Station Rage

by Diane Carey

  Odo flinched as the electricity shot through him, but concentrated on the panel, pouring his strength into simply wrenching the cover off. Once he saw the conduits, he was able to push his hand in and rip out the guts of the electrical power unit. Simple enough.

  In a moment he was standing over Ibrahim with a handful of shattered and torn electronics, and the zapping had stopped.

  He bent over to put his hands on Ibrahim, and he was struck from behind between the shoulder blades—

  Pok

  Not a punch, but a puncture, as if hit by a marble from a slingshot. Something small penetrated his substance. He straightened quickly and turned to look around.

  Pok pok pok pok pok

  His arms, his back, his shoulder, his other arm—it was as if insects were dive-bombing him. He flinched away, only to be struck again and again. Something solid was hitting him, a dozen solid things—he tried to morph away from the tiny pellets striking him, but there was nothing solid left. Somehow the pellets were dissolving inside him, melting into his body.

  Pok pok pok

  "Ow!" Ibrahim gulped as he lay on the floor, and twisted to grab his left thigh. Suddenly there was blood on his thigh, oozing slowly from a small round wound. "Ow—"

  "Odo, open the door!"

  As abruptly as the stinging had begun, it ended. The turbolift fell to silence, but for Odo's own ragged breathing and the shocked gasps of Ibrahim on the floor.

  "Odo! Open the door!"

  Sisko's voice was a stabilizing force. Odo latched on to it and willed himself to concentrate. From in here he could manipulate the lift doors mechanically. In a moment they reluctantly scraped open.

  "What happened?" Sisko demanded. He snapped his fingers, and the two other Security men dragged Ibrahim out of the lift. "Get him to the infirmary. Odo, what happened?"

  Dizzy and suddenly nauseated, Odo parted his lips and worked to form the words. "Something hit me. . . ."

  "Electrical bolts?"

  "No … after that … some kind of pellets."

  Taking him by both arms, Sisko glanced at the ceiling and wall panels of the lift, bodily pulled him out. "It was a booby trap! Let's get out of here."

  "He is evacuating the station. Did you hear him mention that? Certainly not due only to our little presence. So far we've been hardly more than a slightly debilitating nuisance to such a man. He would not buckle so for merely us. So why is he evacuating the station? Elto? What do you think?"

  The High Gul strode up and down the small line of his men, permeated with appreciation for his few men who had offered him not so much as a wince of doubt or resistance despite the costly revelations of the past short hours. Foggy memories had become crisp as to why he elected these particular children to follow him at so near a proximity, to rest upon their strong backs the empire of the future.

  Elto's face flexed as he contemplated the question, but he didn't appear embarrassed that he didn't know the answer. Rather, he seemed concerned that he was somehow failing to comprehend something important about the situation. "High Gul," he said finally, "I cannot add it up. What am I missing?"

  The High Gul smiled. "You're missing a broader thinking process, my son. Realize that we are on a space station … and imagine why you would evacuate it. If he is evacuating, then he is expecting …"

  A light popped on in Elto's eyes, and the High Gul was gratified to see the same light flare in several other eyes at the same time, though none of the others begged for attention. Elto had the floor.

  "Invasion!" Elto caught his breath. "Someone is coming here!"

  "Yes," the High Gul said. "Someone is coming for us."

  "For us?" Koto interrupted.

  "Of course. You don't think this is a coincidence, do you? No, no, it isn't. Someone has been notified of our awakening."

  In a flush of anger, Ren came forward a step. "By Garak?"

  "I don't know … possibly. Though he could have notified anyone he wished, without awakening us first."

  Ren's anger faded. "Oh …"

  "I would rather guess there was some kind of automatic signal sent by our warming slabs, something integrated into the mechanics decades ago. Therefore, shall we assume this is to be a welcoming arrival?"

  "No," Elto said.

  The High Gul nodded. "No. It is probably our betrayer who comes to us now."

  "Why assume it is our betrayer, High Gul?" Clus asked freely. "It may be someone glad to have us awake."

  "Possibly," the High Gul allowed, "but if that's so, then why didn't he awaken us long ago, and revel in our presence?"

  The anger started to simmer back into place as his logic worked on them. The anger, the indignation of having been betrayed, this would be good, but he wanted them to think hard right now, to understand why they would take the actions that were coming. He wanted them to believe in his process of thought and decision.

  "Let us contemplate carefully," he said. "Arbitrary killing will get us nowhere. We will only enrage our enemy, and his rage will serve him, not us. Even if we kill at a ratio of ten to one, we will still lose. Our tactics must be more exacting, more specific. We have already managed to debilitate their chief of Security. The shapeshifter will barely be able to function and will probably be forced to leave the area. Now we will concentrate on pushing Captain Sisko out of the way."

  "I volunteer to do it, High Gul!" Fen said.

  Ren pushed past him. "And I volunteer to do it, High Gul!"

  "Thank you, thank you," the High Gul told them, holding out one hand in a settling gesture. "When the moment is right, the honor shall be yours together, and the two of you can wrestle for the final blow." Then he chuckled as he regarded them both. "You know, I should really have one of you change your name, lest you confuse me."

  "I'll change my name, High Gul!" Fen blurted.

  The High Gul watched him for a moment, seeing in this dim light the haunting skull features on a face that was too young to look so gaunt. In fact, they all looked gaunt, bony, as if death had not quite let go of them. They were awakened, but somehow their young skin had no luster, their eyes were still sunken, the skin around their mouths like vellum, lips thin and unfilled, showing faintly the shape of their teeth. It was as though the hibernation had indeed gone on a little too long, as if they couldn't come all the way back.

  Why hadn't he noticed until now?

  He wondered how he looked.

  "No, no, I was only joking with you, my son," he said, with a smile that suddenly felt skeletal. "Both your names are dear to me and will go down in the history of our people. Don't be so serious."

  "Yes, High Gul. . . ."

  "As you will, High Gul. . . ."

  "Now, think, think, think. Using information Garak can give us about the station, we can cause the computer to speak in ways that will do us well. This way we can capture their operations center without destroying it. Better to capture an intact station than a destroyed one. Contact Garak and bring him to me."

  "Garak! How fulfilling it is for me to see you again in the alleyways of this hinterland city. Strange, but I've become accustomed already to your presence. It consoles me somehow."

  "I'm most honored, High Gul … here are the rations you requested. I couldn't bring you a replicator without arousing suspicion, but I stole these from a life craft."

  Garak raised his eyes hesitantly, finding the role of the supplicant rather natural, considering in whose presence he stood.

  Still, his innards protested. Burrowing about in the veins of Deep Space Nine was grating on the ego, and the High Gul's enthusiasm should have been validation, yet he was tentative. His hands were pale, clammy, his motions mechanical. He found less and less satisfaction in meeting the High Gul's eyes, and when he did it seemed the allure had gone out of them.

  When had he come to question himself so? Out of a thousand schemes, devices, contrivances to get himself back into the fond eye of the powers of Cardassia, why did this one seem so fraught with artifice?

&
nbsp; Probably because the High Gul was not yet in true power, and that always posed a risk. Surely that was to come. Destiny had put this wonder into Garak's hands and he had conjured it awake, and now it was his responsibility to see the phantasm through to substance. Perhaps all custodians of destiny shivered now and then.

  The High Gul wasn't a large person in comparison with the Elite Guards, yet he fired the mind with his manner. Though he seemed animate, in fact he moved very little. His steps, his motions, his very breathing, the shifts of his eyes were carefully considered for style and impact. Though he seemed to speak often, in reality, if one paid attention as Garak had begun to do, the High Gul paused many times to scan the effect of whatever he had just said.

  The result was many moments of expressive silence, which tended to humble the lower caste and to enhance the stability of the High Gul. It was effective, and Garak envied it.

  How many years of practice had been required to devise, practice, and perfect such elegance of control? Control not of self, but of those around. Indeed a much higher attainment.

  The great old man was looking at Garak that way now. It was humbling, haunting, and Garak shrank beneath the sound of his own awe. He lowered his eyes.

  As if sensing, perhaps measuring, that thoughts were beginning to stray, the High Gul moved close to him and attended Garak as if he had nothing else in the universe to attend.

  "You could find no translators for us?"

  "Oh—translators … well, there aren't any portable ones. The station has a universal translation system built into all the communications. All you have to do is feed power to a unit that hasn't been compromised by your … by the damage."

  The old leader's eyes gleamed. "Built in? Universal Translators in daily use? So integral? Such a place!"

  Garak tucked his chin. "Yes. It's quite a place."

  "And the schematics you delivered to us have been instrumental in our understanding of the station. We will find a way to free the translation system, that we may speak to these people. We stand in the midst of technical majesty! It is a wonder of modern times, this clawed outcast."

  He waved both hands in an encompassing gesture, communicating his own kind of awe. Then he reached to the side of the narrow passage, and touched the wall.

  Garak wondered if he were being manipulated, but this icon from the past seemed genuinely appreciative of the giant station, like a trainer looking at a wild animal. To Garak, Deep Space Nine had been, until now, little more than a hideout where he could lie low from those who wanted him dead and stand firm against those who would make him a puppet.

  Today, somehow, it was something else.

  "Garak," the High Gul said, his haggard face a canvas of wisdom. Somehow he moved a step even closer. "I sense your difficulty."

  At his ancient leader's insight, Garak put up thicker defenses. Suddenly he realized how much he had given away, even in silence that had been meant to hide his evasions.

  "I am committed to you, Excellency," he attempted, curing his tone as perfectly as possible in this dusty hideout.

  "But I see sacrifice behind your eyes," the High Gul went on, "and I understand it. As an exile living here, you must have feelings for these people, yet you have the inner mettle to take this chance for a change in the balance of powers. I wish to assure you, my goal is not to destroy these people, but to alter rule at Cardassia."

  He placed a weathered, steady hand upon Garak's shoulder, and stepped back, an enticing movement where others would have stepped closer.

  "For you," he granted, "I will give these people an opportunity to surrender."

  At the right moment, he squeezed the shoulder just enough. The effect was like a change in gravity, and Garak forced an expression of innocent appreciation onto his face.

  Whether or not the High Gul believed the face—that was something else.

  As Garak and the Elite Guard gazed upon him, the High Gul gazed from one to the other, absorbing them one by one into his power.

  "I will awaken the Cardassians, divide the Bajorans from the Federation, ignite the Klingons, tease the Romulans, infuriate the Orions, combust these Terrans who have come among us, and all the others who already bristle, and foment the war that should have happened a long time ago. They'll all be warring each other, and I will win. With the galaxy once again on fire, I will be at home."

  "They knew you could get through small openings that would keep the rest of us out. They trapped Ibrahim in there and used those electrical bolts to make us want to get him out. The trap has your name all over it. They wanted to get to you into a place where the rest of us couldn't go, and we fell for it."

  "We had no choice," Odo chafed as he lay on the diagnostic bed with Sisko glowering down at him. "A man was trapped and being tortured."

  "I should've seen through it." Sisko paced to the end of the bed and back up the other side. "They've been one step ahead of me all the way and that's got to stop. How do you feel?"

  Odo grimly resented Sisko's attentiveness. "Infiltrated," he said. He knew his answer was inaccurate, that Sisko was really asking him if he was fit for duty at this time when each of them was critical.

  "They put something in me," he went on. "I can feel it. And I can't get it out."

  "Describe that feeling."

  Disturbed by this colorful vagueness being forced upon him, Odo damned the guilt of being helpless. He struggled to find words that could only be frugal in explaining what he felt.

  "It's not heat, precisely, not cold, but … I'm aware of not being … completely pure."

  How foolish, how cheap it sounded. How unscientific.

  He pressed his lips flat, irritated at himself, and at Sisko for not becoming angry with him. Though cosmetic, Sisko's sedate fury allowed for too much latitude. It made Odo self-conscious, vulnerable.

  He hated that.

  "I can't help you, Captain," he said finally. "I don't know what they did, but although I'm somewhat tired I guarantee I am fit for duty."

  "We'll let the doctor decide that."

  "The doctor can do exactly nothing for me. He doesn't have a medical file on shapeshifters."

  "Even if he did, it would probably leak." Sisko prowled the end of the diagnostic bed as if unaware of his own quip. "I saw him. The leader. He wasn't just hiding in that shadow—he was watching the fight, looking for weaknesses. When you had to morph to get away from that spear, he saw one and he acted upon it. He figured out how to weaken you. I'm not going to let anybody else get cornered. I'm going to start pushing."

  Odo raised his head from the bed, and felt his neck ache and stretch. "How?"

  Sisko's jaw jutted as he ground his teeth in determination. "Without internal sensors, we're going to have to quail hunt. We have to flush them out."

  Letting his heavy head fall back, Odo asked again, with more force, "But how?"

  "Section by section, we're going to turn off the station, that's how. They have to breathe, they need warmth—we'll turn off the air, the heat—they'll come out or they'll die. We'll start with the docking pylons, right where we first found that tomb, and the unused reactor chambers. Starfleet will get here, and when they do, they're not going to be facing an armed station that I lost to the enemy. The first thing I'm going to do is prepare a shuttle for launch, and I want you to—"

  "Captain Sisko! Constable!"

  Dr. Bashir rushed into the area carrying a sealed sterile beaker, eyes wild.

  "For heaven's sake, Odo, don't revert to your liquid state!"

  "Doctor," Sisko interrupted. "Calm down and explain that."

  Bashir looked at Odo, then at Sisko, and held the beaker out. Inside was a very tiny pellet floating in inert pink juice. "I took this out of the soft tissue of Ensign Ibrahim's thigh. It's a pellet of nonreactive material, used, I presume, as a housing, a bullet. The nonreactive material remained solid in Ibrahim's tissue, but if it fell into liquid, like Odo's physical substance, it would dissolve immediately!"

  "Yes, I felt t
hem dissolve." Odo shoved himself up onto one elbow, and the doctor winced at the movement. "So what?"

  Bashir swallowed hard, then said, "Embedded inside is a tiny amount of Element One-ten!"

  Sisko pushed himself straight and paced away, one hand over his mouth, his eyes troubled.

  "What is it?" Odo asked. "What would that do?"

  "To Ensign Ibrahim, nothing," the doctor said, animated as a squirrel in a tree. "But in your physical makeup, the inert casing would dissolve right away and leave the element to integrate with your … body. At room temperature, it's in gaseous form, and it's penetrated you completely!"

  "Doctor, please, you're not making sense," Odo growled. "I don't feel any different!"

  His expression inflamed with frustration, Bashir looked desperately to Sisko.

  Odo took the cue and also glared at the captain. "Could they have gotten it from one of the shut-down reactors?"

  "If they did, then they killed the guards I put on station down there." New anger blistered across Sisko's face and he paced again, but only a step. "More heads for this witch-hunt."

  Odo looked at the doctor, then back to Sisko. "What does this material do to me?"

  Face stony and jaw set, Sisko forced himself to face him again. The ugly truth wasn't getting any more palatable. "Element One-ten is highly fissionable material, very unstable. When enough of it is rammed together in a small space, it reaches critical mass. Its own decay sets off a chain reaction. A small amount turns spontaneously and instantly into energy … and you get an explosion. A big one."

  Suddenly conscious of his hands, his legs, of even his most minute movement as he looked at the doctor and at his captain. Odo felt the gravel in his voice. "But what does that mean?"

  "It means," Sisko said, "you can't return to your liquid state to rest, or morph yourself into any other shape, certainly not anything the slightest measure smaller than you are now. You've got to hold this form indefinitely, no matter how exhausted you become. Or you'll erupt like an antimatter bomb."