by Diane Carey
She sifted her fogged memory of those last moments in the pylon for signs of life in that heap of arms and legs and gushing bodies. She was in charge now. In charge of the station's last few minutes.
"Yes, it was a trial," she said, after weighing this answer's value too. "It was a brutal misery and a constant crippling resistance against barbarians like you."
"Me? Not like me," he said. "I am from much before all that. My legacy is from another time, another Cardassia."
"Are you?" she impugned. "Not from what I've seen so far. You can posture and delude yourself all you want, but let me tell you a little about what you spawned. Burned children … severed limbs … prisoners scalded with boiling tar as an example to others, survivors shown recordings of their writhing families, a civilization already beaten being beaten further down for no reason other than their captors' insecurity. Healthy Bajorans broken and shredded by generations of slavery … the planet stripped until it was useless even to Cardassia. Proud of your children, Mr. Crescent? They boldly carried on the legacy you've pretty plainly shown us today. That's what you slept through. Another time, my backside."
She knew she shouldn't talk, but desire to communicate her fury rumbled to the top. A feeling of dissection took her by the throat, just as this extra-large Cardassian hit man had her by the arms. Any of these monsters could snap her like a twig.
"You're a freak," she told him. "A fossil. I and my people lived out your legacy for you. And you proved it was yours when you walked over so casually and put your knife into my commanding officer while he was still fighting three of your men. That's grandeur, I'll tell you. You can kill me, but that won't kill the fact that I saw what you really are."
The High Gul's face had been impassive, he'd worked at that, she could see, but suddenly a single crease appeared across his brow, just a small change but still a suggestion that her words had plucked a string he hadn't wanted to hear vibrating.
He realized he'd given something away. Quickly he pressed his bloody palm to his head for a moment, and paced across the bridge away from her until he regained control.
"Madam, I need you to help me drive this battleship. Will you help if I promise to use it in defense of the station against the Cardassian force outside?"
She pursed her lips. "You're good with words. But you can't charm me into helping you."
His friendly manner vanished like a light snapping off.
"Seconds matter!" he raged, so sharply that even Elto flinched at the upper bridge console and turned to look.
Lowering her chin instead of raising it, Kira simmered, "Peddle it somewhere else."
Before her, the High Gul's hollow yet elegant face was crimped now, twitching.
She was doing it. She was getting to him. At least she would have that. He might win, but if she had anything to do with it he wouldn't win happy. She could take torture. They weren't getting the Defiant. Judging from the rocks and shocks blundering through the very bulkheads, shaking the ship under them, the station wouldn't take much more of this relentless battering before its shields fell.
She stared at the High Gul and blindly hated him.
She was in command, for the last minutes of Deep Space Nine's existence. It was almost over. They'd lost. Now the only victory left was to not aid the enemy.
"Launch the vessel, sentinel," the High Gul repeated, "or, believe me, I will rip it off the pylon and take half of your station with it!"
Kira pasted him with a poignant glare and folded her arms across her chest. "Then rip it."
"You are maddening!" the High Gul spat. He swung away, then swung back without taking even one step. "You baffle me! You're obviously a survivor, a smart woman—can't you see what's happening here? Surely you've figured out that whoever is there is not a friend of mine! I am not the reason your station is dying!"
She pushed herself to her feet. "You're deluding yourself!" she blazed. Instantly she swung around to Elto—he was poised to jump her. "Don't bother! I'm not going to fight you." When he settled down, confused, she turned her back on him and faced the High Gul. "Who else but you is the reason? You can't charm this away and you can't hide from the moral blame. It's all yours. You and your poisoned culture."
A bone-rattling hit drummed through to them—possibly a hit right on the docking pylon, shaking the ship so hard that Kira grabbed for the helm to keep her balance. As if a figure in a dream, the High Gul barely moved, didn't even shift his feet through the shock wave, but stood still as statuary amid the blur of vibration. He seemed untouchable by the shaking, roaring, bawling of the station and the ship as their deflectors were shorn section by section.
"You're wrong about me, sentinel." He stabbed a conductor's finger at open space, as if directing the music of heavy hits. "This Cardassia is not me. I never tortured anyone nor made a single slave. I am not the Cardassia you know. Yes, of course we were conquerors, but in my time we were never squanderers. It was this new Cardassia who buried me in the vault, so my power would be diminished while they used my reputation, my banners, my pedestal of accomplishments to their own ends. Why do you think I was locked away?"
He came around the front of the helm and spread his hands upon the navigation board before her, leaned forward, and pleaded with his whole being.
"I would kill a million for a reason, but I wouldn't kill even one for no reason."
As she gazed back at him, Kira felt a change deep inside her chest. Pity?
She couldn't tell, but it was there and beating like a new heart. She'd been lied to by a hundred Cardassians in her life, she'd been deceived, bribed, courted by their every wile and had always turned a practiced deaf ear and responded with stony silence.
This time something moved in her at the beckoning of this ghost. It might be that she had weakened in these later few years, during which she had miraculously come to know a precious few honorable Cardassians, knelt in tears at the deaths of some of these, an unthinkable turn of life for her,
Was she that weak?
"Tell me, sentinel," this man asked slowly, "what would entice you to throw off the yoke of Starfleet on behalf of Bajor?"
Everything about him had changed. He no longer threatened with either words or manner. Had he seen the change in her?
They stared at each other.
"How about a chance to see the Cardassia you know torn apart by civil war? … Would this win you over?"
CHAPTER 17
"THEY'RE GONE."
A faint electrical snapping and the sizzle of falling debris were the only sounds left after the portcullis closed between the pylon corridor and the Defiant. Now that avenue was closed.
"They're gone."
Something buzzed inside a wall panel. After a moment, it stopped.
A piece of the ceiling, dangling by a thread of insulation, strained its last molecule and fell with a short crunch.
"Tell me you're faking."
Before him he saw his hands melt and form again into hands. His mind was as blurred.
"Sisko … you're pretending."
Odo struggled against the blinding fatigue and dissolution of his physical form. He had never thought of dying, not this way, with the chance of taking the whole station with him.
He had been ready to rest when all this began. Now the hours had drained him beyond his limits, and the pollutant in his body was making him feel ill. Each took more and then still more effort to resist.
Now there was this pile of knotted limbs and still torsos, and there was no noise coming from there. No movement. He had waited long seconds for it, but there was nothing. Sisko wasn't pretending.
He raised his numb hand to touch his comm badge. "Ops … Ops, do you read? Medical emergency … come quickly … Ops, can you hear me?"
The badge crackled weakly, as if it were also too tired to focus.
No one responded. Had they heard? It was barely possible that the channels were fouled, that they heard him but that he wasn't picking up their answer.
He clung to that.
With collected effort he drew his knees toward his body, slid them under and rolled onto them. The pollutant in his system was clogging his thoughts, fogging his vision, but he made his way to the pile of bodies and shouldered his way between them.
Two of the dead Cardassians slid off and thumped to the littered deck. Beneath them, still pinned under the third corpse, lay Ben Sisko. Blood puddled the deck beneath him, soaked his shoulder and neck and the left front of his uniform. His face was the color of clay.
Odo didn't bother speaking to him. There was nothing to say, no sense to any words. There was only the blood, bubbling from the wound in Sisko's chest.
Odo lifted his heavy hand and pressed it to Sisko's punctured chest. Slowly, ever slowly, careful to maintain the size of his form, he let his hand melt into the wound, sink through tissue and liquid, and take the form of the wound deep inside Sisko's body, and there he felt the struggling thump of Sisko's heart—not dead yet.
Gradually, concentrating, he let his limb take the shape of the edges of torn arteries and punctured muscle, until the pumping of blood was blocked off and the thudding of the heart became less panicked.
Now he would have to hold himself here, pressing into each vein as he found new bleeders, and he would tick off the minutes one by one.
A Cardassian civil war. Cardassians at each other's throats for a change, ignited by a hero of the past.
Kira's imagination bloomed like a ball of light. She knew instantly what the concept meant. Distracted by their own inner conflict, Cardassia would be finished as a threat to Bajor, or to anybody else. If this living corpse really was the one, the original High Gul of the Crescent Order, then Cardassia would rip itself apart over him.
He had changed completely in his approach to her. Had he been that much affected by hearing what Cardassia had become? She saw the tightening of his throat, the twitch of an eye, a faint flicker of revulsion that he didn't seem to want her to see. Nobody was that good an actor.
"I speak truthfully to you," he said, his voice much less dramatic than before, "about Bajor's best interest. I give you no word that I'll leave you alone if I am victorious. If I am victorious and I'm still alive, and Cardassia isn't smashed, you'll probably have to fight me someday. But Cardassia may be smashed. Certainly the current order will mutate … and I see in your eyes you don't think it can be worse." He paused, moved a step, looked at the deck, then looked up again. "What is your name?"
Fighting to continue hating him, she felt her animosity shiver. If he were lying, there would be prettier lies.
"Kira," she said.
He nodded. "Kira," he continued, "I offer you a holy war in my name that can only do well for Bajor and all its allies. We have a mutual enemy out there. Your station is falling apart. In minutes we'll all be dead. What are you going to do about it?"
She felt cold. All at once the weight of command was bigger than the station, bigger than the sector, and it made her back hurt.
Who could tell how a civil war would turn out? Whatever happened, those who were in power now would certainly be deposed by those younger and stronger. Current powers would be broken. Something entirely new might rise.
And the Federation would probably have a hand in the outcome—that could only be good.
If anything, a civil war would make Cardassia a nonfactor in the galaxy for fifty years or more. Take them right out of commission.
Imagine …
Could she make that decision? She didn't even know if Sisko and the others were still alive after that attack. The station didn't look good. She was on her own.
Was that a good enough excuse?
It might be.
She looked at the old man. Their motives were different, but sometimes that could work. Maybe after they drove Fransu off or killed him, the High Gul would abandon DS9. There was nothing for him here, after all. His front was at his home planet.
Sisko had been right—the High Gul could've killed them all any time he wanted to and possessed the station. Instead all he had tried to do was gain control over his environment and clear an avenue of escape. As soon as he lost control of DS9, he had abandoned it. It didn't prove he was gentle, but it did prove he was smart, too thrifty to waste havoc for no gain.
Kira moved again into the seat at the helm, tugged herself forward until his ribs touched the leather buffer, and tapped the flickering communications panel.
"Dax … this is Kira."
She looked at the High Gul, searched his face for satisfaction or gloat. There wasn't any.
"If you can hear me," she said, "release the docking clamps. Prepare to launch the Defiant."
CHAPTER 18
ON DEFIANT'S COOL BRIDGE, a slim woman pressed her elbows to the panel in front of her, tightened her lips in frustration, and punched the comm. "Jadzia, this is Kira, do you read?"
The system crackled, then, "Dax here, Kira. Are you on board?"
"Yes, and I've got the High Gul on board. He'll be off the station. We're ready to launch. Release the docking clamps, please."
"Kira … you know I need command authorization to do that. Where's Sisko?"
"I left him in the docking pylon with Odo," she said dispiritedly, with meaning. "It's my call now, Jadzia."
There was a pause.
"Understood. Releasing docking clamps."
With a heavy, sonorous chachunk, the docking clamps receded and the ship's hull was free of its umbilical hookup to Deep Space Nine. Kira felt as if she had just listened to the sounds of her own legs breaking.
"Station umbilicals are in. You're clear for launch," Dax said. "I'll keep the station's shields around you as long as possible. Good luck."
"Thanks, but protect the station. We'll take care of ourselves. Defiant out."
The ship moaned, the engines warmed, the ventilators breathed fresh warm air, and the wide forward viewscreen blended to life, showing a disjointed view of the other two lower pylons, giant claws descending beneath the station in graceful curves.
"Alert status," the High Gul said from behind her. He was in the command chair.
Pressing her lips flat, she touched the red-alert control. The bridge fell to eye-forgiving red lights, which made everything on the control board show up more clearly.
"We've got to keep away from Fransu for a few minutes," Kira said, "until I can energize the shields."
"Do as you must. Departure angle."
Still nauseated by the twisted logic of what the High Gul had said to her, Kira complied. Before them the main screen wobbled and changed.
She pressed her hands to the helm. Beneath her scraped and tingling palms, the hard strong vessel angled down and away from the pylon, until they could see the vast underside of the station turning over them.
"There it is," he murmured. "The bespangled spool of Terok Nor. Deep Space Nine. Have you ever looked sincerely upon the thing you defend? Look how the grizzled prism turns in space. Ah, it's a tribute to science that it floats here, so similar to the spacedocks of my time. But in my time we had trouble living on them for very long. Look at the shadows upon her, like spilled wine. . . ."
"I always hated the place," Kira said, willingly crass.
"Then why do you defend it?"
"Because it's mine now."
"And as it is yours, so is the guardianship it provides to your fragile planet. I understand. How is the ship feeling beneath you?"
"Undermanned," Kira said. "We can fight, but as systems go down, there won't be any way to bring them back up."
The High Gul straightened and faced the main screen, the picture of the station's gunmetal rim with its pearl-string of lights, at the broken windows and shattered hull, parts only creased, some sliced right out like forkfuls of pie.
"I will order them to cease," he said. "I am the High Gul. Now I have this strong ship. I'll fight him and I'll win. In respect for Captain Sisko, I will leave your station intact. In respect for you, sentinel, I shall leave Bajor alone for no
w. Then I shall do as I promised—put all the factions of the galaxy up against each other until they mutually shred. They will play like puppets for me, and I will rename this sector Little Chaos."
"Hold very still … one more moment … now slowly begin to withdraw—slowly, Odo, slowly! I'll get each bleeder one by one as you release them … good … oh—look out! … all right, I'm sorry about that … almost done …"
They were both sprayed with blood, sweating and working in intolerable conditions. The pylon was cold, and now dust-clogged and stuffy.
"He's not dead, is he?" Odo asked, exhausted. Plugging off Sisko's bleeding from the inside had been grueling.
Julian Bashir appreciated the ability, however, and had already commented several times on its effectiveness. "You did a remarkable thing here, Odo. Just another moment or two …"
Below them, a low voice croaked, "No, I'm not dead yet."
"Captain," Bashir chuckled, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were conscious. Are you in pain?"
"Hell, yes, I'm in pain, Doctor."
"You'll be stable in just one moment. Odo managed to retard the bleeding until I could get here."
"Situation …"
As his mind fogged in and out, Odo forced himself to find the energy to speak. "Kira was taken hostage aboard the Defiant. I heard them launch about five minutes ago. The High Gul is down to four men, counting himself. The station is under heavy bombardment. I don't know the details."
"Have they moved out of the shield sphere yet?"
"I don't know that either."
"What about me?"
"You sustained a six-inch puncture wound to the upper left quadrant," Bashir said. "It went down at an angle and missed your heart, but punctured a lung. Odo kept you from bleeding to death and also from … well, exhaling yourself to death, for want of more technical terminology. All right, Odo, slowly withdraw and I'll close the wound."
"Patch me together."
"That's what I'm doing, sir."