"I DON'T BELIEVE IT!"
Ops was cool, dim, and there was even a fresh breeze coming through from the ventilators. On the main screen, the Starship Exeter and the Klingon warship hung in princely fashion, with the Exeter taking the wreck of Rugg'l in tow.
Standing together, Sisko and Kira stared baldly at the subdued, ever-haunted proctor of their station. Before them, the shapeshifter was obviously exhausted, but no longer physically strained. The poison was gone and Odo was still alive, standing right here, uneasy under their stares.
"How'd you get it out of him?" Kira asked as she glanced at Julian Bashir.
"I didn't," the doctor said casually. "The chief did."
He in turn gestured to Miles O'Brien.
Weak and battered, Sisko pressed a hand to the Ops console and levered around to the engineer. "How, Chief?"
"The same way we've used for centuries," O'Brien said with a quirky glint in his eyes. "A centrifuge. We put him in a big cargo drum, spun it with antigravs, and let the Element One-ten go to the outside, and filtered it out, then beamed it into space and let it blow its merry heart out."
Kira shook her head. "I don't get it!"
O'Brien tilted his grin at her. "You keep thinking of him as a solid. He's liquid. We just separated out the adulterant. Why didn't you just ask me to begin with?"
Self-conscious, Odo lowered his gaze, plainly hoping that would be a signal for all of them to stop gaping at him. He'd survived, and that was that.
Sisko glanced custodially at the people around him. Hovering nearby like the low notes on a French horn, Jadzia Dax stood nearby, gazing at them with an expression strangely similar to the High Gul's timeless wife's. Beside her, Julian Bashir eyed Sisko, certainly waiting for the right moment to order him to the infirmary for those twelve hours of recuperation.
At his side, still stained and frayed from these last hours' events, Kira was feisty as Peter Pan, but now somehow subdued, maybe ashamed—Sisko couldn't tell and offered her the respect of not asking. By leaving the issue alone, he gave her tacit approval of her actions on Defiant. He knew she walked a line, and he wasn't going to push her off.
That was how things were in this hard-bitten, untrusted, castaway garter of a station. Their electric Kira did a little command, a little security, weather-eyed Odo slopped over into defense or engineering, Sisko would do security or defense or anything else he wanted to, for an engineer O'Brien had broached more than his share of dangerous decisions, and nobody was really sure about Dax. They were an undefined collection, and that, in many ways, defined them.
Around them the grey walls and aniline black shadows of Deep Space Nine were as comforting as a summer glade.
Ultimately he looked again at Odo, unable to restrain his appreciation for the station's vigilant background man. "Well," he said, "that'll make quite a tall tale around the sector, I'll bet."
"Absolutely not, Captain!" Odo said, tight as a strung bow. "The indignity of having an engineer as my doctor, of being separated like the ingredients of some foul cocktail … if you don't mind, I'd rather not have it talked about. Chief, thank you very much, and that's the end of this."
"Come in! Come in! You can get autographs right here, only a modest fee—something to show your grandchildren! We have the entire episode recorded and we're re-creating it at zero nine hundred in the holosuites! Right this way … Odo! All these people want your autograph!
"Quark!" Odo backed away as if approached by a snake.
Some people would describe Quark that way, but Sisko had come to think of their local Ferengi moonshiner as less a swindler than just a guileful shortchange artist who hated his own honest streak.
"Quark," Sisko demanded, grabbing the little charmer as he passed, "where'd these people come from? The station is supposed to be evacuated."
"Oh, it is, Captain," Quark said, "except for one transport ship that got stuck in its docking claw. Security just got them out, and, well, there didn't seem to be any sense in sending them down to Bajor at this point, is there? I mean, they're here—why not take advantage? And I've been in contact with the refugee station on the planet about Odo's centrifuge show! We're already booked up through Wednesday afternoon! Ladies and gentlemen! If you'll follow me, I'll conduct a brief tour of the Operations Center of Deep Space Nine. It's a privilege to be here—as you know, Ops is generally off-limits to anyone, but—"
"Quark," Sisko snapped. "Not now and not here."
With false piety Quark crowed, "Of course! I understand completely! Ladies and gentlemen, this way! We're disturbing the heartbeat of the station, the very core of function, the command center—if you'll follow me, I'll lead you to the holosuites, and the first show will begin!"
Sisko grinned as Quark ushered his tour group around Ops, taking the long, long way back to one of the turbolifts. "Don't worry, Odo," he assured. "It can't last more than a month."
"I can't even do anything about it," the eternal misfit moaned. "I have to go back to my quarters and rest. If I don't come out for a month … don't come in after me. Good night."
Gazing at the deck, Odo made a controlled dash for the nearest lift while Quark was still pointing out the ships on the main viewer to his audience.
"Poor Odo," Sisko uttered. "All right, everyone, back to work. Doctor, deal with the wounded and collect any bodies on the station and conduct appropriate autopsies. Dax, let's begin bringing station residents and visitors back up from the planet in a calm and organized fashion. Priority goes to families with small children and merchants dealing in perishable goods. Chief, you're in charge of repair teams. Let's put this station back together."
As his crew broke up and headed back to their posts and Quark squeezed every last second of letting his tour group get a gander at Ops, Sisko indulged in a few winces and a telling groan, and for the first time let himself notice how hurt he was. His right leg was numb at the knee, his shoulders ached all the way up to his ears, and breathing was a struggle—that punctured lung. He could feel Bashir's masking medicine wearing off. His wounds were beginning to pound for attention. He'd have to get patched up before he could beam his son back up from Bajor. Couldn't let Jake see him this way.
As she came to Sisko's side, Kira eyed Quark's tour group, then glanced at the main screen. "The Potemkin went out to gather the communications drones that were blocking the sector. The Hood is securing the immediate area. The whiteout is over."
"Good. Thank you." Sisko leaned back on the Ops table.
"Now what?" Kira asked. "How do we report all this? It's going to make a big, ugly, bitter tangle between Cardassia and just about everybody else."
"First," Sisko said thoughtfully, "we'll dawdle around making repairs and offering shore leave to the crews of those starships. It'll drain the intensity out of the moment. That way we can stall making a report for a week or so, and let the matter fizzle out."
"Stall? Why?"
"Because if we make an immediate report, investigation will seem more urgent. The longer we take, the less critical any action will seem. We'll let the diplomats sort out the unwarranted attack on the station. We'll suggest that Gul Fransu was a rogue, not acting under authority of the Cardassian Command. We'll downplay the amount of damage and normalize relations quickly. I respect the High Gul enough for that. He ended his exceptional life rather than provide a reason for Cardassia to rise up in these times, because he knew it couldn't stand up to modern powers out there. I'd be betraying that gesture if I handed over the whole truth with all its colors. So … I think I'll just hang on to it, Major."
She gazed at him keenly, at first perplexed, then gradually more heartened by his logic. Her dilated passions found their way around what he was trying to say, and Sisko watched as, second by second, the tension went out of her shoulders and she became at ease with what he had decided to do.
The change in her made him believe he was doing the right thing.
He was going to do it anyway.
"What do we report about the High Gul himself?" she asked quietly. "I don't know what I feel about him anymore. At first I hated him, but later …"
"At first he was just a faceless enemy," Sisko abridged. "Then he got a face. It happens, Major."
She nodded, still mystified. "But he was here, the events did happen, and now he's not here. What are you going to tell Starfleet about how he died?"
Sisko drew a long breath and let out a sigh. "Let's just say he immolated himself on the bodies of both our wives."
He pushed off the Ops table, found his center of balance, and limped toward the turbolift.
"You have the conn, Major," he grumbled on his way out.
Kira watched him go. "Will you be in the infirmary, sir?"
"For a while." He cast a glance over his bare, bloody shoulder. "Then I'm gonna go watch the Odo Show. Quark! What's the ticket price?"