps backward. "O'Brien here." Sisko's voice seemed to fill the corridor with fore- boding. The commander did not sound happy. "Time to make our last stand, Chief. Report to the core entrance of Crossover Bridge Three. Odo will meet you there." "Right away, Commander," O'Brien said, signing off. He gave Keiko a pained, apologetic look, while automatically unbuckling his phaser.
"Your last stand?" she asked anxiously. In her arms, Molly slept soundly, apparently untroubled by dreams of rampaging Hortas.
You shouldn't have heard that, he thought. Sisko didn't know you were standing by. "Stay in our quar- ters," he said. "Everything will be fine. I promise." Bridge 3 was not far away. He jogged away and, for his own sake, didn't look back.
"Onscreen," Sisko ordered. A horizontal cross sec- tion of DS9 flashed onto the viewer, appearing as a sequence of concentric circles with the core at its center. A single cluster of red triangles, indicating the current locations of the baby Hortas, stood out sharp- ly against the pale blue schematic. Sure enough, Sisko noted, the triangles were heading for one of the radial tunnels connecting the habitat ring to the core.
Why were they all moving toward the center of the station, as though something was drawing them on?
Their current trajectory seemed too consistent, al- most coordinated; he would have expected a more random pattern from a litter of unsupervised infants.
Sisko wished he knew more about growth and devel- opment of Hortas. Was it possible they were commu- nicating with each other? And, if so, to what end?
Sisko stared at the viewer, tracking the Hortas' relentless approach. "I only count eighteen Hortas," he observed aloud. "Allowing for the one casualty we know about, that still leaves us one short. Are we sure we have them all onscreen?" He wondered briefly if the missing Horta was somehow directing the others.
N'Heydor shrugged apologetically. "Maybe. Maybe not," he admitted. "We have systems failures all over the station, including the sensors. Entire levels are flooded with microwaves from damaged energy recep- tors. I can't guarantee we have a solid lock on every Horta." "Understood," Sisko said. It was also possible, he thought, that one of the eggs hadn't hatched yet, or that the missing Horta had been stillborn. "Have someone check out Habitat Suite Nine-five-nine. I want an inventory on those eggswor what's left of them." "All security personnel are currently defending the core," Sanger pointed out.
"Then send a technician," Sisko said impatiently.
"I assume we have one that can count to twenty." "Absolutely!" the young man said hastily. Gulping nervously, he opened a comm line hurriedly. Sisko had more important things to worry about, however, than one green officer's embarrassment. He contem- plated the determined onrush of Hortas apparent on the viewer. Even if there is one more Horta on the loose, he theorized, the overall pat
tern is clear. The extra Horta is almost surely zeroing in on the core as well.
But why?
Lieutenant Eddon interrupted his thoughts. "I lo- cated the Horta that Constable Odo saw sucked outside," she said. "It's still within range of our transporters. I'm beaming it to the infirmary now." "Very good," Sisko said. He contacted Bashir's nurse immediately. "Do you have the Horta?" he asked her.
The voice of the Bajoran woman emerged from his badge. "It just arrived, but, Commander, I think it's dead." Sisko's heart sank. First the mother, now the child.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Well, it's hard to tell," Kabo conceded. "But it's not moving, and I'm not detecting any life signs." She paused. "By the Prophets, if I didn't know better, I'd swear this was just a stray meteor and not a living thing at all." "Thank you, Nurse Kabo," Sisko said. "Please continue to monitor the... the body. Report any changes in its condition. Sisko out." A terrible feeling of weariness came over Sisko as he stood in Ops. He refused to slump in front of his crew, but, at the moment, he felt as old as an admiral. He ran a hand over his scalp, unconsciously checking to see if he still had all his hair. Twenty Hortas, he thought. And now one was missing, and another probably gone forever. Up on the screen, scarlet triangles worked their way across the bridge, where his people, including Odo and O'Brien, waited to stop them once and for all.