Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult Books #4: The Pet

by Mel Gilden

  THE MISSING PRINCE

  It’s the anniversary of the discovery of the Wormhole, and ships from all over the galaxy are headed to Deep Space Nine to celebrate. When the freighter Ulysses docks at DS9, an animal escapes from one of the crewmembers and heads straight for Jake Sisko. It does not speak or eat, but loves to play ball! Since the furry little creature presents no threat to the station and the owner is under investigation by Security Chief Odo, Commander Sisko allows Jake and Nog to keep the pet until the situation can be straightened out.

  Besides, the Commander has more important things to worry about. For starters, a huge new ship has come through the Wormhole and its captain is threatening to blow up the station unless his Crown Prince is returned—unfortunately for Sisko, he’s never seen the prince. Also, mysterious creatures have begun terrorizing the station. With time running out, Sisko and his crew search the station for clues, while Jake and Nog try to save their pet from an alien’s evil plan!

  Cover art by Alan Gutierrez

  Interior Illustrations by Todd Cameron Hamilton

  Panic on the Promenade

  Suddenly, between Darm and Babe, a monster appeared on the Promenade. It roared up in front of Darm, black horns shining, red tail whipping from side to side.

  People saw the raging purple monster and ran. There was mass panic on the Promenade as the crowd began to run in all directions, tripping over one another in their hurry to escape.

  The commotion brought Jake and Nog rushing out of the holoshop.

  “Babe,” Jake yelled. “Where is he?”

  “There!” Nog pointed down the concourse, toward where their furry friend was running for the stairs, dodging between legs of fleeing patrons.

  Jake started to run.

  The monster vanished.

  Then, as Jake looked around, he realized that Babe had disappeared, too.

  “If Darm has Babe, then he’ll try to sell him to that alien he was with at Quark’s,” Jake guessed.

  “Then let’s find the alien and ask him.”

  “He won’t tell us anything,” Jake warned.

  “He will if we ask him right,” Nog said. He used the broad Ferengi grin that meant he had a plan. And that usually meant trouble for someone….

  Star Trek: The Next Generation

  STARFLEET ACADEMY

  #1 Worf’s First Adventure

  #2 Line of Fire

  #3 Survival

  #4 Capture the Flag

  #5 Atlantis Station

  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

  #1 The Star Ghost

  #2 Stowaways

  #3 Prisoners of Peace

  #4 The Pet

  Available from MINSTREL Books

  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A MINSTREL PAPERBACK Original

  A Minstrel Book published by

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1994 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

  STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-88352-6

  First Minstrel Books printing December 1994

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  A MINSTREL BOOK and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Cover art by Alan Gutierrez

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  For Phillip—keep on Trekin’

  —Mel

  For Phyllis—here’s one more pet

  to add to the menagerie

  —Ted

  STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE

  Cast of Characters

  JAKE SISKO—Jake is a young teenager and the only human boy permanently on board Deep Space Nine. Jake’s mother died when he was very young. He came to the space station with his father but found very few kids his own age. He doesn’t remember life on Earth, but he loves baseball and candy bars, and he hates homework. His father doesn’t approve of his friendship with Nog.

  NOG—He is a Ferengi boy whose primary goal in life—like all Ferengi—is to make money. His father, Rom, is frequently away on business, which is fine with Nog. His uncle, Quark, keeps an eye on him. Nog thinks humans are odd with their notions of trust and favors and friendship. He doesn’t always understand Jake, but since his father forbids him to hang out with the human boy, Nog and Jake are best friends. Nog loves to play tricks on people, but he tries to avoid Odo whenever possible.

  COMMANDER BENJAMIN SISKO—Jake’s father has been appointed by Starfleet Command to oversee the operations of the space station and act as a liaison between the Federation and Bajor. His wife was killed in a Borg attack, and he is raising Jake by himself. He is a very busy man who always tries to make time for his son.

  ODO—The security officer was found by Bajoran scientists years ago, but Odo has no idea where he originally came from. He is a shapeshifter, and thus can assume any shape for a period of time. He normally maintains a vaguely human appearance but every sixteen hours he must revert to his natural liquid state. He has no patience for lawbreakers and less for Ferengi.

  MAJOR KIRA NERYS—Kira was a freedom fighter in the Bajoran underground during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. She now represents Bajoran interests aboard the station and is Sisko’s first officer. Her temper is legendary.

  LIEUTENANT JADZIA DAX—An old friend of Commander Sisko’s, the science officer Dax is actually two joined entities known as the Trill. There is a separate consciousness—a symbiont—in the young female host’s body. Sisko knew the symbiont Dax in a previous host, which was a “he.”

  DR. JULIAN BASHIR—Eager for adventure, Doctor Bashir graduated at the top of his class and requested a deep-space posting. His enthusiasm sometimes gets him into trouble.

  MILES O’BRIEN—Formerly the Transporter Chief aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, O’Brien is now Chief of Operations on Deep Space Nine.

  KEIKO O’BRIEN—Keiko was a botanist on the Enterprise, but she moved to the station with her husband and her young daughter, Molly. Since there is little use for her botany skills on the station, she is the teacher for all of the permanent and traveling students.

  QUARK—Nog’s uncle and a Ferengi businessman by trade, Quark runs his own combination restaurant/casino/holosuite venue on the Promenade, the central meeting place for much of the activity on the station. Quark has his hand in every deal on board and usually manages to stay just one step ahead of the law—usually in the shape of Odo.

  CHAPTER 1

  Play ball!”

  The umpire’s thunderous voice echoed through Yankee Stadium. The crowd rose as one. He was coming.

  Young Jake Sisko fidgeted on the pitcher’s mound and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his
hand. Not that he was nervous, but it was the middle of July in New York City and the heat was sweltering.

  How did they survive without climate control? Jake wondered. He hadn’t thought about it before, but Earth in the twentieth century was a pretty primitive place.

  Jake studied the faces of the crowd. They were eagerly waiting for this moment—even the aliens. Dad is really going to jump all over Quark for programming aliens into his baseball hologame, Jake thought. Commander Benjamin Sisko loved baseball and wanted it played pure. But Ferengi knew as much about baseball as a Bajoran tree toad did, and cared even less. Setting up this holosuite simulation was strictly a business proposition on Quark’s part, and a way to keep on the Federation’s good side.

  “Jake.” Benjamin Sisko approached the mound. His manager’s uniform was deliberately wrinkled. Jake liked to play baseball because it was about the only time his dad acted like a real kid instead of like a grown-up. Any other time the commander of Deep Space Nine wore a Starfleet uniform that looked as if it had just come fresh from the replicators, which it usually had.

  Benjamin Sisko stepped to the mound and whispered to his son. “Pitch him low and inside—like I taught you. Nothing fast and nothing straight.”

  His dad had told him that a hundred times. Jake couldn’t forget if he wanted to. “Gotcha, Dad.”

  “Coach,” the elder Sisko corrected him.

  “Sorry. Coach.”

  Benjamin Sisko left the mound and returned to the dugout, pausing a moment to frown as he looked into the stands and noticed a pair of Ferengi hawking peanuts and lava worms.

  On the mound Jake sized up his opponent. The man swinging the bat at home plate didn’t look like much of an athlete. He was, to put it bluntly, overweight. More than that, he was fat. But Babe Ruth was also perhaps the greatest slugger in the history of baseball. Or so his father had said. Jake was about to discover the truth of that for himself.

  Jake’s first pitch was a bit too low and too far inside. “Ball one!”

  This wasn’t quite as easy as practicing in the Iowa cornfield simulation where his dad had taught him the fundamentals of baseball. For one thing, this pitcher’s mound was a lot farther from home plate.

  Jake’s next throw was right on target and caught the Babe asleep at the plate. “Strike one!”

  Another ball. Then another strike. Finally “Ball three!” It was a full count.

  By this time Jake was really sweating, and it wasn’t from the heat. This pitch was for all the marbles, or was that a different game?

  Jake wound up and threw. The ball arced through the air toward the plate. The Babe started his swing.

  “Computer. Freeze program.”

  The baseball stopped six feet from the plate. So did the Babe and everyone else in the stadium.

  Benjamin Sisko ran out of the dugout. “O’Brien!” he shouted.

  The door to the holosuite appeared in midair between home plate and first base. Chief Engineer O’Brien stepped through and walked halfway across Yankee Stadium in his Starfleet uniform. No one in the stands noticed because they were frozen solid. This really was “time out,” Jake thought.

  “Sorry,” O’Brien apologized when he reached Sisko.

  “Things are coming apart in Operations. Four ships just docked, and more are on their way through the wormhole. With docking bay six still down for repairs, we’re short one slot.”

  “Some of them will just have to hang out in orbit,” Sisko replied. He turned to Jake. It was his turn to apologize. “Sorry, son. We’ll have to replay the game another time.”

  Jake nodded. “Computer, store program and close.”

  Instantly Yankee Stadium vanished. Jake watched as his father and O’Brien exited the holosuite, then he followed them.

  The two Starfleet men quickly caught a turbolift that would take them directly to Operations, the nerve center that controlled all the technical functions of Deep Space Nine. It was an anniversary of the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole that connected the Federation with Gamma Quadrant, and the celebration was attracting ships from both sides of the wormhole to Deep Space Nine like a magnet.

  It was early afternoon, and even if his father had to work, Jake didn’t. He hurried to the Promenade to find his Ferengi friend, Nog.

  With all these extra ships in dock there was sure to be a lot of excitement on the station.

  CHAPTER 2

  The first time Jake Sisko saw the creature, it was charging straight toward him. Things like this occasionally happened when Jake played Space Safari with Nog in one of Quark’s junior holosuites.

  But Jake was not in a holosuite now. Instead he was on Deep Space Nine’s main Promenade, an area of exotic shops which was crowded with the passengers and crews from the swarm of starships currently docked and waiting for clearance to pass through the wormhole.

  Fortunately, the charging creature was not huge. It was about the size of the Saint Bernard that Jake had played with when his dad took him to the Swiss Alps on their last visit to Earth.

  But this didn’t look like a Saint Bernard, or any other kind of dog. It reminded Jake of the rhinos that used to roam the African plains, except this creature was covered with a golden fur, from the tip of its stubby horn to the bushy end of its tail.

  This was all Jake had time to notice as the creature bolted through the crowd on the Promenade, like a rabbit in the woods dodging a pursuing fox, and landed in Jake’s lap. Both boy and creature tumbled to the ground.

  Jake was scared for a moment, but when he looked into the creature’s eyes, he saw that this was no wild beast. This was a being with intelligence. And it was frightened.

  Slowly Jake reached out his right hand. He knew what it was like to be alone and afraid. He had felt that way for a long time after his mother had died. He saw that same lonely ache mirrored in this creature’s eyes.

  The creature responded to Jake’s gentle touch and became quiet. For a long moment they sat there face to face, oblivious of the curious crowd that had gathered around them.

  “Stop!” An angry cry like thunder shattered the tranquility of the moment. The crowd parted as a big man with black hair and a scar on his left cheek pushed his way through. He was dressed like a spacer, but his manners spoke more of back alleys than of flight decks.

  “Stop!” the man yelled again, and the creature cringed as though it had been hit. “Come here!” Despite the harsh command, the creature did not move. It was determined to stay with Jake, as though the young boy could protect him from this angry giant who towered over them.

  “The beast is mine,” the man said as he glowered at Jake. “Give it to me!”

  Jake was too startled to speak. He understood why the creature, or anyone, would be afraid of this man.

  The man started to reach past Jake for the creature.

  “No!”

  The familiar voice belonged to Nog. Jake saw his friend running to join them. Nog was pointing at something that the man held in his left hand.

  “You can’t use a restraining collar,” Nog said. “You’ll hurt him!” The Ferengi boy tried to grab the collar, but the man pushed Nog aside roughly. The crowd stirred, but no one seemed anxious to take on this enraged spacer.

  “It is mine. I do with it what I please.”

  Jake leaped to his feet, summoned up all his courage, and faced the man. “You can’t use a restraining collar on him.”

  “You’d rather I use it on you?” It was more than a question; it was a threat—and not a subtle one. “Get out of my way, lad!” The man stepped forward. Jake did not move. But what he expected to happen didn’t. The man stopped, but not of his own volition. What prevented him from moving was the strong arm of DS9’s security chief, Odo. “Shall we discuss this in a civilized manner?”

  But the man was not in the mood to discuss anything with anyone. He swung around and attempted to punch his fist into Odo’s face—except that Odo’s face wasn’t there when his fist arrived.

  Being a
shapeshifter, Odo simply let his face split apart as though it were liquid. The man’s fist went straight through the opening that instantly appeared in the place Odo normally formed his nose.

  The man withdrew his fist, muttering a curse against all shapeshifters in general and this one in particular. Then the man lashed out with his right foot.

  Odo stepped to one side and used the man’s own momentum to send him spinning out of control and to land him flat on his back. In one swift movement Odo put his own foot on the man’s throat and applied pressure. The man gasped, turned pale, and went limp. Odo looked over at Jake and smiled reassuringly. “He’s all right. I just took the fight out of him.”

  The constable lifted the man to his feet. He was still gasping. “Though he’ll have a sore throat tomorrow morning.” Odo looked the man in the eye and demanded an explanation.

  “Who—” the man tried to say.

  “I’m the law on Deep Space Nine. And you were about to break it.”

  The man pulled away from Odo’s grasp, stumbled, then steadied himself against a bulkhead. Now that the man had, for the moment, lost his will to fight, Odo turned his attention to the gathering crowd. “That will be quite enough. Nothing to gawk at here. Go about your business.”

  While the crowd slowly dispersed, Nog came over to join Jake, who was gently stroking the distressed creature. The man, regaining his composure, glared at them. “That thing is mine.” He pointed at Jake and Nog. “Those two tried to steal it.”

  “It—he was frightened,” Jake said. “We only wanted to help.” Jake indicated the collar lying on the ground.

  “He was going to use a restraining collar.”

  Odo picked up the collar and turned to the man. “What you do in space is your business, but this station is Federation territory. And use of a restraining collar requires a permit. Who are you?”