by Diane Carey
"Talk to me, Dax, is this comm badge working?"
"—ing, but br—up, Kira. I'll boost—ain. … Is this any better?"
"It's better. Sir, the comm badges are back. Mostly."
From ahead of her in the dim, dusty causeway they'd been forced to go through to avoid areas the computer still had sealed off, Kira could just barely hear Sisko mutter, "Right."
The conduits were scarcely more than tubes in the internal skeleton of the station, meant for maintenance, not easy movement for anything larger than the eternal and unavoidable cockroach. Claustrophobic and encroaching, the conduits were especially crushing now as shudders and booming sounds shook the bones of the station from the constant throttling by Gul Fransu's ship. He fired and fired at them, probably hoping to chip away at the station's deflectors and eventually break through. It might work. If they let him have enough time.
On her hands and knees, Kira shuffled along behind Sisko, pausing every few shuffles to check behind, to see how Odo was doing. Each glance gave the same answer—poorly. Each progressive moment stole more strength. He'd been holding humanoid shape for a long time now and it had become a race. If he slipped, dared to rest, or was somehow driven unconscious and lapsed to his liquid state, then boom. In his guarded, background-man way, eternally outside even among outsiders, Odo knew his job and didn't mind doing it, even under the worst of conditions. Solitary as an eagle, soaring above and out of the crowd, but always on the lookout, Odo competed with Sisko for tacit authority over arrests.
Ordinarily nimble and lean, today he was shivering.
Yet he still resisted Kira's concerned glances, in which lay offers to let him off the hook, that they would take care of this particular danger. He forbearantly refused, even if only with the weather eye of each return glance. In his sedately alien manner he insisted he would prevail, that the effort of tracking and capturing these infiltrators helped distract him from his fatigue. Maybe that was true, and maybe it was just something he was telling himself.
She wondered. She continued crawling forward.
"Major," Sisko said from in front of her as he crawled out of the conduit into an open narrow passage in the docking pylon, "I've been thinking about these two people we're struggling with. What do you think about them?"
She accepted his hand and let him lever her out of the hole. "I think they're belligerent, pushy. . . . I think they're … well, they're Cardassian. But this High Gul—he's a wild card. We can't expect him to behave like Cardassians we're used to."
Still inside the conduit's opening, Odo looked battered and bruised, even though technically a shapeshifter couldn't be bruised. Danger of his condition fluttered before them—even he didn't know how much he could take, or not take.
"Unfortunately we don't have time to take a history course on the Cardassian past. Come on, Constable." Sisko's face gleamed with perspiration in the tawdry work lights as he hoisted their exhausted Security chief out of the conduit opening. "We've got this individual prowling our innards, and suddenly a sector-wide whiteout that has all the earmarks of a prelude to invasion, but culminates in the appearance of one, and only one, ship."
The station rocked hard suddenly, and made a sickening pitch. Sisko and Kira stumbled but managed to stay on their feet, but Odo skidded onto one knee.
Sisko plunged to catch him. "What the hell was that?" He tapped his comm badge. "Dax! What's going on?"
"Gul Fransu has moved in, Benjamin. He's not going to bother hovering out of range and potshotting us, apparently. He's hitting us with full power."
"Hit him back the best you can. We'll hurry."
"Understood."
"Sisko out." He stepped past Kira and snapped, "Let's get going. That kind of hit'll shake the station apart in minutes."
Forcing herself to let Odo follow them on his own,
Kira hurried to his side as he moved into the more open corridor. It was chilly here. Dax was right—she had apparently kept this docking pylon almost exclusive to use of the Defiant, so there wasn't usually anyone down here. There hadn't even been time to heat up the place beyond standby temperature.
"Sir, are you suggesting that we're caught between these two people in some private fight? A personal grudge?"
"You tell me." Sisko's voice was gravelly with frustration. "Gul Fransu flies in and demands that we hand over the 'hostage' we're holding, his supreme whatever-he-said, his High Gul, and when we don't comply and take action to drive him back, he fires on us with full-power destructive force. Would you do that if your High Gul were being held in a place?"
"No. You're right, I wouldn't."
"Unless you were the one who wanted to kill him." She turned for another custodial glance at Odo.
With those long legs Sisko got a stride ahead of her, so Kira hustled to his side once again and this time hurried to keep up. "Do you really think that? That changes the whole strategy of what's happening."
"Hell, yes, I do. Don't you feel those salvos? This guy means business. I don't know what the backstory is on these two, but I'd bet there's a big one. I'd also bet the Cardassian Central Command doesn't know Gul Fransu is here at all."
"You think he's acting on his own? Attacking a Federation—" Kira's words were partly lost in the thunder of another hit. They grabbed for each other and for the corridor handrail until the reverberations rolled away. "Attacking a Federation station on his own authority?"
"I hope so," Sisko said. "Otherwise it's war." He stopped at a loading junction and tapped his comm badge. "Sisko to O'Brien."
His comm badge blipped, crackled, then fell silent.
In that instant of silence Kira's awareness fixed on Sisko as she realized what she had just heard.
War, and he was ready for it. In spite of all that had happened to him in his life, and in the past few hours, he was still being a Starfleet officer, more concerned about the station and defending Bajor than himself or even his son. For that moment regret sliced through her, a sliver of embarrassment that most Bajorans still acted as though they expected the Federation to abandon them at a feather's flight.
"Sisko to O'Brien. Come in, Chief."
Another thrumm cast them to a bulkhead, but there was no answer from O'Brien.
"Sisko to Dax. Are you still picking me up?"
"Dax here, I hear you, Benjamin. You're not clear, but I might be able—"
"I can't pick up O'Brien yet. Can you?"
"There must be some residual inhibitors in the system. The High Gul's a good wrecking ball, but he's not much of a repair man. I've managed to get contact with Chief O'Brien, but he's breaking up."
"Tell him to reserve power to shore up the deflector grid. Fend Fransu off with full phasers, the harder the better. Protect Defiant at all costs until we can get her launched and out into maneuvering space. Sacrifice other areas of the station if you have to. Just buy me time. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"Keep these channels open. They might clear themselves if they're active. Sisko out." He took Kira's elbow and hustled her forward with particular urgency. Major, when we get to the Defiant, I want you to handle the docking clamps by hand, in case Gul Fransu is scanning the—"
The corridor erupted into bright orange light and white sparks. A streak of destructive energy came so close to Sisko's head that his hair was seared as he ducked backward, shoving Odo back also. He drew his phaser and fired blindly down the corridor to a junction where the shots had come from.
Almost instantly another streak came in answer, and drew black artwork on the far wall.
Caught in the crossfire, Kira dodged wildly to one side and struck a bulkhead, dropped, and rolled for her life toward Sisko. He pulled her around the corner.
"How could they possibly miss!" she choked as the stench of seared metal thickened the air. "We were sitting ducks in that passageway!"
"I don't know," Sisko uttered. "Maybe their eyes didn't wake up all the way."
"Or, sir, maybe they have trouble
using our phasers."
"Explain why you think that."
Kira pressed her shoulder to the cool wall. "Sometimes specially trained elite soldiers get special weapons and that's all they know how to use. When I was on Bajor in the caves, we were guerrilla fighters and the first rule is that the enemy supplies all your weapons. We could use anybody's weapon and make weapons out of anything. The Cardassians only knew how to use their own."
"Like flying the same runabout all the time. How many are there? Did you see?"
"I'm sorry—I didn't see a thing," she admitted.
Sisko pressed his lips flat and his face turned hard as he scanned the flashing corridor for a target and evidently didn't see one. "We don't have time for this. . . ."
"Let me draw them out, sir," Odo offered. "I can take a phaser hit."
"Not on your life, Constable. Or mine. Or hers. You don't have any idea what a high-energy burst would do to the fissionable material in your body. Besides, I just don't like the idea."
"Sir," Kira said, "that corridor comes around like a horseshoe and meets this one, down there, behind us. If they split up, they can trap us here without cover."
Sisko looked in the direction she was pointing, to a shadowed curve in the pylon's corridor where a darker shadow gave away another passage. "Go down there and stand ground. I'll try to draw them out. Odo, stay behind me."
"Reluctantly," Odo muttered. He clutched his own phaser, but his arm sagged. He pressed his shoulder blades to the wall and closed his eyes for a moment. His face had a sheen of melting plastic, scraped with patches of orange that fluxed and changed as he struggled to hold his form.
Resisting an urge to give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, mostly because she was afraid her fingers might leave depressions that might give him even more trouble, Kira stayed low and climbed past him, then made her way to the other passageway opening. As she arrived, the thought occurred to her to keep going, to hunch her way down this bend, around behind the assailants. A blanketing shot could stun them all. Kill them all.
How many were there? Would she be facing two or ten? Had she and Sisko stumbled on the entire band of renegade Cardassians? Or was this a hit squad, come to get them before they reached the Defiant?
She tried to listen to the sounds behind her, to count the phaser shots scorching the other corridor. Sisko was shooting. That meant he saw targets. She almost called to him to tell her how many he saw, but that would telegraph their ignorance. Old bells went off from other battles, and stopped her from doing that. Ignorance was better than broadcasting favors to the enemy.
Frrrruuuummmmmm—the station was hit again from outside, a bone-shattering blow that echoed and creaked deep within the base structure.
Enemies outside, and enemies inside the station. It was still a blister. Abruptly defensive of the big old place, she gripped her phaser tight and scanned the dimness for movement. Unless they were fools, they would come here. She was ready.
Unless they anticipated her being here, guarding this passage—unless they had chosen this place on purpose. . . .
Had they done that? Was she falling into their plans, letting them separate her from Sisko? Weaken the force?
"Sir!" she began, and turned to look, but all she saw was Sisko's shoulders hunched and working, and Odo huddled behind him, struggling to brace himself on the shuddering wall. They didn't hear her over the whine of phasers down the pylon curve, and the drone of hits from outside, relentlessly rocking the station every few seconds. Like some ghastly bagpipe, the drones and the whine coupled to rattle her mind. She found herself wishing for five seconds of silence.
She saw phaser shots lance the air over Sisko's head, hopelessly missing their target.
"Sir!" she shouted. There was no time for anything else.
As the ceiling buckled over Sisko and Odo, Kira realized what she had failed to understand until now. These Cardassians weren't imbeciles who didn't know how to handle phasers. Instead they knew the architecture of the station, and that was their target—the ceiling struts.
A hellish noise in the foreground drowned out the drone of hits on the station from Gul Fransu's ship. Kira threw herself to the deck as the corridor collapsed around her, her eyes and mouth caked with metallic shavings and insulation dust. The whine of phasers broke off, then there were two more whines, then nothing. The air turned thick, musty.
All at once she wanted that sound back.
Plastered with debris and dust, she dragged herself forward, abandoning the passageway the Cardassians had fooled her into guarding. Masonry and ceiling stuff clogged her path.
"Sir!" she called again. That was stupid—if he didn't answer, then the Cardassians would know they'd forced him down and would advance to finish him off.
Sparks and fizzling noises erupted at the place where Sisko and Odo had huddled. Part of the wall was sheared off, exposing live electrical fittings that were gutted and arguing with the open air.
And there they were—two Cardassians in funny clothes. Big ones, haunting the wreckage behind clouds of dust and electrical smoke.
Frruuuummmmmmm Frruuummmm-fuuummm
The deck beneath her vibrated like an earthquake.
Lying low, Kira slowly brought her phaser around to the front, peering over her arms as she took aim.
Her hands wouldn't close on the firing mechanism. She looked at them—blood sheeted her knuckles. Spasms racked her numb fingers and her elbows both tingled. In a minute that numbness would go away, but did she have a minute?
She let the phaser fall sideways into her left hand and made her right hand into a fist, then opened it, then clenched it again. She had to get the feeling back! She had to aim … fire …
Out of the rubble like a swamp monster in a story, a huge dark form rose in a single heave. Chunks of masonry and metal shavings cascaded from Ben Sisko's shoulders and the top of his head. His face was gray with dust, powdered and skeletal, and for an instant he looked like a dead Cardassian. The whine of his phaser blistered the narrow corridor again, in two sharp chords—bzzzt … bzzzt.
One of the Cardassians shrieked and raised his hands, but the other never had a chance to make a sound or move. The air turned hot and stinky again, and the two forms melted violently away like burning flash paper.
Under Kira the deck rumbled. Vuuuuummmmmm
Another hit from outside. The station could only take so much. They had to get Defiant launched. They had to defend from a distance. . . .
She managed to get the phaser into her right hand. Pain swept up her arms as the numbness began to fade. If she could just feel the trigger—
"Major?"
Smoke blurred her vision. Her shoulders hurt now. Was that a good sign?
"You're bleeding. Let me get you up."
The deck floated away under her and she hovered in midair, breathing heavily, her head light and spinning. As her head slowly cleared, Kira became aware of hands dabbing at her knuckles and wrists, squeezing her arms, probing for cuts and breaks. Over the pain in her shoulders, sensation was coming back into her upper body. She could feel her fingers again. Could she ever.
"Bet that stings," Sisko said. He still looked clay-gray and wasted, caked with insulation and dust, as he moved away from her to paw through the pile of collapsed ceiling. "Nothing permanent. Some abrasions, maybe a shock or two. I think you got the worst of it. Odo and I were insulated from the electrical jolts by the ceiling material."
Kira cleared her throat and forced her voice up. "That's the first time I've ever heard anybody being glad that a ceiling fell on him."
"Right. Well … those two were easy." Sisko glanced down the corridor expectantly, then hauled Odo to his feet. "Can you stand?"
"Yes," Odo croaked, and pressed a hand to what was left of the wall, determined to have spoken the truth.
"You call that easy?" Kira coughed as the dust crowded her lungs again.
"Easy to fool, I mean," Sisko said. "Once the ceiling fell, they took for grant
ed that I was done for, and came over here. That gave me my chance."
She brushed the hard bits of scrap from her tingling arms. "So did I."
"Anyway, it's two down. Adjust your phaser to leave a body. I want to be able to prove to Mr. Crescent that we've done what we've done. Major, how many of those individuals were asleep in that chamber? Do you remember?"
"Weren't there twelve? Eleven?"
"That means, counting the one who got killed before, that they're down to seven or eight." He glared down the pylon's forbidding corridor and gritted his teeth. Hot provocation shined in his eyes. "I can handle nine."
The High Gul chilled with satisfaction. Sisko had come to keep the Defiant out of enemy hands, and the enemy was already here.
"Thrust!"
It was his favorite battle cry. Much better than "action" or "rush" or "arms forward" as others had invented in his time. He enjoyed more than he could ever have anticipated shouting it once again. Oh! The surge of it! The surge!
His Elite Guard thundered through the tiny pass toward the three stunned faces of Sisko, his shapeshifter, and a Bajoran woman. Ah, the joy of pure shock! What invigoration to put such shock on the faces of the enemy!
The High Gul spread his arms and raised his chin, basking in the sensation as his young guards charged the enemy. Even knowing that Ren and Fen had failed, were probably dead, he suddenly captured a low-ranker's delight in the chance to destroy Benjamin Sisko himself.
Why hadn't he thought of that before?
Ren had wanted so badly to go. Fen had coveted a chance to act like a pure brute and had never had one until now.
The High Gul knew he had nurtured their desires to his own purpose. But that was what they were here for.