THE SOUND OF choking is as old as time and as heartless. Pain, surprise, a graze of humiliation, of shock that the posturing has finally cracked open into violence—all are pieces of the body of battle.
Smoke boiled across the Rugg'l's bridge. Gul Fransu waved pointlessly at the gushing black stuff as if to slap it away, but there was more coming in. "Get the ventilators working! And where is our bridge help!"
"Both killed in a corridor during the second hit." Renzo's throat was raw with smoke. "I've ordered two more, plus a weapons specialist. Ballistics are inhibited, warp power down one-fifth, sublight compromised one-quarter."
"Adjust forward and beam thrusters to push us back. Gain some ground. Put our strongest shields to the station, then all stop. All we have to do is keep hitting them. Can you see?"
"I can manage my way."
Hearing Renzo move off to his left, Fransu shuffled across the bridge, still blinded by smoke, and burned his fingers twice on fused panels before he found the engineering console and tapped instructions to the lower decks, assuming they were still alive to take his orders.
Renzo stumbled to the middle of the bridge, cradling a wounded arm as he gazed at the calcimine claw of Terok Nor hanging in space before them on the crackling screen. "It's bigger than I thought it would be."
"It's a change-faced lodging," Fransu added, joining him at the command chair. "It looks Cardassian, but looks lie. If the High Gul has found out how long he lay there in dark cold, then he's a shocked man."
"Shock can twist a person," Renzo considered, by way of agreement.
Fransu only nodded. "Concentrate all our power to deflectors and weapons. We're a fighting ship, they are a station. We can take more than they can. Their shields will collapse before ours, and a station cannot run away. It will be just exposed metal to be cut to pieces by whatever we have left. And connect with the nearest communications drone and make it stop blocking this area. I want to hearthe High Gul's voice one more time before I destroy him."
Renzo looked at him, paused, then thoughtfully said, "I shouldn't let you."
Fransu glanced at him knowingly, shifted his shoulders, and gazed again at the huge station slowly rotating, its dull rim spackled by white lights.
"But you will."
He gazed with satisfaction on the giant station that in a short time would be a relic. The only thing darkening his mood was the inevitable killing of his own crew when this was all over, and the abandoning of his ship. He and Renzo would survive in a life pod and make up a story to cover their acts of these hours. Anything could be said to have happened except what actually was happening.
It wasn't the end he had imagined for himself and the High Gul and the Elite Guard all those years ago when he had hatched the plan to depose the High Gul's power and turn the course of events as they were being laid out, but things had changed. And he was older now. He would have a chance to—
"Renzo!" Fransu jolted out of his chair. "What … what is that? What is that!"
"Where?"
"On the lower docking pylon!"
Below the station, just coming into view as the great structure slowly rotated, hanging like a spider on the glittering web, lay ablunt-cut vessel, dark against the fabric of space. Built low, round, and flat, it had blunt side-mounted propulsion units and a scoop-shaped snout protruding out the front—weapons or sensors? The clubhead ship would present very little target hull to the enemy on approach or vector. Painted in matte ink blues and grays, it bore no usual pride and smiles of Federation ships, but only the muscular essence of dirty purpose.
"That's the Defiant." Fransu browsed the forward screen. "I heard reports about it. It was made to fight the Borg."
"If that ship is meant to fight the Borg, and we have to fight it—"
Moving hand over hand around the helm, Fransu stalked the screen, his eyes scanning again and again the blunt vessel that had changed everything.
"Why hasn't it launched? What's it doing, just sitting there at dock?"
"Maybe it's here for maintenance." Renzo was clearly working to hide his agitation at the sight before them. "Maybe they have no crew for it. Maybe the warp core is out of it—maybe—"
"It doesn't matter," Fransu rasped. "Everything is different now! If that ship is spaceworthy, we must act before they have the chance to cast off! I don't want to have to deal with that blockbuster—quickly, Renzo, more quickly than you have ever done anything, double our fighting power and sacrifice wherever we must. Close in on the station and gear up for heavier bombardment. We can no longer afford a simple siege. We have to storm the walls! We have to finish the station before that thing launches!"
"Talk to me, Dax, is this comm badge working?"
"—ing, but br—up, Kira. I'll boost—ain. … Is this any better?"
"It's better. Sir, the comm badges are back. Mostly."
From ahead of her in the dim, dusty causeway they'd been forced to go through to avoid areas the computer still had sealed off, Kira could just barely hear Sisko mutter, "Right."
The conduits were scarcely more than tubes in the internal skeleton of the station, meant for maintenance, not easy movement for anything larger than the eternal and unavoidable cockroach. Claustrophobic and encroaching, the conduits were especially crushing now as shudders and booming sounds shook the bones of the station from the constant throttling by Gul Fransu's ship. He fired and fired at them, probably hoping to chip away at the station's deflectors and eventually break through. It might work. If they let him have enough time.
On her hands and knees, Kira shuffled along behind Sisko, pausing every few shuffles to check behind, to see how Odo was doing. Each glance gave the same answer—poorly. Each progressive moment stole more strength. He'd been holding humanoid shape for a long time now and it had become a race. If he slipped, dared to rest, or was somehow driven unconscious and lapsed to his liquid state, then boom. In his guarded, background-man way, eternally outside even among outsiders, Odo knew his job and didn't mind doing it, even under the worst of conditions. Solitary as an eagle, soaring above and out of the crowd, but always on the lookout, Odo competed with Sisko for tacit authority over arrests.
Ordinarily nimble and lean, today he was shivering.
Yet he still resisted Kira's concerned glances, in which lay offers to let him off the hook, that they would take care of this particular danger. He forbearantly refused, even if only with the weather eye of each return glance. In his sedately alien manner he insisted he would prevail, that the effort of tracking and capturing these infiltrators helped distract him from his fatigue. Maybe that was true, and maybe it was just something he was telling himself.
She wondered. She continued crawling forward.
"Major," Sisko said from in front of her as he crawled out of the conduit into an open narrow passage in the docking pylon, "I've been thinking about these two people we're struggling with. What do you think about them?"
She accepted his hand and let him lever her out of the hole. "I think they're belligerent, pushy. . . . I think they're … well, they're Cardassian. But this High Gul—he's a wild card. We can't expect him to behave like Cardassians we're used to."
Still inside the conduit's opening, Odo looked battered and bruised, even though technically a shapeshifter couldn't be bruised. Danger of his condition fluttered before them—even he didn't know how much he could take, or not take.
"Unfortunately we don't have time to take a history course on the Cardassian past. Come on, Constable." Sisko's face gleamed with perspiration in the tawdry work lights as he hoisted their exhausted Security chief out of the conduit opening. "We've got this individual prowling our innards, and suddenly a sector-wide whiteout that has all the earmarks of a prelude to invasion, but culminates in the appearance of one, and only one, ship."
The station rocked hard suddenly, and made a sickening pitch. Sisko and Kira stumbled but managed to stay on their feet, but Odo skidded onto one knee.
Sisko plunged to catch him. "What the hell was that?" He tapped his comm badge. "Dax! What's going on?"
"Gul Fransu has moved in, Benjamin. He's not going to bother hovering out of range and potshotting us, apparently. He's hitting us with full power."
"Hit him back the best you can. We'll hurry."
"Understood."
"Sisko out." He stepped past Kira and snapped, "Let's get going. That kind of hit'll shake the station apart in minutes."
Forcing herself to let Odo follow them on his own,
Kira hurried to his side as he moved into the more open corridor. It was chilly here. Dax was right—she had apparently kept this docking pylon almost exclusive to use of the Defiant, so there wasn't usually anyone down here. There hadn't even been time to heat up the place beyond standby temperature.
"Sir, are you suggesting that we're caught between these two people in some private fight? A personal grudge?"
"You tell me." Sisko's voice was gravelly with frustration. "Gul Fransu flies in and demands that we hand over the 'hostage' we're holding, his supreme whatever-he-said, his High Gul, and when we don't comply and take action to drive him back, he fires on us with full-power destructive force. Would you do that if your High Gul were being held in a place?"
"No. You're right, I wouldn't."
"Unless you were the one who wanted to kill him." She turned for another custodial glance at Odo.
With those long legs Sisko got a stride ahead of her, so Kira hustled to his side once again and this time hurried to keep up. "Do you really think that? That changes the whole strategy of what's happening."
"Hell, yes, I do. Don't you feel those salvos? This guy means business. I don't know what the backstory is on these two, but I'd bet there's a big one. I'd also bet the Cardassian Central Command doesn't know Gul Fransu is here at all."
"You think he's acting on his own? Attacking a Federation—" Kira's words were partly lost in the thunder of another hit. They grabbed for each other and for the corridor handrail until the reverberations rolled away. "Attacking a Federation station on his own authority?"
"I hope so," Sisko said. "Otherwise it's war." He stopped at a loading junction and tapped his comm badge. "Sisko to O'Brien."
His comm badge blipped, crackled, then fell silent.
In that instant of silence Kira's awareness fixed on Sisko as she realized what she had just heard.
War, and he was ready for it. In spite of all that had happened to him in his life, and in the past few hours, he was still being a Starfleet officer, more concerned about the station and defending Bajor than himself or even his son. For that moment regret sliced through her, a sliver of embarrassment that most Bajorans still acted as though they expected the Federation to abandon them at a feather's flight.
"Sisko to O'Brien. Come in, Chief."
Another thrumm cast them to a bulkhead, but there was no answer from O'Brien.
"Sisko to Dax. Are you still picking me up?"
"Dax here, I hear you, Benjamin. You're not clear, but I might be able—"
"I can't pick up O'Brien yet. Can you?"
"There must be some residual inhibitors in the system. The High Gul's a good wrecking ball, but he's not much of a repair man. I've managed to get contact with Chief O'Brien, but he's breaking up."
"Tell him to reserve power to shore up the deflector grid. Fend Fransu off with full phasers, the harder the better. Protect Defiant at all costs until we can get her launched and out into maneuvering space. Sacrifice other areas of the station if you have to. Just buy me time. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"Keep these channels open. They might clear themselves if they're active. Sisko out." He took Kira's elbow and hustled her forward with particular urgency. Major, when we get to the Defiant, I want you to handle the docking clamps by hand, in case Gul Fransu is scanning the—"
The corridor erupted into bright orange light and white sparks. A streak of destructive energy came so close to Sisko's head that his hair was seared as he ducked backward, shoving Odo back also. He drew his phaser and fired blindly down the corridor to a junction where the shots had come from.
Almost instantly another streak came in answer, and drew black artwork on the far wall.
Caught in the crossfire, Kira dodged wildly to one side and struck a bulkhead, dropped, and rolled for her life toward Sisko. He pulled her around the corner.
"How could they possibly miss!" she choked as the stench of seared metal thickened the air. "We were sitting ducks in that passageway!"
"I don't know," Sisko uttered. "Maybe their eyes didn't wake up all the way."
"Or, sir, maybe they have trouble using our phasers."
"Explain why you think that."
Kira pressed her shoulder to the cool wall. "Sometimes specially trained elite soldiers get special weapons and that's all they know how to use. When I was on Bajor in the caves, we were guerrilla fighters and the first rule is that the enemy supplies all your weapons. We could use anybody's weapon and make weapons out of anything. The Cardassians only knew how to use their own."
"Like flying the same runabout all the time. How many are there? Did you see?"
"I'm sorry—I didn't see a thing," she admitted.
Sisko pressed his lips flat and his face turned hard as he scanned the flashing corridor for a target and evidently didn't see one. "We don't have time for this. . . ."
"Let me draw them out, sir," Odo offered. "I can take a phaser hit."
"Not on your life, Constable. Or mine. Or hers. You don't have any idea what a high-energy burst would do to the fissionable material in your body. Besides, I just don't like the idea."
"Sir," Kira said, "that corridor comes around like a horseshoe and meets this one, down there, behind us. If they split up, they can trap us here without cover."
Sisko looked in the direction she was pointing, to a shadowed curve in the pylon's corridor where a darker shadow gave away another passage. "Go down there and stand ground. I'll try to draw them out. Odo, stay behind me."
"Reluctantly," Odo muttered. He clutched his own phaser, but his arm sagged. He pressed his shoulder blades to the wall and closed his eyes for a moment. His face had a sheen of melting plastic, scraped with patches of orange that fluxed and changed as he struggled to hold his form.
Resisting an urge to give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, mostly because she was afraid her fingers might leave depressions that might give him even more trouble, Kira stayed low and climbed past him, then made her way to the other passageway opening. As she arrived, the thought occurred to her to keep going, to hunch her way down this bend, around behind the assailants. A blanketing shot could stun them all. Kill them all.
How many were there? Would she be facing two or ten? Had she and Sisko stumbled on the entire band of renegade Cardassians? Or was this a hit squad, come to get them before they reached the Defiant?
She tried to listen to the sounds behind her, to count the phaser shots scorching the other corridor. Sisko was shooting. That meant he saw targets. She almost called to him to tell her how many he saw, but that would telegraph their ignorance. Old bells went off from other battles, and stopped her from doing that. Ignorance was better than broadcasting favors to the enemy.
Frrrruuuummmmmm—the station was hit again from outside, a bone-shattering blow that echoed and creaked deep within the base structure.
Enemies outside, and enemies inside the station. It was still a blister. Abruptly defensive of the big old place, she gripped her phaser tight and scanned the dimness for movement. Unless they were fools, they would come here. She was ready.
Unless they anticipated her being here, guarding this passage—unless they had chosen this place on purpose. . . .
Had they done that? Was she falling into their plans, letting them separate her from Sisko? Weaken the force?
"Sir!" she began, and turned to look, but all she saw was Sisko's shoulders hunched and working, and Odo huddled behind him, struggling to brace himself on the shuddering wall. They didn't hear her over the whine of phasers down the pylon curve, and the drone of hits from outside, relentlessly rocking the station every few seconds. Like some ghastly bagpipe, the drones and the whine coupled to rattle her mind. She found herself wishing for five seconds of silence.
She saw phaser shots lance the air over Sisko's head, hopelessly missing their target.
"Sir!" she shouted. There was no time for anything else.
As the ceiling buckled over Sisko and Odo, Kira realized what she had failed to understand until now. These Cardassians weren't imbeciles who didn't know how to handle phasers. Instead they knew the architecture of the station, and that was their target—the ceiling struts.
A hellish noise in the foreground drowned out the drone of hits on the station from Gul Fransu's ship. Kira threw herself to the deck as the corridor collapsed around her, her eyes and mouth caked with metallic shavings and insulation dust. The whine of phasers broke off, then there were two more whines, then nothing. The air turned thick, musty.
All at once she wanted that sound back.
Plastered with debris and dust, she dragged herself forward, abandoning the passageway the Cardassians had fooled her into guarding. Masonry and ceiling stuff clogged her path.
"Sir!" she called again. That was stupid—if he didn't answer, then the Cardassians would know they'd forced him down and would advance to finish him off.
Sparks and fizzling noises erupted at the place where Sisko and Odo had huddled. Part of the wall was sheared off, exposing live electrical fittings that were gutted and arguing with the open air.
And there they were—two Cardassians in funny clothes. Big ones, haunting the wreckage behind clouds of dust and electrical smoke.
Frruuuummmmmmm Frruuummmm-fuuummm
The deck beneath her vibrated like an earthquake.
Lying low, Kira slowly brought her phaser around to the front, peering over her arms as she took aim.
Her hands wouldn't close on the firing mechanism. She looked at them—blood sheeted her knuckles. Spasms racked her numb fingers and her elbows both tingled. In a minute that numbness would go away, but did she have a minute?
She let the phaser fall sideways into her left hand and made her right hand into a fist, then opened it, then clenched it again. She had to get the feeling back! She had to aim … fire …
Out of the rubble like a swamp monster in a story, a huge dark form rose in a single heave. Chunks of masonry and metal shavings cascaded from Ben Sisko's shoulders and the top of his head. His face was gray with dust, powdered and skeletal, and for an instant he looked like a dead Cardassian. The whine of his phaser blistered the narrow corridor again, in two sharp chords—bzzzt … bzzzt.
One of the Cardassians shrieked and raised his hands, but the other never had a chance to make a sound or move. The air turned hot and stinky again, and the two forms melted violently away like burning flash paper.
Under Kira the deck rumbled. Vuuuuummmmmm
Another hit from outside. The station could only take so much. They had to get Defiant launched. They had to defend from a distance. . . .
She managed to get the phaser into her right hand. Pain swept up her arms as the numbness began to fade. If she could just feel the trigger—
"Major?"
Smoke blurred her vision. Her shoulders hurt now. Was that a good sign?
"You're bleeding. Let me get you up."
The deck floated away under her and she hovered in midair, breathing heavily, her head light and spinning. As her head slowly cleared, Kira became aware of hands dabbing at her knuckles and wrists, squeezing her arms, probing for cuts and breaks. Over the pain in her shoulders, sensation was coming back into her upper body. She could feel her fingers again. Could she ever.
"Bet that stings," Sisko said. He still looked clay-gray and wasted, caked with insulation and dust, as he moved away from her to paw through the pile of collapsed ceiling. "Nothing permanent. Some abrasions, maybe a shock or two. I think you got the worst of it. Odo and I were insulated from the electrical jolts by the ceiling material."
Kira cleared her throat and forced her voice up. "That's the first time I've ever heard anybody being glad that a ceiling fell on him."
"Right. Well … those two were easy." Sisko glanced down the corridor expectantly, then hauled Odo to his feet. "Can you stand?"
"Yes," Odo croaked, and pressed a hand to what was left of the wall, determined to have spoken the truth.
"You call that easy?" Kira coughed as the dust crowded her lungs again.
"Easy to fool, I mean," Sisko said. "Once the ceiling fell, they took for granted that I was done for, and came over here. That gave me my chance."
She brushed the hard bits of scrap from her tingling arms. "So did I."
"Anyway, it's two down. Adjust your phaser to leave a body. I want to be able to prove to Mr. Crescent that we've done what we've done. Major, how many of those individuals were asleep in that chamber? Do you remember?"
"Weren't there twelve? Eleven?"
"That means, counting the one who got killed before, that they're down to seven or eight." He glared down the pylon's forbidding corridor and gritted his teeth. Hot provocation shined in his eyes. "I can handle nine."
The High Gul chilled with satisfaction. Sisko had come to keep the Defiant out of enemy hands, and the enemy was already here.
"Thrust!"
It was his favorite battle cry. Much better than "action" or "rush" or "arms forward" as others had invented in his time. He enjoyed more than he could ever have anticipated shouting it once again. Oh! The surge of it! The surge!
His Elite Guard thundered through the tiny pass toward the three stunned faces of Sisko, his shapeshifter, and a Bajoran woman. Ah, the joy of pure shock! What invigoration to put such shock on the faces of the enemy!
The High Gul spread his arms and raised his chin, basking in the sensation as his young guards charged the enemy. Even knowing that Ren and Fen had failed, were probably dead, he suddenly captured a low-ranker's delight in the chance to destroy Benjamin Sisko himself.
Why hadn't he thought of that before?
Ren had wanted so badly to go. Fen had coveted a chance to act like a pure brute and had never had one until now.
The High Gul knew he had nurtured their desires to his own purpose. But that was what they were here for.
Before him his young heavyweights formed a barricade of shoulders and thick backs as they boldly charged the three stunned outposters. A few shots of energy creased the air, but no one fell.
There were shouts—not his men. The others. Wild shots of energy weapons sliced into the bulkheads and ceiling, blasting the construction apart and raining rubble and dust. Blades flashed. Cutthroat hacks drew blood—the High Gul saw the smears of it on the wall, but couldn't see Sisko or the others anymore. Was that Sisko's voice? The huff of deep physical effort?
The High Gul looked for the solid dark shape, so familiar in his mind now. Sisko was a big man, but these young ones were big also, and there were four on him. Umdol, Elto, Telosh, Koto.
At the far end of this junction the High Gul saw the shapeshifter, barely able to stand, huddled against a wall, raising his energy weapon and struggling for aim that would skewer one of the Elites and not his own commander or their nurse. The High Gul was gratified by the shapeshifter's depleted condition. From moment to moment parts of his body were blurring, changing color, dissolving and reassimilating. All his energy was going into holding his form.
Yes, it was gratifying, but there was also terror in it. What if he was too tired?
Three others, Clus, Coln, and Malicu, were after the woman, but she was slight and difficult to grab. Twice as the High Gul watched she was caught and still managed to slip out of the Elites' grips. The second time she spun away from them, lost herself in their massive legs, danced underneath and out of the way, then turned a weapon on them.
Orange bands of light, scorching light, crackled through the air. Coln shrieked with agony and shock as his arm was severed from his body at the point of his neck artery, and half his chest went with it. He grasped the empty air where his arm had been, stumbled, stared at the disaffected limb lying in its own twitches in the dust, then gasped over and over with shock and confusion. He fell against the bulkhead and stared, suddenly oblivious of the battle around him.
Now his eyes sank and turned icy. He sank toward the deck, his mouth moving in soundless words. By the time his haunches touched the vibrating deck, he was no longer close to life.
Coln, who had been the High Gul's wife's favorite. A son she wished were theirs. She had felt that way about Elto, too. And about Ranan, who died with Malicu's spear through his body when the shapeshifter changed before him.
Perhaps the Bajoran wasn't a nurse after all.
She fired again, but this time her shot went wild as Malicu caught her around one shoulder and dragged her off balance, and Clus knocked the weapon from her grip. It went flying. This enraged her and she bellowed against the beachhead that she'd struck.
As the bitter stink of seared flesh and bone puffed at the High Gul out of the dimness and through his grief, he realized the meaning of energy streaks randomly grazing the immediate area and what might happen.
"Don't shoot the shapeshifter!" he shouted over the scream of the energy weapons. When the sounds continued, he shouted louder, "Cease firing! Blades only!"
He stepped through the clutter of fighting forms, rushed to the shapeshifter, and kicked the energy weapon from the shuddering hand. The shapeshifter sank against the wall, helpless to chase the weapon, helpless to put up a fight or use his natural abilities to confound the enemies who had cornered him. This was a defeated being.
The High Gul gazed down at him in intimate silent warning. Then he turned to the grunting mass in the middle of the junction.
And he drew his own blade. It was time to move this drama forward to the next poignance.
He moved slowly. Each step was calculated, not a charge or plunge, but a stride. He knew his target. Somewhere among the bright tunics and flags of his own men was the form of Sisko.
He saw flashes of the right colors from time to time—Sisko's black head, his burgundy clothing, blunted by dust. . . . The High Gul moved closer, pressed in deeply on top of the struggling mass, but was shoved off as Telosh howled in shocked pain and suddenly collapsed, clawing at his throat.
Under Koto, Elto, and Gobnol, Benjamin Sisko was fighting viciously, holding Gobnol by the face with one hand, Elto by the head in his bent elbow, Koto up on a pointed knee, and with the other hand clawing at the deck for the energy weapon that had apparently been torn from his own grip, but he was nowhere near it.
Roaring, Malicu suddenly charged in, pushed Elto aside, and plunged onto Sisko. Beneath them, Sisko was a demon given life. A beautiful sight, such possessive rage, and the High Gul gave himself a moment to enjoy what he was seeing. Worthy foes were neither cheap nor common, and he had hardly expected to find one doing paperwork on a cargo station.
His thoughts snapped when Malicu yelped like an animal and staggered back.
Sisko had apparently gotten his grip on a chunk of marble—who could tell what piece of discarded construction material this was?—and had used it on Malicu.
Time to stop enjoying and start eliminating.
The High Gul placed one hand on Koto's shoulder, and very gingerly felt his way through the tangle of large arms and torsos with his knife until he thought he had the right feeling on the end of his blade.
Taking his time and sensing his way through to the best flesh, he leaned forward, pressed the heel of his hand to the hilt, pushed hard. He knew that sensation as it rushed up the hilt, and he inhaled deeply to savor it.
Below, Sisko threw his head back and those white teeth flashed in a terrible grimace. He shouted something unintelligible—a roar of anger, perhaps, a good sound.
The pile of strong bodies collapsed suddenly. The High Gul stumbled back, drawing his blade back with him. Red blood ran down the blade to the hilt, and drained over his arm. Just right.
"No!" the Bajoran woman cried fiercely from behind him, kicking and slapping Clus and Elto, who were just now managing to catch and hold all her many limbs.
A surge of energy—he recognized the last panic of a dying man—blazed where a moment ago there was only the mass of Elite Guards and one human. Two brown hands came up, caught Gobnol by the head. Gobnol suddenly lost his balance, threw his arms backward, and there was a ghastly crack. He fell forward onto Sisko's sagging body.
All at once, the pile of effort quite simply heaved once and collapsed like a great dying animal. Abrupt stillness washed over the corridor. There was no more movement, other than the haunting twitches that came after a battle.
Gobnol and Telosh lay plainly dead. Close by, Malicu flinched and sucked his few last breaths. His head was cracked completely open from his eye socket to the top of his skull ridge. His sad eyes rolled toward his leader. Still alive.
Lying across the gore of Coln, Koto struggled to get up, slipping in his own blood and Coln's.
"Help Koto," the High Gul snapped to Elto. "Leave Malicu.".
He paused briefly over the destroyed forms of his men, ignoring Malicu's gurgling pleas for help and the last pathetic wandering of his eyes.
"Malicu," he uttered. "My last student."
The syllables dissolved in his throat.
He turned away. He could look at the dead, but not the nearly dead.
Three of his Elites left. Three out of two thousand. A heavy price.
Stepping over the sheared pieces of flotsam left on the deck by the battle, the High Gul came ultimately to the site of his win, and looked down with appreciation on the dark lump in the rubble.
"Benjamin Sisko, leader of the outpost, king of the sector," he murmured. "A waste."
Dragging the Bajoran woman along with him, Clus drove his toe into Sisko's muscular side. When there was no reaction, he declared, "Dead."
"How do you know for sure?" the High Gul asked, almost quizzical. "You've never seen a human before."
"Looks dead," Clus offered.
"So did we." Enjoying his amusement at his soldier's expense, the High Gul moved a few steps to glower down at Odo.
Helpless, weak, the constable lay at the joint between a bulkhead and a support strut, unable to change shape, not strong enough to put up a physical fight, and stared up at his bane. The High Gul saw the struggle to remain in this form when it would have been natural for him to shapeshift into a whip or something and lash these invaders to a wall.
What a strange creature … his face was moving, melting in patches even as they watched.
Hoisting Koto at his side, Elto glared down at the creature too. "Kill him? I can do it."
"No," the High Gul said. "I wouldn't even know how to kill such as him."
"Bring him with us, Excellency," Clus suggested. "He can help drive the ship."
Tolerant of mood in the shade of his win, the High Gul turned. "Remember what we did to him, Clus? See how tired we've made him? He is a walking explosion. I don't want to have him anywhere near us."
"Then Garak," Elto said. "I'm sure he knows how to drive that ship."
"Garak?" The Bajoran woman came to life suddenly. Anger boiled in her eyes. "I knew that ball of spit's been helping you!"
The High Gul looked at her. "To his own purposes, you may be assured." Then he turned again to Elto. "I don't trust Garak entirely. I feel much more secure about this young woman. I do not trust her at all … so at least I know what I'm dealing with."
He held a graceful hand out toward the narrow end of the pylon, toward the main docking arm.
"Come now, my strong and young believers, and let us board our victory."