"CHIEF—LOOK OUT!"
Too late. Out of the shadows, a matte black club swung down and cracked against a human skull patterned with curly buff hair.
Miles O'Brien shook his ringing head and cursed himself for not reacting quicker to the warning from behind. "Oh, damn … damn that …"
He blinked up at the heavy lintel. It hadn't really moved, but sure seemed as if it had. This whole tunnel was on the hunt for the two of them. His bleeding hands, torn uniform, and now his swelling forehead told the tale.
Pressing a scored palm to his skull, he lay to one side and rested against the curved wall of the access cave. "I shouldn't have let you talk me into this, Odo. This is what I get. Look at me. I'm chipped as cordwood."
Security Chief Odo moved forward from the harsh slashes of shadow and blades of light cast by the illuminators they'd been dropping like bread crumbs behind him. "You all right?"
Wincing, O'Brien tried to nod, but it hurt. He fingered his head. "Swelling up like a soap bubble. Times like this could drive me back to the sod."
With a grunt Odo shifted his lanky body, leaned a knee on a broken piece of metal, and touched the lintel that had reached down from heaven and struck O'Brien. "Mmm … it's painted dull black, with some slashes of gloss black that go against the shape. Keeps it from being seen until someone gets struck on the head."
"Call the Cardassian Central Command and tell the bastards it still works."
This tunnel was more like a coal mine than an access corridor through one of the docking pylons that vaulted into space like a spider's legs. Its collapsed areas and false turnoffs had confounded their tricorder and turned what should've been an hour's glance into a daylong exploration. The widest place they'd come through had been back about an eighth of a kilometer, and it had only been four feet wide and six tall. Odo couldn't even stand up all the way.
Of course, Odo could be shorter if he wanted to.
The skinniest place had been all of twenty inches wide. Odo hadn't found it a problem, but O'Brien had done some fancy squirming to get his shoulders through, and taken a scrape or two or three on the odd edge.
Some of these edges were razor sharp—like the lintel, deliberately made that way. This was a danger maze, built to bump, bruise, or slice anyone who didn't know the way through. A misstep meant a fall, and a fall could mean losing a hand or leg.
"Inexcusable," Odo simmered, gazing now into his tricorder, squinting at the tiny screen. His blank face had more expression than he seemed ever to realize. "When Starfleet took over, I told them they'd better explore these pylons thoroughly. They didn't listen."
"There wasn't time," O'Brien defended. "It's a big station. Besides, you could've come down here anytime on your own, mate, instead of waiting until it was Captain Sisko's idea, so don't be so lofty. This pylon was collapsed during the fighting. There was no reason to come down here. I mean, how many back alleys do you bother looking down?"
"I look down them all."
One hand on a cobweb thick as cotton, O'Brien peered through the shadows. Odo seemed at home here as he gazed into his tricorder and the soft lights from the screen, normally invisible, brushed the lineless mask of his face. Somehow he was mystical in the darkness and dust, an echo of legends that called to O'Brien from long back and were hard to ignore even through the clutter of an engineer's logic.
"So nobody's ever been down this far since before the war?" O'Brien asked.
Odo looked up, his rough voice laden with a sudden meaning, his eyes like two thumb marks in clay. "Nobody."
"Right," O'Brien sighed, and pushed himself forward again. "Come this far, might's well keep on."
"Agreed. Would you like me to take the lead?"
"No, I'm fine. Here, watch your footing on that … here's another one of those black things topside … welcome to Hell'n Highwater … can I show you to your room, cell, or coffin?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Nothin'. Let's roll."
This place had a life of its own. Not just the tunnel, but the whole of Deep Space Nine. Even evacuated, it would still pulse. He'd felt that since his first runabout approach, since he first saw the great unlubricated wheel cranking in space, cast in methyl violet and frosted with the cold light of the Bajoran sun, grizzled with patina not of age, but of overuse. This giant spool of incorrigibles was bazaar, dime store, rialto, community center, infirmary, refuge, precinct house, or hideout to the hundreds who came and went from it, and it could stir the neck hairs of any species that had them. Only a person's own odds could say whether the jaundiced silver sculpture in this dry veldt of space would turn out to be a safety net or a bottle dungeon, and the station ignored all hopes, turning coldly and whispering, No promises, no promises.
To Miles O'Brien, this crossgrained, cantankerous duty station was the back stair of space, and it still looked a little too Cardassian for comfort.
He coughed harshly, and it cracked him out of his haunts.
From behind, Odo asked, "Chief?"
"Fine … air's a bit stale."
Hanging with both hands from a steel rod overhead as he swung over piled trash on the deck, Odo huffed at him. "Only if you breathe it."
O'Brien paused. "Looks like we're up against a dead end here."
"Are you sure?"
"No passage right or left … I'm flush up against a bulkhead. Cold, too. Let's have a light."
From a suffering rucksack that had bumped along on one hip all day, Odo tugged another of the small illuminators and clicked it on.
Gassy white light gulped at the darkness and finally swallowed most of it, enough to show a dust-shrouded wall made of several pieces of dented metal panels, bolted and welded to each other in a crude manner.
"Oh, the captain's not gonna like this," O'Brien muttered. "Not a bit."
Odo squeezed in to put a hand on the shabby wall. "Why not?"
"Look at the seams. Anybody with a can opener could break in through this mess in five minutes. You know the captain … sees every little disturbance as killing somebody's family."
With a twist of his flat lips, Odo tilted his head. "That's not a nice thing to say."
"I don't mean it poorly. We've had a streak of peace on the station lately. I just don't like to be the one to bring him trouble. Wish I didn't have to tell him about this."
"I'll tell him," Odo said. "I'm in charge of security. It's my job to bring him trouble."
"You sure there's no schematic of what's down these ruddy throats?"
"None. This pylon and the one directly above are the two oldest parts of the station. Though Deep Space Nine is only about 21 years old, some of the parts were cannibalized from existing stations. No telling how old they are."
"Crazy-quilt space station," O'Brien grunted. "Hear something new every day, don't we?"
"Yes, we do." Odo craned his long neck to look at the edges of the patchwork wall. "There's a sensor source behind here."
"It's not open space?"
"No. There's a six-point-four-meter pocket between us and open space."
"Air in it? Maybe there's a hull breach."
Odo keyed the tricorder and waited until it did its search. "Very little air. But no breach. It's vacuum-sealed."
"Let's put some air in it."
"Now? Without protective equipment?"
"Why not? We've had a hellacious time getting this far and I want to know what the Cardassians were trying to keep anyone from seeing."
Rather than waste time on a pointless agreement, Odo handed O'Brien the tricorder and toed around the clutter, then reached down and came up with a four-foot metal rod. Looked heavy. Maybe a forged rhodinium blend. Even Odo had a little trouble hoisting it.
He fixed one end of the heavy rod flush into the palm of his hand, supported the middle with his other hand, and aimed for a seamless patch on the bulkhead. His narrow shoulders flexed, rotated, then set.
"Take cover," he rasped, and braced his legs.
BANG!
Wheeeeeesssskkhhhuuuuuu
O'Brien clutched at the collapsia of ragged structural stuff around him as the sudden rush of air from here to there pulled him nearly off his feet. He came down on one knee, the other foot skidding out of control. A tornado of metal shards and bits of insulation material struck him in a sudden tidal wave. As he crammed his eyes shut, his last glimpse was of the rhodinium rod being ripped out of Odo's hand and the constable's thin body bowing forward.
O'Brien reached out and caught Odo's wrist, yanked back hard, and managed to keep the other man from crashing forward into the rattling bulkhead.
Ssscheeeeeeee
The sound was deafening, mind-filling. O'Brien felt his cheeks twist out of shape and grimaced to keep control and hold himself in place, waiting to be sliced in half by some soaring booby trap. His hand cramped, his fingers clawing into Odo's uniform sleeve. Strange how much it felt like real fabric—but there was a slight oiliness where his fingertips pressed hard. Was he imagining it because of what he knew? Confused by the noise, the rushing air?
He held on hard, teeth grinding. If there was a hull breach in there in spite of what the tricorder read out, even one that hadn't quite broken through, this would certainly break it and they were both dead men. All he could do was hold on and wait out the wind.
Hundreds of pounds of flotsam thrashed past them, all rushing for the four-inch hole Odo had punched in that makeshift bulkhead. They huddled for cover and only half succeeded in avoiding a hammering. O'Brien tried to pull Odo down, but the constable levered against him and maneuvered around behind to take the brunt of the pounding. For an instant O'Brien thought to shout at him, to tell him not to be protective, but then he realized that Odo could probably take the pounding better than he himself. Still—
Shaaaaahhhhh …
The whistle began to fall off. Took damned long enough.
He forced one eye open, just a squint.
The bulkhead was still there, though now dent-pocked and skirted with a talus of junk. But no structural collapse.
As he got shakily to his feet, O'Brien found his legs and back throbbing with pain, and glanced down to see if he was cut anywhere.
No blood. "All in one piece," he faltered. "You?"
"So far." Odo ran his fingers along the dented wall, then glanced into the tricorder. "The pocket is equalized. Not the best quality of breathable air, but it'll do. Still cool in there, but warming up."
O'Brien brushed crumbs of shaved hull material off his arms. "What now?"
"There's no time like the present." Odo handed him the tricorder.
"You be careful, now."
"I think we're beyond that point, Chief. Stand clear, please."
O'Brien stumbled as his heel came down on a solid block, but he skidded back a step and found a place to stand. When he looked up again, Odo had already stopped looking like Odo. In the constable's place was a mottled liquid pillar, arms and legs now melting out of form, shoulders falling and flattening. Another moment and there were no more knees, no chin, no hair.
With an involuntary shiver, O'Brien managed to hunker back another inch or two. The pillar mutated into a tower of silver jelly, lengthened, curved forward, and poured through the four-inch hole in the bulkhead. Stretching, it went through that hole like a snake into the ground, its last inch whipping like a tail.
He pressed close to the hole, but it was too dark to see through. He thought he heard another sucking sound, or squishing sound—or was it in his imagination?
"Odo?" His skin crawled. Shapeshifting …
Was the tricorder working all right? Was there really good enough air in there to breathe? Was it too cold—and would the cold be bad for a shapeshifter?
"See anything?" he tried again. "Odo?"
Just as he was about to take a blunt instrument to the hole—why hadn't they brought phasers?—there was movement behind the wall.
"Hand … a … through."
"What?" O'Brien went up on his toes to clear the skirt of junk at his feet.
There was another shuffle. "Hand me an illuminator through the hole."
"Oh—sure. Here you go."
The illuminator was barely small enough to go through, with a little encouragement from the heel of O'Brien's hand. In another second, frosty haze erupted inside the hole.
"Do you see anything?" O'Brien nosed up to the opening again. "What's in there?"
Bearing his weight as he leaned forward, his fingers started to cramp. He pressed his palms against the bulkhead, but the metal was too cold for him to do that for very long.
Aggravation growled in his stomach and crawled into his bowels. Damn this place … just when he thought he knew his way around, just when he had control, just when he'd gotten it safe to live here, gotten it in order, this giant set jaw in space decided to flex itself and show him what for.
He put one foot up on the mess of junk. "Odo! Can you hear me all right?"
"Yes, Chief." The constable's voice was faint.
"What's in there?"
"Call Captain Sisko. Tell him to get Dr. Bashir and the major and come down here right away."
"Why?" O'Brien put his eye to the hole, but saw only bits of dust floating in a band of ghostly light.
"Because," Odo rumbled from deep in the shadows, "we're in a lot of trouble."