“Captain, the first ship is almost beyond our weapons range,” Dax reported. Kira glanced back up at the viewscreen, but she hesitated. “Captain,” Dax said again, her tone urgent.
“Target the first vessel,” Kira said. “Fire phasers.”
“Firing phasers,” Dax said. The captain peered over at the lieutenant as she worked the tactical console. Kira waited, and then Dax delivered a verdict. “Direct hit,” she said. “Virtually no effect. The vessel is continuing on its course.”
“Fire quantum torpedoes,” Kira ordered. “Full spread.”
Tense seconds passed, and then Dax reported four hits. “The ship’s shields are down only eight percent.”
“Eight percent?” Kira asked, thunderstruck. Four direct, consecutive quantum torpedo detonations would have severely impacted the shields of even the most powerfully equipped Starfleet vessel. How much weapons fire would the crew of Deep Space 9 have to spend to destroy even one of the intruding ships? If Kira loosed Deep Space 9’s weaponry on a fleet of conventionally fortified vessels, and even with Defiant contributing its own armaments to the effort, she knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prevent all of those ships from reaching Bajor. Within the prior two weeks, a pair of Starfleet vessels—the Galaxy-class Magellan and the Norway-class Mjolnir—had docked at the station for maintenance and repairs, while a third—the Sovereign-class Chancellor—had stopped at Bajor for shore leave for its crew, but all three had since departed the system. Kira could only hope that none of them had traveled too far.
“Open an emergency channel,” she said. “Contact any Starfleet vessels within two days of Bajor. Request their immediate assistance, then inform Starfleet Command of the situation.”
“Aye, Captain,” Candlewood said. “Right away.”
Kira reached to the sit table and brought up her own communications display. She would contact Bajor’s first minister, Asarem Wadeen, and warn her of the squadron crewed by an unidentified force headed for the planet, with unknown intent. After all that her people had been through, even the possibility of an attack on their homeworld horrified the captain.
As Kira tapped a control to open a comm channel, she saw yet another wave of ships emerge from the wormhole.
* * *
Iliana Ghemor listened to the words of her nemesis: “This is Captain Kira Nerys of Deep Space Nine, to unknown vessel. Please identify yourself.”
In the cockpit of her small ship—of what had been Grand Archquester Votiq’s personal vessel before Ghemor had decisively removed him from where he’d stood in her path—she felt rage surge within her. The red-hot nucleus of anger and resentment that she always carried at the heart of her being, that had for so long defined the trajectory of her life, exploded, a star turned supernova in the black pit of space. In her mind’s eye, Ghemor envisioned herself taking control of the navigational actuator and swinging the bow of her crimson, bladelike ship around until it pointed toward the old Cardassian ore-processing station that had been usurped by the Bajorans and the Federation. She imagined priming the isolytic subspace torpedo she towed behind her vessel, then launching it and bearing witness as the devastating weapon tore Deep Space 9 apart, and Kira Nerys along with it.
Ghemor’s hands hovered over the helm controls. All the pain of her adult life had led her to that moment. It felt like it had been another existence entirely when she’d received word that Ataan Rhukal, her childhood friend who’d eventually become her betrothed, had been killed by the Shakaar terrorist cell on Bajor. The personal tragedy drove her to join the Obsidian Order, the secretive Cardassian intelligence service, which trained her and then transformed her, making her into a replica of Kira Nerys. The Order intended Ghemor to replace Kira in her radical group, and thereby infiltrate the Bajoran dissidents. Before Ghemor could deploy to her assignment, though, one of the Cardassians’ own, a depraved gul named Skrain Dukat, imprisoned her and kept her as his personal plaything for thousands of days. Her interminable detention robbed her of her freedom, and the unrelenting abuse she suffered took away her will to live, replacing it with a thirst for vengeance.
The great mass of Deep Space 9 showed on Ghemor’s sensors like a glowing target. She ached to mete out reprisal to the fountainhead of all her ills, but a just retribution demanded more than the mere death of Kira Nerys—it required agony. For all the misery Ghemor had endured, she needed to repay it, if not in kind, then with some reciprocal version. Her anguish necessitated Kira’s own.
“This is Captain Kira. Identify yourself and state your business in this system or face the consequences.”
Ghemor laughed. She understood the need for consequences far better than Kira. She did not alter her ship’s course, but continued toward Bajor. Her scans showed that a single Ascendant vessel pursued her at close range. She assumed that it must belong to Raiq, who had attempted to contact the Grand Archquester when Ghemor had taken control of his ship in the Gamma Quadrant and headed it for the Bajoran wormhole. The rest of the Ascendant armada followed, the knights clearly driven by the belief that they needed the isolytic subspace weapon to help them achieve the Final Ascension—the generations-long quest of their people to find and become one with their gods.
Her sensors also showed a Starfleet vessel powering up at Deep Space 9. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She would reach Bajor ahead of them all, and once she had, she would unleash the might of her weapon on its people—on Kira’s people. Ghemor would bring her enemy to her knees by destroying that which she held most dear.
An alert sounded in the cockpit, and Ghemor consulted her control panel to see that Deep Space 9 had fired its weapons in her direction. The phaser blasts slammed into the shields of her vessel, but she barely felt their effects. Starfleet could not match the technology of warfare employed by the Ascendants.
Another warning pulsed, and then four quantum torpedoes exploded against the shields. Ghemor identified a dip in the protective envelope encompassing her vessel, but nothing that would distract her from her goal. Kira wanted her to identify herself and state her business. Ghemor would make her purpose known soon enough. Kira would look upon the destruction of her people and her world, and then find the responsibility for the act laid at the captain’s own feet.
And then Ghemor would finally end Kira’s miserable, treacherous life.
* * *
A circle of darkness appeared ahead of the ship, quickly growing to reveal a field of stars within it—or perhaps beyond it. Raiq quickly surveyed her instruments, trying to make sense of what she saw. Except I already know, don’t I?
Not that long ago, the Archquesters—the leaders of the Ascendants’ Orders—had come together for the first time in millennia, seeking clarity on what many knights viewed as portents of the End Time. At the gathering, an alien woman appeared in their midst and declared herself the Fire, a figure prophesied by scripture. As presaged by the holy texts, the Fire claimed that she would lead the Ascendants to the Fortress of the True, where they would finally be judged by their gods and burn beneath their gaze, with the worthy among their ranks uniting with them.
In pursuit of that goal, a young Quester named Aniq had previously managed to acquire a metaweapon, which she had subsequently enhanced by arming it with transformative fuel. It had been Raiq’s understanding that the powerful explosive device would be utilized within the Fortress, facilitating the burning of the Ascendants and their joining with the Unnameable. After uncounted generations, the Final Ascension at last seemed within reach.
But then, on the cusp of the Fortress, the Ascendant armada had come upon the long-concealed homeworld of the Eav’oq. In the distant past, the last of those heretics had escaped extermination by going into hiding. The Fire ordered a squadron of ten ships to destroy the lone remaining city on the planet.
To Raiq, the proposed action had seemed more than simply apt. It promised closure, and carried with it a sense of symbolism that bordered on the poetic. There, in the star system whe
re the Ascendants would finally locate the portal leading to the Fortress of the True, they would execute one last tribute to their gods by eradicating the blasphemers who had escaped their wrath.
Raiq had watched as Aniq had delivered the metaweapon to the Grand Archquester’s vessel, to be safeguarded during the attack. A squadron of ten Ascendant ships then headed for the Eav’oq world. Excitement churned within Raiq.
But then she had seen the Grand Archquester’s vessel break away from its position at the front of the armada. The distinctively colored ship darted forward, and for a moment, Raiq assumed that Votiq, or perhaps the Fire, had chosen to participate in the obliteration of the Eav’oq. But sensors did not show the vessel turning in the direction of the planet. Rather, it continued along the course the Fire had set for the armada—which meant toward the Fortress of the True.
The Grand Archquester’s ship towed the metaweapon behind it.
Raiq’s excitement that her people would soon enter the Fortress and stand before the True had transformed into fear that she and the others would be left behind. She immediately opened a channel and hailed Votiq. When she received no response, she did not try a second time. Instead, she contacted the armada and sounded the alarm.
There had been no time for consensus, and Raiq hadn’t waited for it. Instead, she started in pursuit of the Grand Archquester’s vessel and the valuable cargo it towed. She tried to imagine Votiq absconding with the metaweapon and seeking to utilize it for his own purposes, but she couldn’t. He had lived longer and spent more time on the Quest, in the service of his people, than any other existing Ascendant. Raiq could not conceive of him wanting to abandon the Orders so that he could stand alone before the Unnameable.
It’s the Fire, Raiq had thought as she’d pushed her own ship to its limits. If she truly is the Fire. It sickened Raiq to harbor suspicions of a figure foretold by prophecy, but she could not deny the distrust building within her. Would the Unnameable really have sent an alien to guide us?
Raiq had followed the Grand Archquester’s vessel on sensors. It pleased her that scans showed the rest of the Ascendant armada falling into formation behind her. She peered out through the transparent canopy of her own ship and searched for any visual sign of Votiq’s vessel.
That had been when space had blossomed before Raiq. A great frenzy of light and movement wheeled around in brilliant shades of blue and white. Even before she entertained a conscious thought about what she saw, a thrill like an electric charge coursed through Raiq’s body. There could be no doubt about the wonder before her: the gates that would lead her and the rest of the Ascendants into the Fortress of the True.
Raiq had felt elation and fear in equal measure. She saw the Grand Archquester’s vessel ahead of her, a dark knife-edge towing the subspace weapon, advancing directly toward the center of the kinetic radiance. Raiq glanced at her display to see a series of readings that made little sense. Votiq’s ship still appeared on her scans—
And then it had vanished. Raiq looked up to confirm the disappearance, and saw that she had a choice to make. Suddenly at the boundary of the spectacle, she could either continue forward or turn away.
Exhilarated beyond measure, and yet also terrified, Raiq had taken the only action she reasonably could. After an existence lived exclusively on the Quest, seeking out and eliminating sacrilege while searching for the Fortress, she could not turn away from the realization of all her striving. She pulled her hands away from the control console before her, then watched as her ship drew ever closer to the coruscating field of light.
Raiq’s vessel had shuddered as it had crossed through the gates of the Fortress. A rich blue light enveloped the cockpit. Great luminescent streamers twined past, and beyond them, sequences of white rings appeared to define a vast cylinder. On the periphery of the region through which the ship moved, concentric loops formed, expanded, and faded away.
As Raiq had gazed out at a sight as beautiful and wondrous as she’d expected, her vessel had continued to buck and heave. She examined her console and saw that powerful stresses threatened the integrity of her ship’s hull. Sensors showed wave intensities increasing asymmetrically, escalating externally but not internally—an occurrence she previously would have thought impossible. In the region surrounding her vessel, a centripetal force of unknown origin somehow acted on the imaginary mass of neutrinos. Proton counts climbed sharply, and spatial discontinuities propagated, seemingly at random.
Raiq had looked back up through the canopy of her ship, not only eager at long last to lay her eyes upon the form of the Unnameable, but deeply curious as well. As she searched the writhing panorama ahead, her vessel quaked again, hard, and nearly threw her from her seat. She knew that she needed to compensate for the fractured space around the ship and the strains on the hull. She worked to reconfigure the navigational deflector, then tied her scans into the helm to accommodate the discontinuities.
When Raiq had raised her head again, she’d seen the black disc expanding in the distance, like a hole opening in the fabric of reality. She consulted the sensors to identify what she saw. She wanted an explanation other than what it looked like to her, but then the kaleidoscope of shifting colors and forms fell away, and the ship shot back out into normal space.
Anticipation and hope drained out of Raiq, replaced by dread and disappointment. Stars shined in the firmament, none of them in patterns she recognized. Off to one side, a structure composed of arcs and circles and angles hung in space like some great skeletal sentinel. Directly ahead of her, sunlight from the nearest star glinted off the deep, purplish red of the Grand Archquester’s vessel as it continued speeding away.
Confusion colored Raiq’s thoughts. Her zealous faith told her to trust in the prophecy that heralded the coming of the Fire, and in the Fire herself, but her lack of understanding about what had just happened provoked doubt. Had Raiq just entered the Fortress of the True, and if so, then why had she not encountered the Unnameable? Had she been deemed unworthy? Or had the Fire led her not into the Fortress, but into—and through—some other construct?
Raiq turned and peered behind her ship through its transparent canopy. At first, she saw no indication of the Fortress or the gates through which she had passed. But then a dizzying gyre of blue and white light appeared like a dawn in the eternal night of deep space. From within the dazzling display emerged ranks of Ascendant ships.
What is happening? Raiq asked herself. She had no answers, but she vowed to herself that she would get some. She turned back to her control console and sent her ship in pursuit of the Grand Archquester’s vessel.
Suddenly, red-yellow beams cut through space from the structure—probably a space station—and into the Grand Archquester’s vessel. Raiq checked her sensors to see that the weapons had not resulted in any damage to Votiq’s ship. She considered returning fire, but she did not want to overstep her authority. She waited a moment, and then a quartet of bluish white bolts flashed out of the space station and into the Grand Archquester’s ship.
Raiq primed her vessel’s own weapons. For the moment, she did nothing, following Votiq’s lead, but she would not stand idly by for long. She continued on in pursuit of the Grand Archquester’s ship, ready for any battle that might come.
* * *
“We will prepare our planetary defenses, Captain, but . . .” On the main viewscreen in Ops, Asarem did not complete her sentence, but Kira understood the first minister’s meaning just the same. A number of weapons platforms orbited Bajor, supplemented by several ground-based installations, while Ashalla and the other large cities possessed deflector grids. Those measures, commensurate with similar fortifications on other Federation worlds, could protect against the weaponry of a single starship, or even that of several vessels, but they had not been designed to withstand an attack by an entire fleet.
“We don’t know their intentions,” Kira reminded the first minister, though the words sounded unconvincing even to the captain. Overlooking the possibility�
�and perhaps the likelihood—that the invaders had destroyed the communications relay in the Gamma Quadrant, their large fleet, their refusal to respond to repeated hails, and their direct course for Bajor did not suggest benign objectives.
“We’ll reach out in peace to welcome them,” Asarem said, “but considering that they’ve declined to reply, I doubt that our efforts will meet with success.”
“No,” Kira agreed. “Probably not.”
“Keep me informed,” the first minister said. “Asarem out.” The viewscreen went dark, and Kira saw Candlewood work a control on his panel to close the channel. An image of the wormhole reappeared, another phalanx of ships streaming from it.
“How many ships in total?” Kira asked.
“Nearly seven hundred,” Dax said.
“Captain,” Candlewood said, “the Defiant has just left the station.”
“Acknowledged,” Kira said, pleased that Vaughn would be on the scene to deal with the situation, but unsure exactly how she should have him proceed. Hundreds of alien ships had unexpectedly entered the Bajoran system through the wormhole, running with shields energized and with apparent armaments, but they had yet to make an offensive move. Kira had fired the first shots, to little effect, but she did not want to wait to respond further until an attack had been loosed against Bajor. If she chose—
“Captain, two ships that have just come through the wormhole are a close match to a known configuration,” Dax said.
“Show me,” Kira said.
The image on the main viewscreen shifted, magnifying a single vessel so that it filled the display. To the captain, the streamlined, almost tubular design resembled a Starfleet warp nacelle. It did not appear to possess any running lights, and Kira doubted that its black hull would have been visible had the vibrant form of the Celestial Temple not been open behind it.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Ascendance Page 3
