“Except that one time,” Nog said. “Back on the station . . . toward the end of the war. You and Doctor Bashir closed down the bar. You were . . . well, very happy. I remember you had been in the holosuite, and you were very pleased because I thought you’d finally won.”
“Won?”
“The one you’d been playing for so many weeks,” Nog said, suddenly aware that he may have made a misstep. “The one based on the Alamo”
O’Brien squinted as if looking off at a foggy and distant horizon. He wiped his perspiring forehead with his gloved hand and then smiled wanly. “No,” he said, looking away. “I mean, yes, I remember. That was a strange day.” Standing straighter, collecting his thoughts, the chief continued, “But everything was strange in those days. The Dominion closing in. Victory seemed like a dream. And there we were right at the center of it all, right on the anvil.” O’Brien paused, momentarily lost in memory, and then continued. “I don’t remember whose idea it was to change the Alamo simulation. Probably Julian’s.” He shook his head. “He didn’t always play fair, you know. Anyway . . .” O’Brien looked directly at Nog and, for a moment, just a moment, Nog felt as if he was actually being seen. “I guess you didn’t know. Did you?”
“Know what?”
“Didn’t you wonder why we changed it?”
“Because you were tired of losing.”
“Right,” O’Brien said. “Exactly right. Sometimes you just want a win. Especially when times are dark. You want the bright sunrise over the mountains, the birds singing, and the sap rising. I think Julian was feeling it more than anyone back then.” He laughed. “So, he changed the parameters. Davy Crockett lived. Bowie lived. Everyone . . . well, mostly everyone lived.” O’Brien unclipped a water bottle from his leg and took a sip. “The good guys won.”
“Oh,” Nog said, embarrassed, though not entirely certain why. “I always wondered. I was glad to be there that night.”
“Julian felt terrible afterward. And not just because of the vodka or rum or . . . bourbon?”
“Whiskey.”
O’Brien reclipped the bottle to his thigh. “Though it’s really very . . . well, it’s kind of you to remember it. Haven’t thought about that night for a long time.” He grinned. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Chief,” Nog said. O’Brien looked like he was ready to tackle another couple flights of stairs, and Nog turned to recommence their ascent, but was suddenly struck by a thought. “Where’s Ginger?”
O’Brien shook his head. “Don’t know. Lost track of her. Probably run off, doing whatever it is she does. Hunting something. Trapping it. Wrapping it up in webbing.”
“I don’t think they do that,” Nog said. “Besides, what’s here that she could hunt?”
O’Brien leaned out over the stairway railing and studied the gloom. “I don’t know. Lost lab animals?” They had only climbed a couple decks, yet the lighting was so poor that the deck was barely visible. O’Brien straightened and flexed his back. “She’ll find us if she wants to. Don’t worry.” O’Brien mounted the first step. “All ready now? Got your second wind?”
“Sure,” Nog said.
“Good,” O’Brien said. “Let’s be off. Find Captain Maxwell.” Nog did not detect any sign of condescension or irony.
Ops Center
The large viewscreen Finch had used to show O’Brien and Nog his presentation flickered and flipped from display to communication mode. Finch fiddled with the control panel and tried to sharpen the signal. Maxwell squinted at the screen, still feeling woozy. A face appeared, though the features were poorly defined, either intentionally scrambled or badly tuned.
“Finch,” said a deep and resonant voice.
Klingon? Maxwell wondered, trying to place the accent.
“What transpires? What happened to your station? Is the product safe?” Definitely not Klingon, Maxwell decided. Too polite.
“There was an accident,” Finch said, attempting to sound blasé. “But the product is fine. Better than fine, actually. Performing admirably.”
“In what version of reality,” Maxwell said, attempting to project his voice, “could anything that’s happening here today be described as ‘performing admirably.’ ” Or, at least, that’s what he intended to say. He got as far as “In what version—” before Finch struck him across the face with the back of his hand.
Maxwell was unprepared for the savagery of the blow. Something in his neck popped, and he felt a bright spark of pain inside his mouth. He might have blacked out for a second, because there was a sense of a gap in the flow of time. When he awoke, Maxwell felt his head hanging down and watched a thin stream of pinkish saliva drip from his mouth down onto his lap. “Ow.” That single word cost him. Maxwell tentatively probed the inside of his mouth with the tip of his tongue and found a large gash on the inside of his left cheek, probably where he had bitten himself.
Finch had returned to speaking to the face on the screen. “. . . disgruntled employee,” he was saying. “Really no way I could have seen it coming, though, looking back, he was an unstable sort. Fidgety.”
“Fidgety,” the face intoned. Maxwell blinked away the pain and the fog. The image must have been intentionally garbled.
“But, as I have so often said,” Finch continued, sounding more and more like his old self with every word, “any setback should be viewed as an opportunity. In this instance, this is doubly true. I’ve collected a great deal of data on the Mother’s responses to adverse conditions and she, as I said, is performing admirably. The Shedai metagenome data you provided has been invaluable in finding solutions to problems that otherwise would have taken—”
“Finch,” the voice intoned.
“Yes?”
“Excuse me, but I do not care.”
“As you say,” Finch said, head back. He rubbed the back of one of his hands against the front of his shirt.
Probably hurt it when he hit me, Maxwell thought. Good.
“I do tend to overshare when I’m excited.”
“Yes,” the face agreed. It appeared to turn as if it was reading something, possibly a sensor output. “Readings indicate the product—”
“The Mother,” Finch added.
“Yes,” the face agreed. “The product is not in a containment device. How am I to transport it to my ship?”
“Ah,” Finch said. “Valid question. I need to—how shall we say?—wrangle it? I may require some assistance on that score.”
“Then I suggest you ask one of your associates,” the voice said. “My scans say you’ve several to choose from. I am prepared to wait for—” He paused, either to check a chronometer or to convert the right unit of time. “—one half hour. Before I entered this area of localized interference, my long-range scanners detected vessels headed to this sector. Were you expecting visitors?”
Maxwell listened carefully to the speaker’s intonation. He’d met so many individuals from so many worlds that he felt that he had a pretty good ear for accents, but the speaker’s world of origin eluded him. There were some strange sibilants at the ends of words, but he couldn’t place the long consonants.
“None that I wish to receive,” Finch explained. “I may require a lift.”
“A lift?”
“A ride. I’d like you to bring me along with you.”
“You do not wish to go where I am bound.”
“Probably not, but you can drop me somewhere along the way. I can compensate you.”
The pilot of the spacecraft paused as if considering his options. Finally, he said, “Prepare my delivery. I’ll consider your request.”
“A half hour,” Finch said. “I’ll be ready.”
The screen went blank.
“And he’s been so polite up until now,” Maxwell said.
“Be silent, Ben.”
“He clearly wants your product
, whatever he thinks it is.”
“Be silent. I’m thinking.” Finch looked as if he was, indeed, thinking hard. Hand on his chin, staring in the general direction of the stairway to the lab, he appeared to be pondering options.
“What’s a Shedai metagenome?” Maxwell asked.
“You wouldn’t understand even if I explained it to you.”
“Try me,” Maxwell said. His head was clearing, and he was attempting to subtly put pressure on the tape. If he kept at it, he thought he could stretch it enough that he might be able to yank his arms free. “I’m a very clever fellow.”
“Perhaps,” Finch said, turning toward Maxwell. “But are you clever enough to know when you may be looking at your last chance? We may die here if we’re not careful.” As if to prove Finch’s point, the artificial gravity briefly blinked, just long enough that Finch’s feet left the deck and Maxwell felt the strain on his arms.
“I thought you said you rerouted power to this room’s grid.”
“I did,” Finch said, rising from a crouch. He had landed badly when the gravity returned, and Maxwell saw him wince. “Imagine what that must have been like in the rest of the station.”
“I am.”
“Your friends, whoever made it back to the station, they may not like it if we have too many more of those.”
“You’re probably right.”
“So what,” Finch asked, limping closer to Maxwell, “if I can convince my friend in the ship to bring them along with me?”
Maxwell suddenly saw where the conversation was headed. Still, he had to ask, “You think he would do that?”
“I think,” Finch said, rubbing his chin with the tip of his thumb, “that the only way I’ll be able to ask is if I contain and deliver the Mother. I can’t do it alone.”
“You’re a bastard, Finch,” Maxwell said.
“I am,” Finch replied. “So very true. And you, Ben Maxwell, are a very good man.” He stood in front of Maxwell’s chair and leaned down over him, gripping the arms in his hands. “And if you swear to help me in exchange for my offer to try to get us all off the station, I have faith you’ll do as you say. You were a good Starfleet officer, I would warrant. A man of honor. A man who kept his word.”
Maxwell couldn’t help himself. He brought one of his knees up as fast and hard as could. Finch crumpled to the ground, groaning and gasping imprecations. Speaking loud enough that Finch could hear him through what he was sure was a high-pitched internal screech, Maxwell said, “Cut me loose. I’ll help. You’ve got my number.” He paused to better enjoy Finch’s muffled whimpers. “Well, mostly . . .”
Hangar Deck
“You’re the last one,” Bharad said, leaning in with the plasma torch. She handed the trussed-up researcher a set of welding goggles someone had found in cabinet. The torch had a little shield that Bharad could use to keep herself from being blinded by the glare, but the ensnared scientists seemed to feel better if they could watch what she was doing and not be forced to shut their eyes against the light.
Bharad had become fairly proficient in the use of the torch over the past hour and hadn’t done anything worse than lightly sear one or two wriggling scholars. The researcher—Bharad couldn’t recall her name—watched her work and even seemed to relax a bit when the filaments began to singe and snap.
“Just another minute,” Bharad said, happy to be almost finished with her task. The doctor was vexed that she would no longer have a distraction from the problem they were facing. They were stranded on the Hooke with whatever menace Finch had unleashed. When her gut began to surge, Bharad stepped away from the almost-free researcher and waited for the gravity fluctuation to subside. It was a long one this time, and she was glad to be in a confined space. Out in the hangar, everyone had taken to standing near a fixed object that they could grab hold of at a moment’s notice. One or two of her colleagues, ironically, had tried to cut strips of the webbing, roll them into thicker cables, and lash themselves to railings, but the silk had begun to dry out and become brittle, a condition Bharad mentally noted to investigate if she had the opportunity.
“I really hate that,” the researcher said when Bharad started in with the torch again.
“Of course you do. But I’m being careful.”
“Not the torch.” She lifted the goggles to cover her eyes. “The gravity.”
“Don’t fidget. Almost through.”
“Do we know if anyone’s coming to help us?” The researcher (What was her name?) didn’t sound frightened, just mildly concerned.
“Our Starfleet friends have gone off in search of Finch and Ben Maxwell. They sent for help, but weren’t sure how long it would take to get here.”
“Or if this old rust bucket will stay together until then.” The researcher dragged her left arm out of the tangle of burned webbing. “What in seven hells did Finch release?”
Bharad shook her head and helped the woman to her feet. Fortunately, she had close-cropped hair, so it wouldn’t be necessary to cut any off to get loose of the filaments. Poor Mary Ratinoff had had to chop away most of her very nice, long, red hair with a pair of work shears. “I’m not sure,” Bharad said. “Commander Nog explained it was some sort of tailored bug—you know the kind of thing Finch liked—that’s supposed to eat contaminants. It got out. Seems to like radioactive material best. Chews through whatever might be in the way to get to them, including hull plating and reactor shielding.”
“Then why isn’t it eating this old thing’s warp core?” She indicated the Wren with a wave of her hand.
“Not sure. Probably because we tamped down the core. Maybe it’s just preoccupied with the main course and is saving us for a snack. Who knows?”
“Why does the gravity keep cutting out?”
“The hull is breached on several levels,” Bharad explained. “I don’t think the Hooke environmental systems are meant to stand up to this much abuse. If I know Ben, he’s probably trying to keep the catastrophes balanced out, which means systems are burping from time to time.” She had no idea what she was talking about, but Bharad figured there was no reason why anyone else had to experience the fear and indecision she was. Besides, for all she knew, she was right and Ben was behind the disruptions. As far as she could tell—whether anyone else knew it or not—his was the hand that kept the Hooke from flying apart at any given moment.
“So, we’re probably best off staying down here for now?”
“I think so,” Bharad said. “The hull appears to be intact. We have atmosphere and power.”
“And if things start falling apart, we have your spiders to help keep things together.”
“They’re not spiders,” Bharad said peevishly. “They’re arachnoforms.”
The researcher—Bella (her name suddenly popped loose from the depths of Bharad’s memory)—made a rude noise and shuffled stiffly out of the transport to join her colleagues.
Bharad switched off the plasma torch, saying, “I have no idea where the girls are.” Off with their boyfriends, she thought ruefully. Typical.
Chapter 17
Four Years Earlier
Starfleet Penal Colony
“I had a weird dream last night,” Maxwell said.
“Oh?” said Doctor Clark, reaching for his padd. Over the years of psychoanalysis, Maxwell had gone from being a person who almost never remembered his dreams to someone who not only dreamed vividly, but also could recall the dreams in excruciating detail. Clark liked to take notes, possibly because it helped him to keep the particulars straight in his own mind.
“There wasn’t much to it.”
“What do you recall?” Clark asked.
“A gerbil.”
“A gerbil?” Scratching on the padd. “That’s what you recall, or that’s all there was?”
“That’s all there was: a gerbil.”
“Not much.”
r /> “No.”
“Was it doing anything?”
“No. Standing on his hind legs. Sniffing. The usual gerbil stuff.”
“Not much of a dream, is it?”
“I guess,” Maxwell said, and stared out the window. He was sitting in a chair today, so he could watch the clouds out over the ocean. “Oh,” he added. “And he was wearing a red shirt.”
“A red shirt? Like a T-shirt? Or a pullover?”
“No, I mean a uniform . . . a Starfleet uniform. The kind they wore when Kirk was commanding the Enterprise, before they redid the uniforms.”
“Oh. Please excuse my ignorance, but what does a red-shirted Starfleet uniform indicate?”
“Back in Kirk’s day, it meant engineering, service divisions, and security.”
“Security?”
“Security officers.” Maxwell grinned. “There was even a joke about that. A very old joke about redshirts.” To his surprise, Maxwell felt the grin leave his face. He was feeling very, very sad and wasn’t sure why.
“What is it, Ben?” Doctor Clark asked. “What are you thinking about?”
“Redshirts,” Maxwell said. “I was thinking about the joke about redshirts.”
Doctor Clark said, “Why don’t you tell it to me?”
“No,” Maxwell said. “No. I don’t want to.”
January 9, 2386
Deck Two
Robert Hooke
“Have I mentioned,” Nog asked, his voice crackling in the intercom in O’Brien’s helmet, “how very much I’m not enjoying this?”
“Yes,” O’Brien replied, punching the giant undead rat in the face. “You’ve mentioned it several times.” The giant undead rat spun away in the indifferent gravity and crashed into a bulkhead. “Have I mentioned how happy I would be if we had thought to bring phasers?”
“By my count, ten times.”
Only ten? O’Brien thought, mildly surprised. Would have expected it was much more than that.
Nog was doing well against his giant undead rat, though he had the advantage of receiving training in low- or zero-g battle while (presumably) the giant undead rat had not. I must stop thinking “giant undead rat,” O’Brien thought. Probably not technically accurate. Also . . . He wound up and booted the third giant undead rat down the corridor, its hairless gray tail twitching, glassy eyes whirling in their sockets. It careened off the ceiling and spun away. Probably an insult to giant undead rats everywhere.