“I really don’t like the sound of that,” Kira said. “All right—what do we do next?”
“When all else fails me,” Dax said, giving her a wry look, “what I usually try next is to ask the chief to hit things very hard. That always does the job.”
“This is ridiculous…” Kira ground out. She put her hands on her hips and glared around ops. Then, with one swift, decisive movement, she pulled out her phaser.
“Nerys, no!” Dax yelped, putting her hands over her face and closing her eyes, wincing in anticipation of the explosion she was sure would inevitably follow.
There was a short silence. Dax risked looking out. Kira was standing with one hand still resting on her hip and the other pointing her phaser at the control panel of the entrance into ops. She had a thoughtful expression on her face. Dax heaved a sigh of relief and relaxed again, leaning on the console in front of her.
“You know,” Kira said, pensively, putting her phaser away, “I’m sure that the last time I tried that, it ended with the station almost exploding.” She glanced over at Dax and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you should try a few more things before I start blowing the doors off.”
“I think that’s a very good idea,” Dax replied earnestly.
Kira lifted a finger in warning. “Just don’t take too long about it, Jadzia.”
Odo studied the inside of the locking mechanism to the door of his office, all too conscious of the irritating presence of Bashir hovering anxiously at his shoulder.
“Any luck?” Bashir said, for about the fifth time.
“If I were having any luck, Doctor,” Odo replied, “then you would not still be staring at a locked door.” He pushed the panel closed.
“Odo,” Bashir said urgently, “I know you think I’ve been talking nonsense, but I really am worried that something is about to happen to the latinum—”
Odo nodded slowly. “It seems reasonable to conjecture that if anyone is making an attempt to steal the latinum, they would do so not long after putting the station’s chief of security out of circulation.”
“Exactly,” Bashir said.
Odo went over to his desk, and tried the com. “Odo to ops.” There was nothing. “Odo to security.” Still nothing. “Odo to anyone who can hear me.”
“Combadges?” Bashir said. They both tried, with no success. “So we’re stuck in here,” Bashir said, folding his arms in frustration, “with no way of raising anyone and letting them know about the latinum.”
“No,” Odo said, shaking his head decidedly. “I can get out of this office, even when the door is barred.” He gave Bashir a knowing look. “You may recall that I found myself trapped in here once before, Doctor,” he explained. “When Gul Dukat’s defense program was mistakenly activated.”
“I remember,” Bashir said, nodding. The whole station had locked down around them, and it was in part because of Dukat’s assistance that the station itself had not been destroyed. Bashir could only hope that they were not facing a similar situation now. They were hardly in a position to apply to Dukat for his help this time round.
“As you may remember, I was not able to escape from my office because there were forcefields running down the decks and along the bulkheads.”
“I guess you decided not to make the same mistake a second time?” Bashir said, starting to grin.
Odo tilted his head. “Being trapped here with Quark provided a sufficiently strong incentive to insure it would never happen again,” he said. “If there is a breach of station security, then the forcefield still covers the door, protecting this office from intruders. But I had the chief install stasis interrupters in the field, which means I am not prevented from shapeshifting out of my office.” He came from behind the desk. “I can get out beneath the door. Whatever situation is currently unfolding on the station, I’ll soon have it resolved.”
“Well, that’s some good news,” Bashir said. “At last.” He took a step back, to give Odo space to change into whatever shape he needed.
There was a slight pause, in which nothing happened.
“Do you want me to look the other way, Constable?” Bashir said, suddenly uncertain of etiquette.
Odo did not answer. He was staring down at his hand. Then he said, “Something isn’t right.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t…” Odo jerked his hand downward, as if he were trying to shake something loose.
“Odo?”
“It appears, Doctor, that I cannot alter my form,” he said. There was a rising note of alarm in his voice.
Bashir reached for his tricorder. “Give me your hand,” he said. Odo pulled away from him. Bashir drew back, raised a palm in apology. “I’m sorry, Odo—I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
“There’s no need, Doctor.” Odo clasped his arms across him, sealing himself away further. “I know what this is,” he said, bitterly, adding Garak to the list of people with whom he intended to have a long conversation once this situation was resolved. “I’ve experienced something like it before.”
They walked onward slowly, Garak waiting for Roeder to give him the signal. They reached the place where the river was crossed by a wide bridge, and the road they were following sloped down to enter an underpass. Roeder began to steer them away from the river. Just before they went into the underpass, Roeder pointed right. They peeled off into a dark side street alongside them.
“There’s a gate up ahead,” Roeder muttered. “It opens into some gardens. Go in there. Move quickly. Keep quiet.”
Sure enough, they soon came upon the gate. It eased open on its hinges, barely making a sound. They hurried in. Garak quickly took in his surroundings. The garden was small and secluded, and surrounded on three sides by what he guessed would be office buildings. There were still one or two lights on in some of them. Anyone looking down from there and out into the garden would almost certainly see them. Garak frowned.
“Keep walking along this path,” Roeder whispered. “It will fork. We’ll go left.”
Again, it was just as Roeder described. They went quickly down the new path; Garak had time only to feel rather than see the dark shapes of trees as they hurried on. The new path ended at another gate. Roeder raised his hand to signal to Garak that they should stop, then he stepped off the path onto the grass, to one side of the gate. He gestured to Garak to take the other side. Garak took up his position, and watched for Roeder’s next move. Roeder put his finger to his lips; then, “Listen,” he mouthed to Garak.
Garak leaned back against the wall. He did not take his eyes off Roeder. They both stood, completely still, staring at each other, listening for footsteps, listening for anyone following. There was nothing. Just the soft, distant sounds of the night. It was not, Garak reflected, the usual means of going about seeing the sights of a city.
A minute or two passed. A light went off in one of the buildings across from where they were standing. Roeder blinked and looked away, up to where the light had been. Then he turned back to Garak.
“Whoever it was,” he said, calmly, “I think we’ve lost them.”
“I didn’t doubt we could,” Garak replied, with a smile. “Where now?”
Roeder jerked his head at the gate. “We’ll take a back way.” He reached for the latch on the gate, and paused. “Will people be looking for you now?”
“Would you let a Cardassian wander around Earth unattended?”
“Probably not.” Roeder pushed open the gate. “But then, you’re not unattended, are you?”
Dax was running her latest test when a comm channel crackled with static, and a voice unexpectedly came through. It kept breaking up, but it was still instantly recognizable.
“This is O’Brien to Deep Space 9. Is there anybody there who can hear me?”
Kira and Dax exchanged relieved looks.
“The voice of the machine,” Dax murmured.
“Chief, this is Major Kira—are you able to hear to me?”
“Just about�
�.”
“You’re breaking up quite badly,” Kira informed him, “but we’re still glad to hear from you. Where are you right now?”
“I’m still over on the Ariadne. What have you been doing to the station?”
“More what it’s been doing to us,” Kira replied. “We seem to have some kind of systems lockdown, Chief. None of the doors are opening, none of the systems are responding to us—we can’t raise any communications…” She stopped and frowned. “How is it you can talk to us?”
There was a brief burst of static loud enough to make both women wince, and then the channel went dead.
“Chief?” Kira said urgently. “Are you still there? Chief? Dammit!”
The channel spluttered back into life. “Sorry, Major, lost you for a moment—what did you say?”
“We can’t raise any communications here, Chief,” she replied, speaking more clearly. “How are you able to speak to us?”
“Nothing over here on the Ariadne has been affected—except for the airlocks back onto DS9. As soon as I realized something was going on, we used the systems here to patch into the station’s com—but this ship’s nowhere near fully operational yet. We’re going to get breakdowns on the channel…”
“Is there any way you can get back over here?” Kira said. “So far as we can tell communications, doors, turbolifts—none of them are working. Certainly nothing here in ops. We could really do with you right now.”
“The Ariadne doesn’t have a transporter. And from what you’ve just said, I’m guessing ours aren’t working right now.”
“Good guess,” Kira said, in exasperation.
“Then, no—I can’t get back. But perhaps I can do something from here.”
“Wait a minute,” Dax murmured. “What’s this?”
Kira came over to see and, as they watched, one of the viewscreens flickered and then came back on.
“Chief,” Dax said, “we seem to be getting some monitoring devices back. Have you managed to get some other systems up and running at your end?”
“Much as I’d like to take the credit, that’s all your own work.”
“It’s certainly nothing we’ve done,” Kira said. “We can’t do anything!”
“Well, whoever’s behind all this seems to be showing a great deal of attention to detail. My guess is somebody wants you to see something.”
Kira leaned over Dax’s shoulder to take a look at the image on the screen. It was showing a closed door.
“Habitat ring,” Dax murmured. Kira nodded. Then, as they watched, the door slid open, to reveal the distinctive shape of an Hamexi, coming through.
“That can’t be,” Dax said.
“What’s going on, Dax?”
“What we can see right now,” Dax said, “is an Hamexi making its way along the habitat ring—” She was stopped by a startled interruption from O’Brien.
“An Hamexi?”
Kira frowned. “What do you two know about this?”
“Well, just that Odo has been worried about an Hamexi visiting the station right now. Thought he had his eyes or whatever it is on the latinum. But last I heard Odo had put him in the holding cells.”
“Yes, he arrested him yesterday, after the auction,” Dax said.
“Well, he’s out now,” Kira replied. “And he seems to be able to pass through all the doors…” She shook her head in disbelief. “They’re just opening as he comes up to them and closing as he comes through!”
“He also seems to be right on route for the Promenade,” Dax pointed out. “Will there be anyone there to stop him?”
“We cleared most of that area when the latinum came on board,” Kira said. “But the route he’s taking leads up to the airlock just along from the assay office. He’s going to hit the forcefields soon enough.”
“This is fascinating stuff,” O’Brien said, “but I don’t know how long this channel will stay open. Tell me what you’ve been trying so far to get things working.”
In between bursts of static and sudden breakdowns in the channel, Dax managed to give him a rundown of her attempts to bypass the command pathways.
“From what you’re saying, it sounds like this program is faking security protocols,” O’Brien said. “There are some high-level ones that give you the authority to lock down an area and stop any access to it.”
“Is there any way we can work around that, Chief?” Kira said. “Any way we can use those protocols to our advantage?”
“That’s my advice—there’s not a lot else to try. I want to get through to Odo. He’ll know the higher level security codes; maybe we can use those to find some way to override this program.”
“Whatever you both say about this Hamexi,” Kira put in, “I’m still not ruling out the possibility that this is something left over from when the Dominion were here.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“I don’t want us to find ourselves sitting targets for a fleet!” Kira said. “Will you try to find out what’s going on from up there?”
“Not everything’s working here properly yet, Major, but I’ll get onto it.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Kira said. An idea struck her. “Back when the Cardassians ’counterinsurgency program locked the station down, Garak had some access codes that let him move around. Odo will know about them, I’m sure. At least if we have those then we could get out of ops.”
“That’s exactly the kind of thing Odo will know about. I’ll get onto it straightaway. Oh, and try not to hit the consoles so hard, will you? You really need to know where to do it.”
Kira and Dax looked at each other guiltily.
“Typical of Cardassians when you think about it. Only they would build systems that respond to violence—”
“You’re getting off the point, Chief,” Kira said, with a slight twist of her lips.
“Sorry, Major.”
“All right, we’ll wait until you get through to Odo. One other thing,” she said, “if you can get any information on what’s going on elsewhere. We’ve got no idea how much of the station is affected, whether anybody has been hurt—anything you can find out.”
“All right, I’ll do my best.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
The channel went dead.
“Well,” Kira said, looking over at Dax, “at least we’re not quite back to blowing off the doors. Not yet,” she added darkly.
“I’m sure between them the chief and Odo will be able to work something out—”
“But we don’t know how long that’s going to take,” Kira said in frustration. She looked down again at the viewscreen. The Hamexi was advancing toward the Promenade. “And I have a feeling a forcefield isn’t going to hold this one. We need to get onto the Promenade before it does—”
“Major,” O’Brien’s voice came through again. Even taking into account the static he sounded unusually acerbic. “Give me a couple of minutes before you start going out with all guns blazing. I doubt you’d beat the Hamexi anyway, and I’m not thrilled at the thought of having to fix every single door between the Promenade and ops.”
Sisko swore at the night sky and tried to make up his mind what to do next. He was not familiar with the city, and he could not guess where Roeder would take someone who had claimed an interest in learning about it. He stared in both directions down the embankment. East, downriver, he had a pretty clear view, and despite the dark it seemed the less promising way. Westward, the river ran beneath a bridge, and then bent away to the south. And up the river, the councillor had said. It could just have been a figure of speech, but it helped him make his decision. He set off west walking at a rapid pace, with the river to his left. Veral’s mocking smile as she had given her warning about Garak came back to him. He found himself with an overwhelming urge to kill Garak when he saw him again.
Sisko kicked a stone out of his way. Again, he thought, he should have predicted that Garak would try something like this. He drew closer to the bridge, and scanned the length of it. There was n
obody there. He walked on. The river began to curve, and the street bent with it. Looking ahead, he could see that it was darker in the underpass, away from the streetlamps. Then he heard footsteps—someone running toward him. He slowed down, thinking he would rather see who it was in the relative light of the street.
The dark figure came out from the under the bridge. It was Lieutenant Chaplin. She no longer had her air of brisk efficiency, Sisko noted. In fact, she looked frantic.
“Good evening, Lieutenant,” Sisko called out to her, calmly. She stopped running, and he made his way over to her. “Are we looking for the same man, by any chance?”
Roeder led Garak down a narrow street. They took a sharp right, into another street. Trying to keep his bearings, Garak guessed that they were now going in front of the buildings that overlooked the garden. More of these tall terraces, like the embassy. He peered at some of the brass plaques on the walls as they went past. Art societies. Historical institutes. They took another right. This street seemed at first to Garak to be ending in darkness; then he realized that it was the river straight ahead.
Roeder, watching him, said, “Do you know where you are now?”
“Yes,” Garak said, glancing around. “We’ve come right back on our tracks.”
“With any luck, our follower will have carried on along the river. Which means, in effect, that we’re now following him. Or her.”
They came out onto the embankment and turned right. The dark mouth of the underpass opened up ahead, but Roeder did not take Garak in. He bore left, closer to the river, leading Garak down some narrow steps.
It suddenly went very dark. For a moment, Garak lost all sense of direction. He made himself concentrate on remembering the map of the area he had studied before leaving Starfleet HQ and, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he recalled a narrow towpath running under the bridge. He glanced around, taking in the whole of his surroundings. They were walking along a wooden pier that ran along the side of the underpass. There were some railings to the left, and then the river; and some dim lights lining the wall of the underpass to the right. Garak could not see anything across the river; could not see another building, could not see if there was anyone out there to witness.
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