Star Trek Deep Space 9

CHAPTER 1



Station Log, Commander Benjamin Sisko, Stardate
46384.1:
    In hopes of reviving the Bajoran mining industry, left
devastated after the Cardassian Occupation, the Feder-
ation has arranged, in cooperation with private Bajoran
investors, to transport a family of Hortas to Bajor. In
theory, the Hortas will use their natural tunneling
abilities to find pockets of minerals and ore which the
Cardassians either missed or deemed too difficult to
extract.
    We are currently awaiting the arrival of the Federa-
tion cruiser Puyallup, en route from Janus VI. I have
dispatched a team of officers to welcome the Hortas to
Deep Space Nine ....

THE AIRLOCK DOOR rolled out of the way like a gear in
some enormous clockwork mechanism. In contrast to
the grim gray walls of the docking ring, the circular
door was the dull red color of drying human blood.
Damn Cardassian architecture, Major Kira Nerys
thought as she walked briskly through the airlock
toward Docking Port g; even after so much time on the
station, I sti# haven't grown accustomed to the ugliness
of it all. Cardassian aesthetics are on a par with their
ethics, she mused; that is, they don't exist.
    Kira suspected that Commander Sisko would not
approve of such sentiments, at least in public. His
Federation was annoyingly reluctant to criticize the
cultures of even their most loathsome enemies. Hell,
they had even made peace with the Klingons. Some-
times she thought it was a miracle that the entire
Federation hadn't been conquered centuries ago. But
then, Kira wasn't sure she believed in miracles any-
more.
    Another airlock door, its gearlike teeth crimson as a
Bajoran sea-tiger, opened before her and the Bajoran
major found herself in a small waiting area outside the
docking port. A triangular display, lit in shades of red
and blue, announced the arrivals and departures of
various spacecraft. An outdated map of the station,
mounted on the wall under a sheet of transparent
aluminum, waited to mislead newcomers to DS9. Two
of her fellow officers, Lieutenant Jadzia Dax and Dr.
Julian Bashir, glanced toward her as she approached
them. Although a stark metal bench, of Cardassian
design, was bolted to both the floor and the adjoining
wall, the pair of officers remained standing. Kira
didn't blame them; uncomfortable and uninviting,
the bench resembled a torture device better suited to a
dungeon than a space station.
    Dax gave Kira a friendly smile and nod, while
Bashir kept on babbling at the young woman, his
hands waving enthusiastically as he spoke. As usual,
Kira noted, Bashir was hovering around Dax's lithe,
attractive form just like a Ferengi would. Why Dax
had never told Bashir just where he could beam
himself Kira had never understood.
    "As a specialist in multispecies medicine," the
doctor was saying, "naturally I find the Hortas fasci-
nating. They were the first silicon-based life-form
humanity ever encountered. Not only that, they also
secrete a powerfully corrosive acid that allows them to
move through solid rock the same way humanoids
move through air. They actually digest raw iron and
other minerals!"
    What was Bashir most enthralled with, Kira won-
dered: Dax's bright blue eyes and gracefully spotted
neck--or the sound of his own voice? Please, Jadzia,
Kira thought silently. Don't encourage him.
    "Really, Julian?" Dax said indulgently. "That's
very interesting."
    Oh, no. Kira sighed and shook her head. There was
no shutting him up now. Sure enough, Bashir leaned
against the bulkhead wall, in what he doubtless con-
sidered a suave and dashing manner, and resumed his
lecture. A Starfleet medical pouch, strapped over his
shoulder, dangled next to his side. "Then, of course,"
he said casually, his eyes never once leaving Dax's
attentive face, "there's the Horta's very unusual re-
productive cycle .... "
    Oh, give me a break, Kira fumed. Typically, howev-
er, Dax stood by cahnly, with her hands clasped
loosely behind her back. Although Dax had a fun-
loving side that Kira had learned never to underesti-
mate, the Trill science officer often exuded a sense of
effortless serenity that was almost spiritual. Not for
the first time, Kira was secretly envious. Is Dax what
Bajoran women were like, she wondered, before dec-
ades of Cardassian oppression transformed us into
refugees and revolutionaries? CouM I have ever known
that kind of peace? Kira fingered the silver earring
dangling from her right ear. The Bajorans had been a
deeply religious people once. Kira liked to think she
still was, and yet her spirit was often troubled.
    She paced impatiently back and forth across the
waiting area. Her dark red boots rapped against the
bare, uncarpeted floor. According to the display, the
Puyallup was now a few minutes late. What the hell
could be taking them so long? She had more impor-
tant things to do than watch another of Bashir's futile
attempts to flirt with Dax.
    "I've heard," Dax said to Bashir, "that the Hortas
only breed once every fifty thousand years." Kira
groaned quietly and rolled her eyes. Sometimes she
suspected that Dax actually enjoyed playing these
games with Bashir. Kira wouldn't put it past her; after
all, the Trill genuinely enjoyed socializing with
Ferengi.
    "That's a common misconception," the doctor ex-
plained. "It's true that every five hundred centuries
the entire species dies out, except for one Horta who
cares for the thousands of eggs left behind, from
which, eventually, a brand-new race of Hortas is born.
But, prior to these epochal near-extinctions, there are
interim generations of Hortas who reprOduce regu-
larly."
    Frankly, Kira didn't care whether each individual
Horta emerged independently from some primordial
lava flow, just so they performed as advertised, and
found new treasures in Bajor's pillaged mines. She
almost said as much, but Jadzia, damn her, gave
Bashir another too-perfect smile. "How intriguing,
Julian. From a medical perspective, are there any
advantages to this cycle?"
    "That's a very perceptive question, Jadzia!" Bashir
gushed. Kira prayed to all the Prophets that the
Federation cruiser would arrive soon. She tapped her
foot impatiently against the floor, wishing it were
Bashir's larynx instead. "Of course, the study of
Horta biology is less than a hundred years old, but our
best theory is that the cycle is a form of population
control. Hortas are basically ageless, indestructible,
and have no natural predators. Thus, every fifty
millennia, one generation of Hortas disappears to
make room for their descendants while the primary
Mother Horta, selected through a process we still
don't entirely understand, provides a form of cultural
continuity." The young doctor leaned toward Dax,
caught up by the joys of science, or hormones, or some
combination thereof. "Think of it! To be the adopted
mother to an entire new generation of beings. Imagine
what the sense of responsibility..."
    "Well," Kira interrupted him, hoping to forestall
another dissertation. "I look forward to meeting the
Hortas." And soon, she prayed. Exhausted already by
Bashir's unending chatter, she found herself seriously
contemplating the Cardassian-built bench, unpadded
metal slats and all.
    "You might want to brace yourself, Major," Bashir
said. Although addressing Kira, he edged even nearer
to Dax. His dark eyes glowing, clearly convinced that
the lovely Trill was hanging on his every word, he
lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Just
between the three of us, a Horta is not the most
attractive of beings. In fact," he said, winking at Dax
and working very hard at being casually, shockingly,
endearingly irreverent, "a fully grown Horta resem-
bles nothing as much as an oversized slug made out of
molten rock!"
    Abruptly, the smile disappeared from Dax's lips.
The station's science officer remained poised and at
ease, but her voice as she spoke was markedly colder
than before. "Some of my closest acquaintances look
like slugs, Doctor, as you may recall." She turned her
back on Bashir and gracefully walked away, a three-
hundred-year-old symbiont sharing a fresh new
humanoid body.
    The crestfallen look that came over Bashir's face, as
he suddenly realized his faux pas, was absolutely
priceless, at least as far was Kira was concerned. Gone
was the confident lecturer and ladies' man of mere
moments ago. "Jadzia," he stammered breathlessly,
"I didn't mean... that is, I certainly never intended
to... you know I have nothing but the highest re-
spect for you and... well, if I can explain... !"
    From the other side of the room, and across as
much empty space as possible, Dax glanced back at
him over her shoulder. "By the way, Julian, I was
excavating planetary cores alongside dozens of Hortas
while you were still learning to crawl."
    In other words, you cocky young fool, Kira thought,
she's been humoring you all along. This was getting
more entertaining by the moment; she'd have to
remember to tell Odo about it later. For the moment,
Dax seemed to have rendered Bashir speechless. It
wouldn't last, of course, but Kira intended to enjoy
the spectacle while she could.
    A short chime from her comm badge broke the
momentary silence. Damn, Kira thought, just as
Bashir was digging his own grave, with Dax maybe
ready to throw in a few handfuls of dirt. The doctor had
been saved, quite literally, by the bell. She patted the
badge on her left collar. "Kira here."
 Commander Sisko's deep voice came over the
comm. "We may have a problem, Major. Our sensors
detect another ship on an intercept course with the
Puyallup. The new ship's not responding to our hails,
and it appears to have come from Cardassian space."
    Cardassian! Kira snapped into combat mode, all
thought of Bashir's infatuations and embarrassments
instantly forgotten. Her fists clenched automatically.
Glancing at the map on the wall, mentally adjusting
for its various inaccuracies, she swiftly deduced the
location of the nearest runabout. "On my way," she
told Sisko. "I'm taking Dax and Bashir on the new
runabout, what's it called, the Amazon."
  "Understood," Sisko replied. "Be careful."
    Kira jerked her head toward the exit and took off at
a steady run. She squeezed impatiently past the slowly
rolling door as soon as a thin crescent of empty space
opened up. Wordlessly, the two Starfleet officers fol-
lowed quickly behind her. Bashir clutched his medical
pouch as he ran after Dax and Kira. The Amazon
waited in a service bay in the habitat ring, on the other
side of the closest crossover bridge. Take the turbolift,
Kira thought; that wouM be faster than on foot. In her
mind, she was already at the helm of the runabout,
racing away from the station, ready to engage the
enemy once more.
    She had no problems with slugs--Horta, Trill, or
Terran. Cardassians, on the other hand, were the
closest thing to sentient slime she knew.
    Phasers fired in her imagination, blasting the slime
out of existence. She was ready. She was willing.
  If only she could get there in time.

    Titan's large, lumpish body made a grinding sound
as she tunneled toward the bridge of the Puyallup. The
latter half of the small cruiser had been packed with
lightweight synthetic concrete, the better to simulate
the Horta's usually solid environment, but Ttan
sensed empty air only inches away. She burned
through a narrow partition of concrete and slid down
the corridor toward the bridge. Behind her, traces of
vapor rose from the freshly created tunnel. As usual,
the Nothingness her Federation allies called "an at-
mosphere" tickled the nerves of her outer carapace
and made her feel uncomfortably exposed. Prime
Mother, she entreated silently, let the worldstuff of
Bajor be firm and hard.
    The doorway opened before her and she entered the
bridge. A metallic semicircle large enough to accom-
modate a three-person crew, the chamber reeked to
Ttan of tritanium and duranium. Good, solid con-
struction, if a bit too airily spacious for her tastes.
Captain Dawson rose from the command seat and
greeted Ttan as the Horta rustled forward, her lower
fringes brushing the cool, metallic floor. Dawson was
a tall, stocky Terran whose jawline was decorated with
a reddish fringe of its own. Ttan believed it was a
male, but wasn't quite sure. Humanoids were such
peculiar entities: all carbon softness and pointy ap-
pendages. If it weren't for their calcium framework,
and a smattering of iron and other minerals, they'd
bear no resemblance to life as she knew it.
    "Prospector Ttan," it (he?) greeted her enthusiasti-
cally. "Thank you for joining us. We should be
arriving at Deep Space Nine shortly."
    "Fine Faring to you, Captain." The Federation
translator affixed to Ttan's husk gave her a melodious
voice with a slight East Indian accent. "And Smooth
Voyaging to you as well, Navigator Shirar."
    Ttan sensed the presence of the Vulcan navigator
before Shirar stepped away from her console and into
view. The currents of copper flowing through the
navigator were unmistakable.
    "Greetings, Prospector," Shirar said. Dark strands
of protein fibers, neatly aligned in descending parallel
rows, framed the Vulcan's pale features. The points of
her auditory organs--"ears," Ttan recalled--were
sharp as stalagmites, Previous conversations had
made it clear to Ttan that Shirar was female. "I trust
your offspring are well."
    "Yes, very." Ttan thought proudly of the twenty
eggs tucked safely away in a small vault she had carved
herself out of the concrete Starfleet had provided.
"And many thanks once more for the extra shielding
you devised for my pilgrim infants."
    Shirar nodded her chin slightly. "Given the impor-
tance and relative fragility of your eggs, it was only
logical to preserve them in a stasis field independent
of regular ship systems."
    "Not, I hasten to add," Captain Dawson said, "that
we anticipate any danger to your children. Still, it
always pays to be careful, especially where little ones
are concerned. I have three of my own, you know."
    Three eggs? Ttan briefly reconsidered Dawson's
gender. Then the captain called her attention to the
large viewscreen at the opposite end of the bridge. The
visual display, which occupied nearly the entire for-
ward wall, revealed a vast and terrifying blackness in
which distant stars seemed to race past them like
sparks thrown off by struck flints.
    The Emptiness Beyond the Emptiness. Ttan had
experienced space before, but still that vast and
endless void, so different from the subterranean home
of her people, both thrilled and intimidated her. It
was so open. How could any Horta survive without
the reassuring, aU-surrounding press of rock about
her, and where, she wondered, had she found the
courage to cross this immense absence in order to
carve new tunnels on a distant world? Ttan felt a surge
of pride and anticipation. What an opportunity to
burn her mark into the Stone of Memory. And maybe,
just maybe, centuries hence, she or one of her children
might become the Prime Mother of the next Renewal?
Ttan would never be so immodest as to admit such an
ambition to any other living being, but if she truly
strived and succeeded at the great task before her...
well, she could always dream, couldn't she?
    "Approaching DS9," an eager young voice an-
nounced. A Benzite, Ttan realized, recognizing the
distinct odor of chlorine from the artificial breathing
apparatus affixed under the ensign's chin. Although he
was basically humanoid in shape, and clad in a
standard blue Starfleet uniform, the Benzite's face
and hands were protected by a pale blue chitinous
covering with glistening silver undertones. His ears,
located higher on his skull than either Dawson's or
Shirar's, were also deeply recessed and less ornate
than other humanoids'. Ttan was proud that she could
identify them at all. With his smooth, hairless shell,
the Benzite somehow seemed more convincingly alive
than the other humanoids on the Puyallup, although
of course Ttan was far too tactful to say so.
"Go to impulse, Ensign," Dawson instructed.
"Yes, sir!" the Benzite responded, expelling a gust
of carbon trichloride. Seconds later, the ever-present
dilithium aftertaste Ttan had learned to associate
with warp travel dissipated from the bridge. The
streaking stars before her slowed in their fiery trajec-
tories past the ship. They were almost there, she
thought in wonder. Bajor: her new home and her
children's future birthplace.
    The fibrous mineral filaments around her base
rustled with excitement as she edged nearer the
viewscreen. Captain Dawson stepped beside her. He
stroked the fringe under his own chin.
    "Let me show you one of the more interesting local
sights," he said cheerfully. "Ensign, lateral view,
medium magnification."
    "Yes, sir," the young Benzite responded from his
post. Instantly, the image on the viewer shifted,
revealing what appeared to be a moon or planetoid
much closer to the ship than the faraway stars. The
moon was large and irregularly shaped, marked by a
chaotic pattern of gray-brown peaks and shadowy
craters, divided by intersecting veins of some rough,
reddish material. Unlike most other moons, this ob-
ject could not be described as a globe; unknown forces
had deformed its mass, flattening its eastern hemi-
sphere and causing the other half to stretch and
protrude along random stress lines, like a human skull
that has been smashed against a hard surface, with its
shell distorted but barely holding together, and bits of
soft tissue jutting out through the cracks. The moon's
coarse and mottled exterior suggested eons of violent
volcanic activity, resulting in a cracked, scarred, and
pitted terrain that had obviously never known the
patient polishing of wind or water. In many ways,
Ttan noted, the huge floating rock bore a distinct
resemblance to a Horta. She wondered if that was why
Dawson had invited her to the bridge.
    If the captain had observed the similarity, he did
not comment on it. "What you're looking at," he said,
"is the most distant of Bajor's moons. They call it The
Prodigal, because it has an unusually wide and ellipti-
cal orbit which brings it within sight of Bajor only
once every five years. More importantly, from our
point of view, its orbit should bring it near Deep Space
Nine in a couple of days. If you're still on the station
then, the view should be spectacular. Something
about the moon's composition causes it to glow
whenever it comes into close proximity with what we
now know to be the entrance to the wormhole.
Tourists and sightseers from all over the Federation
are flocking to DS9 to witness firsthand 'The Illumi-
nation of The Prodigal.'"
    "Previously," Shirar noted, "the station was not
located so close to the moon's path, nor were the
Cardassians inclined to accommodate outside observ-
ers during the Occupation. A better opportunity to
view the spectacle has not been available for genera-
tions."
    A tempting prospect, Ttan thought, but she sus-
pected that she would prefer to travel on to Bajor itself
as soon as possible. Indeed, her stop at the station
seemed more of a Federation formality than anything
else. As DS9 was beyond transporter range of the
planer's surface, a Bajoran shuttle had been hired to
convey her eggs and herself on the final leg of their
long journey. Soon, she recalled eagerly, my children
and I will burrow into the comforting denseness of a
brand-new world. She wondered what Bajor would
taste like.
    Suddenly, the Benzite ensign sat up straight in his
seat. A puff of chlorine escaped his breathing tube.
"Captain! Unidentified vessel dead ahead and ap-
proaching fast." His hands moved briskly over the
face of his console. Ttan heard his chitinous fingers
click lightly against the controls. "They're powering
up their phaser banks."
    "Shields up!" Dawson ordered. "Red Alert!" He
hurriedly regained his seat at the center of the bridge.
Shirar resumed her post as well, to the left of the
Benzite's station. "Brace yourself, Ttan," the captain
said.
    Alarms blared liked screaming babies. Ttan fought
her instinctual response to tunnel to safety; she would
only destroy the delicate circuitry below the bridge.
Instead, she wedged herself into the space beneath an
unmanned computer station and the floor. Despite
her best intentions, a trickle of acid dripped from her
hide, scarring the surface of the floor. My eggs, she
thought desperately. My children!
    Dawson fired off commands to his crew. "Naviga-
tor, take over piloting. Ensign, hostile onscreen."
    The Benzite brought their attacker onto the moni-
tor. The onrushing ship had a hammerhead prow that
promised no peaceful intentions. The craft's muted,
reddish brown exterior made it difficult to spot
against the darkness of space--until a flash of phaser
fire lit up the screen.
    The first blast struck like an earthquake. The
Puyallup shook around her; she could feel the vibra-
tions as, even shielded, the ship's hull shuddered
under the blast's impact.
    "Shields down forty-three percent, Captain."
Shirar announced from her post. "Forty-three point
seven seven seven nine, to be precise."
    "Round numbers will suffice," Dawson said dryly,
his voice admirably cool. Beneath the crimson facial
filaments, however, his hide had gone pale. Ttan
sensed the iron coursing through his veins. "Weapons
systems?" he asked.
    "Inoperative," Shirar replied. "Executing evasive
maneuvers." Unlike Dawson, Ttan noted, the Vul-
can's internal fluids were not moving any faster than
before the attack.
    "Dammit," the captain swore, as the Puyallup took
a sharp turn away from their attacker. "We're hope-
lessly outgunned." His fist pounded the armrest of his
chair. "This was supposed to be a passenger run,
nothing more!"
    Another bolt struck the Federation cruiser, rocking
the floor from side to side. The illumination in the
bridge flickered. A shower of green sparks exploded
from the console in front of the young Benzite. He fell
from his seat and lay twitching only a few yards away
from Ttan. The thin blue shell covering his flesh was
splintered in several places. A thick orange liquid
leaked through the crevices. Mercury mixed with
platinum, Ttan realized. She regretted that she had
never learned the ensign's name.
    "Shields down one hundred percent," Shirar
warned. Her eyes did not leave her console display.
"Warp engines off-line."
    "Open hailing frequencies," Dawson ordered, star-
ing in horror at the fallen Benzite. "Find out what
they want."
  "No response, Captain," the Vulcan said.
    The main viewer remained locked on the hammer-
head ship. Its prow grew larger and nearer by the
second, until it seemed to fill the screen. "Send an
SOS to Deep Space Nine," Dawson said. "Tell them
we need assistance... now!"
    Crammed into her hiding place, Ttan felt an unusu-
al sensation suffuse her entire being, as though she
were instantly dissolving into vapor or lesS. White
static, loud and crackling, seemed to come between
her and the rest of the bridge. Still, just before the
Puyatlup faded completely away, she heard Shirar say,
"They're activating their transporter .... "
    My children, my children, Ttan's soul cried out as
she was snatched by the Void.

    "The unidentified vessel has fired upon the
Puyallup," Dax announced from the conn station
aboard the runabout. Seated beside her, Kira piloted
the Amazon, pushing the ship as fast as it would go on
impulse power, just short of warp speed. Behind Dax
and Kira, Dr. Bashir gripped the armrests of his seat
with white knuckles as the runabout banked sharply
to the right.
    "Unidentified vessel, my foot," Kira snarled. She
knew a Cardassian sneak attack when she saw one.
She glanced down at her monitors; they were only
seconds away from the battle. A small, tight smile
lifted the comers of her lips. She imagined strangling
the Cardassian attackers with their own ropy neck
tendons. It wasn't enough that they had repeatedly
robbed and pillaged this system during their long
occupation... no, they had to keep coming back for
the scraps as well!
    Not this time, she vowed, as they came within sight
of the conflict. In the distance, she saw the scarred and
blackened hull of the small FederatiOn cruiser, drift-
ing in space. The command saucer was still intact, she
noted with relief, but both warp nacelles bore the
marks of direct phaser strikes; the cruiser wasn't going
anywhere on its power. Beyond the Puyallup, her
attacker, of recognizably Cardassian design, hovered a
little short of striking distance. Not a full-size Galor-
class warship, Kira noted with relief, and only slightly
larger than the runabout itself. She increased the
magnification on the viewer. The Cardassian ship was
curiously unadorned, bearing no military insignia or
 markings. A rogue pirate, she speculated, or some sort
 of covert mission? Knowing the Cardassians, she
 suspected the latter.
     "I'm still detecting life signs on the Puyallup, "Dax
 informed her. Despite the runabout's wild flight,
 every strand of Jadzia's long brown hair remained
 tucked neatly in place. How does she manage that,
 Kira wondered, despite herself. "Humanoid, that is.
 I'd have to recalibrate for Hortas." Suddenly, Dax's
 violet eyes grew wide. "Major, the attackers beamed
 something away from the Puyallup."
    Thieves/ Kira thought, shifting course slightly to
bring the runabout above and away from the besieged
cruiser. The last thing she wanted was to put the
Puyallup in a cross fire. The bumpy flight smoothed
out quickly as she slowed to combat speed. "Lieuten-
ant Dax, activate shields and weapons systems. Pre-
pare to fire on command."
    Even as she spoke, a ray of crimson energy leaped
from the prow of the Cardassian ship to strike the
battered transport. For a second, Kira's heart stopped
as she feared she was too late, that the Federation ship
would fly apart, killing everyone aboard, an instant
before she could try to defend them. Those bastards,
she cursed the Cardassians; clearly, they intended to
leave no witnesses behind. If they've destroyed the
Hortas, she thought angrily, I'll see them reduced to
interstellar ash.
    Plasma flames, green and incandescent, rippled
across the surface of the Puyallup, and the entire ship
turned cartwheels in space, but the cruiser held to-
gether, if only for a few moments more. Kira breathed
a sigh of relief. The Prophets had given her another
chance.
 To hell with warning shots. "Microtorpedo. Now!"
she ordered. Dax's fingers flew across her control pad.
Kira watched with grim satisfaction as the torpedo
darted straight for the enemy's bridge. A photon blast
exploded against the Cardassian's shields, rocking the
raider's ship. "The other torpedo. Now." That was the
end of her torpedoes, but Kira wasn't going to let up
now. The Puyallup probably wouldn't survive another
blast, so she didn't want to give the Cardassians a
moment's rest. Besides, she still had her phasers.
    The second torpedo detonated against the under-
side of the Cardassian vessel. Their shields held once
more, but the force of the explosion caused the enemy
ship to lurch and dip momentarily, like a fixed buoy
riding out a sudden wave. And was that the
Cardassians' emergency lighting blinking off, then on?
Kira couldn't tell for sure, but she hoped as much.
Seconds later, the ship lifted away from the Puyallup.
Was it going to take the battle to the Amazon? Kira
held her breath. "Enemy's shields at eight-five per-
cent," Dax said calmly. "Energizing our phaser
banks."
    Then, to Kira's surprise and disappointment, the
Cardassian raider rotated horizontally until the rear
of the ship faced the runabout. Warp engines flashed
like prismatic lightning before her eyes and the
Cardassians took off in retreat. "Heading?" she asked
Dax quickly.
"The Cardassian border. Away from DS9."
Everything in Kira's blood urged her to pursue the
Cardassian ship, to hunt them down and make them
pay for this unforgivable attack, to recover what they
had stolen from the Federation and Bajor. She con-
templated the wounded cruiser, its once gleaming hull
now burned and twisted. The Puyallup floated out of
control, at an angle almost 360 degrees away from its
original orientation; she hoped, for the survivors'
sake, that the artificial gravity had not been shorted
out by the Cardassians' blasts so that everyone would
stay rightside-up aboard the ship, regardless of its
shifting position in space. But were there any survi-
vors? Even as she wondered, the Cardassians were
getting farther and farther away.
    "Damn," she muttered under her breath. Then,
more firmly: "Hail the Puyallup. Find out if they
require medical assistance." She swiveled her seat
around to address Bashir. The young physician met
her gaze steadily. "Get ready, Doctor. I think you're
going to be busy." Kira turned toward Dax. "Lock a
tractor beam on the cruiser. We'll tow it back to DS9
later; for now, hold it in place."
    Dax had already established a corem link with the
Puyallup's captain. Kira was relieved to hear that,
apparently, someone was still alive over there. Still,
she stared with cold fury toward the sector into which
the Cardassians had warped away. This isn't over yet,
she promised herself. Nobody invades the Bajoran
system and escapes with impunity, not while I'm alive.
Especially not the Cardassians.
    "Major?" Dax interrupted Kira's vengeful musings.
"Bad news. The Mother Horta was beamed off the
Puyallup. She's been kidnapped."

CHAPTER
      2

SISKO'S OFFICE had once belonged to Gul Dukat, the
former Cardassian commander of Deep Space Nine,
who obviously hadn't been interested in making his
visitors comfortable. Seated behind an imposing
black desk, his head and shoulders framed by a
cat's-eye-shaped window that looked out on the sur-
rounding stars, Benjamin Sisko observed his staff
standing at attention before him. Not for the first
time, he reminded himself to get some more chairs.
    Dr. Bashir, flanked by Dax and Kira, continued to
debrief the commander on the crisis involving the
Puyallup. "To our knowledge, there are no casualties
so far. Ensign Muluck was severely injured, but his
situation seems to have stabilized. Nurse Kabo is
looking after him now; I've given her detailed instruc-
tions on the care and treatment of Benzites." Sisko
noted orange stains on the sleeves of Bashir's uniform:
Muluck's blood? He wondered how much emergency,
hands-on care the Benzite had required, and if
Muluck would still be alive if not for the young
doctor's efforts. "Captain Dawson and Lieutenant
Shirar received only concussions and minor fractures.
They've been released from the infirmary." Bashir
hesitated before continuing. "Captain Dawson wants
to take part in any rescue mission, but, as medical
officer, I don't think that's a good idea."
    Sisko agreed. While he sympathized with Dawson's
desire to fulfill his responsibilities toward Ttan, nei-
ther he nor Lieutenant Shirar sounded like they were
in any shape to take on the raiders. Better they should
supervise repairs on the Puyallup, which, no doubt,
had other vital missions scheduled.
    "What about the Horta eggs?" Sisko asked. As a
father himself, he felt a pang at the thought of the
unborn Hortas being destroyed or orphaned.
    "All twenty eggs are unbroken and appear to be
unharmed," Bashir said. "I must admit, though, that
prenatal examination of Hortas is something new for
me. Horta eggs look like smooth silicon nodules; they
cantoand have--been mistaken for lifeless mineral
deposits."
    Those nodules are going to hatch, Sisko thought.
What then? Twenty newborn Hortas separated from
their mother? That couM be a problem. Still, there were
more pressing issues to deal with now, like the fate of
the Mother Horta .... He made a mental note to have
Chief O'Brien secure the eggs in an unused cargo bay.
    On second thought, he corrected himself, these eggs
are guests, not freight. Better make that an empty
suite on the habitat ring.
    Dax stepped forward, a data padd in her right hand.
"The eggs were protected by a contained stasis field,
Benjamin. I suspect that this field shielded the eggs
from the brunt of the attack, and may have prevented
the raiders from beaming away the eggs as well."
    "Raiders?" Kira said. "Cardassians, you mean."
Placing her palms firmly on the surface of Sisko's
desk, she leaned toward him. He recognized the fiery
look in her eyes; Kira was out for blood. "Command-
er, this is a shameless Cardassian incursion against
Bajor and the Federation. We have to retaliate."
    Sisko spoke slowly, choosing his words with care.
"I've spoken with Gul Dukat. He insists that the
Cardassian military government knows nothing about
the attack on the Puyallup--or the present where-
abouts of the abducted Horta." Kira snorted, and
Sisko waved a hand to head off her objections. "Yes,
yes, I know. I don't believe it either. Without proof,
however, I can hardly launch a full-scale armada
against the Cardassians, even if I had the ships, which
I don't."
"But we have to do something!" Kira insisted.
"And we will, Major," Sisko said firmly. "The
Horta, Ttan, was under Starfleet protection. A rescue
mission is our top priority, but first we have to figure
out where she's been taken." He rested his chin on his
clasped hands. "So, assuming the Cardassians are
responsible, why would they kidnap Ttan?"
    "To sabotage the Bajoran economy?" Bashir specu-
lated.
    "Unlikely," Dax said. She consulted her padd. "The
Horta mining project was an experimental affair,
confined to one site on the southern continent. Al-
though promising in theory, it wasn't yet a proven
success, let alone essential to the Bajoran recovery."
    Kira pulled back from Sisko's desk, but her entire
body still shook with indignation. "Since when did
Cardassians need a reason to rob and kill?"
    "Point taken," Sisko said diplomatically. "Still, it's
clear that this attack had a purpose, and that purpose
was specifically to snatch Ttan. So, again, why does
someone steal a Horta?"
    "Mining," Dax said. "That must be it. The Hortas
are the greatest natural miners in the known galaxy.
The human-Horta mining alliance on Janus VI is the
most productive--and profitable--source of raw ore
and rare elements in the entire Federation."
    Yes, Sisko thought. That made sense. Slave labor
and greed; even Kira had to agree that those were
plausible motives for a Cardassian operation. "What
we're looking for then is a Cardassian mining installa-
tion. That's where we'll find Ttan." Sisko rose from
his chair, his decision made. "Dax, check the station's
computer. Find out the coordinates of the five nearest
Cardassian mining operations, in order of proximity
to DS9. Kira, rearm the Amazon and assemble a
security team." Sisko paused for a second before
continuing. "Take Wilkens, Muckerheide, Parks,
Jonsson, and Aponte." He saw Kira's eyes widen as he
named his choices, all Starfleet personnel, but she said
nothing, for now, and he chose to ignore her expres-
sion.
    Later, he thought. He was not fool enough to think
that the confrontation had been permanently post-
poned. "The goal here is to rescue Ttan and, hopeful-
ly, return her unharmed. Fast in and fast out."
    "Commander," Bashir began. "Request permission
to accompany the rescue party. Ttan may already be
injured, and I've been reading up on Horta first aid."
    "What about Ensign Muluck?" Sisko asked. He
glanced again at the bloodstains on Bashir's wrists.
    "Nurse Kabo can care for him now. My presence is
not required."
    "I think I should go along too, Benjamin," Dax
added. "I've probably had more experience with
Hortas than anyone else on the station. In fact, one of
my granddaughters lives on Janus VI."
    Sisko nodded. He wondered briefly whether Dax
was that woman's grandmother or grandfather.
"Kira," he said, "Bashir and Dax are with your team.
Prepare to depart within the hour." He looked them
over. "Be careful, all of you. That will be all."
    The office doors slid shut behind Dax and Bashir as
they exited. Not surprisingly, Kira lingered behind.
Okay, Sisko thought, slowly stepping out from behind
his desk, let's get this over with. "Is there something
else, Major?" he asked flatly, his voice giving nothing
away.
    "Permission to speak frankly, Commander?" Kira
asked.
    "Go ahead," he replied, surprised and impressed
that she had actually requested permission.
    "The security team you assigned, they're all
Starfleet. No Bajorans, aside from me. What's the
story?"
 "Does there have to be a story?" Sisko said.
    "The majority of the station's security forces are
Bajoran. The Horta had been invited by Bajorans for
a Bajoran project. The attack on the cruiser occurred
in Bajoran space." Kira's voice grew more forceful
with each point she recited. "And yet, there are almost
no Bajorans involved in the rescue mission. Oh, I
think there's a story, Commander, and I'd like to
know what it is."
    She is my first officer, he thought. She deserves an
honest answer. "I don't want this situation to escalate,
Kira. Because of your history, Bajorans and Car-
dassians are a volatile combination. For that reason,
I'm reluctant to send a team of armed Bajorans into
Cardassian territory."
"You don't trust us to behave?" Kira asked sarcasti-
cally.
    "I trust you, "Sisko emphasized. "But your mission
is to bring back Ttan, not start a war or avenge old
wrongs. We have many fine Bajoran security officers,
but I'd rather use Starfleet personnel on this particular
mission. Sorry."
    Kira's eyes blazed, but she kept her voice even. "I
disagree strongly. Bajorans have a large stake in this
mission, and we shouldn't be treated like trigger-
happy children."
    "Fine," Sisko said. "Your objections are noted. But
we'll do this my way."
    "Understood," Kira said. She turned and walked
out the door, her spine straight as a spear. "I'11 be
under way shortly." The double doors closed behind
her with a whish of air.
    "Good luck," Sisko said. He took a deep breath and
settled back into his chair. After a moment's thought,
he tapped his comm badge. "Chief O'Brien. Report to
Ops in about fifteen minutes. I want to talk to you
about some eggs."

    Dax returned to Sisko's office before O'Brien ar-
rived. A black equipment pouch was at her side, held
on by a strap over her shoulder. Her blue eyes
observed Sisko with warmth and concern. "You
wanted to see me, Benjamin?"
    "Yes." He glanced at the intricate Saltah'na clock
resting on his desk. "Find any likely coordinates?"
    Dax sat down on one corner of his desk. They'd
known each other too long to worry about Starfleet
protocol, at least in private. "The closest Cardassian
mining colony is an L-class planet in the Xoxa system,
about twelve hours away at warp three. There are
other possibilities, but they're much more distant. Of
course, they could have taken Ttan to a new mine we
know nothing about, or maybe even an archaeological
dig."
    "I've thought of that," he said. He'd even consid-
ered the possibility that the Cardassians might have
some insane idea of using the Horta in a military
operation; after all, one Horta had managed to kill
several armed humans during the Federation's first
encounter with their species. Fortunately, that initial
misunderstanding had been straightened out quickly,
close to a century ago.
    "The Xoxa colony sounds like our best bet,
though," he continued. "We'll have to try there--and
hope for the best." He looked again at the bronze
Saltah'na clock he'd constructed some time ago, while
under the influence of an alien matrix; almost three
hours had passed since the Horta had vanished from
the bridge of the Puyallup. Thank goodness her chil-
dren were safe, at least. "Jadzia, do we have any idea
when those eggs are likely to hatch?"
    "According to the immigration files in the
Puyallup's data banks, not for a week or two," she
said. "Horta births are no more predictable than
human delivery dates, of course, but I think you've
some breathing space before the children emerge. And
don't forget, the eggs are also confined in a stasis field,
which should keep them dormant for the time being."
    A mental image came to his mind, of over a dozen
baby Hortas, like huge corrosive earthworms, awak-
ing without their mother. If they were to hatch, what
was he supposed to feed them? Raw rhodinium in-
gots? Kira, he thought, get Ttan back soon. "Is the
away team ready?" he asked Dax.
  "Almost. The runabout's being refitted with a larger
passenger module, as well as additional torpedoes.
Julian's getting together some special medical sup-
plies. The security team is armed and ready. Kira will
page me when she's ready; it should be soon." She
gave Sisko a searching look. "Benjamin, what did you
really want to talk about? I haven't got much time."
    "It's Kira," he said. "You know how hot-blooded
she can be, especially where Cardassians are con-
cerned."
    "That's to be expected," Dax responded. "She's
fought the Cardassians her whole life, seen friends
and allies victimized by them time after time."
    "Of course," he agreed. "Frankly, there's no love
lost between me and Gul Dukat. But I don't want this
hostage situation to erupt into a shooting war, not
with DS9 so close to the border and Starfleet so far
away." Sisko paused. The polished gears of the
Saltah'na timepiece rotated notch by notch. "I just
want you to keep an eye on things, and a cool head
about you. Kira and Bashir are good officers, but
they can both be impetuous, Julian because of his
youth and Kira because, well, she's Kira. Together,
on a risky search-and-rescue beyond the Cardassian
border..." Sisko permitted himself a pained expres-
sion. "Without stepping on Kira's authority, do what
you can to keep this mission from getting more
complicated. I've known you longer than anyone else
on this station, so I know I can count on you."
    "Even in this new body?" she asked. Sisko smiled.
Sometimes he still visualized her as the rascally,
silver-haired man she'd been when they first met.
"Even if your next host is a Ferengi," he declared.
Dax grimaced, as if imagining a particularly unap-
petizing meal. "Please, Benjamin, let's not get carried
away." Then she grinned at him mischievously. "I
mean they're a nice species to visit, but I wouldn't
want to be one."
    A chime from her badge interrupted them abruptly.
"Kira to Dax," the major's voice said. "Meet me at
Landing Pad Two."
    Dax tapped her chest. "On my way. Dax out." She
hopped off the desk and checked the tricorder in her
pouch. "Don't worry, Benjamin. It won't do us any
good."
    Sisko watched her hurry out of his office, through
Ops to the nearest turbolift. "Take care of yourself,
old man," he said as the lift carried her away.
 And take care of Kira and the others.




CHAPTER
      3

IN THE PASSENGER COMPARTMENT aboard the Amazon,
Major Kira strode up and down before the assembled
rescue team, looking each member over with a critical
eye. If Sisko had any sense, she thought angrily, this
wouM have been an all-Bajoran mission. She would
have made a bigger fight for it if time hadn't been so
pressing. She couldn't risk delaying any further; rescu-
ing Ttan had to come first.
    The five Federation security officers, three male and
two female, all human, kept their backs straight and
their eyes focused on the bulkhead in front of them.
    Kira hid a private smile. My reputation precedes me,
she thought with a trace of pride. If I said "boo" I
think they'd die of heart attacks.
    She prided herself on maintaining a reputation as a
tough-as-nails Bajoran officer. She did her best to
reinforce that impression every chance she had, and
this was no exception. If they came under fire; these
men and women had to be ready to follow her orders
without question or hesitation.
    She began to relate the events leading up to the
Horta's capture. As she did, her mind raced ahead to
thoughts of actual combat against the Cardassians.
She still had a lot of old scores to settle--even if she
had to take an all-human security team to do it.
    At least Sisko had made some sensible choices in
assigning members to the team. Ensigns Duane
Wilkens and Ian Muckerheide had hair the color of
copper. The pair made a good security team; Kira had
seen them help Odo break up the brawls that invaria-
bly started at Quark's Place. Ensign Delia Parks was
blond, with her hair pulled in a tight bun behind her
head. Another good choice, Kira thought. Parks was
bright, ambitious, and could double as pilot or naviga-
tion officer, if necessary. Tall, pale Ensign Sven
Jonsson had the creamy color of kaafa milk. He was
all rippling sinew and speed: Kira had once seen him
drag a pair of drunken Klingons off to the brig. Last
but not least came Ensign Natalia Aponte, with her
space-black hair and dark good looks. Ensign Aponte
had always been something of an enigma to Kira. She
always seemed to be watching everyone and every-
thing around her, almost as though she expected
something strange and out-of-place to happen. Some-
times it made Kira uneasy, but now she welcomed
such watchfulness. Nobody would sneak up on them
with Aponte on watch.
  Kira finished the briefing with, "Any questions?"
  "Sir," Ensign Jonsson said.
  "What is it, Ensign?"
  "Shouldn't we have environment suits?"
    Good question, Kira thought. "Dax?" she called.
"I'11 let you answer that."
    "No," Dax called from the conn station, where she
was running the last of the diagnostics. "Cardassian
mining plants are almost always in M-class environ-
ments. Otherwise, they're not cost-effective."
    "What if they dropped Ttan off somewhere only a
Horta could live?" Jonsson persisted.
    "Not bloody likely," Kira said. "Cardassians are
control freaks. To them, a Horta will be merely a new
tool. Believe me, they'll find a way to put her to use in
one of their mines. Any other questions?"
 Nobody spoke up. Good; they were wasting time.
    "Strap yourselves in," Kira said. She watched as
they scrambled to do so.
    Turning, Kira stalked forward to where Dax, at the
corm, had been running diagnostic tests. To make a
bad situation worse, Kira thought, Bashir was watch-
ing over Dax's shoulder and chattering about the
excitement that lay ahead. If she had Bashir breathing
down her neck the whole trip, she'd go crazy.
    "Major," Dr. Bashir said. "Do you think we'll face
any real fighting?"
    "Don't worry, I'll keep you out of it," Kira said. She
turned to Dax and asked, "What's our status?"
    "Everything checks," Dax said. "Ops just cleared us
for takeoff."
    "Doctor?" Kira glanced at Bashir. "Are you
ready?"
    He grinned and pointed to a small black bag on the
floor beside him. "All I could possibly need. Thanks
to Dr. Leonard McCoy's pioneering medical research
on the Hortas, I'm even prepared in case Ttan has
been injured."
    "Very well," Kira said. "Take your seat with the
others in the back. We lift off in one minute."
    Kira cut Bashir off when he opened his mouth to
protest. "That's an order, Doctor." The last thing she
needed was him bouncing around the cabin while they
left DS9.
    "It may be a bumpy flight again," Dax added.
"We'll need you to keep an eye on the crew."
    "Right!" Bashir said, brightening. He picked up his
bag and headed aft.
    Dax said, "All humanoids have their foibles, Ma-
jor."
    For a second Kira wondered if Dax was telepathic,
too. "Am I that obvious?" she asked. If so, I'm going
to have to work on my professional look, she thought.
    "You hide it well. But yes." Dax gave her a little
smile.
 "Why do you... you know... encourage him?"
     "I must admit there is a part of my host that does
find him... attractive." "Attractive? That?"
"Perhaps, if you got to know him better..."
Kira snorted as several dull thuds reverberated
through the runabout. It had to be the docking clamps
being released, she thought. Leaning forward, she
scanned the readouts before her. Engines were pow-
ered up; artificial gravity engaged; weapons systems
active. Hopefully it wouldn't come to ship-to-ship
fighting; a Cardassian battle cruiser would blow them
to atoms. No, they'd have to be fast in and fast out,
she thought, like Sisko had said. She allowed herself a
tight smile. And just like the old days, when she left
there would be a few less slime-devil Cardassians to
worry about.
    Kira activated the thrusters, nosing the runabout up
and away from DS9 in a series of gentle surges that the
artificial gravity couldn't quite mask.
  "Docking ring cleared," Dax said.
    Kira said, "Going to impulse power." She watched
the viewscreen as the runabout turned smartly and
accelerated away from the space station. DS9 dwin-
dled to a speck, then vanished. Still she accelerated.
There was no telling what tortures they were putting
Ttan through.
    "Heading one-nine-eight degrees, mark four," Dax
said.
    That's where the Cardassians attacked the Puyal-
lup, Kira realized after a second of mental calcula-
tions. "Why aren't you setting a course for Xoxa?" she
demanded.
    "Chief O'Brien had a better idea," Dax said. "I
didn't have time to tell you. He recalibrated the
Amazon's sensors to pick up ionized particles caused
by subspace distortion."
    "You know the wormhole plays havoc with sub-
space--"
    "True. But I think we can get there quickly enough
to pick up some residual traces. And the farther we get
from the wormhole, the cleaner the trace we'll find."
    "It's worth a shot, I suppose," Kira said slowly. But
I'd prefer it if you'd tell roe first next time, she mentally
added.
    "If it doesn't work, we've only wasted half an hour.
If it does..."
    "If it does," Kira finished for her, "we've saved
ourselves a lot of unnecessary worry... and possibly
a huge mistake." That's what counts in the end, she
thought.

    Ttan felt a great nothingness all around. Her cilia
spun helplessly; her sensory organs registered only the
faintest traces of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon diox-
ide; she felt as though she were falling into a bottom-
less void. There were no familiar tastes of minerals,
no comforting surfaces to burrow into.
    She tried to fight it, but the same panic that had
overwhelmed her the first time she'd seen the sky over
Janus VI struck her. She began to scream in terror, a
high-pitched keening sound that went on and on and
on. Her cilia whirled helplessly. Acid squirted uncon-
trolled from her glands. "Stop that, Horta!"
    With the voice came light, and the light revealed a
huge cavern. Ttan found herself suspended halfway
between floor and ceiling, spinning slowly in a coun-
terclockwise direction. The walls of the cavern con-
sisted of thick metal girders. The floor underfoot
looked like sheet-metal plating... like the floors in
the Federation ship that had been taking her to Bajor.
    Ttan managed to regain control of herself. Acids
from her body had already begun to etch designs into
the floor and wall plates, she saw with some embar-
rassment. Prime Mother, had she really lost control of
herself like some day-old hatchling?
    She realized she had to be in another ship, this one
without the concrete hold specifically designed to
accommodate her. She was suspended in midair by
some sort of tractor beam. That explained the sensa-
tion of falling, the lack of comforting surfaces into
which she might burrow.
 "Creature!" the voice bellowed.
    Ttan managed to focus on the room's other inhab-
itant: a humanoid wearing shiny black clothing with
only its head, neck, and hands exposed. It stood in an
open hatch regarding her. Its pale skin had a strangely
corded look, as though thick ropes of muscle con-
nected its small head to its body.
  "Creature!" it bellowed again. "Answer me!"
    "I am called Ttan," Ttan said. The Universal Trans-
lator attached to her back spoke for her, adding an
almost imperceptible tremble to her voice.
    "Ttan," the humanoid said more softly. "You will
listen to my instructions and obey them. I am Gul
Mavek, and you are now a guest aboard my ship, the
Dagger."
    "Why have you done this?" Ttan demanded.
"Where are you taking me? What has happened to my
children?"
    "No questions, Ttan. We have some tasks for you to
perform--very special tasks. If you do them well, you
will be rewarded. If you cooperate, you may even gain
your freedom... and the freedom of your children."
  "Please, I must know--!" Ttan began.
    But the humanoid had already stepped back. As the
hatch rolled shut, darkness fell.
 Once more Ttan began to scream.

CHAPTER
      4

BMORANS, Sisko had privately concluded, could be
distinguished from other humanoid races by the
creases on their noses--and the chips on their shoul-
ders. The deputy secretary for the Council on Ecologi-
cal Controls, currently on the main viewer in Ops, was
giving him no reason to change that opinion.
    "No! Absolutely not," the deputy secretary de-
clared, only his head and shoulders visible on the oval
screen. A blond young man with perfectly groomed
hair and blindingly white teeth, Pova had the self-
righteous air of someone suddenly thrust into a posi-
tion of power--and enjoying it far too much. "Under
no circumstances are you to transfer the Horta eggs
onto Bajoran soil."
    "But, Secretary Pova," Sisko said diplomatically,
"it was my understanding that the Hortas had been
invited to Bajor for the express purpose of mining
below the planet's surface."
    "That enterprise," Pova began, "was the work of a
consortium of private individuals, who irresponsibly
launched their reckless endeavor without securing the
approval of the provisional government. Now that
this unfortunate abduction has called the entire proj-
ect to our attention, we cannot in good conscience
stand by and allow alien life-forms to be introduced to
our planet's delicate ecology."
    Sisko suppressed a weary sigh. He kept his back
straight, his posture confident, despite this frustrating
turn of events. He did not know whether the Bajoran
officials had truly been unaware of the Horta mining
project, but obviously the political tides had shifted
for the time being, with the more conservative ele-
ments gaining power. This was not uncommon; the
provisional government, established hastily after the
Cardassians abandoned the planet, was a loose coali-
tion of competing factions that seemed to change its
policies every time there was a full moon. And Bajor
had several moons ....
    That political instability, he reminded himself, was
one of the main reasons Starfleet was here in the first
place. He considered calling Vedek Bareil, who was
probably the Federation's most influential friend on
Bajor. But, unlike the departed Kai Opaka, Bareil's
power was limited--and his spiritual authority hardly
granted him jurisdiction over mining policies.
     Sisko took a deep breath and tried again to reason
 with the secretary. "Perhaps the correct procedures
 have not been observed," he conceded, "but the fact
 remains that I have twenty eggs, each containing a
 sentient being, that will surely hatch long before they
 can be taken back to Janus VI. They may be orphans,
 Pova, and, biologically, they're not suited to life on a
 space station." Again, Sisko visualized an entire
 brood of baby Hortas, burrowing out of control. Who
 would be worse off in such a situation, the Hortas or
Deep Space Nine? "They belong on a planet, deep
underground, not stuck out in space."
    Clearly, Secretary Pova was not a sucker for or-
phans. "That is a problem for the Federation," he
declared. "My first priority must be the environmen-
tal sanctity of Bajor. The eggs stay where they are."
    "If we send them by shuttle to Bajor now," Sisko
argued, "it doesn't have to be a permanent solution."
    "No." Behind Pova, the deputy secretary's office
looked impeccably clean and perhaps newly painted.
If only Bajor were within transporter range of DS9,
Sisko mused grumpily; I'd beam the eggs directly onto
Pova's desk.
    "They may have lost their mother, Pova." Just like
Jake lost Jennifer, Sisko thought, feeling a pang of
sympathy for the unborn Hortas. He wondered if
Ttan had a mate or family back on Janus VI, and
hoped he wouldn't have to send them word of her
death.
    "You are wasting my time, Commander," Pova
said. "Our decision is final. The Hortas will not be
allowed on Bajor."
    Until the coalition government changes its mind
again, Sisko thought, but how long will that take? This
isn't over yet, Pova, he vowed, while calmly stating, "I
suspect that we will discuss this matter again, Secre-
tary. For now, I'll let you get back to your work. Sisko
out."
    Pova's image vanished from the screen, replaced by
a view of the surrounding space. At Sisko's orders, the
main viewer was to be directed toward the Cardassian
border until Kira's return, except when needed for
other purposes. The wormhole, unexplored at the
moment, could not be seen. Sisko relaxed his shoul-
ders and leaned forward, bracing himself on a guard-
rail upon the upper tier of Ops. He glanced around the
operations center. A relief crew manned all important
stations, including four officers at the operations table
alone, but Ops still seemed empty without Dax or
Kira. On Sisko's left, Miles O'Brien fussed with a
trapezoidal display grid at the engineering station;
Deep Space Nine never seemed to run out of minor
malfunctions for O'Brien to fix.
    O'Brien looked up from his repairs to give Sisko a
sympathetic look. "Not being terribly cooperative,
was he?" O'Brien said, with a nod toward the screen.
    "No. I think we're on our own for the duration.
Have the eggs been secured?"
    "Yes, sir. An unfurnished suite on level fifteen.
About all that was available, what with the crowds
coming in for that Illumination business." O'Brien
strolled over to where Sisko was standing. "If you
don't mind me asking, any word from Major Kira and
the others?"
    Sisko shook his head. "While they're in Cardassian
space, they have to maintain strict communications
silence." His knuckles tightened around the guardrail.
"It's a sensible precaution. All we can do is wait--and
take care of those eggs."
    "Well, you know what they say anyway: Don't count
your Hortas until they're hatched." O'Brien's broad
grin faded as Sisko stared at him with a blank expres-
sion. "Er, that was meant as a joke, sir."
    "I know, Chief. Carry on." Sisko marched into his
office and let the doors slide shut behind him. Damn
Deputy Secretary Pova, he fumed, and his whole
Council on Ecological Controls/ Quark wouM have
been easier to deal with; at least you can bribe a
Ferengi. The thought of those twenty young Hortas
being rejected by the very planet their mother might
have sacrificed her life to salvage infuriated him, and
raised uncomfortable associations with his own moth-
erless son. Suppose, he couldn't help speculating,
Jennifer and I had both died in that battle at Wolf359,
and .lake~ fate had ended up in the hands of some
selJ:important bureaucrat? Sisko promised himself
that he would do everything in his power to protect
Ttan's children until Kira brought the mother Horta
safely home.
    Thank goodness, he thought, that Jake at least was
safe and far from trouble.

    "You must be crazy!" Jake Sisko whispered emphat-
ically. "Odo will catch us for sure!"
    Nog brushed away Jake's objections with a wave of
his hand. "You're paranoid about Odo, you know
that? He can't be everywhere."
"Yes," Jake replied, "but he could be anything."
The two teenagers crouched behind a gray rhodi-
nium support beam outside Suite 959. It was early in
the day and this section of the habitat ring was
sparsely populated; only a few tired traders, staggering
back to their ships after a long night of gambling and
carousing at Quark's, had passed by Jake and Nog in
the last half hour. A Bajoran security officer swung by
the suite periodically for a routine check. According
to Nog's calculations, she wouldn't be due back for at
least twenty minutes. Jake wasn't sure he trusted
Nog's calculations. He'd seen some of Nog's home-
work assignments ....
    "Look," Jake argued, "what's the big deal with a
bunch of eggs anyway?" Even with both of them
kneeling, Jake was a head taller than the young
Ferengi. To blend with the shadows, Jake had put on
his darkest blue jumpsuit. Nog, shameless, wore a
bright orange shirt with purple trousers. The wrap
behind his ears glittered with metallic fibers.
    "Ah, but these are Horta eggs!" Nog's eyes gleamed
with the same excitement he usually displayed for
gold-pressed latinum--or anything recognizably fe-
male.
  "So?" Jake asked.
    "Well, er, that is..." Nog seemed reluctant to
abandon his dreams of profit merely for lack of any
solid justification. "The Cardassians wanted them,
right? So they must be worth something!"
    "But it's stealing," Jake objected. He hated having
to be the wet blanket all the time, and certainly
amusements on DS9 were few and far between, but it
felt like he and Nog were crossing some sort of line
with this particular caper. His conscience nagged at
him, with a voice that suspiciously resembled his
father's.
    Of course, stealing was no big deal to a Ferengi.
Even now Jake could see Nog blinking his eyes at his
friend's objection, and struggling to wrap his brain
around the idea that "So what?" was not a workable
response.
    "We're only going to borrow it," Nog said instead.
"Besides, it's only a bunch of eggs, no one is going to
miss one."
    "I thought these were the extra-special Horta eggs,"
Jake said, mimicking Nog's greedy fervor with pin-
point accuracy. Hah, he thought. Got you there.
    Nog was unimpressed by logic. "Consistency is a
hu-man virtue," he said, drawing out the first syllable
in "human" so that it sounded vaguely obscene.
"C'mon, are you with me or not?"
    Jake briefly considered rapping his head against the
girder. How did he get sucked into these messes? But
he knew why. A) he was bored. B) Nog was his only
real friend. Despite the combined efforts of his con-
science and common sense, he couldn't convince
himself that some weird alien egg was more important
than either A or B. "Okay, I'm in. Let's get this over
with."
    "Yes, yes, yes!" Nog muttered gleefully. The boys
rose quickly to their feet, bolted out from behind the
girder, and nearly collided with a large Bajoran securi-
ty officer.
    She was at least six feet tall, with firm muscles (and
an impressive figure) visible beneath her brown uni-
form. A stern expression seemed to have frozen on her
face. "Shouldn't you boys be in school?" she said. It
sounded more like a statement than a question.
    Nog's jaw dropped. His mouth quivered soundless-
ly, making him look like a trout caught on a hook. Was
he speechless with fear, Jake wondered, or simply
overwhelmed by his close proximity to the woman's
imposing curves? Probably a bit of both: I'm going to
kill him, Jake thought, assuming we get out of this
alive.
    "School doesn't start for another hour," Jake ex-
plained hurriedly. "We were pacing out the circumfer-
ence of the habitat ring... for geometry class. Extra
credit." Actually, Nog hadn't attended Mrs. O'Brien's
school for days, but Jake saw no reason to go into that.
"We were at five hundred and fifty steps so far, right,
Nog?" He elbowed his friend, none too gently.
"Right?"
    "Oh yes," Nog sputtered. "Five hundred and sixty
for sure!"
    The security officer eyed them skeptically. The
wrinkles on her nose seemed to deepen. "You were
rushing pretty fast to be doing such careful counting."
    "We count better when we run!" Nog volunteered.
Jake groaned inside.
    "Like you said, we don't want to be late for class,"
he added. Please, he thought, don't call my dad. I still
haven't lived down that business with Odo g bucket and
the oatmeal.
    The officer stared at them in silence for what
seemed the length of a transgalactic voyage--on
impulse power. A thin layer of sweat glued Jake's shirt
to his back. Nog's hands nervously protected the lobes
of his enormous ears.
"Very well," she said finally. "Be on your way."
"Yes, sir, officer, ma'am!" Jake said, almost burst-
ing with relief. He grabbed Nog roughly by the arm,
and, taking long careful strides, tried to pace away
from Suite 959 as rapidly as he could. "Five hundred
and fifty-one, five hundred and fifty-two, five hundred
and fifty-three..."
    "Five hundred and sixty-four," Nog said beside
him, "five hundred and sixty-five..."
    Oh, leaking radioactive wormholes, Jake cursed si-
lently. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the
officer watching them depart, her hands on her hips, a
suspicious scowl on her face. "Human steps equal
one-point-five Ferengi steps," he called back by way of
explanation. He hoped he didn't sound nearly as
stupid as he felt.
    Finally, they rounded a corner and left the security
woman behind. Jake collapsed against the corridor
wall. His heart was pounding. The sweat on his back
cooled to a chilly film. If this was a bad holo, he
thought, I'd be fainting now.
    Nog, on the other hand, seemed positively invigor-
ated now that they were safe. "Eluding prosecution!"
he crowed, bouncing off the floor in an impromptu
victory dance. "There's no greater thrill? He grinned
at his reluctant accomplice. "A school project! Extra
credit! That was sheer brilliance... almost as good
as what I was going to say. As you sure you aren't part
Ferengi?"
    "Positive," Jake replied, forcing himself to remem-
ber that Nog meant that as a compliment. Slowly, his
heartbeat returned to normal.
    Nog pointed his ears in the direction they had
come. "Okay," he said enthusiastically. "I can hear
her bootsteps. She's going the opposite way." Without
even asking Jake's opinion, he dashed back toward the
suite. Halfway there, he paused only long enough to
look back at Jake. "What's keeping you?" he asked,
appearing genuinely puzzled. "Hurry!"
    I don't believe this, Jake thought. I don't believe me.
Breaking into a jog, he caught up with NOg outside the
suite door. The Ferengi was busy affixing a white
crystalline patch to the lock beside the door. Jake
didn't need to ask where the patch came from; like
most Ferengi, Nog wore his pockets on the inside of
his clothes. "Something you 'borrowed' from your
uncle?" Jake asked.
    "Actually, I got it from a cat burglar in exchange
for some Eeiauoan pornography." He shrugged dis-
missively. "I'm not into felines."
    The crystal patch sparkled as it swiftly flashed
through the entire spectrum from white to black,
trying every intermediate shade in between. It oper-
ated completely silently, which made sense, Jake
realized, given the sort of jobs it had probably been
designed for; that this device had once belonged to a
professional thief did not make Jake feel any more
comfortable about this whole stunt. "Look, NOg," he
started to protest.
    Too late. On its third cycle through the spectrum,
the patch halted on a hue somewhere between rose
and pink. It blinked three times; then the two halves
of the sturdy door slid back into the adjoining walls.
Nog rubbed his palms together and scooted inside the
bay. With a sigh of resignation, Jake followed him.
    Low-level illumination activated automatically
upon their entrance, and Jake found himself in a
vaultlike chamber about half the size of his and his
father's personal quarters. Alien graffiti defaced the
walls, and the floor was scratched and in need of
repair. No wonder, Jake thought, the suite was empty
except for the eggs, which he spotted right away.
    They were lined up like bowling balls on top of a
black, triangular platform about three feet tall. "Care-
ful," Nog said, "there's some type of stasis field." To
demonstrate, he brought his hands near the eggs; a
sudden burst of crackling blue energy repelled his
grasping fingers. Nog seemed more amused than
concerned by the shielding, Jake noted as he drew
closer to their target. Keeping at least a foot away from
the invisible field, he stared at the eggs while Nog,
scurrying around on his knees, inspected the field
generator. The eggs all looked identical: completely
spherical, slightly smaller than an old-fashioned bas-
ketball, with a glossy metallic sheen. He had trouble
placing the exact the color of the eggs in the dim light;
they were somewhere between violet and copper,
depending on what angle he looked at them from. Was
there actually some sort of organism growing inside?
It was hard to believe; the spheres looked more like
geological curiosities than something alive.
    Then again, he'd bumped into some very unusual
life-forms during his travels with his father. Human-
oid races were most common, but Jake had no illu-
sions that all beings fit the Terran mode. The universe
meven just the Federation--was full of strange and
exotic entities, like those "nonlinear" intelligences his
dad had discovered in the wormhole. Or Q, who
looked human, but sure wasn't. Or whatever they were
that had impersonated Buck Bokai, Lieutenant Dax,
and that troll during their first year on the station. Or,
for that matter, Constable Odo.
    Thinking about the station's security chief re-
minded Jake of how much trouble they could get into
if they were caught. He glanced nervously around the
empty suite; thank goodness it was so barren, he
thought. There were no stray objects that could be
the shapeshifter in disguise--unless he was one of the
eggs themselves!
    "C'mon," he whispered to Nog. "What's the prob-
lem?"
    "No problem," Nog replied. He ran his stubby
fingers over a control pad located under the rim of the
platform. "There! Try it now."
    Half expecting an energy shock, Jake reached hesi-
tantly for an egg. Nothing happened. He met no
resistance. His hand stroked the smooth, metallic
shell; it was surprisingly cool. He grinned despite
himself. This was too easy! Obviously, the field was
intended to shield the eggs from shocks, not...
borrowing.
    Nog sprang to his feet and scampered, his freckled
face beaming, around the unprotected eggs. "Take
that one!" he suggested. "No, no, that one! Wait a
nano, maybe this one here... !"
    "Nog," Jake said patiently. "They're all the same."
He realized, with a jolt of recognition, that he
sounded a lot like his father talking to Dr. Bashir.
"Choose one and let's go."
    "But which one?" Nog whined, torn by greed
and indecision. "Maybe we should take a couple
more... ?"
 "No way!" Jake said.
    "But..." Nog's eyes darted back and forth be-
tween his friend and the eggs.
    "No," Jake said firmly. He removed a piece of
toweling that he'd tucked into his boot earlier. There
was only so far he could be pushed, even by Nog. He
had to draw the line somewhere. Picking one at
random, he carefully lifted an egg from the platform
and wrapped it in the soft white towel. For a second,
he thought he felt something move within the egg, as
though its center of gravity had suddenly shifted, but
he chalked it up to nerves. That Bajoran woman could
be back at any minute!
    The stolen egg left an empty, circular recess in the
top of the platform, an incriminating gap that caught
Jake's eye like a silent accusation. He looked away
from the depression. "We're out of here," he told Nog.
"Now!"
    The Ferengi hesitated for a moment, staring at the
remaining eggs as if he could absorb the entire haul
into his eyes. He ran his tongue over his rough, uneven
front teeth.  "Nog!"
    With a pained expression on his face, Nog turned
from the eggs and ran with Jake back into the corridor
outside. Jake looked up and down the hall while Nog
hastily removed the crystal patch from the locking
mechanism. There was no one in sight, thankfully. By
the time the suite doors slid shut again, the boys were
already several meters away. Clutching the swaddled
Horta egg close to his chest, Jake walked quickly
toward the nearest turbolift, with Nog struggling to
keep up with him.
    You know, Jake thought, maybe human steps do
equal one-point-five Ferengi ones.

    Nog was nearly out of breath by the time they
reached the turbolift. He snarled under his breath.
Why did humans have to have such long legs anyway?
It seemed an unfair advantage, and unfair advantages
by rights belonged to the Ferengi. Then again, he
didn't really mind that human females had those
astoundingly endless legs. Too bad they felt obliged to
cover them up. Take that Lieutenant Dax, for in-
stance. Thinking about her, out of uniform (and not
into anything in particular), made his lobes tingle.
Suppose she and he were marooned on...
    "Say, Nog," Jake said, knocking him out of a
promising fantasy, "I thought of something. Did you
reactivate the stasis field around the eggs?"
    Deficits, Nog cursed silently. He'd forgotten all
about that field. "I thought you'd done that," he said
hastily, embarrassed. To err was Ferengi, he reminded
himself; the trick was to shift blame fast enough.
    To his surprise, Jake didn't argue the point. "I
guess," his friend said with shrug, "it was going to be
pretty obvious that an egg was gone, even if we'd put
the field back the way we found it. And it's not like
we're expecting an earthquake or something anytime
soon. The eggs will be perfectly safe, right?"
    "Right!" Nog said automatically. Jake was obvious-
ly indulging in that odd human habit of "rationaliz-
ing" his actions in order to "appease his conscience."
Nog didn't really understand this, but he recognized it
when he saw it. Sometimes humans just had to be
talked into pursuing their own best interests. Good
thing, he thought, that Jake has a partner like me to set
him straight.
    The turbolift deposited them on the Promenade. As
Nog had planned, there wasn't much traffic among the
shops and stalls at this hour. Although night and day
were, naturally, abstract concepts on DS9, most peo-
ple stuck to Starfleet time for convenience's sake. It
was handy, especially on the Promenade, to have
regular hours for business--and pleasure. This early
in the morning, most establishments were, depending
on their bill of fare, closed, shutting down, or just
setting up shop.
    Technically, Quark's was open twenty-four hours a
day, but the bar was nearly deserted when they
arrived. Only a handful of diehards and new arrivals
occupied the tables, consuming replicated meals or
trying unsuccessfully to get drunk on heavily diluted
synthehol. (The strong stuff, Nog knew, wasn't served
until serious gambling got under way.) A skinny,
lime-green Asominian, whose species required sleep
only once every twenty years, was flirting shamelessly
with a Dabo girl.
    Quark himself was nowhere to be seen. Nog wasn't
surprised. His uncle seldom woke before noon, and
then spent an hour or two in a holosuite. A distant
cousin, Chram, manned the bar during the morning
shift. Tufts of gray hair sprouted from the bartender's
large ears. When I'm that age, Nog promised himself,
I'm not going to be working for my richer relations. He
gave Chram a wave as he led Jake back into the
storerooms. Chram glowered at him in return; the
older Ferengi was not a morning person.
    In contrast to the glitz and glamour of the public
Quark's, the rear of the bar was a maze of boxes,
compartments, and closets, generously equipped with
odd nooks and crannies. After all, as Nog had been
taught several times, you never knew when you might
need a private meeting place for... whatever. He
guided Jake to a broken-down refrigeration unit stuck
between a crate of bootleg Cardassian wine and a
stack of anti-Bajoran propaganda disks. Several gallon
bottles of kamoy syrup, all covered in dust, rested on
top of the crates.
    "Since the Cardassians left," he explained, "there
hasn't been much call for any of this stuff. My uncle's
waiting for a good time to dump it--at a decent
profit." He tapped the controls on the freezer, then
gave it a slap on the side. The lid sprang open with a
noisy pop. "The egg will be safe in here. Hand it
over." Inwardly, he congratulated himself on maneu-
vering Jake into carrying the stolen egg on his person
this whole time. Puzzling as it could sometimes be,
this human tendency to trust came in very handy.
    "Here," Jake said, slowly unwrapping the egg.
"Boy, am I glad to get rid of this."
And am I ever glad to take it, Nog thought.
Layers of toweling came away, revealing the gleam
of the Horta egg underneath. For the first time, Nog
started to wonder what exactly a Horta was, and what
he was supposed to do with the egg. He stroked his
right ear thoughtfully. No matter. There was profit
here somehow; he knew it.
    His fingers itched for the egg. What was taking Jake
so long? He wanted that egg now!
    Instead of handing it over right away, his human
friend gazed quizzically at the semiexposed sphere.
"Funny," Jake said. "It seems warmer than before."
He peeled away the last layer of cloth and his palm
came into direct contact with the shiny metal shell.
"Oww! Damn! Oww!" Jake blurted suddenly, yanking
his hands away from the egg. With horror, Nog
watched his prize drop onto the hard molybdenite
floor.
    "You... you hu-man!" he cried out angrily. The
egg crashed down with a ringing clang that made
Nog's lobes shrivel. It rolled away toward the back of
the storeroom. Jake waved his fingers wildly about,
then started blowing on his palm.
    "It burned me!" Jake said, showing him the red-
dened flesh on his hand. Nog gave the burn, which
didn't seem that serious, only a second's look before
chasing after the egg. Please, he thought, don't let it be
broken. The egg came to a stop against a cask of
Klingon war games. Nog reached out for it anxiously.
"Wait!" Jake yelled from behind him. "Be careful!"
    At the last minute, Nog yanked his hands away. He
disliked pain almost as much as he craved profit.
Bending over the egg, he searched its surface with his
beady blue eyes for any crack or disfigurement.
    At first, the sphere seemed unharmed. Praise the
bottom line, Nog thought gratefully. Then the egg
began to shake. Nog's eyes widened. "Jake, get over
here. Something's happening!" A high-pitched grind-
ing noise emerged from inside the egg. As the two
boys looked on in amazement, one side of the sphere
began to glow with a faint red radiance. Thin trails of
vapor rose from the glowing portion of the shell. "It's
going to explode!" Nog exclaimed, backing away
frantically on all fours. "Run!"
    Jake grabbed onto Nog's foot, halting his escape.
"No, Nog, no! Don't you see? It's hatching!"
    What? Of course! "I knew that," Nog said defen-
sively. "Can't you hu-mans recognize a joke when you
hear one?"
 "Sssh!" Jake said. "Here he comes!"
    The egg did not crack. Instead, something burned
its way out of the sphere, leaving a steaming hole in
the shell. The creature looked like a huge, scarlet
worm, about half a meter long. Its hide was red and
pulpy, like raw meat, except for tiny flecks of mineral
matter embedded here and there over its surface. A
fringe of tiny tendrils or cilia ran along the bottom of
the creature on all sides; it seemed to use the fringe to
pull itself slowly across the floor, leaving a trail of
scorched grillework behind it. So this was a Horta,
Nog mused. He wondered what it was worth. And
how much more he could charge for it.
    Before he could calculate a price, however, the
newborn Horta crawled (oozed?) back toward the
now-empty egg. Jake and he watched as it burned a
new hole through the shell and disappeared inside the
egg. "What... ?" he started to ask, but then the
entire egg glowed with the red light as before, and
proceeded to dissolve before their eyes. White fumes
rose and evaporated as the hard metal shell melted
into the baby Horta itself, which seemed to absorb
every bit of matter that wasn't boiled away. In a
second or two, there was no shell left, only a wriggling
red thing that emitted a teeth-jarring vibration from
no orifice Nog could detect.
    "What's the matter with it?" he asked Jake desper-
ately. "What do we do now?" And how, he agonized
silently, was he supposed to hide this burning little
monster from his uncle?
    Jake didn't look as confident as Nog would have
liked. "I think it's hungry," he said.


CHAPTER
      5

"WHEN CAN WE EXPECT some excitement, ladies?"
    Feeling bored, Julian Bashir leaned both arms on
the back of Major Kira's chair and peered over her
head at the console. As near as he could tell, Kira and
Dax appeared to be running a series of sensor sweeps
of the space around the ship, but he couldn't swear to
it. Kira's hands danced across the controls almost
more quickly than he could follow, and she wasn't
taking time to explain each step as she went along the
way Chief O'Brien usually did. It didn't surprise him,
considering the time-critical nature of their mission.
  Kira said, "You're crowding me, Doctor."
    "Oh, sorry." She's on edge, he told himself, straight-
ening quickly. The Bajoran equivalent of adrenaline
must be surging through her veins, priming her body
for battle-readiness... and making her a little irrita-
ble. Doubtless he could find plenty of information on
the effects of Bajoran adrenaline back on DS9. He'd
have to look the subject up when they got back. There
might be a paper in it--especially if the Bajorans
made it into the Federation and began serving on
Starfleet ships. He grinned a litte. There was a certain
fame to be had by being the first to file a new medical
paper--just look at the way Leonard McCoy's name
was plastered all over the Horta reports as the "pio-
neering surgeon" who first operated on a Horta.
    "No problem," Kira said curtly. "Bajorans just
have a very definite sense of personal space."
    "You can look over my shoulder, Julian," Dax said.
"It doesn't bother me."
    "Why, thank you, Jadzia!" She must have forgotten
my slug remark, he thought, or at least put it from her
mind in the tumult following Ttan ~ kidnapping. He
felt his heart skip a beat. Something about her excited
him more than any other female he'd ever been
around, He'd heard Chief O'Brien muttering about
"crushes" and "puppy love" under his breath more
than once, but Julian knew it was more than that. This
was the real thing. If only he could get her to notice
him... and if only he could manage to not say
something stupid.
    Leaning on the back of Dax's chair, he moved his
head down until he caught a faint whiff of scent from
her hair, a subtle perfume mingling what smelled like
Andorian wildflowers and flowering plankton from
Cilas XII. Beautiful, like she was, he thought. He
breathed more deeply.
    Kira brought the runabout around and accelerated
again. Julian toppled forward and barely caught him-
self in time to keep from hitting the back of Dax's
head. Accidentally insulting her was bad enough, he
thought. He didn't need to fall on her when she wasn't
looking.
    He shot a quick glance at Kira, but she seemed
completely occupied at the controls. Julian frowned.
She appeared a little too occupied, he decided. She
should have at least taken a quick glance when he
almost fell; she must have caught his sudden wild
movement from the comer of her eye.
    Julian felt the engines' vibrations deepen through
the deck underfoot. Glancing at the monitor, he
watched the runabout speeding forward. He couldn't
tell if the course change had been necessary. If he
didn't know better, though, he would have said Kira
made the ship lurch forward on purpose... or was he
being too paranoid?
    Then the truth hit him and he had a hard time
keeping from laughing. Kira was jealous of Dax! Why
hadn't he seen it before? Clearly she didn't want him
leaning on the back of her seat because she couldn't
concentrate with him so near. Women had told him he
was handsome before--indeed, he'd been something
of a ladies' man at the Academy--but he'd had no
idea he could so thoroughly penetrate even Kira's
mask of icy professionalism. After the mission was
over, he'd have to find a way to let her down gently.
Much as he admired her command talents, Kira
wasn't exactly his idea of a perfect date.
    "Where are we now?" he asked. It would be best to
try to keep Kira's mind on the work at hand.
    "On the last known course the Cardassian raider
took," Dax replied instead. "We're at half impulse
power. I'm running a sensor sweep for subspace
distortion."
    A small light began to flash across Kira's monitor.
Julian found himself leaning forward to see, and when
Kira shot him a glance, he gave her what he consid-
ered his most reassuring bedside smile. Don't break
her heart now, he thought. Let it wait till the end of the
mission. That's the professional thing to do.
    "I have it," Dax said, pointing at what looked to
Julian like a smear of pale gray on her monitor. "This
pattern has to be bled from a warp coil generator.
Major?"
 "It's very diffuse," Kira said slowly.
    "The wormhole might account for it," Julian ven-
tured, though he didn't feel at all sure of himself. This
stuff was way out of his league.
    "No," Dax said, "there's definitely something there.
Let me try a few computer enhancements .... "
    Julian watched as the three-dimensional represen-
tation of space around the runabout blanked on
Dax's monitor, then redrew several times in what he
found a dizzyingly quick succession. Each enhance-
ment showed more detail in the diffused ion cloud.
    "Allowing for normal drift and distortion from
the wormhole," Dax said, "let's run a backward
simulation .... "
    After another dizzying sequence of images, the
diffuse spray of ions suddenly drew together into what
Julian recognized as a distinct trail of ionized parti-
cles. Dax had been right, he saw now. There couldn't
be any mistaking it. A starship had been through here,
and not that long ago.
  "Bingo," Dax said.
  "What?" Kira demanded.
    "An old Earth expression," Julian said, a little
proud that he had recognized such an archaic word.
Forsooth, his classic Earth poetry classes were paying
off at last. "It means we've found it."
    "I can see that!" Kira snapped. "Strap yourself in,
Doctor. We're going to warp speed in ten seconds."
  Ten seconds?Julian thought. Turning, he darted into
the rear of the runabout. The five members of the
security team hadn't yet ventured from their seats. He
scanned their faces and noticed looks ranging from
amusement to fascination. They must have been
listening to every word they said up front, he realized-
. . . and watching his every move. He swallowed. I
hope they didn't see me smelling Dax2 hair. Then he
gave a mental shrug. Well, he thought, this was my day
for putting my foot in it. Hopefully there wouldn't be
too many hot rumors surrounding Dax and him when
they got back home.
    He dropped into his seat and buckled himself in. He
knew they were in a hurry, but ten seconds was cutting
it awfully close for comfort.
    He watched as the stars on the forward monitor
over Dax's head turned to streaks; then suddenly they
were moving faster than light. He started to unbuckle
himself, but Kira called, "Better stay seated back
there, guys. We may have a few more sudden course
shifts coming up."
    "Right," Julian muttered unhappily. He looked
back and found the five members of the security team
all watching him. Ensigns Aponte and Wilkens defi-
nitely seemed to be smirking. He had to find some-
thing to occupy them or they'd all end up grinning
behind his back through the entire mission.
    "Well," he said slowly, his thoughts racing to find
something to do. "I looks like we're stuck back here
for a while. Anybody bring a deck of cards?"

    Kira risked a quick glance over her shoulder, found
Bashir talking animatedly to the five ensigns, and
chuckled softly to herself. They were undoubtedly the
largest audience the doctor had had for quite a while.
They should keep him busy for the time being, she
thought. At least until he ran out of those boring
Starfleet Academy stories of his.
    "Don't you think that was a little cruel?" Dax said
in a low voice. "He could have come back up here."
     "Cruel, but entirely justifiable," Kira replied. "The
way he was smelling your hair made my skin crawl."
  "He smelled yours first."
    Kira found herself speechless. The thought of that
--that--that pedantic fovian worm smelling her hair
--it made her sick to her stomach. She'd have to find
a way to tell him, in no uncertain terms, to stay well
away from her when they got back after this mission.
     "The ship made a turn," Dax announced. "Coming
up. Log course change in five seconds." "I see it," Kira said.
    "They must have thought the wormhole would hide
their new course," Dax went on. "Our new destina-
tion is... the Davon system? Computer confirms.
The Davon system. Estimated time of arrival: twenty-
two hours."
    "The Davon system," Kira mused. There weren't
any Cardassian mining camps there. Or none that she
knew about, anyway.
  "I don't think I'm familiar with it," Dax said.
    "I am," Kira said. "It has a total of six planets, four
gas giants and two sun-scorched rocks in tight orbits
around the sun. It was disputed territory until twenty-
two years ago, when Starfleet ceded it to the Cardas-
sians in a border treaty."
    "I think I did hear something about that," Dax said.
"There weren't any desirable planets, so it was easier
to give it up than make a fuss over it."
  "Just like Bajor," Kira said. She tried to keep the
bitterness from her voice and knew she didn't quite
succeed. "Just like Bajor."

    Ttan heard it as much as felt it when a series of jolts
shook the Dagger. She began to struggle again, trying
to get free, but the tractor beam seemed to work
against her every movement, pinning her in midair.
She would have given anything to be free just about
then. She had to find her eggs.
    The jolts stopped as suddenly as they'd begun. Ttan
strained to hear, but no new sounds reached her. The
hold remained as eerily silent as a mined-out pocket
of duranium ore. Will I never be .free? she mentally
cried out. Will I never see my children hatch? She
began to despair.
    What seemed hours later--she had lost all sense of
time and had no idea how long it had actually
been--a new series of jolts ran through the Dagger.
This time the far wall began to fold down into a ramp,
admitting a flood of brilliant white light.
    Ttan was still spinning very slowly. As she came
around to face the ramp, she peered into the bright-
ness. Several dozen figures moved out there. As she
watched, half a dozen humanoids sprinted into the
hold and took equidistant positions around her. They
all held massive energy weapons of some kind, which
they pointed at her body.
    "What do you want?" she demanded. "Where are
my children?" The Universal Translator repeated her
message. None of the humanoids replied.
    As she continued to spin, Ttan studied their faces.
She wasn't certain, but though they dressed in black
like Gul Mavek and had the same corded necks, she
didn't think any of them were him. If she'd be~n free,
she would have gladly melted him alive for what he'd
done to her.
    "What do you want?" she demanded again. "Tell
me! Tell me/"
    "Ttan," she heard Gul Mavek say, "I am the only
one who can help you." He climbed the ramp and
stood looking at her, his hands on his hips. "You are
my guest. You will follow all instructions with preci-
sion and care. Do you understand?"
    She shot a stream of acid at him. He leaped
backward in time to avoid it, and the acid began to
smoke and hiss as it ate away the metal plating.
    A whining noise filled the air, and a dull, unpleasant
itch hit Ttan from all sides at once. The humanoids
were shooting their weapons at her, Ttan realized.
  "Stop, stop!" Gul Mavek cried. "Cease fire!"
    The phaser rifles grew silent. Ttan continued to spin
in midair, a little faster now, facing first the back of
the hold, then the side, then the front ramp again. If
the weapons had done any serious damage, she didn't
feel it yet. Luckily her people were resistant to phaser
fire.
    She watched Gul Mavek's head twitch and his
hands clench into fists, signs she knew represented
great anger or frustration. However, the humanoid's
voice remained a calm, studied neutral when he spoke
again.
    "Ttan," he said, "that was a mistake. I am your only
friend here."
  "You are not a friend? she cried.
    "I am," he said. "I am the only one who will talk
with you as an equal. I am the only one who can
release you from the tractor beam. And I am the only
one who can let you see your children."
  "My eggsw" Ttan said.
    "Yes, your eggs. They, too, are on board my ship,
Ttan. We haven't counted them yet, but we have them
all. All of the unbroken ones, anyway."
    "What?" Ttan shrieked, her insides suddenly twist-
ing up with fear. "My eggsw" She began to struggle
frantically against the tractor beam. "My eggs--"
    "There were plenty of eggs left," Gul Mavek said. "I
don't believe we counted all the whole ones. I can find
out how many are still intact, if you want. How many
were there supposed to be?"
    "Twenty," Ttan sobbed. She went limp. "Twenty
beautiful children. Oh, my poor, poor young ones--"
    "Wait," Gul Mavek said. "I will be back with the
exact count." He turned and strolled down the ramp
at a leisurely pace, as though he had all the time in the
world.
    Spinning, Ttan felt a confused jumble of anger,
hurt, and despair. Her cilia quivered. She felt numb in
all of her extremities. How many dead? she wondered.
How many still alive?
    How could they have allowed harm to come to her
eggs? How could they let her children perish so
casually, so callously? When humans first came to
Janus VI, thousands had been destroyed, but that had
been an accident. The Federation hadn't realized the
silicon nodules were eggs. As soon as they found out,
they had moved to protect the young Hortas, to help
the Prime Mother feed and care for them. And in
return the Hortas had helped the Federation. It was
unthinkable that a sentient being could let harm come
to children... any children.
    Ttan twitched when Gul Mavek appeared at the
head of the ramp again. He folded his arms behind his
back and watched her silently.
 "Yes?" Ttan cried. "Yes?"
 "Your eggs..."
 "Tell mew
    "I had them removed from the ship for safekeeping.
It seems that nineteen of the twenty are still intact--"
    Ttan felt a keen pang of hurt at the one loss, but
then relief flooded through her when she realized how
many more were still alive and whole. It almost
caused her to miss Gul Mavek's next words.
  "~for the moment," he finished.
    "What do you mean?" Ttan demanded. "If you
harm my children--"
    "You are in no position to make threats," Gul
Mavek said. "If you threaten me or any of my men
again, I will have another egg destroyed."
Ttan all but gasped in horror. "You can't~"
"And," Gul Mavek continued, "after that I will
have another destroyed, and another, and another,
until they are all dead. Every last one of them, Ttan.
Unless..."
"Unless?" Ttan said, a small hope rising within her.
"Unless you cooperate," he said. "If you perform
one small task for me today--one small, almost
insignificant task--I will let you see your eggs for a
few moments this evening."
    Despairing, Ttan could only say, "Anything you
ask, I will do."

    Aboard the Amazon, Julian Bashir tried to concen-
trate on the mess that his tricorder had become. It
hates me, he thought, though he knew that was
irrational. Machines didn't hate anybody. Only this
one certainly seemed to have it in for him. He'd spent
twenty minutes taking it apart and now, an hour and a
half later, it wasn't any closer to being fixed.
     His vision began to blur, and he rubbed his eyes
 with the back of his hand. What he wouldn't have
 given to have ChiefO'Brien's skills right now. He took
 a sip of replicated coffee and grimaced at the bitter
 taste.
     Enough stalling. He forced himself to concentrate
 on the tiny computer screen set into the wall. A trickle
 of sweat ran down this back, and suddenly he began to
 get a neck ache. He knew it was from staring up at the
 monitor too much. The colorful schematic of the
 tricorder's inner mechanism the monitor displayed
 started to blur again.
    "Blast," he said, and slammed down his electron
probe. This wasn't the simple recalibration he had
expected. "Blast it all!" He rubbed his eyes again. It
didn't look like he'd ever get the tricorder working
again.
    He glanced a little wistfully over his shoulder at the
other pull-out table, where the five ensigns were busily
playing poker with cards and chips the onboard
replicator had made. Not that he gambled much; he
simply hadn't realized how little there was to actually
do aboard the Amazon until now. With a little over
warp four as the runabout's greatest speed and anoth-
er sixteen hours of travel still ahead, he would have
welcomed a decent science library, a holedeck, or
even a visit to Quark's infamous holesuites to pass the
time. Without them, poker would have to do.
    He watched as Ensign Aponte dropped three blue
chips into the pot. Everyone else folded, and Aponte
raked in her win with a gleeful laugh.
    Julian hated that sound. He'd lost steadily through
the hour he'd played, and Aponte's laugh had started
to get to him. On impulse, he'd decided to take a
break from the game, have a snack, and try his hand at
recalibrating his tricorder to pick up silicon life-
forms. He'd thought it might change his luck.
    Instead, things had rapidly gotten worse. He turned
back to his pull-out table and stared helplessly down
at the circuits in front of him.
    Bad as they were, what remained of his snack--half
of a replicated ham sandwich and a rapidly chilling
cup of the worst replicated coffee he'd ever hadm
looked more inviting than the tricorder, so he stalled
by taking a couple of bites and sips. It shouM be easy,
he told himself. You're a surgeon. You fix biological
machines every day. How can one tricorder be so hard?
    Finally he couldn't put it off any longer. He set his
sandwich down, selected a probe, and tried to push a
primary connector back in place. Instead, he touched
a scanner trip circuit by mistake. Blue sparks hissed
and spat into the air, and he jerked his hand back to
avoid being burned.  "Blast!" he said.
    "Having a problem, Julian?" Dax asked. Julian
jumped. He'd been so wrapped up in the tricorder
problem, he hadn't seen her wander back into the
passenger section. He had to get his act together, he
thought, or she'd never respect him.
    "A problem, urn, yes," he said, then winced inward-
ly at how pathetic that sounded. "I was trying to
recalibrate my tricorder to pick up silicon-based life-
forms. The changes I need to make are all listed in the
 manual, but somehow I've got them all muddled."
   "So that's what you call it."
     Julian felt himself growing flustered. Somehow, that
 seemed to happen rather frequently when he was
 around Jadzia Dax.
  "I can do yours next, if you want," he offered.
  "I'm afraid mine is already done," Dax said. She
 unclipped it from her belt and set it on the table. "I
 cleaned and recalibrated it two hours ago; then I did
 Kira's."
    "Then do you think you might--" He gestured
helplessly at the tangled mess of wires and data chips
before him. He didn't have the nerve to meet her gaze.
    Dax laughed lightly. "Of course I'll help put it back
together." She slid into the seat opposite him, took the
probe gently from his hand--her touch was cool as
silk and sent a shiver down his spine--and began
snapping pieces of the tricorder together. "It will give
me something to do for the next few minutes."
  "Are you bored, too, then?"
  "A little."
    Julian felt some of his confidence return. "Would
you care to join the poker game with me? I'd be glad to
give you some pointers, if you've never played be-
fore."
    "Actually, one of my previous hosts was a mathe-
matician and an inveterate gambler. He enjoyed play-
ing the odds so much, I'm afraid that--with very few
exceptions--I've grown tired of all games of mathe-
matical probability. Except for Ferengi, it's hard to
find real competition. There's something not quite
fair, I feel, about always being the winner. It puts a
strain on relationships."
    "Ah," Julian said, biting his lip. He'd walked right
into it again. "That's very thoughtful of you, Jadzia."
    He watched her smooth, feminine hands fit piece
after piece of the tricorder together. Every now and
then she made a small adjustment with the probe.
Almost before he could blink, the tricorder was back
together.
 "That's it?" he asked, amazed.
"That's it," Dax said. "You might want to try it out,
of course, to make sure."
    He flipped it open and saw the display panel come
to life. The readout now matched the manual's--right
down to the split screen for carbon-based and silicon-
based life-forms. It worked perfectly. He met her gaze.
"Thank you," he said, sincerely meaning it.
    Dax rose. "Any time, Julian." She paused. "I'm
going to get some sleep. I strongly suggest you do the
same."
    "Yes," he said. "Right away. I just want a few more
hands of cards first." Only sixteen hours, he thought,
and we're there. He wondered if he was going to make
it.

    As Ttan moved down the ramp from the Dagger,
she felt strangely giddy, as though she weighed next to
nothing. They were in some kind of underground
chamber, with crude stone walls far to either side and
a smooth stone floor beneath her. Light came from
brilliant glowing panels set overhead, to either side of
what looked like a glowing forcefield of some kind.
Through the forcefield she could see distant stars.
    She gave an experimental hop, pushing off the floor
with her cilia, and to her surprise soared several
meters forward, almost striking Gul Mavek's back.
The guards bellowed warnings to their leader, snap-
ping up their weapons. Ttan paused, hardly daring to
move. She had noticed that they had increased the
power settings on their weapons.
    Gul Mavek, though, merely paused and regarded
her with a strangely serene expression. "The gravity
here is roughly a third of what you are used to," he
told her. "You will adapt quickly, as have we all." He
 turned his back and led the way down the ramp to a
 stone floor.
     As oddly light as Ttan felt, it was good to have a
 planet around her. Already she tasted traces of ferrous
 oxide, calcium, and other minerals through her cilia.
 If not for her eggs, she would have burrowed deep into
 the rock underfoot in seconds. Not even the phasers
 could have stopped her.
     As long as Gul Mavek held her eggs, though, she
 knew she would do whatever he asked. Nineteen
 children still alive, she thought. Nineteen chances for
 immortality. I must not fail them.
    They crossed an underground docking bay to a large
cargo lift--little more than a rhodinium box with
antigrav units underneath it.
    Gul Mavek boarded first, then Ttan, then the
guards. After one guard rolled a gate across the front
of the lift, they started down.
    Through the gate Ttan watched as they descended
past level after level. The first ten looked identical:
square and white, with doors opening to either side. A
few humanoids in uniforms that matched the guards'
moved through them on errands. The eleventh
through twentieth hadn't been finished, with walls
and floors of a gray-green stone that glistened as
though wet. Ttan knew that look: these tunnels had
been carved out with heavy-duty phasers.
      At the twentieth level the lift came to a halt and the
gate opened. Gul Mavek stepped out.  "This way," he said.
    Ttan emerged more slowly. Here, this far under-
ground, she felt at ease for the first time since she'd
left Janus VI. The rock walls around her, the comfort-
ing closeness, the cool touch of stone--she had come
home.
    Gul Mavek turned left without a second's hesita-
tion. Ttan followed, and the guards brought up the
rear. They traveled in silence for several minutes
before Ttan began to feel vibrations in the stone under
her. She wasn't certain, but it felt like it came from
heavy machinery somewhere ahead.
    At last they rounded a corner and entered another
large cavern. Some kind of large mining and smelting
operation was under way here. On the far side of the
cavern, a seemingly endless line of dust-covered cargo
bins easily ten meters long and five meters wide
floated in on antigray lifts, dumped tons of gravel into
a pile, then floated back out. Huge robot-driven
bulldozers shoveled the gravel onto a conveyor belt,
which carried it into an immense box that radiated
heat in waves--probably a smelting furnace, Ttan
thought. She'd never seen one quite like this before,
but she knew the general principle. Inside, the gravel
was reduced to its composite minerals, then put back
together into ingots of pure latinurn or rhodinium or
carbonire or whatever else it had been programmed
for. She couldn't see where the ingots came out of this
one, though.
     "As you may have already guessed," Gul Mavek
 said, "Davonia is a working moon. We have found
 traces of latinum on this level. I want you to find the
 main deposit for us."
     Moon? Ttan wondered. Where in the Great Plan
 had they brought her?
     "As you command," she said through the transla-
 tor.
     "And Ttan--you have twenty minutes to find it and
 report back. Either that or you won't see your children
 again tonight."
  "But--" she began.
    "Nineteen minutes and fifty seconds," Gul Mavek
said.
    Ttan whirled and hit the rock wall. It melted before
her, surrounding her, filling her body with the deli-
cious tastes of iron, nickel, and three billion years of
water seepage and geologic stability. Latinum,
latinurn, she thought, searching frantically for the
right taste. She had to see her eggs, had to know her
children were safe. Where is the latinurn--

CHAPTER
      6

As USUAL, Quark was claiming to be the injured party.
Odo didn't believe it for a seconO.
    The security chief sat in Quark's bar, his table
conspicuously free of drinks or refreshments, while
Quark himself paced and scurried around him, wav-
ing his hands in the air and putting on a fine display of
Ferengi indignation. "I don't believe this!" he barked,
spraying saliva past his rodenttike teeth. Quark wore a
lime-green jacket over a garish, multicolored blouse
that looked like it had been decorated by a mob of
hyperactive, crayon-wielding two-year-olds. "I come
to you as a law-abiding citizen, a community leader,
victimized by crime, and you won't even lift one
gelatinous finger to do your duty! It's an outrage, a
scandal. Just what do you think your job is anyway?"
    "To keep an eye on you," Odo answered, gazing
impassively over the bar. He declined to look in
Quark's direction. The more agitated Quark became,
the less interested Odo seemed.
  The bar grew more crowded as lunchtime ap-
proached. Odo spotted an unusual number of strang-
ers amid the regular customers. A large family of
Tetlarites stuffed their porcine faces on Quark's over-
priced buffet. The eldest Tellarite, typically near-
sighted, squinted at a plate of Vegan truffles before
snorting his approval and tipping the entire plate
above his waiting mouth. At another table, a pair of
hairless Deltan women glibly fended off the attentions
of over a dozen Argelian men. A small party of
Betazoids sat at the bar, carrying on a silent telepathic
conversation, much to the annoyance of Morn, the
hefty alien who usually occupied one or more of those
seats. Scanning the room, Odo also spotted Klingons,
Caitians, Tiburons, P'alblaakis, and many other new
arrivals, all presumably drawn to DS9 by the immi-
nent flyby of The Prodigal. Odo allowed himself a
moment of nostalgia for the bad old days of the
Occupation; the Cardassians might have been tyran-
nical butchers, but at least they never turned the
station into a tourist trap.
    You'd think, he thought, Quark's greedy little heart
would be filled with glee at this boom in business.
Instead, the Ferengi kept on ranting about some
alleged inconvenience.
    "Contrary to your deranged opinion," Quark de-
clared, "I do not steal from myself."
"You would if you could," Odo snorted in disgust.
Quark ignored the gibe. "In the last two hours, three
plates, five mugs, and one entire chair have disap-
peared from the premises. Do you think they simply
evaporated?"
    "I believe the Ferengi still practice an archaic scam
known as 'insurance.' Are you insured, Quark?"
    "Look," Quark said, lowering his voice. "You and I
both know that if I were after insurance money, I'd
lose more than a few plates. This is petty theft, and
not worth my effort."
    True enough, Odo thought. Although he hated to
admit it, Quark had a point. "I suppose," he said
slowly, making eye contact with Quark for the first
time this encounter, "there's no reason why a major
criminal cannot be afflicted by a minor one."
    "Exactly!" Quark crowed. "Hypothetically speak-
ing, of course. You'll find the thief, then?"
    "Actually," Odo said. "I'm wishing that this robber
were more ambitious. It would appeal to my sense of
justice."
    The Ferengi started to protest, but was interrupted
by the beep of Odo's comm badge. Rising to answer
the call, Odo immediately recognized the urgent tone
in Sisko's voice and turned his back on Quark so he
could listen to Sisko in privacy; then he realized that
Quark's enormous, eavesdropping ears were still too
close for comfort. Very well...
    Odo's bottom half, from his waist to his feet,
dissolved into a translucent orange goo that flowed
upward, forming a soundproof cone over Odo's head
and upper torso. Glancing over his shoulder, through
the glassy sheen of the cone, he saw Quark chewing his
bottom lip in frustration. Odo permitted himself a
thin smile, but his expression turned grim as Sisko
quickly informed him about Ttan's abduction. An
unfortunate matter, he concluded, that could pose a
threat to the station's security should the raiders
return for the other Hortas.
     "Understood," he signed off. Regaining humanoid
 form, he rose from his seat and strode out into the
 Promenade. He had to organize his security team,
 prepare them for the possibility of an imminent
 Cardassian assault. This would have to happen, he
groused, when the population of the Promenade was
already swollen beyond reason. Quark hollered at him
from the doorway of his bar: "Wait! What about my
plates?"
    "Look after them yourself," Odo said brusquely. "I
have more important things to do."

    "I have another chair," Nog whispered. Beneath his
protruding brow, Nog's eyes darted furtively about
the storeroom as he wrestled the chair past stacks of
(mostly contraband) supplies. Crouching on the floor,
his knees resting on the scorched metal grillework,
Jake watched his friend approach.
    "I don't think chairs are going to cut it much
longer," he said glumly. Quark's broken freezer had
been absorbed by the Horta in a matter of minutes.
"We're going to need tables next."
    In fact, all that was left of the first chair was one
shining blue leg that was even now dissolving beneath
the Horta's tendrils. The stolen alien was growing at
an alarming rate, and so was its appetite. Twice as
large as before, it no longer looked so raw and
newborn. A layer of dark, stony armor had formed
over its crimson hide, spreading outward from the
mineral flecks it had been born with. Only veins and
fissures in the armor revealed the redness underneath,
like rivers of molten lava breaking up through faults in
a planet's surface.
    "Tables!" Nog exclaimed. "How am I supposed to
sneak tables out of the bar? My uncle is already
looking suspicious. If he wasn't so busy with all those
moon watchers, he'd be onto us for sure!" He handed
the new chair over to Jake, who shoved it toward the
voracious Horta. He was careful not to get his hands
too close; so far, the little monster seemed more
interested in metal than flesh, but Jake didn't feel like
taking chances. His palm still stung where the egg had
burned him.
    "Nog, I think maybe it's time to tell my dad about
this."
    "No!" Nog said. "My uncle will kill me. Besides,
it's ours. We borrowed it fair and square." Feigning
confidence, and failing miserably, he tried to reassure
Jake. "Look, as long as we keep feeding it, it's not
going anywhere. You stay here and I'll... I'll go find
a buyer right away."
    "Hey, wait a sec!" Jake complained, as Nog backed
away, then turned and ran out of sight. No way is he
sticking me with this, Jake thought, leaping to his feet
and chasing after his friend. The Horta had another
chair to eat. That would keep it busy for a while, he
told himself. Or so he hoped.

    Suddenly, the food stopped coming. The Horta
finished off another sumptuous scrap of chair and
waited for something new to eat. But nothing ap-
peared, and even the carbon-smelling creatures who
had been caring for her disappeared abruptly.
    She let out a grinding cry, but received no response.
She was alone and hungry. The chairs and cups and
other morsels, while delicious, had not satisfied her
hunger. She felt, on the very fringes of her senses,
something else, a promise of food and fulfillment that
was exactly what she craved. And it was nearby.
    Snuffiing along the storeroom floor, she came at last
to a solid rhodinium wall and proceeded to burn a
path straight through it. The lights in the storeroom
winked on and off as severed circuits were replaced by
backup systems.
  The Horta left a steaming tunnel behind her as she
left the storeroom for unknown territory. The food
she wanted called to her. If only she could find it.
 Maybe this way...

    Clad only in a diaphanous white gown that barely
veiled the tantalizing feminine body underneath, the
Vulcan priestess slipped quietly into the young
crewman's quarters. Ensign Marc Tomson sat upright
in his bunk, his heart pounding, as the beautiful
Vulcan drew nearer. Only the small reading light over
his head illuminated the room, penetrating the filmy
gauze stretched tautly over the woman's breasts. Marc
shifted uncomfortably upon his bunk, naked beneath
a single thin sheet.
    "T'Leena?" he asked breathlessly. "Why are you
doing here... I mean, what are you coming..."
    Damn, he thought. I sound like an idiot. "Comput-
er, freeze program."
    Her arms outstretched toward him, her lips glisten-
ing moistly, the figure of T'Leena suddenly became as
motionless as a marble statue. Not breathing, not
blinking, she froze in place as though trapped in a
single instant of time. Marc took a deep breath and
wiped the sweat from his forehead.
    Oh well, he consoled himself. The great thing about
holosuites was you could keep rerunning a fantasy
until you got it right. And he had been fine-tuning this
particular scenario ever since his last term of duty on
Vulcan, several months back. All those irresistible,
unapproachable Vulcan women... ! Still, DS9 had
its attractions as well, including Quark's holosuites.
    Anxious to begin again, he leaned back on the bunk
and rested his head on the pillow. "Computer, resume
program from beginning."
 T'Leena disappeared, then rematerialized at the
entrance of his quarters. The door slid silently shut
behind her, leaving them alone together. She crept
through the shadows toward him, into the revealing
glare of the reading light.
    Marc swallowed and cleared his throat. "T'Leena,"
he tried again. "What are you doing here?" (That's
better, he decided. His voice sounded deeper, more
confident.)
    "! do not know. I do not understand." She knelt
beside the bunk and placed a warm palm upon Marc's
cheek. Her hair, blacker than space and more lustrous,
fell about her bare shoulders. "It is not logical. It is
not Vulcan."
 "But..." Marc prompted her.
    "You make my cool green blood burn like a stream
of fiery emeralds, Marc Tomson. My time is years
away, but when I look on you I feel the passion of the
pon farr." With total Vulcan honesty, she stared at
him, puzzled but unashamed by her strange desires.
God, she was gorgeous, Marc thought. Even though he
had carefully scripted all her dialogue, he was still
overwhelmed by the experience of hearing it from her
own lips.
    "Wha... what do you want from me?" (Take it
easy, he thought. Don't rush things. We're almost
there.)
    T'Leena rose to her feet and reached behind her
neck to untie the straps of her robe. The sheer,
translucent fabric fell away from her body, drifting
with agonizing slowness to the floor. "I want to meM
with you, Marc Tomson. I want to explore infinite
pleasures in infinite combinations. I want to teach you
the ancient secrets of Vulcan love .... "
    "Yes!" Marc blurted. He couldn't stand it anymore.
Sweat streamed down his back. The bunk itself
seemed to be growing hotter by the second. He
grabbed the hem of his blanket and tossed it aside,
exposing...
    A steaming, wriggling mass of brown-and-red rock
burning its way up through the mattress and between
his legs.
    Marc screamed in panic. He half-jumped, half-
tumbled out of the bunk, colliding with T'Leena.
They fell in a jumble of naked limbs onto the hard tile
floor. Forced to improvise, the holographic Vulcan
tried to embrace Marc while continuing her prepro-
grammed declaration of love.
    "... Every seven years is not enough, not for
you ....
    Marc barely heard her. All fantasies and fervor had
been driven out of his head by the sudden, shocking
appearance of the thing in the bed, replaced by an
instinctive urge to escape. Ohmigod, he thought. I'm
completely defenseless. His uniform and communica-
tor lay in a heap on the other side of the floor. His
phaser was back in his real quarters; Constable Odo
didn't allow weapons on the Promenade.
    Frantically, he tried to disengage himself from the
amorous Vulcan priestess. Acidic fumes seared his
nostrils, and he struggled to look over his shoulder to
see what the alien creature was doing, but T'Leena's
teeth held on to his ear. An awkward thunk behind
him suggested that the thing had dropped off the bunk
onto the floor. Maybe it was oozing toward him this
very minute.
    "Computer," he shouted, "end program!" He bare-
ly got the words out before T'Leena thrust her tongue
into his mouth.
    Tongue, T'Leena, and darkened room vanished
instantly, and Marc found himself sprawled on the
floor of the holosuite. Blinking against the sudden,
brighter lighting, he heard a heavy, thrashing sound
nearby. He sprang to his feet and scrambled away
from the sound. Only when he was at least a yard away
did he turn around and look toward the empty space
where the simulated bunk had existed heartbeats ago.
    His fantasy might have dematerialized, but the
monster remained. Tentatively, like a puppy learning
to walk, it zigzagged across the floor, leaving a trail of
charred and sizzling tile behind it. A high-pitched
screeching, like plates of rusty metal being scraped
against each other, emerged from the creature, hurt-
ing Marc's ears. The creature's hunger, and corrosive
nature, were all too obvious.
    He glanced quickly in the direction of his clothing,
wondering if maybe he could make a run for them.
Then the alien, perhaps agitated by the sudden change
in the holosuite's appearance, lurched toward the only
remaining object in the room: Marc.
    The young ensign raced out of the suite as fast as his
feet would carry him. Oh god, he thought, how am I
ever going to explain this to the Commander?

    Shrieks and laughter broke out in the lounge. Be-
hind the bar, Quark looked up in time to see a human
male, quite naked, stumble down the stairs from
Quark's upper floors. Blushing redder than an
Dumesite man-lobster, the human navigated through
the bar and ran out into the Promenade. Despite the
young male's haste, Quark recognized him as the
ensign who had rented Holosuite #5.
    Humans! Quark shook his head. Sometimes he
thought he'd never figure out the sexual customs of
Homo sapiens. No Ferengi would ever flee from a
holosuite unless in pursuit of something more profit-
able. Still, this incident only confirmed his faith in one
of the oldest and most sacred of the Rules of Acquisi-
tion:
 Always get payment in advance.

    The baby Horta was quite confused. This chamber
had appeared very interesting at first. There had been
more of the carbon beings, like the two smaller ones
who had first fed her, as well as solid structures that
looked and smelled as if they were real. But then the
snacks disappeared and so did the creature who
smelled like copper. And the other carbon person, the
one that secreted sodium chloride in an aqueous
solution, had run away, just like her feeders.
    The Horta howled in frustration and hunger. Where
was Mother? Where was the food she craved?
    Despite her cries, she felt no trace of her mother's
presence. She could sense the food, however, sorne-
where in this strange, unsettling world she had awak-
ened into. Below, she realized; it was still farther
below.
    Sinking into the floor, she left the empty holosuite
behind.

CHAPTER
      7

Jadzia Dax made a point of being awake and at the
conn when the Amazon entered the Davon system. If
they came across any other vessels, she would be at the
controls. She could still hear Benjamin warning her to
keep things from getting any more complicated than
they had to be--and she had no intention of letting
him down.
    She felt the thrum of the engines change as she
brought the ship out of warp at the very edge of the
system. Hopefully they were beyond the range of any
sensors the Cardassians had set up. She put a receiver
to her ear to scan privately for subspace radio trans-
missions, but instead of the usual whir and crackle of
static and the mumble of distant voices, she heard a
loud hiss... a hiss that grew louder by the second.
When it became painful, she yanked the receiver from
her ear, wincing. It had to be a Van Luden radiation
belt. Nothing else made that sort of sound.
    "You should have awakened me," Kira asked, drop-
ping into the seat beside her. "What's our status?"
    "There's a Van Luden radiation belt nearby," she
said. An uncomfortable ringing tone sounded in the
back of her head.
    "Where? I don't see..." Kira began, bending over
the sensors. "Got it! Fifty thousand klicks ahead and
closing."
    "That's precisely the cover we need," Dax said. "If
we can't hear them, they can't hear us... including
the noise from our warp coils."
    Against her better judgment, she had to let Kira
take control of the ship. The ringing sound had begun
to throw off her sense of balance. There was no sense
in jeopardizing everyone if her ability to pilot the
runabout was impaired. She shook her head slowly,
trying to clear the sound away. If it didn't stop soon,
she'd have to call Julian.
    "That's fine as long as we're out here," Kira said.
"But it doesn't help us find that Horta. See if you can
spot any Cardassian ships."
    "I told you," Dax said, "there's too much white
noise from the radiation belt." Wasn't Kira listening
to her? "We're going to have to get farther away from
it if we're going to pick anything up." She shook her
head again. Finally the ringing sound began to fade.
    "I didn't mean for you to take a sensor scan, I
meant for you to physically go look using your eyes."
    "What?" The idea sounded crazy, but Kira didn't
look like she was kidding. For a second Dax wondered
if the static had affected her hearing. "You want me to
go and look out the ports?"
    "That's right," Kira said. "Eyeball space around us.
You Federation types are too used to technology.
What would you do if the sensors were down? So you
don't see more than a few thousand kticks in any
direction. Sometimes that's all you need."
    Dax found herself nodding. It could work. "A very
insightful, if primitive, answer. I'll see what I can
spot."
    Rising, she headed astern. At each viewport on the
starboard side she paused and gazed out for a few
seconds, studying the darkness of the void around
them. Slowly her hearing returned to normal, and she
relaxed a bit. That was one less thing for her to worry
about.
    The Van Luden radiation belt hung tantalizingly
near, a shimmering yellow veil of light across the
horizon that she found curiously appealing. There
wasn't anything quite so beautiful as the wonders of
deep space, she thought. Perhaps that's what had
drawn her to the sciences--and ultimately to the
fringe of the known universe.
    As she continued around the runabout, she passed
the spot where the card table had been folded into the
wall for the night. Julian and the others had sacked
out on the floor, on sleeping pads taken from ship's
stores. Gingerly, she stepped around them. Julian, she
thought, looked positively charming in his sleep, with
his perpetually furrowed brow now smooth and re-
laxed. She smiled almost maternally at him. He was
such an endearing child in so many ways.
    She hadn't spotted anything when she reached the
rearmost viewport, so she started back along the port
side, repeating the process. Once more the Van Luden
radiation belt stretched seemingly to infinity ahead of
her, drawing her eye like a moth to its flame. She
found a curious hollow feeling in her chest looking at
it, and she knew when she got back to DS9 that she'd
have to look up whatever studies Starfleet had done on
it during the time this system had been in Federation
space.
    Two viewports from the front of the ship, a subtle
movement caught her eye. She squinted, straining to
see. Yes, there it was... a small black circle moving
across the glow of the radiation belt.
    "Kira," she said. "There's something coming slowly
at us from port side."
  "Where?" Kira demanded.
    Putting the radiation belt from her thoughts, Dax
hurried back to her seat. She leaned forward, located
the speck on her monitor, and pointed. "There. See
it?"
    "I'm bringing us closer," Kira said. "Moving to an
intercept course."
    Dax felt a faint tremor run through the runabout's
deck plates as the Amazon came about. She leaned
forward, watching closely as the black shape grew
from the size of a pinhead to the size of a dinner plate
to the size of a small ship--
    No, not a ship, she decided with relief. "It's an
asteroid," she said. "The radiation belt isn't as clean
as you thought, Kira."
 "Hang on!" Kira said.
    "What are you doing?" Dax demanded. They were
still on a collision course with the asteroid, she
realized.
"One second more..." Kira whispered.
"Decelerate! Kira!" Dax cried, her alarm growing.
"Pull up--you're going to hit it!" The crater-scarred
surface of the asteroid now loomed like an immense
pockmarked wall ahead of her, filling the wide view-
screen.
    "Relax, I know what I'm doing," Kira said. She
fired docking thrusters at the last possible moment.
"I've done this a thousand times."
    Dax braced herself for collision. Kira was certifi-
ably insane. Dax knew it now. Nobody flew on
manual this close to an asteroid.
    Kira fired the thrusters once more, easing them to a
crawl. Finally, with a jarring bump, the runabout's
nose touched the asteroid's surface. Slowly Kira ap-
plied the thrusters again.
    "You're going to push it," Dax said in awe. She'd
never seen such a move before, and the sheer daring of
it amazed her more than she would admit.
 "Very good," Kira said. "Hold on!"
    A heavy thrumming noise filled the cabin as the
runabout's engines strained against the asteroid's
mass, but Dax had the distinct impression they were
making progress. She glanced down at the ship's
relative-velocity gauge. It showed an almost exponen-
tial increase in speed. When Kira switched from
thrusters to impulse engines, they were positively
racing.
    They rapidly cleared the Van Luden radiation belt.
When Kira cut the engines and used the thrusters to
move back fifteen meters from the asteroid's surface,
Dax breathed easily for the first time. Now at least
they had a little room to maneuver. She didn't like
cutting it so close.
    Kira began flicking switches. The interior lights
went out, along with most of the instruments. "We
don't want them to pick up our energy bleed," she
said. She leaned back and looked at Dax. "We should
be clear of the radiation belt's interference. Try the
sensors again."
    Dax blinked. "You continue to amaze me, Kira,"
she said.
 "Like I said, it's an old trick. There are a lot of
asteroids around Bajor. We used to sneak whole strike
forces into orbit this way. Are you picking anything
up?"
    "Not yet." Dax finished the readouts from the first
two planets and moved on to the third. For a gas giant,
it had a suspiciously high energy reading. She took a
more detailed scan, but found nothing unusual. If not
the planet, she thought, perhaps the moons...
There, on the innermost moon--that had to be 'a
forcefield. Smiling triumphantly, she brought up a
subspace scan. They were definitely broadcasting, and
the transmission was being beamed back toward
Cardassia.
     "I've found them," she announced. "There's a
 small base on the third planet's innermost moon. And
 I'm picking up a Cardassian transmission." She
 looked at Kira. "The computer can't read it. That
 transmission is security scrambled."
     Kira smiled wolfishly. "Bingo, as you might say.
 Too bad Cardassian codes are such a devil to crack; I'd
 give a lot to know what they're saying right now."
     "So would I," Dax said. "Let's see what our records
 have to say about that moon. I loaded the Starfleet
 survey of all the local systems before we set out, just in
 case we needed them."
     She called up a readout on the Davon system and
 skipped ahead to the proper planetary body. "The gas
 giant is fourteen AUs from the sun," she read aloud.
 "Its innermost moon showed real promise for mining
 exploitation. The preliminary survey team found
 traces of phlaginum, uranium, and several other
 heavy metals--and latinum. They didn't find any
 large deposits, but the Davon system was handed over
 to the Cardassians before a real survey could be
 done."
    "Latinum," Kira mused. "The Cardassians use it as
much as the Federation does. This has to be the place
they've taken Ttan."
    "It's a good possibility," Dax agreed. The mathe-
matician part of her symbiont would have wagered
heavily on it