Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 005 - Fallen Heroes by Dafydd Ab Hugh

Author:Dafydd Ab Hugh [Hugh, Dafydd Ab]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Media Tie-In, Space Opera, Time Travel
ISBN: 9780671884598
Publisher: Star Trek
Published: 1994-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Major Kira Nerys held up her hand; behind her, the column of children and a few adults stopped, frightened. She checked the time: 2715—no wonder she felt exhausted; she had been fighting continuously for more than fifteen hours.

Kira blinked, and she was back in the Shakaar; Cardassians had invaded Bajor again. They were coming!

She shook her head, clearing the cobwebs; there were no Cardassians . . . it was even worse: tireless, remorseless killing machines, worse than the Borg, though on a smaller scale.

She put her finger to her lips to emphasize silence, held up two fingers, and pointed forward, past the intersection at which she waited. The first two children dashed across, as silently as they could. The invaders at the other end of the corridor did not notice.

Kira signaled for the next two children, then the next. In all, twelve children scuttled past the occupied corridor: eight Bajorans, two humans, a Betazoid, and a little Vulcan girl.

The two Bajoran runabout pilots Kira had rounded up were not so silent; one slipped, her shoes making a squeak on the polished deck. The invaders heard them and turned.

Kira caught the first one with a dead-center shot in its chest, using the captured rifle. The bullet cracked through the armor as if it were papier-mâché, apparently killing the occupant instantly.

The moment it fell, it flared brilliant red. Kira turned her face away; when she looked back, the invader body had vanished, leaving behind nothing but its heattwisted armor.

Strange, she thought; the bullets didn’t do that to us.

Kira Nerys crossed the corridor and waited at the intersection, crouched low with her rifle just peeking around the corner. Her invader counterpart dropped to its belly and began plinking at her.

Kira did not waste ammunition, knowing it was an impossible shot. Instead, she withdrew behind her column, all of them heading for access ladder twelve leading up to the service bay, where the runabout Orinoco waited.

She only ventured ten meters down the corridor, however, then hovered, hugging the bulkhead and aiming low at the intersection she had just left.

As Kira predicted, the cautious invader crawled all the way to the intersection, lay flat on its stomach, and eased its bubble head past the corner.

It saw her just as she saw it. The invader only froze for an instant; but an instant was long enough. Kira Nerys fired two rounds into the invader’s face. The helmet shattered, exposing a ruddy brown, furry, reptilian face, now splattered with black blood. The invader convulsed as if suffering a grand mal seizure, then fell still.

A second later, it, too, melted into a bubbly goo.

Kira nodded, finally understanding: it was not the bullets that caused the meltdown; it was a security mechanism designed not to allow intact invader bodies to fall into enemy hands, where they might be dissected, their weaknesses probed.

Kira backed up until she bumped into her column. “Move it, move it!” she commanded.

They stealthily followed two more turns along the sterile, almost antiseptic corridors of level fifteen between tunnels one and three.

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