When the Vorta had finished his conversation and Vorgan’lorat hurried away, Odo asked, “What’s our status?”
“We’ve lost main power,” Weyoun said. “The warp drive and the sublight engines are off line, as is communications. We had a hull breach on Deck Two, but it’s been sealed with a force field.”
“What’s the prognosis for repairs?” Odo asked.
“The Jem’Hadar report that, without assistance, the warp drive is irreparable,” Weyoun said. “They may be able to restore the sublight engines though, and communications should be back on line shortly.”
“What about main power?”
“That may take some time,” Weyoun said, “but the backup batteries are in good condition.”
Odo considered his options. He had to finish what he’d started, but he also wanted to ensure the safety of his surviving crew. “Make communications your top priority,” he said. “As soon as it’s restored, send a message to the Dominion and, on my authority, request two Jem’Hadar vessels to provide you immediate assistance. If you can repair this vessel within a day, do so. Otherwise, have it towed back to the Dominion. I want you to remain here with one ship to wait for my return.”
“Founder,” said Weyoun, his concern plain in both his voice and expression, “where will you be?”
“I have to deliver the message that the Romulans prevented us from transmitting,” Odo said.
“But how can you be sure your message didn’t get through to Bajor?” Weyoun asked.
“I requested a confirmation if it was received, but there’s been no reply,” Odo said. “Additionally, the Romulans targeted our communications equipment, and they also destroyed the Federation’s comm relay. That tells me that they were intent on preventing my message from making it to the Alpha Quadrant.”
Weyoun nodded in apparent agreement, but he continued to look stricken. “I see your point,” he said. “But is it safe for you to travel on your own?”
Odo felt a swell of emotion for Weyoun, and pride for how far he’d come. Odo could tell from the way the Vorta had asked about his safety that Weyoun’s apprehension came less from a creation’s fear for one of his gods and more out of one friend’s natural concern for another. “I’ll be careful,” Odo said. “I’ll be fine.” He looked toward the near corner of the bridge, to the hatch that opened onto the deck below. “I’ll use the hull breach,” he said.
“I understand,” Weyoun said. “The crew have abandoned that section, so it’s empty right now. Once you’re there, I’ll lower the force field for a moment.”
Odo nodded his assent, then made his way to the hatch. He opened it, climbed down the ladder, then pulled it closed behind him. It did not take him long to locate the breach, a blackened gash that ran diagonally across two compartments. He stood in front of it and waited.
When the force field dropped along the breach, the restored atmosphere in the compartments rushed out into the void. Odo did not look outward, though, but inward, to the currents of motion that lived within him, that made him a Changeling, that exemplified his nearly limitless physical potential. He saw and felt rivers of movement, the never-still tides of possibility that formed his being, and with a conscious effort, he envisioned the change that he would become. His body softened and shifted, transformed from quasi-solid into the embodiment of thought, as he willed himself into a new series of shapes.
Odo poured himself through the fissure in the hull and out into the void. Humanoid in one instant, an amorphous spill of golden liquid the next, he continued to morph, his essence seeking to capture in itself a figure that Laas had first shown him. Satisfaction washed over Odo as he became a large, long, multifinned creature, a life-form that could move through space, its motion smooth and graceful. Odo fashioned parts of his new body into specialized sensory organs, mimicking those the creature used to detect the gravitational eddies caused by stars and planets, so that it could adjust its own mass and dimensions to propel itself through the void.
The spaceborne Odo moved quickly, utilizing the abilities of that which he had become to soar through the Idran system. He dived deep into the gravity well of one world, then hurtled around it and out again, deeper into the system. Asteroids aided him along his path, a comet, another world, and another. He knew his destination, could sense the increased wave intensities surrounding it, could feel the impact that the high quantity of protons had on the surrounding region.
In short order, Odo arrived. The great passage that linked distant parts of the galaxy opened for him, turning in loops to bare its radiant blue entrance. Powerful light gleamed from within.
Without hesitation, Odo swam into the Bajoran wormhole.
Through the runabout’s forward viewports, Kira saw colors and shapes that did not belong in the Celestial Temple. She opened the blast doors on the lateral ports as well, but the wormhole appeared normal to either side. Kira worked the sensors on Rubicon’s main panel, searching for answers about what lay ahead. She hadn’t known precisely what she would find in the wormhole, only that she must find it.
But that’s not entirely true, is it? Kira asked herself. She did have one expectation for what awaited her: the Emissary. She did not retain her Orb experience in the way that people recall their dreams; in some sense, she did not recall it at all. But she felt it, a new, deeper part of herself, a partially submerged but still essential portion of her psyche, which housed the compulsion that had driven her from Bajor and out into space, to the home of the Prophets.
Kira surveyed the displays on the runabout’s main console, observed the sensor readings as they danced, settled, fell apart. Among the noise of confused information, though, she spotted the identification beacon of Defiant. Benjamin’s old ship, Kira thought, and the ship to which he’d returned. Sometimes, the Prophets draped the paths they weaved with poetry.
As Kira continued farther into the wormhole, the foreign colors and shapes became clear. She saw the gray, compact hull of Defiant, but not by itself. To her dismay, the ship had been caught in the gauzy white embrace of a tractor beam. Its captor, a great, grayish-green Romulan warbird, dwarfed the Starfleet vessel.
Smaller than either starship, Rubicon hurtled toward them both. Without hesitation, Kira pushed the runabout closer. Though still unsure of her purpose, she felt certain that the Prophets would guide her actions.
As she neared the two starships, another color, another shape crossed her view. The flame-red opening in the wall of the wormhole—of the Celestial Temple—repulsed her. Its tattered edges made it look like a lesion, a horrible injury that showed no signs of healing.
It’s worse than just a wound, Kira thought. It’s a desecration.
She stared at the vile red despoilment. She didn’t know what had happened, what it meant or why, only that something terrible had taken place, and that there might yet be worse to come. Kira understood that she had been summoned to this moment, that the Orb of Destiny had changed her so that she could change what lay ahead of the runabout.
But she didn’t know what to do. She searched Rubicon’s main console for answers and found none. She knew that she couldn’t fire phasers or launch a microtorpedo within the wormhole, and given the relatively small size of the runabout, she couldn’t hope to use its own tractor beam to help Defiant escape the warbird’s clutches.
Feeling helpless, Kira stood up in Rubicon’s cockpit. She stared at the console, at all the controls, but nothing came to her. She looked frantically around the cabin for anything that might point the way to a solution. Seeing nothing of any use, she peered back out through the viewports. Just ahead, the warbird used its tractor beam not to pull Defiant, but to push it away from the hideous stain on the Temple wall.
But that stain, Kira saw, had depth. Not something on the wall of the wormhole, she realized. Something attached to it from the outside. She stared at it, tried to will herself to comprehend it. And as she did, it began to glow . . . a red light that grew to blot out everything else in her view, a
light that came to encompass her—
The sun had dropped lower on the horizon, its orange-red face reflecting off the water and bathing Kay Eaton in its radiance. She squinted against the glare, then turned back around and resumed rowing. Her back ached, and the fatigue in her arms left them numb. But still she continued on. She had to save Benny. She had to save him for Cassie.
As Eaton had moved farther out into the river, she’d largely stopped trying to peer back over her shoulder to see Benny and Eli in their boat. Doing so broke her motion and slowed her down. Periodically, though, she would throw her chin over one shoulder or the other, allowing her peripheral vision to catch a glimpse of the other boat, just so that she knew that she followed along in the right direction, and that the two men had not been lost.
Farther away from shore, the river roughened. Rowing became harder for Eaton as swells rose higher and fell deeper. She had already pushed herself for so long, and exhaustion threatened to overcome her. I have to be close, she thought desperately. I have to be.
Eaton turned and looked.
Where the water swirled in the middle of the river, it had grown wider and deeper, she saw, and it had begun to spin faster. The whirlpool reflected the dying sun in tints of flaming red. In horror, she spotted Benny’s boat teetering on the lip of the abyss, in jeopardy of falling into the gaping hole.
Benny moved in a blur of motion, hauling his oars through the water with visible effort, trying to pull away from the danger. Eaton had almost reached him. If I can just get close enough to grab hold of his boat—
Suddenly, a great wave rolled across the river and carried Eaton’s boat upward. She rose higher and higher, until she could look down past Benny and Eli and see into the vortex. Within it, a strange green boat, shaped like a bird, rode the rim of oblivion. A man with scaled flesh rode inside, and, as Eaton watched, he reached up and clawed at Benny’s boat. If he reached it, if he gained a grip on it, she knew that he would pull Benny and Eli down, dooming them.
As the wave settled, Eaton swung back around, turning her back on the scene once more. She drove her oars quickly through the water, powered by the certainty of what she must do. Her boat sliced through the waves, picking up speed. I’m going to make it, she told herself. I’m going to save Benny.
And then a tremendous cacophony roared up behind Eaton, the sound of a collision. Her head snapped back painfully and she fell to her hands and knees. She struggled to right herself, but the boat pitched and tossed on the violent water. She tried again, steadying herself, trying to rise so that she could see what had happened.
Eaton peered over the side of the boat. It faltered on the edge of the maelstrom. Deeper still, though, the birdlike boat, which she must have struck, hurtled down into the red vortex.
Eaton looked to either side for Benny. Somehow, his boat had been thrown clear, and she saw him moving away toward shore—toward safety.
A smile bloomed on Eaton’s face, even as something cold clutched at her feet. She looked down to see water pooling in the bottom of her boat. The collision had caused a leak. She turned around to see how badly the boat had been damaged—and instead saw Eli Underwood.
Could he have been thrown into my boat when we collided?
Except that something more than that must have happened, Eaton realized. Eli no longer looked like the decrepit man Benny had been so anxious to free from custody. Eaton gazed instead at a man who appeared strong of body and strong of mind, still recognizable, but no longer infirm. He did not have a young face, but one with character and experience. She supposed that his gray hair and the lines in his flesh had been well and honestly earned.
“How did you get here, Eli?” she asked, her voice barely audible over the sound of rushing water.
The newly invigorated man said nothing, but in reply, he stood up, reached forward, and hauled Eaton up into his arms. For a moment, she thought he meant to walk across the water and carry her to safety, but that seemed a mad idyll. Instead, he bent his legs, spun his body, and threw her into the air.
Eaton saw nothing but sky as she flew from the boat. She waited for the cold embrace of the river to swallow her in its depths, but then she landed on something solid. The impact pushed the air from her lungs. Even as she struggled to breathe, though, she sought to rise.
When she did, Eaton saw that Eli had managed to get her back to the shore. She peered out over the water, searching for the two men whom she had helped free from police custody, and had then pursued. She could not see her boat, or the one that looked like a bird. The vortex had vanished. She saw only Benny, rowing away, no longer in danger.
Eaton raised her hand and waved to Benny. Her eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun on the water, but the light grew brighter—
—and then the light faded, leaving behind the fiery depths of whatever had breached the wall of the Celestial Temple.
Through the viewports, Kira saw that the warbird had pushed Defiant back away from the red flaw. All at once, she understood that the Romulan crew meant to travel into that hole . . . into that wormhole.
And she knew that they had to be stopped.
Kira quickly sat down again at the main console and worked the conn. She brought the runabout up and over the Romulan warbird. From her new vantage, she saw that the tractor beam projected from the forward hull of the warbird—from the beak at the front of the vessel’s long neck. Kira glanced down at the console, still looking for answers. Her gaze came to rest on the weapons controls, but she knew that could not be an option.
Running on instinct, feeling that she had no other choice, Kira lowered the bow of Rubicon, aiming the runabout at the Romulan vessel.
“The smaller Starfleet vessel is moving above us,” reported Reval.
Though he could not say why, the timing of the second Federation ship’s entry into the wormhole filled Morad with dread. He turned away from the viewer, even as it showed Vetruvis’s tractor beam forcing the Federation starship away from the mouth of the Tzenkethi wormhole. All Morad wanted to see were the stars of home.
“Ignore the smaller vessel,” ordered Kozik. “We’re just moments away.”
The ship shook, and Morad waited for the devastation that would surely follow. All of my efforts, he thought. All come to nothing. He had lost every trace of confidence.
But the ship only trembled and remained intact.
“They’re firing some kind of focused force beam,” Reval said. “Minimal impact.”
“Keep pushing,” Kozik said. “Keep the tractor steady and keep moving that ship away. We’re almost there.”
“What . . . what is that?” asked Analest, her tone one of complete confusion. “Is that one of the aliens who live in the wormhole?”
Morad turned back to the viewscreen, his curiosity overcoming his fear. He saw what looked to him like a mammoth sea creature. It had a long, graceful body that trailed winglike appendages behind it. It moved sinuously, as though swimming through water currents. He watched it, fascinated despite the circumstances. He wondered idly if it would attack, and if so, how much damage it would cause.
But then the ship shuddered as a deafening noise filled the bridge. In his mind, Morad saw metal rending and sections of hull crushed. He crashed to the deck as the lighting failed.
Morad didn’t know if he passed out, but he became aware of a terrible quiet. He heard the voices of the crew, mostly delivered as moans and cries for help. Other than that, the ship had grown deadly silent.
But that remained true only for a moment more.
“Try using the deflectors!” Sisko called out, searching for any means of beating back the Romulan vessel. He stared at the warbird on the main viewer, and at the tractor beam that had captured Defiant. Admiral Akaar had charged Sisko with preventing the Typhon Pact from utilizing their newfound wormhole-generation technology to acquire the tools to construct their own quantum slipstream drive, but it seemed likely that the Romulans stood on the threshold of accomplishing exactly that. S
isko knew that he had to stop the warbird, but the Defiant crew had so far been unable to break the ship free. Restricted to the use of impulse engines within the wormhole, and with the warbird’s greater mass, Sisko and his crew hadn’t been able to prevent the Romulan vessel from moving Defiant out of its way.
“Use the deflectors how?” asked Slaine.
Sisko strode over to tactical and leaned in over the console. “Try concentrating a narrow-beam deflector burst,” Sisko explained. “Maybe if we can throw an unexpected punch, that will break us free.”
“Captain,” said Candlewood, “there’s a runabout approaching.”
A runabout? Sisko thought. From where? From Bajor?
“Attempting deflector burst,” Slaine said.
Sisko looked over at the viewscreen and saw a slim white beam flash out from the bow of Defiant and into the Romulan vessel. The warbird quivered, but its tractor field did not falter. “Minimal effect,” Slaine said.
“Try it with more power,” Sisko said.
“We’ll blow out the deflector array,” Slaine said.
“Then blow it out!”
Suddenly, a creature appeared on the main screen. It glided past, but then traveled out of view. Sisko shook his head, wondering if he’d begun to lose his hold on reality.
Then he saw the runabout. It swept up and over the Romulan vessel. For a moment, it hung there, and Sisko didn’t know what to expect next. But then it dived down toward the forward section of the warbird.
“No!” Sisko yelled. He could do nothing but watch as the runabout crashed through the neck of the warbird. The tractor beam ceased immediately. “Quickly,” Sisko said, even as the bridge and forward structure of the Romulan vessel tumbled away from the decapitated remainder of the ship. “Move us back—”
That’s when the Romulan warbird exploded.
Kira programmed a collision course with the Romulan warbird, executed it, and raced for the back of the runabout’s cockpit.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation) Page 40