by Неизвестный
That was all O'Brien needed to hear. Damn it, he cursed silently. This hellhole barely works at the best of times, let alone when it's being nibbled to death by Hortas. "Odo," he called out. "Your turn." To O'Brien's relief, the security chief refrained from any caustic remark. He saw Odo roll his eyes, then watched as those eyes, the face they were lodged in, and every other part of Odo disappeared into the flux of his transformation. A breath later, a full-sized simulacrum of a Mother Horta glided down the bridge to meet its "children." If only, O'Brien thought, the real Hortas find Odo's disguise as convinc- ing as I do.
"Deactivate the shield," he said, as Odo ap- proached the midsection of the bridge. "Or what's left of it, that is."
Odo encountered no obstruction between himself and the Hortas. Chief O'Brien's work, he wondered, or a simple power failure? The Horta's shape was as cozy as he recalled; still, he wasn't sure how long he'd be able to maintain this form. The sixteen hours allowed his solid form was running out. Furthermore, too many transformations in too few hours, plus his recent battle against explosive decompression, had left him more fatigued than he cared to let on. Odo thought longingly of the comfort of his pail, wishing for a few minutes of untroubled rest, but settled down instead on the floor of the bridge, immediately in the path of the real Hortas. A motherg work, he thought bitterly, is never done.
The Hortas did not react to his presence as enthusi- astically as they had before, although the lead Horta halted less than a foot away from Odo and greeted him with the harsh, abrasive sounds of stone against stone.
As before, Odo did not know how to respond so he remained silent, noting how much larger all the Hortas were now. The one nearest him was almost as massive as Odo's current form, about the size of a snack kiosk on the Promenade. He hoped that he was still dealing with infants, and not a gang of rebellious adolescents.
The nearby Horta brushed against Odo. Its voice, loud and scraping, rose slightly, then died away. It backed away from Odo while, on both sides of him, rows of pitted, pulsating Hortas eased past the dis- guised constable and continued their trek toward the core. Their sibling was not really retreating either; it was preparing to circle around Odo, who briefly considered falling back and turning himself into a wall. But no, he realized, that would be suicide. He'd seen what a determined Horta could do to a wall.
Instead he abandoned the impersonation. Like a swiftly flowing river of gold, he streamed back to the core-side entrance, swirling around and past the more slowly moving Hortas, until he rose up on humanoid legs at O'Brien's side. Fortunately, the Starfleet man had witnessed Odo's shapeshifts too often to be taken aback by the security chief's rapid re-formation.
"No luck?" O'Brien asked, all business.
"Either they know I'm not Ttan or they don't care." Odo shook his head wearily. "Kids these days..."
Odo looked like he was ready to drop, or melt, or whatever, O'Brien thought. Despite the constable's gruff attitude, his face and hands had taken on the slick, moist sheen of a candle held too close to a flame.
A slight, but perceptible, ripple seemed to run under the surface of his beige uniform. O'Brien hoped he wouldn't have to mop Odo off the floor anytime soon.
Looking away from Odo, he watched the Hortas draw nearer. The first two had nearly reached the end of the tunnel, with the others trailing after them.
Memories of his failure at the weapons towers came back to him. He didn't bother to reach for his phaser.
The Hortas looked larger now, and even more impen- etrable, and they were getting closer by the second.
The ball is definitely in my court, he concluded.
Good enough. If nothing else, Odo's latest effort bought me time to set up one more trick. With any luck, it will be the last one I need.
"Shields at both ends of the bridge," he demanded.
Odo shook his head; it swayed unnervingly at the end of an increasingly fluid neck. "They burn through shields faster than Quark slips through loopholes." Even his voice seemed less solid. He gurgled instead of barked.
"Trust me," O'Brien replied. "The shields are for our sake." He tapped his comm, establishing a link with the central computer. "Deactivate artificial grav- ity in all bridges to the core." For once, the computer didn't argue with O'Brien.
Perhaps, he speculated, the damn program was as anxious to yank the rug out from under the Hortas as he was. After all, a small army of Hortas was only minutes away from invading the heart of Deep Space Nine. And if the Hortas started to devour the core, how long would it be before Ops itself was on the menu?
"Gravity canceled," the computer announced.
O'Brien watched with satisfaction as, one after anoth- er, the Hortas floated upward, away from the floor of the bridge. They hovered helplessly, suspended in a contained zero-gravity cell. The rustling filaments along their undersides whipped about uselessly, un- able to achieve more than glancing contact with any other surface. A pair of drifting Hortas bumped into each other, then ricocheted away gently in opposite directions, where one of the Hortas knocked into a third, sending it spinning down the corridor back the way it had come while tumbling over and over in the air. Within seconds, all the Hortas were colliding in midair, bouncing back and forth along the corridor. It was like viewing a game of zero-g billiards played in slow motion.
Perfect, O'Brien thought. Nonlethal, but effective.
He'd guessed that the Hortas, adapted by centuries of evolution to life within the dense interior of a planet, would be ill-equipped to cope with a gravity-free environment. And the truly beautiful part of the trap was that it actually took less energy to cut out the artificial gravity than to maintain it. From an engi- neering standpoint, he couldn't help but appreciate the economy of his stratagem, especially considering the ravaged state of all the station's systems. Maybe they could manage without Dax's scientific expertise after all.
Then the Hortas began screaming: wild, ear- piercing screams that sounded like sirens blaring, or, O'Brien acknowledged reluctantly, like baby Molly in the grip of a nightmare. "They're panicking," he whispered to Odo.
"Yes," Odo agreed. Even across the massive species boundaries separating humans from Hortas, the sound of pure fear was unmistakable.
The keening tore at O'Brien's heart, but he could have lived with the screams if necessary. Better to terrify the poor babes than to annihilate them, or to let them take apart Deep Space Nine, bite by bite. The frightened Hortas did more than scream, though; they were spraying acid frantically in all directions. Jets of caustic liquid, orange as fire, spurted from every crack in the Hortas' lumpy bodies. Globules of acid pooled in the air, forming glowing puddles of death levitating throughout the bridge, but for every burst that fell short of the surrounding surfaces, another spray splat- tered against the walls and flooring, turning solid metal into a bubbling, dripping mess that quickly evaporated to form gaping holes in the structure of the bridge. The drifting globs of acid soon found the walls as well, digging beneath the gray plating to the delicate mechanisms underneath. White-hot sparks leaped from damaged circuits. Flames and dark black smoke merged with the white steam of the Hortas' corrosive secretions.
Through the sparking and the screaming, O'Brien could barely hear the desperate reports coming over his comm, but he got the gist of it right away. The acid storm created by the Hortas in their frenzy to escape their zero-g prison was wreaking havoc on systems on every level of the bridge.
O'Brien stared at the chaos and destruction. Not far away, one of the Hortas spun end over end as it sprayed blazing orange streamers all around it, like an antique pinwheel firework. But the desperate Hortas were much more dangerous, he knew, than any crude pyrotechnic device: "Chief O'Brien," the silver-haired technician called out. She pointed her Starfleet-issue tricorder at the sealed bridge. "Microwaves are flooding the bridge.
The acid must have consumed the transmission nodes. Radiation levels are rising." Thank heaven the shields are still in place, O'Brien thought, but for how long? Sm
oking fissures and gaping scars marred the interior of the bridge, while the shrieking Hortas caromed through a sea of smoke, sparks, and flying acid. Forget the radiation, he thought. What about the structural integrity of the bridge itselff.
"Computer," he said. "Restore gravity to all cross- over bridges immediately." The Cardassian program did not want to let the Hortas off so easily. "Requesting confirmation from commanding officer.... " "Bring that gravity back now," O'Brien barked angrily, "while we still can!" As an afterthought, he added, "And, computer, locate and deactivate all damaged energy junctions." Damn it, he thought, why couldn't the Cardies have built a safe, reasonable EPS system into the station instead of their usual, cheap microwave array?
"Acknowledged," the computer replied, surrender- ing to his authority. O'Brien felt a sudden humming vibration under his feet, and gravity returned to the corridor with a bang and splash. Eighteen Hortas crashed to the floor at once, while blobs of drifting acid fell like rain all along the bridge. The acid doused the Hortas, but left no marks upon their invulnerable shells. O'Brien watched, scowling, as the acid ran down the Hortas' sides to wreak terrible damage on the bridge floor. How many levels, he wondered, would the falling acid burn through? He took comfort in knowing that the entire bridge had already been evacuated.
The nearest Horta, who moments before had spun like an acid-spewing top, landed upside down. Its tendrils flapped ineffectually in the air and, for a moment, O'Brien let himself hope that the Horta, like an overturned tortoise, would be unable to right itself.
In that case, he'd simply grab a stick and give them all a good flip over onto their backs.
This simple plan died almost before he finished conceiving it. Before his eyes, the inverted Horta sunk into the floor, disappearing from sight. A second later, and a few yards away, it reemerged rightside up.
Obviously, all the beastie needed was an instant surrounded by solids to orient itself again. "I don't believe this!" O'Brien muttered. "Can't anything stop these things?" "On Janus VI," Odo said with obvious difficulty, "they have no predators or crime. I checked." O'Brien glanced at his companion, trying hard not to stare too obviously. It looked like Odo had put all his effort into keeping his face, and especially his mouth, more or less intact. By contrast, gravity had pulled his hands and fingers down, elongating them so that his digits were thin, attenuated things with drop- shaped bulbs at the ends. The ripple beneath his uniform was now a surging current; Odo's substance sloshed about audibly, driven by strange biological tides, barely contained by the anthropomorphic water balloon his body had become. Tiny beads of moisture dotted his imitation flesh; if O'Brien hadn't known better, he might have mistaken them for perspiration.
"For God's sake, man," he said softly, conscious of Odo's carefully maintained dignity. "There's nothing more you can do here. Take care of yourself before, well, you know." Odo stared at O'Brien. His face no longer had definition enough to express any emotion. The look in his eyes might have been anger, or gratitude, or feelings O'Brien could not even guess at. Odo lifted one hand and watched it stretch like taffy toward the floor.
"You're right," he said quickly, then turned away.
With his peripheral vision, O'Brien caught a glimpse of something gold and wet flowing away from the scene, in the direction of the Promenade. He hoped Odo would reach his office--and his pail--in time.
But was any place on the Promenade safe, with the Hortas so close to the core? Deep inside, O'Brien doubted it.
"Eyes on the bridge," he ordered the assembled team, and not just to let Odo make a clean escape. The Hortas had shaken off the trauma of their adventure in zero gravity. A mixed blessing, to be sure: the screaming had stopped, but the Hortas were on the move again.
And O'Brien had run out of tricks.
Frustrated, he slammed his fist into a bulkhead.
This was the weapons towers all over again. You're an idiot and a failure, he cursed himself. Even little Molly had handled the Hortas better than he had so far.
Molly.
With a start, O'Brien realized he still had one more card to play: Molly's solution. "Feed them," he said, softly at first, then louder and as an order. "Feed them," he commanded. "Bulkheads, struts, spare parts... I want everything that isn't nailed down brought to the Hortas pronto!" To demonstrate, he grabbed hold of the open cover of the fused control pad and wrenched it violently free from its hinges. He flung the thin sheet of metal in the path of the closest Horta. Bent and battered from O'Brien's attack, the cover clanged loudly when it struck the floor of the bridge. The noise, or perhaps some tantalizing miner- al odor the humans could not detect, attracted the Horta's attention. It edged up to the cover, snuffling at it with its tendrils. Apparently the sheet was just what the doctor ordered; with an enthusiastic rumble, the rocky creature pounced upon O'Brien's offering, haul- ing its entire body over and atop the cover. O'Brien heard the hiss of boiling metal and glimpsed a flash of glowing red through the fringe of filaments along the bottom of the Horta.
The sheet was a mere tidbit, however, which the Horta consumed almost instantly. Fortunately, Starfleet and Bajoran officers came scurrying from all directions, carrying fresh food for the Horta and its siblings: guardrails, cabinet doors, beakers, desktops, data clips, scanners, fire extinguishers, consoles, padds, microscopes, mugs, stepladders, carrying cases, trioorders, stools, suits of security armor, deco- rative kelinide-alloy molding, metal charts and public notices, even a large obsidian bust of Gul Dukat that must have been tossed unceremoniously in a closet shortly after the Bajorans laid claim to the station.
O'Brien saw two hefty Bajorans carrying an entire airlock door between them. The large, gear-shaped object surely weighed a couple hundred pounds. Be- hind them, a Tiburonian lieutenant, the scalloped lobes of her ears flushed with exertion, clutched an engraved map of DS9; someone had painted the phrase YOU ARE HERE over the original Cardassian char- acters.
All spare or inessential material, or so O'Brien hoped. Still it seemed to do the job. The Hortas fell upon this bounty with an avidity that reassured him that his scheme was working, but that also distressed him owing to the sheer speed and energy with which the Hortas devoured all that was brought before them.
All along the bridge, DS9 personnel stepped warily around acid-formed pits and crevices while Hortas feasted eagerly on quickly assembled piles of supplies and debris. For the present, a state of equilibrium existed, with his people adding to the piles about as quickly as the Hortas ate away at them, but how long could they keep up with the Hortas' seemingly insatia- ble hunger? Staring at the creatures as they burned and burrowed into the heaps of junk, O'Brien felt like the manager of an all-you-can-eat flea market, and one that was rapidly running out of stock.
To his surprise, he saw Jake and Nog among the workers ferrying material to the Hortas. The com- mander's son had an armful of genuine aluminum baseball bats, while Quark's nephew struggled under the weight of what looked like a cheap cast-iron treasure chest. O'Brien worked his way through the busy line of Starfleet and Bajoran officers until he caught up with the boys only a few yards away from the great Horta barbecue. He dropped one meaty hand apiece on the boys' shoulders. Nog squealed in fright, dropping the treasure chest onto the floor. The latch holding the chest's lid shut snapped open upon impact, and the contents of the box spilled out before Nog's feet. Glancing down, O'Brien saw a pile of jointed toy figurines, representing various sentient races: Vulcans, humans, Klingons, and many other types of males and females. Every figure was nude, he spotted instantly, and anatomically correct.
"Erotic action figures," Nog explained, shrugging.
"Kid stuff." O'Brien realized with a start that chest had to be Nog's old toy box. Nog looked embarrassed, but only slightly, like a teenager forced to show someone his baby pictures.
Ferengi, O'Brien thought. He shook his head to clear his brain of the ghastly image of tiny Ferengi toddlers at play with these obscene little models.
"Look, lads," he
said, "you shouldn't be here. It's dangerous." "But, Chief," Jake Sisko protested, "we have to help out somehow. We have to." Nog nodded in agree- ment, although O'Brien thought the nod lacked both enthusiasm and sincerity.
He was struck, however, by the intensity in Jake's voice, and the terrible yearning in the boy's wide brown eyes. This was important to Jake, O'Brien knew, although he couldn't begin to guess why. He considered the sports equipment in Jake's arms; the commander and Jake had brought those bats all the way from Earth, O'Brien recalled, and if Jake was that eager to sacrifice his own precious possessions for the sake of the station, who was O'Brien to say him nay?
For an instant, O'Brien recalled his first Starfleet assignment, and how vital it had been to prove himself back then. True, Jake was younger now than O'Brien had been then, but O'Brien thought he recog- nized the look in the boy's--no, he corrected himself --the young man's eyes.
Sisko may never Jorgive me, O'Brien decided then and there, but I don't have the heart to send him away.