by Mel Gilden
“This time you’re not getting away,” Darm said threateningly. He took a phaser out from under his tunic. “And this is to make sure you don’t.”
CHAPTER 8
Jake and Nog returned in time to see it happen—but not in time to prevent it from happening.
They had reached the doorway to their clubhouse, arms loaded with cartons of food to tempt Babe, when they saw Darm. They saw him raise his phaser and take deliberate aim. And they watched helplessly as he fired a single low-energy blast that struck Babe in the chest. The furry little creature whimpered, trying to fight off the paralysis. He fell on his side and lay on the floor twitching.
Darm adjusted the phaser’s control. “Looks like you need a stronger dose. I don’t want you waking up before I hand you over to Forsh.”
“No!” Jake and Nog shouted together. They dropped their food cartons and charged at Darm. Both boys together were no match for the much stronger third officer of the Ulysses, but the unexpectedness of their attack caught Darm off balance. He fell to the deck, and his phaser flew from his grasp.
Darm roared like a wounded lion. He struggled to his feet. “You laddies are in trouble—deep trouble.” He came for Jake first.
Jake rolled, avoiding the spacer’s initial rush. “Get the phaser!” Jake yelled to Nog as he scrambled toward the door.
Darm was already on his way to retrieve the phaser, but Nog leaped at the spacer and attempted to tackle the much bigger man around the legs. That slowed Darm down for a moment, and if anything, it made him even angrier.
Darm reached out and grabbed Nog by the arm. Nog howled in that particular way that Ferengi do when in trouble. Darm ignored Nog’s yell and lifted the boy high into the air. But he did not have a chance to do anything else, because Jake splashed a bowl of Cayon chili into the spacer’s face. It was only warm, but the thick glop momentarily covered Darm’s eyes.
“I can’t see!” he screamed.
Jake seized the opportunity to dodge past and scoop up the phaser. “Hands up,” Jake ordered, trying to imitate his father’s authoritative voice.
Darm scraped the chili from his eyes with his right hand while continuing to hold the struggling Nog with his left.
“Put the phaser down,” Darm snarled.
Jake took a step backward. He wasn’t sure what stun level the controls were set for, and he certainly didn’t want to hit Nog.
Darm used Jake’s moment of hesitation to snake his brawny arm around Nog’s neck. Nog howled even louder.
“Put the phaser down, or I break your Ferengi friend’s neck.” Darm twisted his arm tighter, and Nog’s howl was cut off by a choking sound.
Jake hesitated another moment.
It was all the time an experienced street fighter like Darm needed. He threw Nog at Jake.
Both boys tumbled against the wall. Jake held onto the phaser—but not for long. Darm stepped over and forced his heavy boot against Jake’s arm. Then he reached down and ripped the phaser out of Jake’s weakening grasp. Darm stepped backward, releasing Jake.
The two boys huddled together against the wall.
Darm slowly raised the phaser. “You lads have caused me plenty of grief.” He gave them a twisted smile. “It’s payback time.”
Darm aimed the deadly phaser. But he never had a chance to fire the weapon, because at that moment the roof fell in on him—literally.
Jake and Nog watched in amazement as the ceiling of the construction shed collapsed on top of the spacer. Darm let out a scream and ran out, saving himself, and making no attempt to rescue Jake, Nog, or Babe.
But, strange as it seemed, they had no need to be rescued. For as soon as Darm was gone, the destruction vanished. The room was back the way it had been before the cave-in.
“What happened?” Nog wanted to know.
Jake looked over at Babe. “It’s Babe.”
“What?”
“He did it. Babe created some kind of hypnotic illusion.” Babe crossed over and laid his head in Jake’s lap.
“Then it was Babe who caused the illusions in the Promenade,” Nog reasoned.
“Yes,” Jake agreed. “It must be the way he defends himself in the wild. A kind of camouflage.”
Jake stroked the golden fur on Babe’s horn. The little creature sighed. He appeared to be exhausted, as though the effort of saving them had drained all his energy.
“Take it easy, Babe.” Jake tried to comfort his pet.
“The bad man is gone.”
Suddenly Babe began to shake, as if he had been zapped by a lightning bolt. He rolled off of Jake’s lap and shivered uncontrollably on the floor.
Jake and Nog watched Babe’s seizures, helpless to do anything. Finally the convulsions subsided. Babe struggled weakly to his feet.
“Easy, Babe.” Jake tried to sound reassuring as he stepped forward, but his insides were twisting as if he had swallowed a Gobian spit worm. Something strange was happening to his friend, and he had absolutely no idea of how to stop it. Before Jake could reach Babe, the creature shuddered again. Then he turned and bolted for the door. “Nog, catch him!” Jake yelled.
Nog tried to intercept the little rhino, but he leaped and missed. Babe dashed past and was out the door. Ferengi might be financial wheeler-dealers, but athletes they definitely were not.
Jake thought fast, trying to imagine what his father would do in this situation. Something was wrong with Babe, and the creature needed help from an expert. “You go get Dr. Bashir,” Jake told Nog. “I’ll find Babe.”
Nog hurried out of the room without his usual argument.
Jake knew that when it came down to the crunch, Nog trusted his judgment—at least when there was no profit potential involved. But now he had to do his part and find Babe. Only he didn’t know where to start looking.
Then Jake remembered that Babe had originally sought the highest shelf in the clubhouse, and he reasoned that the injured creature might again seek the high ground.
Jake went to the end of the short corridor outside their clubhouse and began to climb the ladder toward the top of the docking pylon.
This section of Deep Space Nine had never really been finished—at least on the inside. A framework of beams intertwined with loose cabling. The abandoned tube stretched upward and curved slightly inward as it narrowed near the top.
Occasionally small work platforms gave Jake something solid on which to rest. He glanced over the edge and saw it was a long way down to the bottom of the pylon. A very long way.
“Babe,” Jake called out nervously. “Where are you?” This wasn’t going exactly as he hoped. If there was one thing that Jake really disliked it was high places.
Jake took another step upon the ladder. Suddenly a rusted rung broke under his weight. Frantically Jake reached out for something to hold on to—but the top half of the ladder pulled away from the frame. Jake was left dangling from the broken ladder in the center of the tube—high above the base of the pylon.
Slowly the bolts that anchored the bottom section of the ladder began to loosen.
Jake closed his eyes and, to make himself stop shaking, concentrated on what he had to do next. Only he didn’t know what to do next. He wished that his father were there.
Things weren’t going much better in Operations. Sisko watched impatiently as his engineering chief attempted to repair an unanticipated problem in the main computer’s logic memory.
“Blasted Caradassian technology,” O’Brien muttered under his breath.
“I don’t care who’s responsible, Chief. Fix it!”
“I’m doing my best, Commander.” O’Brien was about to try replacing his fifth circuit board. This one had better be it. The time limit the Pyxians had given them was about to run out. And they still hadn’t figured out which of the ships in dock had visited the alien’s star system. With all the extra traffic from the wormhole celebration, their job wasn’t made any easier.
“Chief, if you please,” Dax’s soft voice cajoled.
&n
bsp; O’Brien slid the board into place and made sure it was tight. “Okay, try it now.”
Dax pushed a few keys. After a microsecond of hesitation, a star map of the Gamma Quadrant appeared on her screen. This was a partial view of a Starfleet survey map of the systems nearest the wormhole. Now she pushed another button, and the first starmap was overlaid by a second map which contained many more stars. This was the translated data from the Pyxians.
“We’ve got a ninety-nine percent match,” she told Sisko, the relief evident in her voice.
“Put it on the main screen,” Sisko ordered.
Instantly a holographic image of the Gamma Quadrant materialized on the main viewscreen.
“Computer, which one is the Pyxian system?” asked Major Kira.
One star in the image began to blink.
“Computer, magnify.”
At Kira’s command the screen zoomed in on the blinking star, exploding it into an image of a star system with eleven planets and twenty-four moons.
“Okay, we know where they came from,” Sisko observed. “Now, who’s been there?”
“Computer, match Pyxian system to captain’s logs of starships now docked at Deep Space Nine.”
“One match found,” the voice of the computer responded.
“Computer, show us the match,” Sisko commanded.
Immediately the silhouette of a starship was overlaid on the holographic image of the star system. “The matching ship is the Federation exploration vessel Ulysses.”
“I should have guessed,” Odo muttered as he ran for the turbolift. “I’ll have your missing prince—or know exactly what happened to him—in ten minutes,” he said as the lift doors closed behind him.
“Kira, contact the Pyxians,” Sisko ordered. “Let’s see if we can keep things from getting out of hand until Odo gets back.”
“I’m trying,” Kira replied as her fingers played over the control panel. “But there’s a lot of static. It’s almost as if—”
Kira’s words stopped in mid-sentence.
So did everything else.
A low rumble seemed to come from somewhere beneath their feet. If they had been on a planet it might have come from the bowels of the earth. It was like an—
“Earthquake!” An ensign shouted instinctively, leaping for cover under a table and ignoring the absurdity of his statement.
Suddenly the room vibrated violently. People and objects were tossed about as if they were toys in a dollhouse that was being shaken by a giant child. One of the auxiliary computers broke loose and flew across the room, narrowly missing Kira. The cable holding an overhead monitor snapped, and the viewer fell and smashed on top of the Operations Table.
The room continued shaking as people hurried shelter.
“It’s the Pyxians!” someone shouted.
“Our grace period just ran out,” Dax said.
The attack had begun.
CHAPTER 9
Jake did not feel the rumbling that was happening elsewhere on Deep Space Nine. At the moment, hanging from a broken ladder high above nothing in the upper pylon shaft, he had more immediate concerns on his mind.
Cautiously he stretched out his right hand, while continuing to hold tight to the ladder rung with his left. He fingers brushed against thin air. The safety of the wall beams was beyond his reach. The shaft disappeared into the dimness, seemingly miles below.
He tried extending his arm farther. The ladder creaked as he shifted his weight. The bolts holding the bottom section to the wall groaned. One of them snapped. What would Dad do?
Jake wondered whether his father had ever been in a situation like this one. He knew a senior officer of a Starfleet ship had plenty of opportunities to face death. That was the kind of opportunity that Jake would have been glad to forgo—indefinitely. But here it was, and he had to do something. Now.
If he continued to hang here, his arms would eventually get tired, and he’d fall. Or the bolts would break or loosen from the wall, and the ladder would fall, taking him with it.
There was one chance. He could make one big swing that would carry him across the abyss to the far wall—and safety. But he would have only one try. The effort would almost certainly pull the bolts loose from their tenuous moorings, plunging the ladder into the shaft. And if he couldn’t grab on to something solid on the far wall, he’d be right behind it.
After an instant of hesitation, he made his decision. Jake closed his eyes and swung his body backward. He heard the bolts grind as they tore free of the wall. Then he opened his eyes and swung forward, letting go of the ladder rung when he reached the top of his arc. Like an acrobat on a trapeze, Jake flew across the empty void.
For one long moment he was sure he wasn’t going to make it. Then his hand grabbed on to a beam, and he pulled himself tight against the wall.
Behind him the ladder broke free and dropped down into the dark void of the shaft, clanging again and again off the sides as it fell.
Jake held tight to the beam for several minutes, shaking as he thought about what might have happened if he had missed. Soon the shaking subsided. He had made it. He was safe.
Very slowly and very carefully Jake began to descend from the upper shaft of the pylon.
He was almost back to the clubhouse level when he remembered why he was here.
Where was Babe?
Elsewhere Deep Space Nine was experiencing utter chaos. The Promenade was rapidly becoming a disaster zone. People fled as huge steel girders surged up through the floor of the mall like metallic prehistoric monsters. One girder shot skyward like an arrow and anchored itself in the ceiling, dangling precariously over the heads of fleeing pedestrians.
One section of the balcony overlooking the Promenade split apart. Only the quick reaction of one of the assistant engineers prevented several Bajoran sightseers from plunging through the crevice.
Rolling shock waves shook the station like an endless series of earthquakes and sent anything not tied down—and quite a bit that was—careening across the open spaces. An alert security guard scooped up a child who had stumbled and was about to be rolled over by a runaway maintenance cart and hustled her to safety.
People ducked and dodged objects coming at them from every direction. The Promenade had become a live mine field, and no place seemed safe. But incredibly, in spite of the panic and the property damage, no one was injured by any of these flying projectiles.
Quark watched in dismay as his entire stock of vintage Juno wines tumbled off the shelves, ending up in a pool of pink liquid at his feet. With his establishment collapsing around him, Quark took the only prudent course of action open to him—he hid under the bar.
“Some security,” Quark cursed as yet another shelf of expensive spirits crashed down on him. “Odo, where are you when I need you?”
Meanwhile, in Operations, Commander Sisko was asking the same question. “Where is Odo?”
“He was on his way to the docking bay where the Ulysses is berthed,” Kira replied. “But I can’t seem to get a fix on his communicator badge. I can’t get a fix on anyone’s comm badge.”
Another quake shook Ops. Anything that wasn’t secured again flew across the room. The whole station seemed to be coming apart at the seams.
“What’re the Pyxians hitting us with?” Sisko asked, holding on to the sides of the Operations Table.
“Unknown,” Kira replied, trying to work her computer terminal. “Appears to be some kind of high-frequency blasts. They’re tearing the station apart.”
“That’s obvious! But what do we do about it?”
“Fire has broken out in docking bay two,” Dax reported.
“Send an emergency team,” Sisko responded.
“I don’t have an emergency team to send,” O’Brien countered. “Right now everyone I have is in at least three places at once.”
“Can’t you contact the Pyxians?” Sisko appealed to Kira.
“I’m sending, Commander. But if they’re receiving, they’re not tel
ling me about it.”
At that moment the largest quake yet struck the station.
We can’t take this much longer, Sisko thought. Odo, you better come up with something fast.
With the station coming apart, Darm struggled back toward where the runabouts were docked. Under the circumstances, with the docking bays in chaos, a large ship had no chance to escape, but a smaller runabout might sneak away in the confusion. Darm did not mind deserting a sinking ship, even if he had to leave everyone else behind.
Maybe not everyone. For it was at that moment that Darm saw Babe. The furry little alien creature was sitting in the middle of the corridor, almost as if he were waiting for the spacer. Darm took it as a sign that his luck was finally changing for the good. He smiled.
“Gotcha,” Darm said as he grabbed Babe.
Surprisingly the creature made no attempt to escape.
“At least I’ll leave this cursed place with a few bars of gold-pressed latinum in my pockets.” Darm whistled as he carried the creature down the corridor.
Darm found the alien Forsh near the airlock to his ship. None of the airlocks was functioning, so there was no way to get aboard.
“Even if there were a way, nothing is leaving the station,” wailed Forsh. “We’re all doomed!”
“Then you won’t mind paying me for delivering this,” Darm said as he shoved Babe forward.
“What am I going to do with that thing when this whole station is falling apart?”
“Frankly, I don’t really care,” was Darm’s hard response. “But we made a deal. And you’re going to honor it.” Darm took out his phaser to emphasize the point.
While nodding, Forsh took something from his belt pouch. It was a slender card that resembled a computer microcircuit board. It was actually a bearer note that could be exchanged for five bars of gold-pressed latinum, with no questions asked, anywhere in the Federation. “This is the amount we agreed upon,” Forsh said as he handed the card to Darm.
Darm took the card, then reached into Forsh’s belt pouch and removed four more of the cards. “I’ve just upped the price.”
