“Raise Endalla,” Vaughn said.
“Channel open,” Ling said.
“Defiant to Endalla research facilities,” Vaughn said. “This is Commander Elias Vaughn.”
Long seconds passed without a response. Vaughn was about to speak up again when an image appeared on the main viewscreen. Perhaps in his forties, a Bajoran man did not look to the companel at which he stood, but back over his shoulder. Behind him, several other people scurried about, and Vaughn could hear the white noise of commingled voices and what he thought might be an alarm.
When the man turned around to face the companel, Vaughn identified himself again. The man said, “I’m Goros Kly. I’m a botanist.”
“Mister Goros, a series of subspace fissures has opened up in orbit of Bajor,” Vaughn said. “You need to shut down all of the power supplies on Endalla.”
“Minister Aland just contacted us,” Goros said. “We’re trying to shut everything down right now, but there are eleven different facilities on Endalla, each with their own power sources. We don’t have a centralized shutoff.”
“Do you have vessels on which to leave Endalla?” Such an evacuation likely wouldn’t provide a solution, Vaughn knew, since the ships would have active power sources.
“We have a few small vessels for emergencies,” Goros said, “but not enough to fit more than a small number of people.”
“Then do your best to shut down the power,” Vaughn said. “The Defiant is going to attempt to seal the subspace fissures.”
The man nodded, then looked back over his shoulder again. He called out to somebody who hurried past, but Vaughn could not make out his words. When he finally turned to the companel once more, Goros said, “I have to go.” He stabbed at the companel with one hand, but apparently missed the deactivation control. The channel between Defiant and Endalla remained open as the man hurried away.
Vaughn looked over at Ling and made a slashing motion with his hand across his throat. The ensign nodded and tapped at her controls, severing the communications connection with the Bajoran moon. The view of Endalla returned to the screen.
“Captain, we’re ready to eject the warp core,” Nog reported.
“Very good,” Vaughn said, rising once more from the command chair. He paced forward to stand beside Prynn. “Ensign, bring us parallel with the fissure, keel facing it,” he said. “Coordinate with Lieutenant Nog as to distance. I want the core to enter the fissure and detonate at the same time, ten seconds after we eject it. Be prepared to maneuver the ship appropriately if a new fissure opens in our direction.”
Both officers acknowledged their orders, then worked with each other to determine how best to execute them. Vaughn returned to the command chair. Until Defiant reached a fissure and jettisoned their rigged warp core into it, he could do nothing but hope that the scientists on Endalla would survive long enough for that to make a difference. But Vaughn had to agree with what the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition had to say about hope: it didn’t keep the lights on.
Time seemed to elongate as Defiant rushed forward. The ninety seconds Bowers had estimated before a fissure reached Endalla came and went, but the moon remained untouched by the unfolding disaster. But is it disaster, Vaughn asked himself, or salvation? Bowers reported that almost all of the Ascendant fleet had already been destroyed, and that it appeared only one ship would escape the expanding subspace fractures, the one that had started away from Bajor before Ghemor had launched the missile.
Though not a religious man, Vaughn had personally felt the influence of the Prophets, and the commander had to ask himself if he thought they had a hand in what was transpiring over Bajor. Only minutes earlier, the planetary population faced an invading fleet of zealots led by a mentally and emotionally unstable Cardassian bent on exacting her revenge on them. Whatever Taran’atar had done aboard his ship had turned the tables. If such a dramatic reversal did not suggest divine intervention, then Vaughn didn’t know what did.
As they drew to within two minutes of reaching a fissure, Prynn began counting down in increments of ten seconds. After fifty seconds, Bowers spoke up.
“Captain, a fissure is about to reach Endalla.”
By the time he’d finished speaking, Bowers’ words had come to pass. On the viewscreen, a dark, angled shadow sliced into Bajor’s largest moon. Vaughn almost could not credit what he witnessed. The red glow of flames spread across the face of Endalla as though the entire orb had been set alight all at once. The effect lasted only a moment, and then the fires died, as though extinguished by a great wind. Later, an analysis of Defiant’s sensor readings would show that the moon’s thin atmosphere had been ripped away, some of it pulled down into subspace, and the rest blasted out into the void.
What remained of the moon barely resembled Endalla. Where soil and plant life had once painted the surface in browns and greens, only the dull gray of a dead world remained. Bowers quietly announced that scans showed no indications of the scientific installations that had been established there, and no signs of life.
“Coming up on a fissure,” Prynn said. Without needing an order, Ling adjusted the main screen to display the path ahead of Defiant. Vaughn felt a sense of oppression leave him as the image of the lifeless moon winked off, though he knew his relief was chimerical; he no longer had to endure looking at the place where so many had perished. If the Prophets could be considered deities, and if they actually had protected the Bajoran people from the Ascendants, then it could only be said that they were cruel gods.
On the viewer, a ragged stretch of space showed not the black of infinite distance, but the nullity of nonexistence. It looked like a vast chasm in the sky. Its tenebrous opening gave Vaughn the impression of the gaping maw of some impossible spaceborne creature.
“Bringing us in over the fissure,” Prynn said.
“Preparing to eject the warp core,” Nog said. As Defiant’s bow pitched upward, Ling kept the viewscreen focused on the fissure.
“Five seconds,” Prynn said, and then she counted down to one.
A feedback tone sounded in the bridge, not too dissimilar from the one that accompanied the launch of a quantum torpedo. “Warp core away,” Nog said. On the viewer, the long, cylindrical core shot out into space from the ship’s keel.
“Ensign Tenmei, get us out of here,” Vaughn said, but Prynn had already engaged the ship’s impulse drive. “Viewer astern.” He resisted the temptation to count down from ten in his head.
As the ebon tendril of subspace faded into the distance, an atmosphere of anxious expectation settled over the bridge crew. They all waited to see if their efforts would halt the fracturing of space above Bajor, or if more would need to be done. Vaughn also assumed that they all also wondered if some new fault in the continuum would reach out and smite their ship.
When ten seconds had passed, Defiant’s warp core exploded.
* * *
Through the forward viewport of Yolja, Kira saw a blue-white flash of light above Bajor. Her sensors told her that the Defiant crew had jettisoned their warp core into one of the subspace fractures, and she presumed Commander Vaughn had ordered its destruction in an attempt to combat the shredding of space brought about by Ghemor’s weapon. She could only hope that it would work.
Even if it does, it’s too late for the people on Endalla, Kira thought bitterly. She had lived so much of her life—first under the yoke of Cardassian oppression, and then later, during the Dominion War—with not just the threat of death hanging over her, but with its reality a consistent presence. She had somehow survived one battle after another, unexpectedly making it into her middle thirties, but so many of the people around her had perished along the way—family, friends, comrades-in-arms. In some ways, she had become inured to such deaths; they did not incapacitate her emotionally, and she functioned in their wake. At the same time, the pain had never gotten easier to bear. Even the deaths of innocent strangers, such as the scientists on Endalla, gnawed at her spirit.
Of course, mor
e than the lives of people she did not know had just been lost. She wished she could thank Taran’atar for his sacrifice, though he doubtless would have eschewed her gratitude. If his final, seemingly desperate act worked—and it seemed at that moment as though it would—he might have saved the entire population of Bajor.
After the destruction of Taran’atar’s ship, Kira had done essentially as the Jem’Hadar had suggested. She did not turn Yolja and speed away from Bajor, but she did bring the runabout to station-keeping. She followed what took place next, both on sensors and via a magnified view of Bajor on a screen. By the time the subspace waves that Taran’atar had set in motion reached Yolja, they barely registered as a spatial disturbance.
Kira had observed, though, as those same ripples in the foundation of space-time sparked Ghemor’s subspace weapon. She watched cracks form in reality itself, which then began swallowing up the ships of the Ascendant fleet. It did not take long for her to realize that Ghemor’s missile had not simply been a subspace weapon, but an isolytic subspace weapon. Nearby power sources drew the fractures and then bred new ones.
Staring through the forward port, Kira saw the blue-white light of Defiant’s exploding warp core spread. It moved along sharp-edged paths, forming a misshapen latticework that could only be the network of spatial fractures the isolytic weapon had caused. Then, just as quickly, the light started to fade.
Kira examined her sensors. She noticed first that Defiant and its crew had escaped the ejection and destruction of their warp core. But where Endalla only moments earlier had scanned as a living, inhabited world, its current readings depicted it as little more than a sterile rock in space. Likewise, the skies above Bajor, so recently filled with thousands of ships massing for an attack, sat empty, every Ascendant vessel annihilated by the shattering of space-time.
Every vessel but one, Kira realized.
The captain refocused her sensors in search of the Ascendant ship that had fled from Bajor prior to Taran’atar taking action. She had notified Dax about the rogue vessel, and she knew that the lieutenant would handle the situation as best she could. Although Vaughn had reported the considerable strength of both the Ascendant ships’ shields and weapons, Kira had confidence that Deep Space 9 could stand against a lone aggressor. The course of the vessel, though, concerned her; it continued on a direct heading for the wormhole. The captain didn’t know if the remaining Ascendants intended either to flee, to bring back reinforcements, or to damage the Celestial Temple, but an entire fleet of their people had just attempted to destroy Bajor. Kira wanted answers.
Closer to the Ascendant ship than anybody else, she turned Yolja and set out in pursuit.
* * *
Raiq piloted her ship at top speed through the solar system, her course taking her precisely toward the entrance to the Fortress of the True. She did not know what else she could do, and yet she feared that the gates would not open for her. She had sinned grievously—she had not only distrusted the Fire, but had acted against her—and she’d been rebuked for it by the new Grand Archquester.
The new Grand Archquester. Raiq still found the account of Votiq’s individual Final Ascension suspicious, but as she rushed away from the location of the greatest catastrophe in the Ascendants’ history, she hoped to the core of her being that the Fire had been speaking the truth. If so, then the goal Raiq had pursued every moment of her life, the goal her people had relentlessly sought throughout the millennia, remained ahead of her, a tantalizing possibility that meant everything to her, that gave shape and meaning to her existence. If not—
If not, then I have nothing, she thought, not without bitterness. Her past—more than that, the entire history of the Ascendants—would prove worthless and empty. Her future would no longer exist in any form that she recognized. And in between the cycles gone and the cycles yet to come, in her present, she would for the first time in her life be utterly directionless.
What have I done? Raiq asked herself. What have my doubts wrought? She had questioned both the honesty and the judgment of the Fire. Believing that the Ascendants needed Aniq’s subspace weapon to help bring about the Final Ascension, Raiq had prevented the long-awaited prophet from employing the device against a planet of heretics. The new Grand Archquester ordered the release of the missile, but Seltiq also agreed with Raiq about how it should be used. Were we both wrong? Should we simply have acquiesced to the Fire’s plan? Would that have made a difference?
Raiq had so many questions, a jarring reality when juxtaposed with the virtual certainty in which she had lived her life. She was accustomed to having answers provided to her, and not having to search them out herself. To her horror, she discovered that questions carried far more implications.
But Raiq could not stop herself from asking: Did I bring this cataclysm down upon us? She could only answer: Maybe. Maybe if she had not intervened when the Fire had initially launched the missile, it would have reached the surface of the planet and wiped out the billions of heretics there. Maybe, having performed one last sacrament for the Unnameable, the Ascendants would at that moment be headed for the Fortress of the True, on their way to the Final Ascension.
Except we did not act as Ascendants, Raiq realized. They had taken the Fire at her word that a race of heretics inhabited the planet, but doing so ignored the rites and procedures established eons prior. The Ascendants visited the cultures they happened upon, observed them, judged them. Only after they had taken that time and made those efforts, and only if circumstances warranted, did they then perform a cleansing.
Was that it? Raiq wondered. Had the Fire been sent not just to guide them to the Fortress of the True, but to gauge their suitability for the Final Ascension? Had the Ascendants failed the last task they had been given, and thus denied the opportunity to reenter the Fortress?
Does it even matter? As far as Raiq knew, all of her people had perished, their ships wiped out by their own subspace weapon. As she’d fled the armada, her sensors had offered up confused readings, and so she supposed that one or two vessels, perhaps even more than that, might have somehow escaped. The notion seemed born out of desperation, but she clung to it.
But if any other Ascendants had survived, wouldn’t they also be headed for the Fortress of the True? Raiq examined her sensor console. An unfamiliar ship followed closely behind her, and farther ahead, two similar vessels moved toward her from the direction of the space station located near the Fortress. Raiq also saw an attempt to communicate with her from the trailing ship. Though she doubted it, she supposed that another Ascendant could have captured the vessel and used it to escape the yield of the subspace weapon. She tapped at a control, and a voice filled the cockpit of her ship.
“This is Captain Kira Nerys of the Federation station Deep Space Nine, to the Ascendant ship.” The automatic interpreter immediately translated the words from the language of Opaka Sulan’s people to that of the Ascendants. “Stop your vessel at once, deactivate your weapons, and lower your shields. You have invaded this system and attacked us, but we do not seek confrontation with you. We want only to talk.”
Raiq stabbed at her controls, ending the transmission. After a lifetime spent on the Quest, she would not yield so near to its end. She told herself that it did not matter that she would face the Final Ascension alone. She would burn beneath the gaze of the Unnameable, and even if they found her unworthy, at least the end would be at hand.
Raiq accessed the controls for her ship’s baryon pulses and tetryon bolts.
* * *
Aboard Deep Space 9, in Ops, Dax studied the tactical console. She wished she could use Defiant to intercept the fleeing Ascendant vessel, but the starship remained at Bajor, its crew consulting with the first minister and other officials, and studying the aftermath of all that had taken place. Dax had dispatched two runabouts, Platte and Volga, but after speaking with Commander Vaughn, she wanted to send out two more. According to the first officer, the bladelike ships possessed both formidable armaments and durable shi
elds.
Captain Kira, in pursuit of the Ascendant vessel herself, had just contacted the station, though, and she had opted for different tactics. Because DS9 currently hosted only civilian vessels, the captain wanted the balance of the runabout fleet to remain in their hangars, out of sight, but ready to launch in defense of the station. Dax tried to persuade her, without success.
She saw on the tactical console that the Ascendant vessel rapidly neared the two runabouts, with Kira following close behind aboard Yolja. Lieutenant Commander Ro Laren and Ensign Jang Si Naran crewed Platte, while Lieutenant Rey Alfonzo and Ensign José Chavez had taken out Volga. The captain’s orders had been, foremost, to keep the station safe, and second, to capture the Ascendants alive.
Sensors showed that the paths of Platte and Volga would soon intersect that of the Ascendant vessel. The two runabouts flew on staggered courses rather than in formation so that they would provide more than a single target. Dax aimed one of the station’s outer sensors and set it for maximum magnification. The two runabouts appeared on the main viewscreen in Ops, Platte ahead and off to starboard, Volga behind and off to port. In the distance, the Ascendant vessel became visible, though it appeared as little more than a black surface barely reflecting the light of the Bajoran sun.
Dax ordered Lieutenant Candlewood to tap into Platte’s communications. She immediately heard Ro attempting to contact the approaching vessel. “This is Lieutenant Commander Ro Laren to the Ascendant ship,” the security chief said. “You have entered this system without authorization. You are instructed to power down your weapons and bring your ship to a halt. We do not want to fire on you, but we will do so if necessary.” Not surprisingly, Dax heard no response. The captain had similarly failed to provoke a reply.
On the viewscreen, the Ascendant vessel grew in size, though Dax could still make out scant detail, the ship’s knife-shaped hull offering little to see when viewed from in front of it. Suddenly, two dazzlingly white beams surged from the ship, independently targeting the two runabouts. The bright, expanding circles of energy slammed into Platte and Volga. Dax eyed the status readouts for both and saw that their shield power had been reduced by a third.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Ascendance Page 12
