"That?" Clark asked.

"That was probably trying to defend my son," Maxwell continued. The next words surprised him, "Because I wasn't there . . ."

"No," Clark said. "You were doing your duty. You were following orders and also, not inconsequentially, keeping your crew alive. You were a man, Ben, with many responsibilities. Maybe too many."

"Maybe," Maxwell said. "But still. They died." He continued to study the small crescent groves in his palms, his mouth tasting of ashes, and added, "Small things in my charge tend to do that."

January 9, 2386 Central Core Robert Hooke Falling isn't so bad, Nog thought, as long as you don't obsess about the sudden stop. A distant portion of his brain was attempting to do the math, to calculate the relationship between ma.s.s and acceleration, even factoring in variables like the drag on the cable and possible fluctuations in the artificial gravity, but it was all too much.

He fell without knowing where the bottom was because math is not your friend in the dark. Nog felt the vibration of the spool in his belt unreeling and knew in his gut that the mechanism wasn't engineered to take the kind of shock he was about to put it through. Still, they had to try and, after what seemed the appropriate number of seconds in free fall, he squeezed the brake. Legs and head snapped backward, and the pressure against his lower back made Nog want to curse, but the breath was squeezed out of his lungs, so the only sound that came out was a soft, high-pitched feeeeee.

It might work, he thought, and fixed his jaw so he didn't accidentally bite off his tongue. But his engineer's mind returned to calculations, and the answer he arrived at was that he had already fallen too far. The deck was coming up fast; gravity would win out over the paltry amount of friction he applied to the line. Probably just as well, he decided. The amount of force he would need to stop his fall would probably snap his spine anyway.

Contact.

Nog expected to hear a splat or a crack, but instead the din filling his head was more of a boooinnnggg! This sound was quickly replaced by a sharp thwack and a piercing screech, which, surprisingly, didn't come from Nog.

His gut told him he was bouncing, even though his brain hadn't quite accepted the idea. When the big bounces turned into little ones, Nog awkwardly groped the surface behind his back. Some kind of netting, he realized. A little sticky.

The screech was still going on, though it had slowed down and was lower in tone, like a teakettle removed from the flame.

Something was touching him, probing, checking his suit (and his body?) for lumps, tears, and contusions. Finding nothing, the probe withdrew. Nog lifted his arm off the netting, the sticky fibers pulling the fabric of his environmental suit taut, and flicked on his light. To his right and above, he saw the stairway that ran up the sides of the central core. He turned and found the chief, bunched up into a ball, his back against the bulkhead. He had his own light on and pointed at the opposite side of the chamber. Nog turned and there, as expected, was Ginger, her eyes glittering and mouthparts moving. She chittered expectantly. "I'm fine," Nog said, sitting up. "Thank you." He turned to O'Brien. "You okay, Chief?"

"Swell, thanks," O'Brien said, keeping the light squarely on Ginger.

Nog decided he wouldn't bring up the screeching noise he had heard. Tilting back his head (which was difficult in the bulky suit), he shone his light up to inspect the stairways. He was sure he saw movement: squirming tendrils and undead rats lying in wait. "Any ideas?"

"Not just yet," the chief said. "Still processing the existential horror of finding myself in a web with a giant spider staring at me."

"Okay," Nog said. "Take a minute." He tried to stand, but the web was too springy and there was nothing to brace against. Amazing stuff, he thought. Must be a million uses for it. He looked up again, had a thought, and then looked over at Ginger, who had backed away to the edge of the net and climbed the wall. "Could you," he asked, "catch those rat things in a web and keep them out of our way?"

Ginger stared at him blankly. Probably she couldn't hear him, since there was clearly almost no atmosphere in the core. He was amazed that the lack of air pressure didn't seem to bother her, but who knew what Bharad had designed them to withstand? After a minute of constant eye contact, Nog got the impression that it wasn't so much that she didn't understand him as she just thought his idea was pretty bad. "How about this? When we get to a level where we can't get past them, you climb up the wall and drop a line?"

Ginger tilted her head to one side as if considering.

"I'm vetoing that one," O'Brien said. "But I think you've got the right idea. Go around, not through."

"Right."

"There might be another way. a.s.suming your new best friend is willing to help."

Nog looked into Ginger's eyes and felt very sure she was more than willing.

Finch's Lab Maxwell gripped the front of Finch's environmental suit with both hands and threw the man across the room, as far away from the Mother as he could. Despite his smaller stature, Maxwell had the advantages of martial-arts training, surprise, and Finch's precarious sense of balance. The big man arced across the room, arms windmilling, to collide with the command console and crumple into an untidy heap. Maxwell bounded after him and landed with his leg straddling Finch's chest. Leaning in, he struck his opponent's helmet with the heel of his hand. Finch's head bounced off the deck, the blow cushioned only by the insulation inside of his helmet. A moment later, he groaned, eyes half-shut.

"You told Sabih to do it, didn't you?" Maxwell asked, grabbing the collar of Finch's suit and shaking him. "The whole thing about him quitting was just a big ruse, some showmanship. You knew your customer was coming to take away your monster, and you weren't sure you could build another, so you told Sabih to come back in here and remove a chunk. You told him there was no radiation blast, which was true enough, and you thought you told Sabih everything he needed to do to bypa.s.s your fail-safes. But he really wasn't very good at this sort of thing, was he?" Maxwell banged Finch's helmet against the deck one more time because he liked the sound. "He was just a kid, a guy who wanted to work in science, but couldn't actually do science. Admit it or I'll break open this helmet and throw you in that tank."

Finch struggled, but was too disoriented and, considering the day he'd had, probably too tired. He flailed, but Maxwell slapped his hands aside and then gave him a half-hearted shake. Finch subsided, breathing hard, much harder than he should have been. Maxwell wondered if the big man was having some kind of seizure or a breakdown, but then the sputtering turned into words.

"Get off of me, you filthy peasant, you worthless piece of trash!" He inhaled deeply and Maxwell thought Finch was getting himself back under control, but, instead, he used the breath to continue his tirade. "You're worthless. I know . . . I know about you. Know enough! Things hidden, because of your Starfleet friends, but I can put the pieces together! I can guess the story."

Suddenly very tired, Maxwell released his grip and let Finch flop to the deck. From the corner of his eye, he spied the Mother in its half-enclosed tank, its tendrils palpitating. Maxwell said, "I'll tell you the whole story whenever you like." Motivated by who-knew-what malice, Finch attempted to grasp Maxwell's leg and drag him down, but his grip was too weak and Maxwell only had to yank his leg away. For good measure, he gave Finch a little kick in the side with his heel. "But here's the punch line, the part you should remember: I've killed a lot of people." He paused to catch his breath. Their fight had taken more out of him than he had realized. "Even more than you, I bet." Maxwell reached down, clutched one of Finch's legs, and slowly dragged him across the deck toward one of the exits. "Fortunately for you, I've decided not to add to the total." He looked over at the tank and the thrashing blob within. Addressing it directly, Maxwell added, "You don't count."

Finch grasped his meaning. "No!" he shouted, trying to kick free. "You can't! I won't! Your friends!"

Maxwell tightened his grip and shut off Finch's channel. No sooner did blessed silence descend than a new sound interrupted: a hailing frequency. Finch stopped struggling, apparently hearing the hail too. Maxwell groaned. A half hour can go by so quickly when you're preoccupied. He tapped his suit's comm switch and said, "This is the Hooke."

Finch's customer replied, "Time is up."

Chapter 19.

Two Months Earlier Deck Two, Robert Hooke "Did they forward the manifest?" Nita Bharad asked. Wendy Newsham struggled to keep up with her friend's rapid pace. Whenever they walked together, Newsham always felt winded, despite the fact that she was half a meter taller and had longer legs. What it came down to was that Bharad just moved faster, she wanted to get wherever she was going sooner so she could start doing whatever it was that needed to be done. Or so Newsham thought.

"Not the whole thing," Newsham said. She defrayed some of the cost of her tiny lab s.p.a.ce and quarters by working in the hangar as a freight handler. It was one of the "programs" Finch made available to his tenants to help them cover their costs. Working there had one other benefit: Newsham had a pretty good idea what was coming into and leaving the station. "Finch won't doc.u.ment his private stash."

"Private stash?" Bharad gave her a sidelong glance.

"You know what I mean. His stuff gets highest priority. If whatever you ordered didn't fit on the transport, then it's still sitting in the loading bay back in . . ." She lit up her padd and scanned for the most recent transfer point. "Vulcan? Can that be right?"

"Seems like an awfully roundabout route."

"Funny thing about Vulcan: they're very strict about following the letter of the law, but they tend to err on the side of the recipient on questionable items."

"That's a very circuitous way of saying something, but I'm not sure what," Bharad said. She stopped at the lift and pressed the b.u.t.ton several times in quick succession: click, click, click, click. This bothered Newsham, who had once dated a turbolift technician. "You only have to push the b.u.t.ton once," Severan used to say. "It gets the idea with just one push."

"It means that if you know how to list things on an invoice-le mot juste-Vulcan will let it go through."

"I just wanted my d.a.m.ned vitelline membranes," Bharad said. "My research is at a standstill! The last batch I got was contaminated! I wasted six months and an entire generation of embryos!"

"Embryos?"

"Eggs, dammit!" Bharad pushed the b.u.t.ton six more times.

"I know what embryos are. I just didn't know you were working with them. Never mind. It's better I don't know." Newsham knew Bharad was some sort of genius with genetic manipulation, but she'd never quite gotten her head around exactly how or why or even whether it was (strictly speaking) legal. Newsham's work in quantum beekeeping was, by comparison, dull, even when you factored in the fractal honeycombs.

The lift arrived. Several weary-looking scientists slumped out; Bharad impatiently pushed into the throng, not bothering to wait until the departees were clear. "Hangar!" Bharad barked, and the elevator doors slowly slid shut.

"You need to calm down, Nita," Newsham said.

"Do I?" Bharad asked. "And if I don't? What's going to happen?"

"Maybe your head will explode?" Newsham grunted under her breath, but then Bharad's fuming silence got on her nerves. She suggested, "One of the biotechnology guys started brewing beer and is serving it at the lounge on deck four. Want to go check it out?"

"Beer?" Bharad asked. "Brewed here?" She shuddered. "Sounds unsanitary."

"Possibly," Newsham conceded. "Doesn't the alcohol make it sanitary?"

Bharad dismissed the comment with a wave. The lift descended slowly. Newsham sighed. She wasn't sure why she and Nita were friends. She wasn't even completely sure they were friends. The one fact she knew for certain was that they were the only two Terran women on the station. Both of them had tasted real vanilla ice cream and knew what a s...o...b..-Doo was. They had a bond.

"Do you know the ma.s.s of whatever Finch had shipped in?"

Newsham lit up her padd again. "Four hundred kilos."

"Four hundred!" Bharad shouted. "The transport only carries five hundred! How is anyone else supposed to get anything out here?"

"That does seem like a lot," Newsham admitted. She scrolled through the parts of the manifest that she had permission to view. "Oh, here's why." She pointed to a line item. "Meat s.p.a.ce."

"Meat s.p.a.ce?" Bharad asked. "He's having meat shipped out here? Through Vulcan?"

"No," Newsham said. "Sorry. Jargon. He's transporting personnel. A person. He hired someone."

"Someone?"

"A hundred and fifty kilos of someone."

"That's a big someone."

"He's probably bringing some personal effects," Newsham said. "You know: clothing. A pillow. Things."

"I didn't get to bring things. Or, I should say, I did, but I had to pay for them."

Newsham shrugged and felt her ponytail come undone. She handed her padd to Bharad, reached behind her head, and whipped her hair back into a loose knot. "Maybe he did too. We don't know, do we?"

"He? He, who? What's his name?"

"Maxwell," Newsham read from the manifest. "Benjamin Maxwell. He's going to be the maintenance engineer."

"Huh," Bharad snorted. "Janitor, you mean."

"Sure," Newsham allowed, "janitor."

"Sounds like a loser."

"He's been hired as a janitor-sorry, maintenance engineer-out on the a.s.s-end of nowhere," Newsham said. "Of course he's a loser." She chuckled. "But we're all losers, Nita. Otherwise, why would we be here?"

The lift ground to a stop, and the doors slowly parted. The hangar deck was, as usual, chaotic and disorganized. Badly packed crates were piled just outside the Wren's cargo hatch. Underpaid pilots and shipping clerks milled about uncomfortably, waiting for someone to sign off on manifests. Finch, naturally, was nowhere to be found.

Bharad waded into the fray and began tossing about shipping containers, looking for something with her name on it.

A man with newly (though unevenly) shorn hair stood off to the side of all the nonsense, a carry-on bag at his feet and a small shipping container hanging loosely from his hand. He was watching the hubbub on the deck pa.s.sively, like he was trying to solve some kind of puzzle. When he noticed Newsham's gaze, he cautiously approached her, moving, she thought, like a horse that had been beaten. "Um," he said, "hi. I'm looking for Anatoly Finch?"

"Then you should just follow his stuff up on the lift," Newsham replied. "His will be the last stop at the top."

"Oh," Maxwell said, and retracted in on himself a bit. "d.a.m.n. Okay. Well, can you tell me where my bunk is?"

"I'm guessing you're the new maintenance engineer?"

"Janitor, yeah."

"I can help you find your way. As soon as my friend is finished tossing the place for her package. You have all your stuff?"

Maxwell jostled his bag with the tip of his boot. "All set."

"That's it? Nothing else? No . . . pillow?"

"There aren't any extra pillows here?"

Newsham thought for a moment. "I'm not sure. Maybe?" She nodded at the box Maxwell was cradling under his arm. "What's that?"

He shook the package gently. "Oh, right. I saw this on the flight deck. Read the label and realized it was perishable. Figured I wasn't bringing all the ma.s.s I was allotted, so I grabbed it." He shrugged. "Do you know who it belongs to?"

Newsham scanned the invoice label with her padd. Bharad, Nita, it read. Vitelline membranes. "Well, d.a.m.n," she said. "You've just made a friend for life."

"O-kay," Maxwell said. For just a moment, his slack features twisted into a knot. It looked, Newsham thought, like he had forgotten how to smile, but was doing his best. "Well," he concluded, "that's good. Can't have too many of those, can you?"

January 9, 2386 Deck Five "Do you think she can survive outside?" Nog asked.

"I don't know," O'Brien said. "But she seemed to be doing fine in the core."

"I think there was at least a little air pressure in there."

"Maybe," O'Brien said, leaning out through the crack in the hull, staring out at the stars. "But she seems to be doing well enough now. I think we thank our lucky stars and go with it." He looked back over his shoulder at Nog and his new best friend. Studying Ginger's face, O'Brien noted that there was some kind of thin film over the two largest eyes, while the half-dozen or so smaller orbs were shut tight against the vacuum. Her mouthparts were folded shut too, and some sort of carapace closed over them. The arachnoform might not be completely invulnerable to the extremes of open s.p.a.ce, but O'Brien had a strong feeling Ginger could tolerate more hostile environments than any Terran spider could. O'Brien wondered if Nita Bharad really understood what she had brought into the universe, but he knew that the present moment was definitely not the time to ponder such questions.

"But we don't even know if she can cling to the side of the station," Nog said.

"You're looking for reasons not to do this, Nog," O'Brien said. He very badly wanted this part of the mission to be over.

"I am expressing a reasonable amount of caution about expending our scant resources, Chief," Nog retorted. O'Brien was impressed despite himself. The kid knew how to use officer language. "In my estimation, we only have one shot at this, and I am hesitant to proceed until we fully understand the parameters of the mission."

O'Brien chuckled. "That last bit was practically Sisko-esque," he admitted. "Well done." Nog scowled, but he couldn't maintain it and grinned. Performing a quick mental calculation, he asked, "Do you know we've known each other for over fifteen years?"

"Seventeen, Chief."

"Seventeen?"

"Seventeen."

O'Brien considered. There was, at minimum, a strong probability that they were about to die. The plan-his plan-was ridiculous, though he knew it was also their best shot at survival, based on the information they had at hand. "It's possible," he said, "that it might be time for you to start calling me Miles."

Nog seemed startled. He appeared to consider the statement very carefully. Despite the clock that was ticking in his head, O'Brien let him. "It's possible," Nog allowed, "but it's just as likely that I really like calling you Chief."