by Неизвестный
Sisko frowned. That particular choice of weapon troubled him. Why a knife? One phaser burst and the chief would have been killed. One wide burst, and we 'd both have been stunned.
Again he used the tricorder to scan for life-signs, but it was useless. This close to the emitter its displays flashed erratically.
Sisko made his decision. He set his phaser to force
six, medium dispersal. There was no time to take care-ful aim at the emitter as the chief had done.
He swung out and fired at once, ducking back behind the pipe even as a dagger clanged against it. The sensor mask emitter exploded in a shower of translator sparks. The sensor mask was down.
Breathing hard, but feeling victorious, Sisko leaned back against the pipe, tried his communica-tor again. No response. But it didn't matter. Sisko knew that as soon as Worf was able to restore emer-gency communications in Ops, he'd be able to get through.
Suddenly, the thick odor of sewage intensified. Involuntarily gagging, Sisko stuck his head out to take a quick glance around the pipe and saw a gout of dark water spraying from the top edge of the vat where the sensor mask emitter had been. His phaser blast had obviously punctured the vat wall. And the vat had to be a waste separator, designed to send liquids to the recycling evaporators and solids to the replicator mass reclaimers.
Only now, both liquids and solids were splattering down on the metal deck of the facility, and because of the imbalance in the artificial gravity fields, the odifer-ous sludge from the vat was oozing toward the back of the cavernous water-plant room.
In a vain attempt to shield himself from the terrible smell, Sisko pulled the neck of his duty shirt up over his mouth and his nose. He had to keep going. At least now he knew where to go.
And with the emitter gone, his tricorder should be functional again. Sisko checked its display. It was. There were two life-signs twenty meters ahead.
Still keeping to the cover of the pipes, Sisko headed
in the direction of the indicated life-signs, not certain what he was looking for.
But what he found wasn't surprising.
Quark.
In chains.
Hanging head down.
Over an open collection tank filled to the brim with dark, bubbling sludge.
Quark's hands were tied behind his back and thick black wires were cruelly clipped to the edges of his prodigious ears.
And the only way Sisko was able to tell that the Ferengi was even alive was because the tricorder said he was.
Sisko checked the reading again. "Damn," he whis-pered. One of the two life-signs had disappeared. Now there was only one-Quark. The other had moved out of range, or else had-
Pain seared Sisko's back as he was thrown forward to the slippery deck, his phaser and tricorder both tum-bling away.
Throwing off the shock of the attack, Sisko rolled to his feet, leaping up to face whatever, whoever, had felled him.
An Andorian female. Three meters away. Crouched in fight-ready position, the stark-blue ten-drils of her antennae jutting from her distinctive blue-white, Vulcan-short hair. In one blue hand, she held a golden dagger like the one that injured O'Brien.
His attacker was one of the two sisters Odo had been watching. But which sister, Sisko didn't know.
The Andorian moved closer, hypnotically waving her dagger in circles, her dark, blue-rimmed eyes
absolutely fixed on his own. Sisko could see muscles ripple in her bare blue arms and midriff. She was dressed more for a workout in a zero-G gym than she was for any trade mission, wearing only a snug black leather vest, black leggings, and low-cut gripshoes.
A spasm twisted Sisko's back where the Andorian had kicked him. The fact she hadn't stabbed him as she had O'Brien meant she didn't consider him a wor-thy opponent. She intended to toy with him.
But Sisko was in no mood to be toyed with.
He slapped his hand down to his second phaser, ripped it from its holster strips, and-even as the Andorian launched herself at him with an ear-splitting shriek-fired point-blank.
She collapsed at his feet, her eyes rolled back, her body unmoving.
Sisko kicked the dagger from her limp hand, then twisted her over on her back to keep her nose and mouth clear of the sewage whose level was still rising. The movement of her chest attested to the fact that she was still breathing.
Sisko checked to be sure she had no other weapons, then started for Quark, who was still trussed and help-less, suspended from the ceiling.
Quark's mouth was moving at warp ten, but say-ing nothing Sisko could hear above the increasing din in the vast chamber. Sisko muttered to himself as he studied the chains from which the Ferengi dan-gled over the sludge tank. "Quark, I don't know what you did to those people, but-" Sisko stopped sud-denly, remembering. People. And he whirled around just in time to be thrown against the sludge tank, as the second Andorian sister's hand stabbed at his neck.
This Andorian female was even more threatening than her sibling. While only slightly taller, she was much, much stronger. She wore almost the same outfit as her sister, but her long blue-white hair was pulled back tightly and braided, and the smooth blue skin of her left arm was intricately tattooed in black from wrist to shoulder.
With a shriek even louder than her sister's, she launched herself at Sisko before he had a chance to regain his balance.
Sisko tried to feint sideways, but stumbled.
The Andorian changed her angle of approach in midair, transferring her momentum into a spinning high kick that struck Sisko's shoulder, knocking him back against the edge of the sludge tank, so that his arm fell back into it.
Then the Andorian dropped to one knee beside Sisko, raised her hand to deliver a lethal punch-down blow to his chest.
But Sisko summoned all of his strength to fling his arm up, splashing raw sewage in her eyes.
The Andorian screamed as she shrank back from him, her hands clawing at her face.
Sisko twisted away, swinging one of his legs under hers, tripping her, so that she fell to the deck.
Ignoring his still-twinging back, he staggered to his feet.
In a heartbeat, the Andorian's body flexed power-fully, and she was once again standing upright before him, her blazing, dark eyes intent on revenge.
Sisko reached for his phaser, but it was gone.
The Andorian threw herself at him.
Instinctively, Sisko tucked and rolled toward her, forcing contact before she had anticipated.
He lost his breath in one explosive moment as her foot slammed into his ribs, but then the pressure was gone and he looked up, gasping, in time to see her flailing form flip over him and land in the sewage tank ejecting a fountain of disgusting liquid that struck and soaked Quark as precisely as if the Ferengi had been its chosen target.
Slowly, clutching his side, Sisko struggled to his feet, trying not to laugh because it hurt too much as Quark maniacally spun and sputtered and sprayed droplets of a dark substance whose origin was too ter-rible for Sisko even to contemplate.
"Calm down, Quark," Sisko finally managed to shout. "I'll get you down."
Quark screamed something indecipherable-two words? Sisko couldn't be sure. But the Ferengi was shaking and swinging back and forth on his chains, clearly panicked by something. Probably the fear of falling into the sludge tank, Sisko decided.
"What?" Sisko called up to Quark. The Ferengi's neck veins were now bulging as Quark screeched again. But it was impossible to hear him over the incessant rush and roar of the liquids in the pipes all around.
The second Andorian sister was trying to pull her-self toward the edge of the tank, to drag herself out. She was moving so slowly, Sisko doubted she'd cause him any more trouble. He decided to leave Quark to Worf's security staff, and instead to go back to get O'Brien and deliver him to the Infirmary. Quark might be uncomfortable but he wasn't in any danger now.
He looked up to wave at Quark to somehow signal him that someone would come back for him, when he
&n
bsp; finally realized that the Ferengi wasn't looking at him, but at something beyond him.
With a sudden flash of alarm, Sisko turned about.
A moment too late.
A black shape enveloped him like a tidal wave sink-ing a ship, and the roar of the room fell away into silence as he drowned in a sea of darkness.
CHAPTER 19
"behind you," Quark muttered as Benjamin Sisko col-lapsed on the filthy deck of the din-filled water-plant room. "I was trying to say, behind you...."
But, as usual to Quark's view of things, no one ever paid him any attention until it was too late.
And it was much too late for Sisko, just as it was too late for those ghastly Andorian sisters.
Quark had absolutely no idea who it was who had struck Sisko down. All he knew was that Sisko's attacker was outfitted in a shiny black, wrinkled, class-two environmental suit, one designed to operate within normal life-support pressure and temperature ranges, and that such a garment was worn usually to protect against biological or chemical contamination. Know-ing this did not make Quark feel any better.
Or smell better, Quark thought bitterly. Ever since something had happened to momentarily interrupt the
station's gravity fields a few minutes ago, the water treatment facility had begun to stink worse that he most likely did, thanks to that clumsy Andorian female and her spectacular fall into the sludge vat. In fact, now that he thought about it, this place smelled even worse than a Medusan moulting pit.
Quark hung motionless in his chains, shutting out the cacophony of the incessant sound of rushing liq-uid, regarding the floor and the latest interloper, as he stoked his internal fires of resentment. Trust the Car-dassians to economize by treating waste water in a centralized location, instead of using personal recy-clers. I mean, Quark thought indignantly, there's an understandable desire for profit, and then there's being obsessed by it. And right now, suffering the dis-astrous olfactory consequences arising from the imbe-cilic decision of whichever Cardassian genius thought he'd save some latinum on Terok Nor's waste-recycling system, he himself would actually be willing to trade a year's worth of profits from his bar for just one last lungful of fresh air before the stranger in black killed him as he had just killed DS9's chief executive.
Quark reconsidered the odds. After all, this close to the wormhole, one could never be too certain which prayers were going to be answered. Better make that six months' worth, Quark amended as he saw Sisko's murderer heading toward him, toward the sludge vat above which he dangled helpless, head first, and beside which Satr now lay, recovering her breath after climbing out of the vat.
Of the two sisters, Quark remembered thinking when he had first met them that Satr was the cute one. And that the other, Leen, was the smart one. But incredible though it now seemed to him, he had been
willing to overlook that classic character flaw in a female. Instead, he had stupidly looked forward to see-ing how long he might be able to prolong negotiations with both Satr and Leen. He'd been in the bartending business long enough to have heard what they said about females with blue skin. And the chance to feel four female Andorian hands on his lobes at the same time had always been a little fantasy of his.
But then Dal Nortron had gone and got himself killed and spoiled everything-he'd had to avoid the sisters instead of cultivating them. Before long Odo had him in protective custody, and then had arrested him, only to let him go just in time to be waylaid by that miserable excuse for a Ferengi-Base. And all to be dragged down here to meet Satr and Leen again.
Quark moaned just recalling the degrading treat-ment he'd been subjected to. His head hurt like the devil, and it wasn't simply because he had been left hanging by his heels like a Mongonian eelbat for the past day and half.
He'd been a perfect gentlemen with those two Andorian monsters. Even after that ingrate Base had dragged him in a sack through the smugglers' tunnels and dumped him out in front of Satr and Leen, he'd made the two sisters a completely reasonable request in his most charming manner. Something along the lines of: "Ladies, such a pleasure to see you again. Is it time to do some... business?"
Satr's reply had involved a sharp elbow in his stom-ach, and Leen had trussed him up in chains like the Friday night special at the Klingon Cafe. It was then that Quark knew for certain that he had been betrayed by them and Base.
Base. The name should have warned him. The little
insect had come into Quark's back office and launched into his oh-so-sincere sales pitch, about how he wanted to protect his investment in the Orbs, how he wanted to make sure Quark stayed safe before, during, and after the auction, how he planned to take care of Satr and Leen personally-and for only an extra eighteen per-cent of Quark's commission on the auction proceeds.
That percentage had been so out of line that Quark had actually spent twenty minutes negotiating a reduc-tion, never once questioning why it was that Base should be on his side for eighteen percent, when the little gnat could kill him and have a shot at the full one hundred percent.
They had settled on nine-and-a-half. Plus Base could keep half the tips all the bar's wait staff earned during the days he replaced Quark as barkeep. In the meantime, Quark would be safe behind a sensor mask where no one could find him.
And worst of all, in Quark's recollection, was that the entire deal had been negotiated in front of his own idiot brother. Base had set the whole thing up so that when Quark disappeared, Rom would dimwittedly think that was part of the plan and would not be con-cerned. No one would be concerned.
As if anyone would anyway, Quark thought with a self-pitying half-sob.
And then, even more humiliating to recall, that conniving Base convinced him to put himself into the sack with an antigrav ballast, supposedly so he could be taken to a safe place deep within the sta-tion.
"Why the sack?" he remembered asking Base.
"For a stinkin' nine-and-a-half points," that little vole had squeaked persuasively, "no way you're going
to find out about the perfect hiding place I figured out. But for twelve and-a-half...."
It had been the perfect argument. No hiding place on the station was worth an extra three percent, and like a targ to the Klingon wedding feast, Quark had climbed willingly into the sack, hugging the antigrav, until Base tossed him out on the deck of the water-plant room-and the four female Andorian hands went to work on him in a terrible travesty of his fantasy.
Now, suspended directly above a dark substance which was as good a metaphor for his life as any, Quark mulled over those he considered his enemies as if he were fingering a pocketful of well-worn worry stones.
First, Rom, his idiot brother who betrayed him by letting that half-sized, half-son-of-a-Klingon into Quark's bar in the first place. Second, Base. Third and fourth, Leen and-
Quark saw the black-suited figure below draw a small phaser and shoot Satr with a soundless flash of energy, then splash through the sludge-strewn deck to dispatch Leen next.
Wincing in commiseration for their bad luck, Quark amended his list of enemies, at the same time wonder-ing where the Andorian sisters had hidden their lat-inum. It would be quite a tidy sum for someone fortunate enough to find it.
But not for him. His own luck, no matter how poor it had been, had obviously run out. It was his turn now.
The black figure, face completely obscured by a wrinkled black hood and a full-face breathing mask, looked up at Quark, then adjusted the small phaser's setting and took careful aim.
Even though he was resigned to his fate and deter-
mined to face it as a rational being, Quark instinctively reached back to his childhood lessons from the weekly Celestial Market classes his loving parents had forced him to attend. Trying not to breathe in any more of the noxious fumes that he had to, he reflexively mumbled the Ferengi prayer that was his people's traditional ward against impending disaster. "All right, this is my final offer...."
But the shooter below was in no mood to negotiate.
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bsp; He fired.
In one timeless instant, Quark realized that the shooter's beam wasn't aimed at him but at the chain that bound his feet.
A second timeless instant later, as he felt his stomach fall up toward his knees, Quark dropped-the chains melted through-straight into the bubbling vat of-
"Frinx!" Quark gasped, as a strong hand grabbed him just before he hit the liquid sewage.
Still in midair, he kicked wildly to be free of what was left of the chains still loosely draped around his ankles.
The figure in black deposited him on the deck, standing upright on his own two feet, right beside the motionless body of poor Captain Sisko.