CHAPTER 8

THE TINY SHUTTLEPOD, designation Alpha, rose slowly from its landing pad in shuttlebay 2. Above it, the pressure door slid open to reveal the chaotic blue energy flux of the wormhole pocket. Capable of carrying up to six personnel, Shuttlepod Alpha, for this mission, was empty. Lifted by the expert manipulation of the shuttlebay's variable gravity fields, the shuttlepod continued its ascent until it was five meters above the Defiant's ventral hull and well out of range of any localized, artificial-gravity fluctuations.

As precisely as if it were on a mechanical turntable, Shuttlepod Alpha then rotated in place until it faced its destination.

Deep Space 9.

On the bridge of the Defiant, Sisko gave the order and the main viewer switched from the optical view as seen from the starship to that seen from the shuttlepod's sensors.

“What's the distance?” he asked.

Ignoring the viewer, Jadzia focused her attention solely on her science station. “Well, as we thought, no sensor ranging data are available. Not even a radar return. Going just by apparent size . . . Alpha's holding at fifteen kilometers from the station. Just as we are.”

“All right, then,” Sisko said. “Give her a nudge. Station-keeping thrusters only.” The speed of the shuttlepod would be no more than thirty-six kilometers per hour. A cautious approach that would enable Jadzia to probe the structure of the space-time bubble in which the Defiant, for the moment, existed.

“First thruster fire,” Worf announced. “Delta vee of one centimeter

per second.”

Sisko waited for the first report. It came in seconds. “I don't believe it,” Jadzia said with a laugh.

“What is it, Old Man?”

“As soon as we stopped the thrusters, the shuttlepod stopped moving relative to us.”

“No inertia?” Sisko asked, surprised.

“Not out there,” Jadzia said, still sounding amused. “Absolutely incredible.” She picked up a small padd from her console, then tossed it to a startled Dr. Bashir, who recovered quickly enough to clap two hands together to catch it. “At least we've still got inertia in here,” the Trill scientist concluded.

“So what do we do?” Sisko asked. “Go to constant impulse? Or use the tractor beam?”

“Tractor beam,” Jadzia said. “That way, we'll be able to measure any noninertial resistance to the shuttlepod's motion, so it'll double as a measurement of the density of space out there.”

Sisko nodded. They had fifteen hours, three minutes remaining until the pressure waves peaked and the Defiant ceased to exist. Time enough to transfer the eighteen passengers on the ship to DS9, provided they could determine a way to do so.

“Activating tractor beam,” Worf confirmed.

“Let's see the shuttlepod,” Sisko said.

The viewer switched over from the shuttlepod's sensors to display a new angle from the Defiant's hull. The Alpha was suddenly bathed in a shaft of pale purple light.

“Start her forward, Mr. Worf.”

As the angle of the tractor beam changed, Sisko watched the shuttlepod slip away from the Defiant, propelled by the gentle pressure of the tightly focused gravitons. When the tiny craft had cleared the bow of the ship, the viewer display changed again to a new forward angle.

“No resistance,” Jadzia reported. “It's moving just as if it's in a normal vacuum.”

“Speed?” Sisko asked.

“Twenty kilometers an hour,” Worf said.

“Go to fifty.”

“Aye, sir.”

The shuttlepod grew smaller on the viewer.

“Still no anomalous readings,” Jadzia said.

Sisko couldn't suppress his smile. “You sound disappointed.”

“Just surprised that there're no surprises.”

“Take her to five hundred kph, Mr. Worf, and stand by to bring her to a relative stop, fifty meters from the station.”

“Aye, sir,” Worf acknowledged. “Estimated time of arrival from current position is ninety seconds.”

Just then, Sisko became aware of his son standing to one side of his command chair.

“It can't really be this easy, can it?” Jake asked.

“I think we're allowed to win one every once in a while,” Sisko said with a smile. “How're we doing, Dax?”

“No distortion in the tractor beam. And no mass anomalies. Frankly, Benjamin, I'm at a loss to explain it.”

“Maybe the shuttlepod's stretching the space-time bubble we're in,” Bashir volunteered. “Dragging space-time with it.”

Sisko glanced over at Jadzia, saw her thoughtful expression. “That's possible,” the Trill said. “Certainly it would explain the fact that there are no detectable anomalies in the structure of space-time along the shuttlepod's path.”

As Sisko returned his attention to the viewer, he caught sight of Jake's expression, recognized it.

“Go ahead, Jake. Ask your question.”

Relief in his voice, Jake spoke hesitantly. “Well . . . if we can see the station, can anyone on the station see us?”

“Unlikely,” Jadzia said. “We're so far out of temporal alignment with the station's local frame of reference that at most we'd be showing up as a very faint chroniton shadow. Even then, someone would have to be specifically looking for that kind of phenomenon and adjust the sensors precisely. And I don't know why anyone would.”

“But, then,” Jake continued more strongly, obviously thrilled to be taken seriously, “how come we can see the station?”

“Good question.” Jadzia smiled at Jake, pleasing Sisko by her encouragement of his son's curiosity, even under these conditions. “I think part of it has to do with the station's being much more massive than the Defiant, so in a way it's putting out a stronger signal. Not to mention the fact it's also still connected to normal space, which we're not.” The Trill shrugged. “If I had to give a name to the phenomenon, I'd say the station had more temporal inertia, so it's easier to detect.”

Jake nodded, but the confusion on his face suggested to his father that Jake had understood little of Jadzia's explanation. “I'll take your word for it,” was Jake's only comment.

“Coming up on destination,” Worf announced. “Fifty meters . . . and holding at relative stop.”

“We're in good shape,” Jadzia said. “Switching over to shuttlepod sensors. We should be able to look right through the station's viewports.”

The viewer flickered, changing from the optical view of DS9 from the Defiant at a distance of fifteen kilometers to a close-up from the Alpha at fifty meters.

Sisko leaned forward in his chair, expectant, but the viewpoint did not change.

“Old Man . . . ?” he said, turning to Jadzia.

Jadzia and Worf both made rapid adjustments on their controls, but the image on the viewer didn't change.

“It seems Jake was right,” the Trill finally said. “It's not going to be easy. According to all our readings, DS9 is the same distance from the shuttlepod as it is from us. Fifteen kilometers.”

“I won't even ask how that's possible,” Sisko said. From the corner

of his eye, he saw his son retreat back to his previous position at the situation table.

“Thank you,” Jadzia replied.

Sisko stood up and walked over to the science station to see Jadzia's displays for himself. “How do we proceed?” he asked.

The Trill scientist didn't waste time. “Since we have full power reserves, I think we should take a few minutes to beam a test cylinder over to the shuttlepod, then retrieve it. We still need to know if we can actually establish a transporter beam in an environment without subspace, and now without inertia.”

Sisko felt the unwelcome stirrings of concern. If they could not physically approach and board the station, the transporter would be absolutely critical to their plan.

“Do you foresee any problem?” he asked.

The Trill sat back in her duty chair with a sigh of finality. “I just don't know, Benjamin. When it comes to theory, I could spend the next week telling you all the ins and outs about what we're seeing here. But when it comes to implementing those theories . . .” She looked up at him, serious. “All I can say is I wish Chief O'Brien were here.”

Sisko nodded. Jadzia was speaking for them all.

Odo stood by the empty command chair on the bridge of the Boreth and wondered what it was about Miles O'Brien that kept the engineer from taking his place there.

There could be no question the Chief was in command of this ship. Not by rank but by ability. Not even Quark questioned him anymore.

But O'Brien was adamant in his refusal to assume the trappings of command, even though such action would make it much easier for him to monitor the rest of his irregular crew.

“Odo, I think he's afraid,” Quark said under his breath.

Odo was momentarily startled. He hadn't heard the Ferengi come up beside him at the engineering station.

“Who's afraid?” Odo demanded.

Quark impatiently gestured toward the side of the bridge. “The Chief. Who else?”

“Why would you say that?”

Quark stared up at him crossly. “I know you were wondering why Chief O'Brien wasn't taking the command chair. He's afraid, that's why.”

Odo folded his arms. “I was wondering no such thing.”

Maddeningly, Quark folded his own arms in mocking parody, the movement twisting up his Bajoran robes. “You can't fool me,” the Ferengi smirked. “You think because you keep your face so smooth and . . . and unfinished, people can't see what you're feeling, or what you're thinking. But I've been watching you, Odo. Almost ten long years. I know you better than you know yourself.”

Odo moved swiftly in verbal counterattack. “Quark, I've never seen you so nervous.”

Predictable as always, Quark sputtered in immediate, indignant protest. “I'm not nervous. I'm never nervous.”

Odo shrugged. “Aren't you? You're talking quickly. Your ears are flushed. And if you really were able to peer inside me and know what I'm thinking, you certainly wouldn't tell me about it.”

Quark bit his lip, eyed Odo skeptically, then spoke extremely slowly. “And—why—wouldn't—I?”

“Because,” Odo said with great satisfaction, “you're giving away a trade advantage. The next time I catch you smuggling something and haul you in for questioning, I'll stand behind you, and you won't have any idea what I'm thinking.”

Odo enjoyed the way Quark's mouth fell open, then snapped shut. The Ferengi really hadn't been thinking clearly.

“Well,” Quark stammered, “well, I don't care. Because there won't be a next time.”

Odo smiled as coldly as he could. “I see. Your experience in Ferengi Hell has finally convinced you to change your ways.”

“What ways? I don't need to change my ways. What I mean is, there won't be a next time because . . . because we're doomed. That's why. We're doomed. Not that you care.” Quark gave a little sob and turned away, his back to Odo.

Odo grunted and took the chance to check again on Dukat. The aged Cardassian was still lying stretched out on the deck by the communications console, legs bound at the ankles, hands bound at the wrists. Someone had rolled up a blanket from a medical kit and compassionately placed it under Dukat's white-haired head, but Odo didn't think the Dukat of the year 2400 was someone who was concerned with physical matters, and certainly not with compassion. The Cardassian had remained unconscious since Garak's assault, and it was Odo's impression—or, perhaps, wish, he admitted to himself alone—that Dukat was now immersed in his own Pah-wraith-inspired hell. With any luck, he'd never bother his fellow passengers again.

Reassured that Dukat still posed no threat, the changeling walked over to watch O'Brien and Rom at the operations station as they worked with the crew members in the main transporter room to switch manual control to the bridge.

“Well . . . ?” Quark said.

Odo sighed. The Ferengi was right in front of him.

“Well what, Quark?”

Some of Quark's bluster appeared to be gone. His ears were definitely looking paler. “Well, I . . . I just poured out my heart to you. This is . . . this is when you're supposed to say something supportive.”

Odo nodded in understanding. “Ah, of course. This is supposed to be a moment of bonding between us. Two old adversaries facing what might be their final hours. At last breaking down the barriers between them so they can finally admit their admiration for each other, reach some kind of common ground and mutual understanding in the face of oblivion.”

“That's it, exactly,” Quark said with a hopeful smile.

Odo returned the smile. “Good idea. I'll go talk to Garak right now.”

The changeling walked away from the Ferengi, knowing precisely the sequence of emotions that would flash over Quark's face: shock, disappointment, and fear.

Garak had positioned himself at an auxiliary control console near to the entrance doors. Somehow, in the few minutes that had passed since Chief O'Brien had come up with his plan to cross over to Deep Space 9 of the past, the Cardassian had managed to find and change into an Ascendancy uniform—a poorly fitting cross between Odo's own Bajoran uniform and a Starfleet design but a much more practical garment than the robes Weyoun had made them all wear in B'hala.

Garak looked up and gave Odo a slight nod of acknowledgment as the changeling joined him at his console. Then the Cardassian's gaze slid off Odo and settled on Quark, a forlorn and lonely figure standing in the middle of the bridge.

“Is he acting up again?” Garak asked.

“Nothing more than usual,” Odo said. He peered over Garak's shoulder to see what was on his screen. But in a quick, careless gesture, Garak's hand brushed across the controls, erasing the screen before Odo could glimpse more than a fraction of its heading.

“Klingon Planetary Defense Analysis?” Odo asked. That was as much as he had been able to read.

Garak blinked at his console's blank screen. “Is that what was there? I was merely passing the time by randomly scrolling through the ship's library. And I appear to have lost my place.”

Odo studied the guileless Cardassian. He quite understood if Garak wanted to find out how Ascendancy forces had defeated his world. Though he would never admit it to Quark, Odo thought, the Ferengi was right in thinking that in these final hours, some accounts should be settled.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Garak asked politely after several seconds of silence.

It was a difficult moment for Odo, but he forced himself through it. He cleared his throat. “I—I don't think I thanked you properly. For saving me from . . . from where you found me.”

Garak held up a hand as if refusing a gift. “It was the least I could do.”

Odo appreciated Garak's quick acceptance and desire not to exaggerate the nature of his gratitude. But he hadn't finished. “And . . . I was hoping that we might be able to come to an understanding that . . . well . . .” Odo wasn't sure how to continue.

But Garak was. “Rest assured,” he said smoothly, “I will never speak of it. Where you were, what you experienced at the hands of the Pah-wraiths . . . that shall be a secret between us.” The Cardassian allowed himself a small smile. “Indeed, considering the techniques that enabled me to enter into the Pah-wraith illusions of yours and the others, I could say that what I found comes under the heading of doctor-patient privilege.”

Odo was puzzled. “What techniques?”

Garak regarded him in wide-eyed innocence. “Oh, this and that.”

Odo rearranged his own expression into a stern glare.

“Well,” the Cardassian said as he shifted forward in his chair, “if you must know, I once made a suit for a . . . person who I had reason to believe was a member of the—” Garak dropped his voice to a sibilant whisper “—Obsidian Order, Special Investigations Unit.”

So it's like that, Odo thought. “I see. You made a suit . . .” he said.

“A very nice one, as I recall. It took many fittings. And, as you may or may not know, a man has very few secrets from his tailor.”

“And this . . . man, just happened to tell you all about the Obsidian Order's techniques for interrogating prisoners by entering into induced illusions.”

Garak nodded gravely. “I was as shocked by his candidness as I see you are. But as things turned out, it appears that what little I remembered of the techniques he described did come in handy. Wouldn't you say?”

“Handy,” Odo repeated. And all at once the changeling no longer felt disturbed that Garak had penetrated his hell to find him eternally wandering the barren world upon which the Great Link had once existed, forever fixed in his quasi-liquid state, unable to become any sort of shape or solid. Instead, he became concerned about any other secrets Garak might have obtained from the others he “rescued.”

“I know what's worrying you, Odo,” Garak said.

“You and everyone else, it seems,” the changeling said gruffly.

“But you needn't worry. A mind is not something to toy with. Especially not those of one's friends and allies.”

Odo didn't know whether or not to believe Garak, but for now, there seemed to be little point in thinking the worst. The worst was doing quite well on its own, and coming closer to them each minute.

“It worked!” O'Brien suddenly said joyously, and at once Odo, like everyone on the bridge except for Dukat, turned his full attention to the Chief and Rom at the operations console. “There are no more surprises about the structure of space in here.”

Odo felt distinctly heartened to see the Chief smiling broadly. “We were able to beam equipment and biosamples to the probe we sent out to the station and beam them back with absolutely no loss of information.”

“So what?”

Odo scowled as Quark dared challenge the Chief.

“Ten minutes ago,” the Ferengi charged, “you told us it didn't matter how far that probe traveled. It was always going to be twentytwo and a half kilometers from the station, the same as the Boreth. There's no connection between the two space-time bubbles, you said. So what good does being able to beam out to a probe and back do us?”

“Quark, it's not important where we beam to,” O'Brien explained, his good humor not diminished one whit by the Ferengi's rancor. “It's the fact that we can beam at all. Since we can't get to the station physically, the transporter is the only way we can get from here to there.”

“But how?” Quark demanded fretfully. “It could be a trillion light-years away, for all we know.”

Now Odo saw O'Brien's smile fade. But then, Quark could do that to anyone. “It's not a trillion light-years away, Quark. In absolute terms, its distance is probably only a few hundred-thousandths of a light-second.”

Even Odo was surprised by that, though he left the questioning to Quark.

And Quark didn't disappoint him. “That's impossible. You said yourself you sent that Klingon probe five hundred kilometers away and that its distance to the station didn't change from our distance.”

“Physically, no,” O'Brien agreed testily. “But look at the viewer, Quark. We can see the station right there, plain as day.”

Garak spoke up next. “Which raises an intriguing conundrum, Chief. Just how is it that photons are able to pass between the two bubbles of space-time if physical objects remain trapped in them?”

“Old-fashioned relativity and a bit of quantum physics, Garak.” Regaining some of his previous elation, the chief engineer warmed to his topic. “You see, on average, all photons travel at the speed of light—the absolute top speed for a physical object in normal space. But individually, each photon is actually a probability packet—not an object, but a probability wave.

“Now, if you send out a thousand photons at a target at the exact same time, most of those photons will reach the target also at the same time—that time, corresponding to the speed of light. But it's been known for centuries,” O'Brien said with a stern look at Quark, who shrugged and rolled his eyes to indicate his disinterest, “that a handful of those photons will arrive at the target slightly ahead of the others. That's because, when their probability waves impinge on the target and collapse into a photon, the photon, just by sheer quantum chance, is at the very front edge of the packet. So, there'll always be a few photons out of every bunch that manage to travel slightly faster than light.

“And those,” O'Brien emphasized with a smile, “are the very photons our sensors are picking up to create the image on the viewer.”

The chief engineer waved at the image. “And by exceeding lightspeed in their local frame of reference, those photons have popped out of their space-time bubble and entered ours. Just like a surfacelaunched space probe breaking out of the gravity well of one planet and traveling through space to another.”

“Jadzia Dax could not have explained it better, Chief,” Garak said silkily. “Yet you raise another intriguing possibility. Is it possible that whoever's on the station can also see us?”

But O'Brien shook his head dismissively. “No. First of all, this ship is much less massive, and second, our local rate of time is too different from the station's. If someone worked at it, reconfigured the main sensors, knew where to look, they might be able to pick up enough to know that something is nearby. But they wouldn't be able to resolve us with any greater detail than we can resolve the Defiant.”

Odo turned to look at the viewer again to locate the small and indistinct gray disk that was the station's starship. Like DS9 itself, the Defiant was occupying its own space-time bubble, approximately forty-five kilometers away, judging just by its apparent size. But O'Brien had been unable to make any estimates of what era the ship was from. In fact, the Chief said it was likely they were seeing the ship as it was during one of its many trips through the blue wormhole. And since the Boreth's sensors could not establish the ship's apparent position with the required accuracy, O'Brien had ruled out any attempt to beam to that craft.

The changeling was still studying the Defiant's image when he heard the irrepressible Quark sound off once again.

“Would someone please tell me why all of you people are so pleased with yourselves?” Quark complained. “Even I know transporter beams don't travel faster than light.”

Odo watched sympathetically as O'Brien took a deep breath before he answered. The changeling admired the Chief's resilience. “For our purposes, they don't have to,” O'Brien said. “They just have to travel through something other than normal space.”

Quark wasn't finished. “But even if they can go from . . . from ‘here to there,’ our time scales are still out of synch. You still haven't told us how can we possibly survive the trip.”

“Uh, brother—”

Odo saw the grateful look that Chief O'Brien gave Quark's brother Rom. Quark just closed his eyes as if to ask, “Why me?”

Undeterred, Rom offered his own explanation. “Uh, almost every time someone beams from one place to another, the time frames are slightly out of synch. I mean, if you're in standard orbit of a planet, you're traveling more than thirty thousand kilometers per hour. And if you beam down to the surface? Suddenly, you're only traveling a few hundred kilometers per hour as the planet rotates.”

Quark opened his mouth as if to say something, but Rom pressed on earnestly. “It's the transporters that do that, brother, by automatically compensating for changes in kinetic energy and temporal acceleration. I mean, Starfleet transporters can even manage nearwarp transport at relativistic speeds. We might feel a bit dizzy sometimes, but the transporters have been doing what we need them to do for centuries.”

“Thank you, Rom,” O'Brien said. “Now, if there're no more questions?” The chief engineer looked around the bridge.

Beside him, Odo heard Quark mumble something that seemed to imply some natural connection between Rom and being dizzy, but that was the extent of Quark's effort. The Ferengi barkeep was back to looking glum and depressed.

“All right, then,” O'Brien said, “let's go on to the next step.”

“Uh . . . beaming a test pallet to the station?”

O'Brien gave his assistant a sideways glance. “Well, not really, Rom. That won't tell us anything.”

Quark roused himself enough to snort at his brother's confusion.

“Uh, why not?”

“Because we won't be able to beam it back.”

Odo saw Rom blink in surprise.

“No carrier wave,” O'Brien said simply. He made his hand move up and down and forward like a small boat on rough water. “A transporter carrier wave propagates through subspace. But there is no subspace in here. So we're going to have to transport the way they did in pioneer days. Dead reckoning. One at a time.”

“I knew ‘dead’ would come into it somehow,” Quark sighed heavily.

“It's not that bad, Quark.” O'Brien tapped a finger to his temple. “After six years, I've got all the key DS9 coordinates up here. There won't be any trouble finding a place to beam to. It's just that, well, without subspace, there's no way I'll ever be able to get a fix on anyone to bring them back. So it's going to be a one-way trip for all of us.”

His panic revived, Quark's voice rose in a wail. “But . . . but what if you're wrong? What if that version of DS9 is a mirage? Or it's only five seconds from being destroyed by the red wormhole? Or—”

Odo had had quite enough. He wheeled abruptly and placed a hand firmly over Quark's mouth.

“That's why we're going to send just one person first,” O'Brien interrupted. “A volunteer. To see if—”

“Mmmmph—I'll go!” Quark cried as he tried to bite Odo's hand and the changeling jerked it sharply away from him. Even if he couldn't be bitten, Odo found the mere thought distasteful.

Everyone stared at Quark. Odo thought he heard a chuckle and knew it had to have come from Garak.

“What?!” O'Brien said, giving voice to everyone else's reaction.

“What's wrong with that?” Quark snapped. “I want to do my part, too.”

“But . . . ,” O'Brien said, almost choking, “you're a coward.”

“I am not!”

O'Brien looked as if he were in sudden pain. “Well, not about some things,” he conceded. “I'll give you that. But all you've been doing for the past half hour is complaining about how everything I've been saying won't work.”

Quark held up his finger like an orator making a final point. “I've been . . . testing the hypothesis.”

“You've been quaking in your boots, is what you've been doing,” O'Brien said hotly.

Quark's face grew sober, as if he were trying to rise above his sense of outrage and hurt feelings. “I am sorry you feel that way, Chief, but your misperception of me, and, perhaps, of all Ferengi, in no way changes the fact that I am volunteering for this dangerous experiment in order to help my fellow. . . .” Quark looked around at the others on the bridge. “. . . uh, fellows,” he concluded.

O'Brien ran his hand over his head, clearly nonplussed.

Odo snorted. This fiasco had to end. “I'll take care of this for you, Chief,” he said. “You're not going, Quark.”

“je SoH, Brute?” Quark said sadly.

“I beg your pardon?”

Quark waved his hand with a world-weary sigh. “It's Klingon. You wouldn't understand.”

“No, but what I do understand is that you are not volunteering to be the first on DS9.” Odo looked over at O'Brien. “Chief, think about it. The first thing he'll do if he actually shows up on DS9 twenty-five years in the past is to make sure he's safe and his bar is protected. And if the rest of us run out of time while he's attending to his own business”—Odo shook his head—“well, then, I'm sure he'll raise a toast to us on Ferenginar, or wherever he retires to after profiting from his knowledge of the future.” He smiled grimly at Quark to let him know just who had won here. “How many years did you say we'd known each other?”

“You don't know me at all,” Quark said in his most wounded tone, then spun around and marched away to sit by himself at an unused station, two down from Dukat's prone form.

Odo looked over at O'Brien. “I'll go,” he said.

“You're sure?” O'Brien asked.

Odo nodded. He had no doubts. “When I get to the station, if time's of the essence, I can take on a liquid form and move more quickly than anyone else. And, perhaps most importantly, security won't be a problem.”

“Why would it be?”

Seeing the worried look on O'Brien's face, Odo pointed out the obvious—at least, it was obvious to him. “Chief, what do you think Captain Sisko's response is going to be when what he'll take to be a duplicate Odo shows up and tells him to close Quark's, arrest Vash, and lock down the station until the Red Orbs are found and neutralized?”

O'Brien nodded, at once seeing the point. “You'll have a better chance convincing him if we're all over there backing your story, giving Dr. Bashir DNA samples to confirm we're not a bunch of Founder spies.” Then O'Brien gave an unhappy sigh.

“Chief?” Odo asked.

“We won't belong there, will we? I mean, Keiko will be married to the other me.”

Rom's gasp was immediate. “Leeta!”

“Anyone think about me?” Quark whined. “I'm going to be a half-partner in a solely owned business!”

“But we will be saving a universe,” Garak said as he finally left his console to join O'Brien and Odo. “I daresay that will bring more than enough personal rewards to make up for whatever personal sacrifices we might have to make.”

“Easy for you to say,” Quark said. “With two of you, you'll make twice as good a spy.”

“If I were a spy,” Garak said pointedly, “I could see where you might have a point.”

“So how do I signal back to you that the transport was successful?” Odo asked, to bring the discussion back to what was really important.

“Oh,” Rom said, “I already worked that part out.”

Odo waited patiently.

“When you get to the station, go to one of the upper pylon docking

ports.”

“Which one?”

“Uh, doesn't matter. Whichever one you can get to. Right by the manual controls for the airlock, there's a small control panel that activates the visual docking lights—for ships that have lost their guidance systems. There are three banks of three lights each—”

“How Cardassian,” Odo said as Rom continued.

“—by the outer airlock door. All you have to do is turn them off and on by hand.”

“Presumably in some sort of code?” Odo asked.

“Uh, I hadn't thought of that,” Rom said.

“Idiot,” Quark sneered. But no one was listening.

“Starfleet binary?” O'Brien suggested.

Odo recalled having studied it. “With the long and short signals?”

O'Brien now picked up a small Bajoran padd, input a command, then showed Odo the screen. It held a simple chart showing the long and short codes for the standard Federation alphabet. “Start with ten or so rapid flashes so we'll know which port to watch, then give us the local time. That'll let us know how quickly we have to get the rest of us over there.”

It all sounded reasonable to Odo, which left him with only one final question. “What if I don't make it?”

O'Brien nodded at Rom, and the Chief's assistant held up another padd.

“I'm going to record a warning message for Captain Sisko,” Rom said. “We'll store it in as many padds as we can replicate, then transport the whole lot to the Promenade ceiling and to Ops and let them rain down on whoever's there. One way or another, we'll get them—us —to do the right thing.”

Odo was satisfied. Everything was covered.

“Then I'm ready anytime you are,” he said.

“We'll transport you directly from the bridge to the target coordinates,” O'Brien explained. “I'm sending you to that unfinished habitat area on Deck 4.”

“Good choice,” Odo agreed. He knew the location. It was a section in the lower personnel levels that the Cardassians had never completed as designed. In an area where up to ten individual living units might have been installed, a large room had been left instead. It was such a tempting storage area, so far from the cargo bays and the station's regular security patrols, that Odo had made it a point to inspect the area personally at least once a week. “The last time I checked it, it was completely empty.”

“That's what I'm counting on,” O'Brien said. “Without sensors or a carrier wave, none of the transporter's automatic positioning safeguards will be operational. I'm going to set your coordinates for a meter and a half above the deck, so brace for a drop.”

“Understood,” Odo said. “Shall I just stand here?”

“Maybe back up a bit,” O'Brien suggested, “so we can get a clean fix. And I'd crouch down.”

“Why don't I just do this?” Odo asked. He formed a picture in his mind, and became that picture, settling on the deck away from the others with a fluttering of coppery wings and feathers. Quark made a clucking noise but moved away hastily when Odo's form advanced on him with hissing beak.

“Perfect,” O'Brien said. “Admiral Picard would be pleased.”

Odo nodded his avian head in acknowledgment. He had taken the form of a Regulan phoenix, not much larger than a Terran hawk. In this form, a sudden drop would not be a problem.

He took advantage of the moment to enjoy the sensation of being in a different form, while O'Brien and Rom made the final adjustments to the transporter controls now accessible from their console.

“Ready?” O'Brien asked. “This'll be a slower transport than you're used to. Could be disorienting, the way they used to write about it back in the old days.”

Odo spread his wings. He even enjoyed the odd way O'Brien's voice sounded to avian ears and how clear and sharply focused everything looked with avian eyes. He fixed his intent glance on Quark, who retreated even farther from him.

“Stand by, then,” O'Brien said. “Three-second countdown for the autosequencer . . . coordinates input . . . and energize.”

Odo took a breath, thankful for the chance to finally be taking action, and only in the last second of the countdown did he realize that he was not the only one who had been waiting.

Because, just as the cool tingle of the transporter effect began to spread through him, with his heightened avian senses he felt the deck shake under pounding footsteps, heard ragged shouts of surprise, and then felt the tight grasp of powerful hands as he was lifted upward.

To stare directly into glowing red eyes.

And with that, the Boreth dissolved around him, and Odo beamed into the past.

Taking a monstrous demon there with him.