IN THE DS-NINE SECURITY OFFICE, Constable Odo sat at a desk surrounded by banks of surveillance monitors, some of them lit up with schematic displays, some of them blank. At the moment, he was staring at one particular display. Now, that was peculiar! Sensors in a whole section down on pylon six had just come back on-line. How had that happened?
Under ordinary circumstances, he would have simply made a note to have the anomaly checked out by maintenance. But these were hardly ordinary circumstances, not with the recent bombing incident. And pylon six was currently where the Cardassian warship was berthed.
Immediately, Odo made an urgent call to Major Kira. Alone in his office, his attention engaged on his work, the shape-shifter had slowly allowed his features to blur until his appearance was only generally humanoid, although it retained all functional aspects of the form. By the time Kira answered, he had resumed his usual aspect, close enough to Bajoran to pass at first glance.
"Major, there's an anomaly in section nine, pylon six."
Kira was on duty in Ops. The place had been quiet, with technicians working at their stations. But hearing Odo, she started, and her hand made an instinctive move toward her phaser. Pylon six: that was the Cardassian ship! With an effort, she controlled her reaction. If Odo had said "anomaly," he didn't mean a riot or a Cardassian invasion.
The constable went on. "Sensors in the section have all been burned out since the Cardassians wrecked the place. Now they're functioning again. And I don't think there's a repair crew scheduled to be in that section."
Kira shrugged. "Call Chief O'Brien and make sure about the maintenance schedule. Then get down there and check it out," she ordered. "I'll meet you."
She was just starting toward the transporter pad when the communications tech called out, "Major! There's an urgent message from the Swift Striker. Gul Marak is demanding to talk to the commander."
Kira paused. With Sisko off duty, she, as the ranking officer in Ops, would normally handle such communications. Of course, in an emergency, Sisko could be paged, but no one had said anything about this situation being an emergency. And why should that Cardassian be making demands, anyway?
With an unmistakable set to her jaw, Kira said quickly, "I'll take it," as she strode over to the master console.
The furious face of Gul Marak was immediately displayed on the main viewscreen. As he saw who was facing him, his thin lips drew back from his teeth with distate. "I said I wanted to speak to the Federation commander."
Kira concealed her own loathing only a little more effectively. She snapped stiffly, "I'm Major Kira, first officer on this station. Commander Sisko isn't available."
Marak's nostrils flared as he took a breath. Reluctantly, he said, "A deserter has just escaped from my ship onto the station, through the emergency airlock. I insist that you return the criminal immediately."
Kira felt a warm vengeful glow in being able to say with absolute truth, "We have no report of a Cardassian deserter on this station."
"This man is a traitor and a murderer! He's armed and dangerous. He's brutally murdered his superior officer and assaulted a sentry."
"I'll inform our security office about the situation," Kira replied shortly, conceding nothing. "We will, of course, investigate your charges."
Marak looked as if he was going to say something intemperate, but his image abruptly disappeared from the screen.
Kira still felt the warmth of satisfaction as she signed off and logged in the exchange. Thwarting Marak had given her more pleasure than anything since the time she held off three Cardassian warships with not much more than hand phasers and bluff.
A murderer. You're a murderer, Marak. All your breed are murderers. Nevertheless, she had to admit that having a rogue Cardassian armed and at large on DS9 was a dangerous situation. If Marak's story was true. But she had reason to believe it might well be. More than that, she was willing to bet that it might have something to do with Odo's report of an "anomaly" in section nine on pylon six. The emergency airlock to the Cardassian ship was on section eight, just one level above. But of course she had said nothing about any of this to Marak. He had no need to know about security arrangements on DS9. And there was no real evidence to connect the two incidents. Other than coincidence.
"Inform the security office about the report of a Cardassian deserter," she told the comm tech as she went quickly to the transporter pad. Then, "Beam me down to section nine, pylon six."
Odo was waiting for her. "Did you contact O'Brien?" she asked.
"He said the only repair teams he had down here were to check out the airlock systems and the turbolifts. That work was already completed before the ship docked."
"Well, this whole situation may be more complicated. Gul Marak claims an armed Cardassian deserter has come onto the station through the emergency airlock on section eight. He may be hiding somewhere around here."
Odo's expression managed to show concern. "Armed?"
"Marak claims the man murdered his superior and assaulted a guard, then escaped through the lock."
"But … there was no alarm!"
"Another malfunction?" Kira speculated.
"This is my fault!" Odo exclaimed through clenched teeth. "I take full responsibility. When the ship docked here, I forgot about the emergency lock! Most of the ships that come here aren't configured to use it."
"So it wasn't guarded?"
"No. And the sensor array in that section wasn't even working!"
Kira glanced at the monitors overhead. But now these sensors are working? what about the monitor at the emergency airlock?"
Odo quickly checked his security padd. "No sensor function."
Kira shook her head. "This just doesn't make sense.
Have you checked these sensors out? Do we know why they just came back on-line?"
"My probe reveals normal functioning, that's all. I've asked Chief O'Brien to come and look at them. Maybe he can tell if there's been any tampering."
"Good. But first, we'd better take a look at this emergency airlock," Kira said grimly.
But nothing in the lower corridor seemed wrong or out of place. Kira stared at the closed airlock door. Just on the other side of that lock was the Cardassian ship. So close. She had to shut her eyes for a moment.
"Major?"
She opened them again. "Sorry."
She looked at the wall panel. "You say the security alarm didn't go off. Was it set? Is it broken?"
But a quick look inside the panel showed the alarm switch was properly set. If someone had gone through the lock, it should have gone off. "You can't switch it off from inside the lock. So how did he get through?" Kira demanded, frustrated.
"Unless the deserter had someone on the station helping him. To switch the alarm off from this side."
Kira scowled at the thought of a conspiracy between a Cardassian and someone on the station.
"Or unless …" Odo flipped on his probe, then hissed through his teeth. "It's not functioning, either! But—if the alarm isn't working, then the door shouldn't open, either. At least, it's not supposed to. So no one should have been able to come out this way."
"Maybe they didn't. Maybe this is all some trick of Marak's," Kira said slowly.
They stared at each other. There was one way to find out. Kira took a breath, then hit the airlock control pad. But the door remained closed, and instead of the security alarm, she heard the louder buzz of the hazard warning, and the door panel flashed red in Cardassian script that both Kira and Odo could read:
PRESSURIZATION FAILURE
AIRLOCK INACTIVATED
They looked at each other again. This situation was getting harder and harder to make any sense of.
"We could override it," Odo suggested unenthusiastically, but neither of them wanted to make the attempt. Pressurization failure was no trivial matter on a space station.
What was going on? The airlock malfunctioning, no alarm, broken sensors suddenly working again.
"Do you think, somehow, that you could be getting false readings?" Kira asked Odo.
He checked his probe again. "I don't see how. But, I suppose it's possible. In this situation, anything seems possible."
Kira inhaled with a sharp hiss of frustration. Where was O'Brien? She hit her communicator. "Kira to O'Brien. Have you checked those security monitors in section nine?"
The ensign's good-humored voice came over the link. "I'm here right now. It looks like someone's been repairing our security sensor grid."
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, absolutely. I can see where one of the nodes had been fried. Somebody's fixed it, put in a nice new unit. Not a bad job, either. Wish I knew who it was—I could use the help around here."
Sometimes Kira could find O'Brien's cheerful manner irritating. But she only said, "Could you come down to section eight, to the emergency airlock? Something strange is going on here."
"I'll be right there."
O'Brien came up via the turbolift a few minutes later. He stared at the hazard warning, still flashing, then took out his engineering tricorder to probe the situation. After a moment: "Well, it seems that we may have a leaky seal somewhere, but no major depressurization. I think we can take a look." He keyed in the sequence to override, and the warning light stopped flashing.
"What about the security alarm?" Kira asked him. "Odo's probe says it's not functioning."
O'Brien went to the panel. "He's right, it's not. Now, that's damned odd." He turned to the door control pad, swept it with his tricorder. "Damned odd."
"What do you mean?"
"These are on the same circuit. That control pad shouldn't be working. You shouldn't even have gotten that warning. Hell of a way to set up a system, if you ask me, but that's the way the Cardies wanted it to work."
He went back to the panel, opened it up, and probed around inside for a few minutes. "Everything normal here."
Kira frowned in thought. "Could someone have tampered with the circuits from the other side? From inside the lock?"
O'Brien looked blank. "Why, I don't know. I'd have to take a look. It could be possible, I suppose."
He cautiously touched the control pad, and the door rolled open normally. They stepped into the lock, still nervous about the depressurization warning. But what they found in the lock was the shipside door half-dismantled, with a Cardassian maintenance crew hastily working to repair it, and a Glin who shouted for them to halt where they stood, enforcing his order with a drawn phaser.
"No one is allowed through here!"
Kira bristled, although she resisted the urge to pull out her own weapon. Beside her, Odo and O'Brien were tense and alert. She knew she could count on both men to back her up. Neither of them trusted Cardassians.
In common law, the interior of an airlock between station and ship was station territory that ended only at the shipside door. Kira informed the Glin of this fact in unambiguous language, but he kept his weapon pointed at them. "I have my orders."
Kira refused to back down to the Cardassian. "And I'm investigating a threat to the integrity of the security systems on this station." Then she had a truly malicious inspiration. "Or do I have to inform your Gul that his subordinate is impeding the search for the deserter he claims to be at large on Deep Space Nine?"
The Glin's face paled, and he took an uncertain step backward. "I'm not to allow anyone through this airlock," he insisted again, though less confidently.
"Fine," Kira snapped. "We have no intention of setting foot onto your ship." To Odo, under her breath, "Keep an eye on him."
And aloud, "Chief O'Brien, please carry on."
While the two security contingents faced each other in an uneasy confrontation, O'Brien proceeded to inspect the airlock's interior controls. On the Cardassian side, the maintenance crew also began to carry on with their work of remounting the shipside door.
Kira couldn't help wondering what had happened to it, but she had no intention of asking the Glin.
"Ah!" O'Brien exclaimed a moment later.
"What?"
"See what he's done? He's shut off the exit alarm from inside here, then reconnected the circuitry to bypass it so the door control would work. Neat job!"
Kira might have wished he weren't quite so cheerful about the discovery. "You can fix it?"
"Oh, no problem." O'Brien glanced back at the dismantled door on the ship side of the lock, and his tone was less light as he said, "Now I suppose we know why that depressurization warning went off."
"Yes, but I'd like to know what happened there,"
Odo said, also stealing a look at the Cardassians.
In only a short time, O'Brien had restored the original circuitry and tested it.
"Well," asked Kira from the station side of the lock when he was done, "what are we supposed to make of this? A Cardassian crewman kills his superior, breaks down the shipside airlock door, bypasses the stationside security system, then escapes onto DS-Nine?"
"And fixes the monitors in the next section, while he's at it," O'Brien added. "I think our boy's some kind of technician."
"But why fix the security system?" Odo asked, still frustrated. "I suppose I can understand why he'd want to dismantle them if he could do it, but why stop and make repairs?"
Kira was just beginning to think she might know the answer to that one, when suddenly, in the empty, half-wrecked corridor, the stationwide comm startled them all: "Full station alert! All Security to the Promenade. Civilians, evacuate levels nine through eleven. Medical, report to the Promenade."
In the distance, they could hear the alarms.
Kira reacted instantly, full of certain dread. She and Odo looked at each other, back at the airlock leading to the Cardassian ship. Whatever had happened here, it would have to wait.
Kira hit her comm badge. "This is Kira and Odo. Beam us up to the Promenade!"