CHAPTER
12

SECURITY GUARDS Boyajian and Meyer were making their way carefully through deck 15 of the space station’s core. Boyajian, in particular, felt as if they’d logged several hundred miles in just the past forty-eight hours. And every step of those miles had been nerve-racking as they watched for any sign of the intruder. Every shadow in Deep Space Nine seemed to stir these days; every corner seemed threatening. Every person required a second and even a third glance, and even then he couldn’t be absolutely sure about anyone. For that matter, he had to check every possession he owned to make sure it had no bioreadings. . . .

Suddenly, from overhead, a red mass started to pour down from the ceiling.

It splattered to the floor a mere three feet in front of the two security guards. Immediately Meyer hit his comm badge and shouted, “Odo! It’s here! Core level fifteen, corridor nine!”

 

Odo was nowhere nearby.

He was in the docking ring, grilling people in the hope that they had noticed something—anything—that would be useful to him. But when he heard the alarmed call from his men, he immediately hit his comm badge. “Odo to Ops! Emergency! Lock on and beam me to core level fifteen, corridor nine . . . now!”

 

“Benjamin, they’ve got a sighting,” called Dax, stepping in for O’Brien. She quickly manipulated the transporter controls as Sisko came out of his office and charged down into Ops. “I’m beaming him over there now!”

“Send me along,” he ordered, stepping onto the pad.

For a moment Dax wanted to argue, to state that Sisko could serve far better by staying at Ops and keeping out of the way of Security.

But she knew better. She knew him better.

So she simply said, “Energizing,” and a moment later Sisko vanished.

 

O’Brien was heading for the turbolift to return to Ops when he heard from behind him, “O’Brien! Just the man I wanted to see!”

“Not now, Quark,” he said, and he kept up his stride. Quark fell into step on one side of him, Glav on the other. “Now, come on, O’Brien . . . I always make time for you. You haven’t got a spare moment for me? Remember that free drink? Eh?”

O’Brien hesitated and then said, “Look . . . ten seconds. What is it? What do you need fixed? Tell me, because I really have to get back up to Ops.”

“Fixed? Nothing like that! O’Brien, you have to expand your horizons! You have to—”

“Five seconds and counting.”

“We want to buy Deep Space Nine.”

O’Brien laughed. “Fine,” he said. “You have my vote.” And he walked away.

“Hah!” Quark crowed to Glav. “You see? The chief of operations supports us!”

“I don’t know,” said Glav doubtfully. “I always have difficulty reading human sarcasm. Maybe he wasn’t being serious.”

“Of course he was!” retorted Quark. “The whole key was his saying that we have his vote. Humans don’t talk lightly of such things. They’re very much into discussing this and considering that and voting on the whole package. It’s practically a religion to them! Believe me, O’Brien has no reason to love Starfleet. They booted him off one of their prestigious starships and put him here . . . back before they knew that anyone was going to be remotely interested in the place. We have him on our side, pressing our case to Sisko. I guarantee that O’Brien will sway him. And Sisko, in turn, will help convince the Bajorans. It’s going to work, I’m telling you. In fact,” he said, lowering his voice, “this entire murder business—while certainly a gruesome and deplorable happenstance—has made the property that much more obtainable. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Federation and Bajor wouldn’t love to get rid of the place after everything they’ve been through.”

Glav grinned. “You’re right, Quark! Trust you to take death, slaughter, and misery . . . and find the up side! Your mind never stops working. Very well. Despite the rather distressing setback of Gotto being slaughtered, I’m still maintaining high hopes for this! In fact, this calls for celebration! Join me in a drink?”

“Drinks? Hah! I can do better than that,” said Quark. “Tell me . . . have I introduced you yet to the wonders of my holosex suites?”

Glav displayed even more teeth. “Nooo . . . ”

“Well, then”—Quark patted him on the back—“you’re long overdue.”

And they went off together, chortling in that way that Ferengi had.

Without paying the least bit of attention, they walked past a red-haired Bajoran man. He watched them with curiosity . . . 

And followed them.

 

Odo looked only mildly surprised when he materialized to find Sisko standing next to him. They didn’t have time for any exchange of words, for they found themselves facing a huge red gelatinous mass that was seeping down from a bent ceiling plate.

Meyer and Boyajian had their phasers out, but they didn’t know where to shoot. The security guards were tough, but this was beyond anything they had ever confronted. Hearing the whine of the transporter, Meyer glanced back as Odo and Sisko strode forward. “Sir! Watch out!”

The red stuff was accumulating faster and faster, spreading outward in a huge disgusting puddle. Meyer and Boyajian stepped back as it almost snared their feet. Visions of winding up like the thing’s previous victims were racing through their heads. “Sir!” Boyajian called out.

Sisko frowned in confusion, because Odo wasn’t moving. Odo was simply staring at it. For just the briefest moment—a moment that Sisko would never admit to anyone—he wondered if Odo felt reluctant to take on a being that might very well be just like him. Despite the creature’s murderous intent, was it remotely possible that Odo felt closer to it than to the people with whom he worked?

He wiped the notion out of his mind as quickly as it had come. Odo might be arrogant, smug, and even condescending, but when it came to reliability in getting the job done, he was second to none.

Still . . . why the hell was he just standing there?

The glop had become a circle five feet in diameter and was spreading faster than ever. At any moment it would doubtless coalesce into some fearsome form and then . . . 

But Odo wasn’t waiting. He strode forward, pushing his own men aside, squatted down, and stared at the red mass. It surged forward, around his feet.

“Constable!” shouted Sisko.

Odo dipped his fingers into the slime, held a glob of it up, rubbed it between his fingers, brought it to his nose, and sniffed it.

“Coolant,” he said, “mixed with some sort of gelatin, I think.”

“Wh-what?”

Odo didn’t respond to Sisko’s confused question. Instead he stepped back and looked up at the ceiling.

And Odo’s body dissolved.

Sisko gasped. He’d never actually seen Odo shift his shape before. He knew what the security chief could do, but knowing it was quite different from actually witnessing it.

Starting from the top down, Odo began to transmute into his natural state. But his legs were the last to go, and as they did he sprang up off them, giving him the slight lift he needed to propel himself up into the ceiling crack from which the ooze was still pouring.

 

“This way,” said Quark.

“I’ve been here before, Quark,” Glav said as they stepped into the holosuite. The door shut behind them. “We had a conference in here, remember?”

“Ahh,” said Quark, “but you’ve never seen the holos in action before. Computer,” he called out, “Run program XXX-three.”

The air seemed to shimmer around them, and then a blast of hot air hit them.

They were in a large and elaborately decorated tent. Great tables were laid out with food of all types and colors. Some sort of poultry was roasting on a spit, the crackling sound as real and the aroma as convincing as if it were the genuine article rather than a holodeck re-creation.

“This technology,” said Glav, “never fails to amaze me.”

“It gets better,” Quark assured him. He dropped down onto a large pile of pillows, then reached up and pulled Glav down next to him. “Watch.”

There was the tinkling of gentle bells, and the entrance curtains of the tent were pushed aside. In swayed two dancing girls, clad in multicolored gauze that did little to obscure the specifics of their bodies and nothing to obscure their curves. Their faces were covered with veils as well.

They posed in front of Glav and Quark, frozen in position.

Glav nodded appreciatively. “They look . . . quite suitable,” Glav told him.

“Better than that,” Quark said. He clapped his hands together briskly.

The women removed the veils from their faces.

Glav gasped and said, “Remarkable! Is that . . . ?”

“Yesss.” Quark chuckled. “It took a while to get the program just right. Dead ringers, don’t you think?”

The holograms of Major Kira Nerys and Lieutenant Jadzia Dax smiled invitingly at the two Ferengi.

“I managed to tap into their personal files,” he said. “Their last complete physical . . . their measurements from when they were fitted for their uniforms. I assure you, everything is accurate.”

“But isn’t that sort of information confidential?”

“Hah!” chortled Quark. “Confidential except to the right people. And the right people have the right isolinear chips to find out just about whatever they want.” He lowered his voice and snickered, “Wait until you see the birthmark one of them has on her . . . ah, but you can find out for yourself. Oh, ladies . . . ” He clapped his hands once more.

The holo images of Kira and Dax began to dance, their bodies undulating in time to music that was coming from everywhere. In unison they started to remove the veils that covered the rest of them, and the gauze began to flutter to the floor.

 

On the lower level of Quark’s drinking and gambling establishment, a red-haired Bajoran moved through the crowd. The customers were more subdued these days, with a general atmosphere of paranoia hanging over them. Still, despite all the nervousness in the air, no one gave the nondescript Bajoran a second look.

He looked up the stairs that led to the holosuites, and started upward.

 

In the crawlway above the ceiling, Odo began to re-form.

The first thing he saw was a large overturned vat positioned above the crack. The last of its contents were dripping out and down to the floor below.

And the next thing he spotted was a pair of booted feet disappearing around a corner in the crawlway.

Odo did not like to undertake one shapeshift after another in quick succession. Each time he morphed, he expended energy. Even maintaining the same shape, as he did most of the day in his humanoid form, took some effort. That was one of the reasons he had to return to his natural form and rest at the end of the day. And if he shifted too often, too fast, he could overexert himself.

The consequences of such overexertion would not be pretty.

Nevertheless, Odo gamely shifted again. His shape drew in upon itself, becoming smaller and smaller, and within seconds he was a rat.

He darted down the crawlway as fast as he could—which wasn’t as fast as a real rat could go, because a real rat didn’t weigh all that much. Odo, however—due to those dreary laws of physics—could alter his shape all he wanted, but he couldn’t do a thing about his mass. He now had the exterior shape of a rat, but not its interior structure. Otherwise his weight would have crushed the “rat’s” skeleton and pulped its internal organs. Odo, not really having any internal organs or skeletal structure, wasn’t hampered.

Even as heavy as he was, he was still far better equipped for speed in the confined area than the individual he was pursuing . . . and he already had a fairly good idea who that might be.

He heard the scuffling of elbows and knees in front of him and scooted around the corner. He saw a humanoid form ahead of him, and—yes, just as he thought—it was a Ferengi. A particular Ferengi with whom he was all too well acquainted.

The Ferengi heard a scuttling behind him and glanced back under his own arm. When he spotted the rat he let out a sigh of relief and continued on his way.

The rat, however, had other plans. It clamped its little teeth into the cuff of the fugitive’s trouser leg . . . and held on.

And didn’t budge.

The Ferengi fell flat, his right leg unexpectedly anchored. He craned his neck and saw, to his shock, that he was being assaulted by the heaviest damned rodent he had ever seen. He kicked at the creature furiously, but it didn’t seem to notice or care.

“What the hell kind of rat are you?” screeched the Ferengi in an alarmed, high-pitched voice.

The rat suddenly began to expand. The Ferengi’s eyes went wide as, within seconds, he was joined in the crawlway by the station’s head of security.

“Oh, no!”

“That’s ‘Odo,’” he corrected. “Sounds like ‘Oh, no,’ but with a very bad head cold. So . . . just not your day, is it, Nog?”

Nog moaned softly and thudded his head against the side of the crawlspace.

 

In the holosuite, Dax was pirouetting in place. Kira was arched backwards, her stomach muscles rippling. A considerable amount of gauze was piled up on the floor, and not much was left on the women’s bodies. A fine film of sweat glistened on their skin, and their fingers moved quickly, chiming out seductive melodies with the fingertip chimes they wore.

“Ohhhh, Quark.” Glav could barely contain himself. “Creating the likenesses of genuine women . . . putting all this together. I must congratulate you. You are true slime.”

“Thank you,” said Quark, trying to retain his modesty even as Dax and Kira cavorted, having totally abandoned theirs.

At that moment true slime began to ooze through the crack in the holosuite door.

 

Sisko scowled fiercely at the Ferengi boy who stood in front of him, not looking particularly contrite.

“It was just a joke,” he said sullenly.

“A joke?” said Sisko, barely keeping his outrage in check.

Odo was even less successful. He grabbed Nog by one of his huge ears and said, “Would you consider it an even bigger joke if I cracked your oversized head like a walnut?”

Nog didn’t appear to be listening. His eyes had crossed, and his breathing had gotten faster and raspier.

Immediately Sisko realized what the problem was. “Constable,” he said, “I’d let go if I were you. They like having their ears grabbed. Remember?”

Odo promptly released the Ferengi boy with a look of such disgust that he might just as well have shoved his hand into raw sewage. “What was I thinking?” he wondered.

Meyer and Boyajian were looking sheepishly at the glop that was already starting to coagulate on the floor. “Sorry, sir,” said Boyajian. “Guess we handled this pretty badly.”

“It was an understandable mistake,” said Odo. He gripped Nog firmly by the upper arm. “What was not understandable was how you could possibly have thought this was funny.”

“People are getting hurt, Nog,” Sisko told him angrily. “People are getting killed. And causing our people to run around responding to false alarms is simply unconscionable.”

Nog shrugged. He didn’t even make an insincere attempt to say he was sorry, which only served to exasperate Sisko even further. “Constable,” he said, “get him out of here. Take him back to his father.”

“Yes, sir,” said Odo. He shoved the boy in front of him. “Let’s go.”

 

Rom was working the Dabo wheel, trying to drum up interest in one of Quark’s premier games.

Betting had been rather slow that day. Most of Quark’s patrons were content to nurse their drinks and watch each other with a high degree of suspicion. The grim attitude seemed to be one of Why should I gamble? I probably won’t live to enjoy my winnings.

Not an attitude that was exactly conducive to spirited gaming.

“Come on!” he called out cajolingly. “Who feels lucky?!”

“Shut up,” grumbled a Tellarite.

But Rom didn’t take the admonition to heart, because he saw a potential pigeon fluttering his way. “Doctor!” he summoned Bashir over. “You look lost. You look lonely. You look like someone who may be open to a game of chance.”

“Life holds enough chances without adding artificial ones,” said Bashir, looking around. “Where is Quark?”

“A spin will get you an answer,” purred the Ferengi.

Bashir rolled his eyes. “Oh, very well.” Quickly he placed a bet.

Rom spun the wheel. He watched the ball skittle around . . . and then fall in . . . precisely where Bashir had bet that it would. He gaped and then said gamely, “Two out of three?”

“Tell you what,” said Bashir. “Forget my winnings. Just tell me where Quark is.”

“Well, you know it’s not my place to spy on my boss,” said Rom. “However, it just so happens that out of the smallest corner of my eye, I believe I saw him step into Holosuite B.”

“Thank you,” said Bashir, and he started to walk away.

“Doctor! I don’t think Quark would particularly appreciate being disturbed in the middle of a holosuite sex fantasy . . . if you catch my meaning.”

“Don’t worry,” Bashir shot back. “I’m a doctor, remember? I doubt there’s anything in there I haven’t seen before.” And he headed up the steps.

 

Jake Sisko was bored.

He had intended to cut loose after school and have fun, but Chief O’Brien had escorted Jake to his quarters after taking Keiko and little Molly home.

Ben Sisko’s admonitions about staying put had been assessed and accepted, but ultimately Jake found himself staring into the mirror and feeling utterly without anything interesting to do. There was homework, sure, but what kind of life was that? School and homework. School and homework. Wow. Fun.

And besides, he was quite aware of one great truth: his mother had stayed put. He and his mother had both hidden in their quarters while the Saratoga was being pounded by the Borg.

“A fat lot of good it did us,” he muttered.

The hell with it. He wasn’t accomplishing anything of great importance sitting around. And he was lonely, too. Nog hadn’t shown up at school the past couple of days. Oh, sure, his father, Rom, had said that he’d be bringing him to class regularly. But—surprise, surprise—the word of the Ferengi hadn’t been the most dependable.

Where would Nog be about now? Not in his quarters, certainly. Nog was a mover and shaker. He didn’t sit around, kept captive by his father’s worries. Nog would be out. Nog would be happening. Nog would be . . . 

Over at Quark’s, most likely. Out in the Promenade.

Which was where Jake Sisko now resolved to go.

He stepped out of his quarters, looked right and left to make sure that O’Brien wasn’t hanging around to spy on him, and headed for the crossover bridge that would take him to the Promenade and the heart of Deep Space Nine.