"THEY'RE GONE."
A faint electrical snapping and the sizzle of falling debris were the only sounds left after the portcullis closed between the pylon corridor and the Defiant. Now that avenue was closed.
"They're gone."
Something buzzed inside a wall panel. After a moment, it stopped.
A piece of the ceiling, dangling by a thread of insulation, strained its last molecule and fell with a short crunch.
"Tell me you're faking."
Before him he saw his hands melt and form again into hands. His mind was as blurred.
"Sisko … you're pretending."
Odo struggled against the blinding fatigue and dissolution of his physical form. He had never thought of dying, not this way, with the chance of taking the whole station with him.
He had been ready to rest when all this began. Now the hours had drained him beyond his limits, and the pollutant in his body was making him feel ill. Each took more and then still more effort to resist.
Now there was this pile of knotted limbs and still torsos, and there was no noise coming from there. No movement. He had waited long seconds for it, but there was nothing. Sisko wasn't pretending.
He raised his numb hand to touch his comm badge. "Ops … Ops, do you read? Medical emergency … come quickly … Ops, can you hear me?"
The badge crackled weakly, as if it were also too tired to focus.
No one responded. Had they heard? It was barely possible that the channels were fouled, that they heard him but that he wasn't picking up their answer.
He clung to that.
With collected effort he drew his knees toward his body, slid them under and rolled onto them. The pollutant in his system was clogging his thoughts, fogging his vision, but he made his way to the pile of bodies and shouldered his way between them.
Two of the dead Cardassians slid off and thumped to the littered deck. Beneath them, still pinned under the third corpse, lay Ben Sisko. Blood puddled the deck beneath him, soaked his shoulder and neck and the left front of his uniform. His face was the color of clay.
Odo didn't bother speaking to him. There was nothing to say, no sense to any words. There was only the blood, bubbling from the wound in Sisko's chest.
Odo lifted his heavy hand and pressed it to Sisko's punctured chest. Slowly, ever slowly, careful to maintain the size of his form, he let his hand melt into the wound, sink through tissue and liquid, and take the form of the wound deep inside Sisko's body, and there he felt the struggling thump of Sisko's heart—not dead yet.
Gradually, concentrating, he let his limb take the shape of the edges of torn arteries and punctured muscle, until the pumping of blood was blocked off and the thudding of the heart became less panicked.
Now he would have to hold himself here, pressing into each vein as he found new bleeders, and he would tick off the minutes one by one.
A Cardassian civil war. Cardassians at each other's throats for a change, ignited by a hero of the past.
Kira's imagination bloomed like a ball of light. She knew instantly what the concept meant. Distracted by their own inner conflict, Cardassia would be finished as a threat to Bajor, or to anybody else. If this living corpse really was the one, the original High Gul of the Crescent Order, then Cardassia would rip itself apart over him.
He had changed completely in his approach to her. Had he been that much affected by hearing what Cardassia had become? She saw the tightening of his throat, the twitch of an eye, a faint flicker of revulsion that he didn't seem to want her to see. Nobody was that good an actor.
"I speak truthfully to you," he said, his voice much less dramatic than before, "about Bajor's best interest. I give you no word that I'll leave you alone if I am victorious. If I am victorious and I'm still alive, and Cardassia isn't smashed, you'll probably have to fight me someday. But Cardassia may be smashed. Certainly the current order will mutate … and I see in your eyes you don't think it can be worse." He paused, moved a step, looked at the deck, then looked up again. "What is your name?"
Fighting to continue hating him, she felt her animosity shiver. If he were lying, there would be prettier lies.
"Kira," she said.
He nodded. "Kira," he continued, "I offer you a holy war in my name that can only do well for Bajor and all its allies. We have a mutual enemy out there. Your station is falling apart. In minutes we'll all be dead. What are you going to do about it?"
She felt cold. All at once the weight of command was bigger than the station, bigger than the sector, and it made her back hurt.
Who could tell how a civil war would turn out? Whatever happened, those who were in power now would certainly be deposed by those younger and stronger. Current powers would be broken. Something entirely new might rise.
And the Federation would probably have a hand in the outcome—that could only be good.
If anything, a civil war would make Cardassia a nonfactor in the galaxy for fifty years or more. Take them right out of commission.
Imagine …
Could she make that decision? She didn't even know if Sisko and the others were still alive after that attack. The station didn't look good. She was on her own.
Was that a good enough excuse?
It might be.
She looked at the old man. Their motives were different, but sometimes that could work. Maybe after they drove Fransu off or killed him, the High Gul would abandon DS9. There was nothing for him here, after all. His front was at his home planet.
Sisko had been right—the High Gul could've killed them all any time he wanted to and possessed the station. Instead all he had tried to do was gain control over his environment and clear an avenue of escape. As soon as he lost control of DS9, he had abandoned it. It didn't prove he was gentle, but it did prove he was smart, too thrifty to waste havoc for no gain.
Kira moved again into the seat at the helm, tugged herself forward until his ribs touched the leather buffer, and tapped the flickering communications panel.
"Dax … this is Kira."
She looked at the High Gul, searched his face for satisfaction or gloat. There wasn't any.
"If you can hear me," she said, "release the docking clamps. Prepare to launch the Defiant."