Inferno by Judith Reeves-stevens & Garfield Reeves-stevens

Author:Judith Reeves-stevens & Garfield Reeves-stevens [Reeves-stevens, Judith & Reeves-stevens, Garfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, General
ISBN: 9780671024031
Google: 729btOhSjI8C
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2000-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

O’BRIEN FLUNG HIMSELF at Dukat, but he was a second—a lifetime—too late.

The Cardassian wrapped his arms around the Regulan phoenix that Odo had become even as the transporter beam dissolved them both into their fundamental quantum essence.

O’Brien’s arms wrapped around nothing, and he tumbled to the deck of the Boreth’s bridge, skinning his chin on the rough Klingon carpet, the air knocked out of his lungs.

“That was not a good thing,” Garak said.

“No kidding,” Quark muttered.

“But... Dukat can’t win in a fight against Odo,” Rom said hesitantly.

“It’s not just Dukat,” O’Brien huffed as soon as he could breathe again. “It’s that Kosst Amojan thing, too.” He rolled over and awkwardly pushed himself up from the deck, straightening the annoying robes he wore. Then, limping slightly and feeling every year of his age, he returned to his science console, where Rom was checking its display.

“No sign of beam dispersion, Chief,” Rom informed O’Brien.

“So we may assume they survived transport?” Garak asked as he strolled over to O’Brien and Rom.

O’Brien thought about that for a moment, uncertain. Maybe it would be better if his coordinates had been off, or if smugglers had filled the supposedly empty room with supplies. Maybe it would be better if Dukat had been beamed into solid matter and-

Suddenly, he moaned. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“Think of what?” Garak asked with interest.

But O’Brien didn’t waste his time answering. He glanced over at the main viewer. Deep Space 9 was perfectly centered against a sea of shifting blue energy. The chief engineer focused his attention on the station’s navigation lights. Each one he could see blazed without interruption or blinked on and off as it was intended to.

“Chief?” Garak prompted.

“Look,” O’Brien said quickly. “Let’s say the transport went wrong—”

“Why not?” Quark groused from the other side of the bridge. “Everything else has.”

“What I mean is,” O’Brien continued, “if Odo and Dukat had materialized in a bulkhead, there would have been a helluva explosion inside the station.”

“Of course!” Rom said excitedly. “We’d see a power fluctuation in the navigation lights! Uh, did we see a power fluctuation in the navigation lights?”

On his console, O’Brien played back the last sixty seconds of the viewer’s automatic recorded image. The lights didn’t vary. “No, but that wouldn’t have been the only effect.”

“Uh... there’d be a minor subspace distortion caused by the superposition of fermions in conflict with the Pauli exclusion principle?”

Quark had stalked over to see whatever was on O’Brien’s displays for himself. Seeing nothing that made sense to him, he shrugged, then rolled his eyes at his brother’s suggestion. “That sounds reasonable.”

But that kind of distortion wasn’t what O’Brien was looking for. “No subspace out here, Rom.” The chief engineer couldn’t resist the opportunity to be a teacher. “But you’re right—there would be a different sort of energy signature produced by a matter interference explosion.”

“Uh... another signature which we could detect...?” Then Rom suddenly shouted, “Electromagnetic pulse!”

Quark stuck a finger in his ear and shook it back and forth, as if he had been deafened by Rom’s outburst.

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