Warped (star trek)

by K. W. Jeter

  She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. The readouts from the station's remote sensors moved in shadow inside her skull, small ghosts, their significance—if any—not yet determined. Perhaps the scraps of information meant nothing, just random perturbations in the universe's workings, dust upon unseen and unknowable gears. . . .

  Dax drew in her breath, opening her eyes to the lab's familiar surroundings. For now, until the data added up to something definite—or nothing—she knew she'd have to go on carrying this secret inside herself.

  The glare of the plasma torch had lit the space a lurid white-yellow, the color of a star's core. When the torch was switched off, quiet replaced the sizzling of metal being welded fast to other metal.

  Odo had been able to watch the process without any protective gear, simply by forming a reflective shield over his eyes, letting only a fraction of the intense light through to the optic receptors behind.

  "There, that's done." O'Brien lifted up his own work shield, revealing his face bathed in sweat. The air in the cramped angle of bare girders and wiring conduits had grown hot and stale, unrelieved by any flow of ventilation. He laid the torch down and straightened up, rubbing the small of his back. "That should be the last of them."

  "At least of the ones that our freight handler told us about." He looked past the chief of operations to the thick steel panel that had been sealed in place, blocking off one of the surreptitious entry points to the station. It had been easier to work on them from inside rather than sending a protected crew out onto DS9's surface.

  "If any more turn up, we'll plug 'em." O'Brien had to keep his head ducked to avoid banging it on the network of heavy pipes above. "I don't think that's going to be the case, though; the new structural analysis program I ran on the computer indicated that there aren't any other spots anyone could get not without setting off a full-scale perimeter-integrity alert. We nailed down places that McHogue and the Cardassians didn't even know about." He started breaking down the torch and stowing it in its case. "Too bad it's all rather like securing the barn door after the horses have not only bolted, but they're in the next county already."

  The analysis by O'Brien touched a sore spot inside Odo. It still rankled him that his beloved Deep Space Nine—his home, his world—had been violated by a creature as loathsome as McHogue. He could well believe that this was what a family man such as the commander felt, upon hearing that his son had been exposed to this person's machinations; it was hard to remain quite rational about the subject. The more that he and O'Brien had investigated the holes in the station's physical security and filled them in, the more his simmering anger had approached an internal boiling point. He could easily have laid down his commission as DS9's security chief for the sake of five minutes as a private citizen, alone in a locked room with McHogue; he would have guaranteed that only one of them would have walked back out in one piece.

  "Calm down, man." O'Brien had caught sight of the anger stewing behind Odo's ordinarily blank visage. "You'll blow a gasket if you don't. Or maybe you'll just swell up and burst like a big bubble, or whatever else it is an apoplectic shapeshifter might do. We'd have to sweep up little pieces of you with a wet-dry vacuum cleaner."

  "Very amusing." Odo's scowl remained frozen in place. "I fail to see how you can remain so lighthearted about all this. What McHogue was doing, waltzing in and out with his CI modules, it's . . . it's offensive."

  "Lighthearted I'm not." O'Brien had finished packing up his gear. "Those clowns could have blown an atmospheric seal and we would all have wound up exploding from the drop to zero pressure. No, what it is, is that essentially you're a cop and I'm a glorified engineer; you have an idea of perfection and I'm trained to deal with the reality that nothing ever works exactly the way it's supposed to—God knows that's the truth around this place. Life is a kludge, Odo, otherwise I'd be out of a job." He hoisted his tool case. "Come on, I'll buy you a drink."

  Given his nature, he didn't require liquid sustenance; nevertheless, for the sake of working sociability, he let O'Brien order two synthales and have them set down on the table between them by Quark. The Ferengi said nothing, but returned to the bar in wordless gloom.

  "Cheers." O'Brien hoisted his mug as Quark gave a polite nod. The chief of operations wiped his mouth and looked around. "Saints, what's happened to this place? It's bare enough to use for a loading dock up on the main pylon."

  Odo glanced at the empty tables and booths. "I'm afraid our host is suffering the effects of a severe drop in his business—hence the lugubrious expression. Those bent on pleasure seem to find more to their liking in Moagitty, on the surface of Bajor."

  The explanation prompted an amazed head shake from O'Brien. "You'd hardly believe seeing people turned into murderers would make for successful advertising."

  "On the contrary. In this case, the expectations of a 'cop,' as you put it, are more in line with reality. I'm not surprised that the jaded and bored, in search of new and exotic stimuli, would be attracted to an enterprise that virtually guarantees the ultimate in self-destruction."

  "There's a cheerful thought." O'Brien had already knocked back half of his synthale.

  "You should take a look at the transit logs. Now that McHogue has his operation completely up and running, the traffic passing through this sector and going straight on to Bajor has gone from virtually zero to the point where it's causing some serious navigational difficulties. The weather that the planet is undergoing is only compounding the problem of offworld vessels stacking up outside the atmosphere. Though in the long run, there's no amount of hurricanes that will keep McHogue's would-be customers from reaching their destination."

  "Bit of divine retribution there." The last of the synthale went down O'Brien's throat; he thumped the empty mug down upon the table. "McHogue must have played hooky the day they talked about Sodom and Gomorrah at school."

  "I'm unfamiliar with those worlds."

  "Everybody is, these days." The drink appeared to have loosened O'Brien's tongue. "Though maybe McHogue knows more than we do about these things. How does the old song go? 'What's so horrible about a hurricane, compared to somebody who wants his fun?'"

  Odo gazed at the chief of operations in bewilderment. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "Never mind. Just showing off my erudition, quoting a little Bertolt Brecht at you. Early twentieth century—you wouldn't be familiar with him." O'Brien pushed his chair back and stood up. "As always . . . it's been fun. But I think my wife's waiting for me." He turned and headed for the door.

  Odo was left as the sole customer. He gazed at the one full and one empty mug before him. Beyond the limits of Quark's establishment, the Promenade was deathly quiet. His job as chief of security had become much easier over the last few shifts—so much so that he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep himself occupied. Rearranging his old files and purging out-of-date ones had taken only a few hours. There had been no need for him to accompany O'Brien on his rounds of blocking the surreptitious entrance points to the station, but doing so had been better than nothing.

  He could afford to be nostalgic about the murder epidemic. Now those seemed to him like glory days, a last great flowering of tension and activity. Perhaps I should have taken Gul Dukat up on his job offer—it was a thought that he used to torment himself with, rather than giving it any serious consideration. Since coming back from his visit to the Cardassian diplomatic vessel, the feeling had grown in him that there was going to be plenty of action in Moagitty.

  A shadow fell across the table. Odo looked up and saw a familiar face, one that he hadn't seen in several shifts.

  "Mind if I join you?" Major Kira managed a weary smile. She glanced over her shoulder. "Though it doesn't look like you would've come here if you were looking for company."

  "By all means, Major." He pointed to the chair opposite him. "You're more than welcome." He peered more closely at her. In the dim lighting that Quark favored for his establishment—more out of cheap
ness than any desire for atmosphere—Odo had almost been unable to recognize his fellow officer. He watched her sit down. "Though if you'll allow me to say so, perhaps you would be better served by making an appointment to see Dr. Bashir. You don't look well."

  "Thanks for the concern." Kira rubbed the side of her face with one hand. "I'm just tired, that's all. I've already been told on good authority that I should just go back to my quarters and get some sleep."

  "Why don't you?" Odo felt genuine alarm as he gazed at her drawn face; the major looked the way he felt when he was due for his periodic reversion to a liquid state.

  Kira shrugged, her shoulders lifting as if a massive weight had been laid upon them. "I tried, but my eyes kept popping open. There just seems to be too much whirling around inside my head. I got tired of looking at the ceiling, so I came down here."

  He wondered how much she knew about the current state of affairs on the surface of Bajor. The last time he had checked with the weather-monitoring staff on the Ops deck, the storm winds had increased in force, lashing at the jagged, irregular shapes of Moagitty. Perhaps the clouds that roiled above the planet had their counterpart inside Kira's skull.

  "As it happens, I do seem to have some spare time for conversation." He felt enough sympathy for her that he was willing to make an effort at distraction. "More than enough, actually."

  "That's life among the unemployed. At least you have enough sense to stay out of trouble."

  "Ah, yes—" Odo nodded. "I heard about your unfortunate visit to the altered holosuite. You'll forgive, I hope, my asking you a few questions about that. It's for professional reasons, not just idle curiosity."

  "I'm too tired to care. Ask away."

  "What did you . . ." He hesitated for a moment. "What did you see in there, Major?"

  She told him, her words coming slowly at first, then in a rush that belied her state of exhaustion, as she described the sensation of mounting into an illusory sky, her physical being translated into a pillar of fire.

  "But somehow . . . that wasn't the most disturbing part." Kira shook her head in wonderment. Her gaze moved away from Odo, as though she were seeing again the world inside the holosuite. "It was all the things before that. The things that the skinny little child in there saw—that I saw. Those were true things, things that really happened. I remember seeing them . . . a long time ago." She closed her eyes and spoke without opening them. "But I had forgotten all about them; I made myself forget. So it would be as if they hadn't happened at all." She brought her gaze back to Odo. "That's what I wanted. To forget all of that . . . to forget everything. But I couldn't—not forever. Because . . . the past was in there. And . . ." With a single fingertip, she touched the side of her head. "And in here."

  Odo made no reply. His own thoughts formed an invisible wall around him, through which he could barely see the person on the other side of the table.

  "At any rate," said Kira, "that was the worst part."

  "The past . . ." Odo's voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  "Pardon?"

  "That's what he said. . . ." He pulled himself back. "I'm sorry. It's . . . it's not important."

  The major let out her pent-up breath. "All of a sudden . . . I could just lie down right here and go to sleep." She gave a quick snap of her head, to keep herself awake. "It just came over me. . . ." She managed a wan smile at Odo. "Maybe it does some good to talk about these things."

  He nodded. "Perhaps it does."

  "If you'll excuse me . . ." Kira stood up, leaning against the table for balance. "Now I am ready to take everybody's advice. If anybody needs me, I'll be in my quarters—for a long while."

  Odo watched her cross the empty Promenade and head toward the nearest turbolift.

  Another voice sounded in his head. A voice that smiled and promised things. He didn't have to close his eyes to see Gul Dukat's face, the Cardassian's gaze weighing and measuring what it beheld in turn. Everything that Dukat said had been perfectly calculated to evoke a response, if not at that time, then later, a seed planted that would be harvested when ripe. . . .

  It didn't help to know that. There had never been a time when he hadn't been aware of Gul Dukat's manipulative skill, the ability to look right into another creature's soul and discern what was the one thing most desired. In that regard, Dukat and McHogue were spiritual brothers, two of a kind; they both fastened upon the innermost weakness of their prey and turned it to their own use.

  Odo knew all of Dukat's machinations, yet still couldn't keep himself from wondering about the things that the Cardassian had said to him . . . and what Major Kira had inadvertently added to confirm those things.

  The past is in there.

  A world of ashes remained, after the flames had died, dispersed across the cold stars. When she had been here before, the fire had given her wings, carrying her like a mounting storm above the petty things that crept and cowered on the surface of another Bajor. Her murderous glance, a shining weapon of pure intent, had struck down those who had offended her. Which was all; fire, at last, made no discrimination between the weak and the strong, the victim and the boot upon his throat. And that left ashes for her to weep over as they sifted through her trembling fingers.

  I didn't want to come back here—Kira looked up from where she knelt on the black field. Ever again. Several meters away from her—it was hard to judge distances; points beyond her reach came closer, then retreated as though carried by the waves of a slow ocean—the barracks of the refugee camp were in ruins, the wooden roofs and walls splintered by a giant fist. Beyond them, the barbed wire and dead electrical cables sagged toward the cindered ground.

  It was enough—more than enough—that she'd had to remember these things. But to return to this place, that had once been safely locked away inside her head . . . that was beyond endurance.

  Someone was watching her; she felt the pressure of the other's gaze. "Who's there?"

  Kira saw the figure then, a shadowed silhouette at the limit of the vision, where the night became solid. She knew it wasn't McHogue or anything from the distant past, the past of the watching child, gone now.

  She could almost recognize him, her mouth speaking his name, when she felt the handful of ashes in her grip change to something else. Looking down, she saw a fold of white cloth held tight in her fist, cloth that spilled around her waist and legs. She raised her eyes to see the ashen world falling away from her, as though the night ocean's tide were drawing back to its unfathomable depths. . . .

  Her eyes were already open when she woke, sitting up in bed. Around her, the familiar spaces of her living quarters opened into one another. Her mouth was dry from the ragged breathing that was just beginning to slow inside her lungs.

  Kira swung her legs out from under the thin covers and shook her sleep-mired head. The digits of the chronometer beside the bed showed that only a hour had passed since she had lain down. Great, she thought disgustedly. Bad dreams are all I need right now. She still felt exhausted.

  Something about the dream nagged at her, kept her from laying her head back upon the pillow. Despite her weariness, she concentrated on bringing the pieces into focus. Not fire, but ashes this time; that came easily to her. The standard revenge fantasy that had been Dax's interpretation had apparently metamorphosed into . . . what? Grief, perhaps. For that child who had watched and seen all, and had been changed herself into something different.

  There had been something else; Kira's brow creased as she tried to see it. In the shadows . . . that was it. A figure that she had just been about to recognize, call out his name. Someone . . . who didn't belong there.

  She saw his face clearly then, as though a comm line had broken through visual static. She heard his voice as well, slowly and wonderingly repeating what she herself had told to him.

  From the end of the bed, Kira grabbed her discarded clothes. She was still fastening the collar of her uniform as went through the doorway and into the corridor beyond steps running for the turboli
ft.

  He leaned over the shoulder of the crew member sitting at the meteorological console. The screen cast its shifting light across both their faces. "How does it look down there?"

  The ensign glanced at the station's commander standing beside him, then shook his head. "Not good, sir. This is the worst global weather pattern anyone's ever seen on Bajor. We've accessed the databases left over from the Cardassian occupation, and all available records preceding that, and we can't come up with any comparable situation."

  "What specific disturbances are you picking up?"

  A finger pointed to a curve of dark, irregular shapes on the screen. "There's a parade of hurricanes across the major oceans that's virtually unbroken. And worse, when they move onshore, they don't seem to be dissipating; they just pile on top of each other. There's a churning effect with wind velocities steadily mounting; a lot of the coastal territories have already been flooded by the increased tidal action." The ensign tapped a button and the display drew back, showing the round outline of the planet. "Upper atmosphere's a mess as well. The tracking satellites from which we receive the data are reporting high-level funicular activity, with zero success at predicting where the edges of the shear currents will be. All traffic on or off the planet has been suspended for the time being; any vessel attempting to go through that soup would stand a good chance of getting torn apart or slammed into the ground."

  Sisko straightened up, regarding the screen with his arms folded across his chest. "If we needed to implement any evacuation procedures, could we get a vessel close enough to use a transporter beam?"

  "That's possible, but it wouldn't do any good, sir. The electromagnetic fields radiating from the system's sun have gone haywire as well. Under these flux conditions, we wouldn't be able to lock on a beam long enough to effect anytransfer."