Aniq moved to a control panel on the missile and tapped in a series of commands. Along the forward half of its length, panels rotated out of position, revealing empty compartments. Once, they had held components that Aniq had deemed unnecessary for her purposes, or that she had condensed into other sections: she had eliminated a redundant guidance system, a sublight engine, and a shield generator, and she’d reconfigured its thrusters and an overly complex triggering mechanism. She had then isolated those empty compartments and fitted them with a means of evenly distributing their contents at the moment of the weapon’s detonation.
With a specific movement of her head, Aniq activated the external sensors in her environmental suit. She studied the readouts that streamed across the inside of her helmet and saw exactly what she wanted to see: biomimetic material, relatively free of radiation. Although lifeless, the material still possessed the essence of its physical nature. Buried deep in its structure hid the potential of change—of change, and of the ability to link.
Aniq bent and scooped up two gloves full of the shape-shifter’s ashes, then stood up and deposited them inside an empty compartment in the missile. She could have used a tool to do so, but she wanted to do it with her hands. Somehow, it made the experience more real, more vital.
When the time came, when she and her fellow Ascendants stood in the Fortress of the True and faced the Unnameable, Aniq would see to it that the fire in which they burned also transformed their existence. She and her people would literally join with their gods. That would be the Final Ascension.
III
Ascent
December 2385
“Are you truly Taran’atar?” Ro asked. She thought she understood the implications of his story. Standing before a perfect reproduction of the Jem’Hadar soldier, in a perfect reproduction of a DS9 hangar bay, it seemed eminently believable.
“I am Taran’atar,” the entity said.
Ro wanted to believe him, but she didn’t know if she could. The entity had linked with Odo, and it had scanned the memory banks of both Defiant and Deep Space 9. It therefore effectively knew everything that the captain knew.
No, not everything, Ro realized. Not my thoughts and experiences—at least not those that there’s no record of. “Did you ever write me a note?” she asked. Ro had never told anybody about the brief missive Taran’atar had left for her just before he’d departed the original DS9 for good.
“Once,” the entity said. “I left it beside the door to your quarters. I wrote it in Bajoran. It said, ‘I’m sorry.’ I signed it with my initial.”
The description, perfect in its detail, satisfied Ro. More than that, it thrilled and amazed her. She felt pressure mount behind her eyes, and she forced back her tears. “You are Taran’atar.”
“I am Taran’atar, and more. I was fused in the fire of the isolytic subspace explosion to the shape-shifting substance Aniq had loaded into the weapon. In that form, my consciousness survived the blast and was thrown through subspace. How far, I cannot say, but a considerable distance. Light-years, at least, I have no doubt, but I eventually emerged back into normal space.”
Ro remembered the great fissures that the isolytic subspace weapon had opened above Bajor. Those long, jagged rifts had been explained to her as places where the boundaries between the normal space-time continuum and its underlying foundation had been torn asunder. Could Taran’atar—could anything—enter subspace through such a fracture and surface back into normal space somewhere else—perhaps through an unsealed cleft? Ro didn’t know, but it didn’t seem unreasonable to her—and she did believe that Taran’atar, or some part of him, communicated with her at that moment.
“We floated freely for a while,” he said. “Time passed, whether slowly or quickly, we could not say. Eventually, through sheer chance, we came into physical contact with a mass of rock. We attempted to reach out to it, to take hold, but we did not know how. We struggled mightily, our continuous but fruitless efforts painful and frustrating.”
The captain took note of Taran’atar’s shift from an individual to a collective pronoun. She also heard emotion in his words. The act of remembering did not seem easy for him.
“Though we could not explain how we did it,” Taran’atar continued, “we at last managed to . . . melt. We seeped onto the surface of what we would later learn was an asteroid. We clutched at a portion of its surface and returned to our solid state.
“We remained there for a period of time we could not begin to define,” Taran’atar went on. “We had nothing but ourselves, but many of us railed against the commingling of our thoughts . . . of our life-forces. It was a new existence. For some, it represented rescue, an escape from the nothingness that death would have brought. For others, it came as salvation, a reprieve from lives lost during their existence to what suddenly appeared to be a lie. For still others . . . for me . . . it was torture: my existence laid bare, my failures no longer serial but comprehensive, my weaknesses not a difficult internal struggle but a beacon of flaws broadcast to an entire link of unknown beings.”
“A link,” Ro said. She had not intended to speak—she wanted to hear the tale that Taran’atar wanted to tell—but one too many questions had risen in her mind.
“I was not the only consciousness transformed by the detonation,” Taran’atar said. “So too were many of the Ascendants. Many also perished, overcome by the explosion, by the destruction of matter, before the transformative wave could sweep them up and fuse them into it.”
Taran’atar raised an arm to the side and pointed. Ro looked and saw another figure rising from the deck, painted all in silver and attached by numerous tendrils of shape-shifting material to the surface from which it grew. Unlike Taran’atar, it was not standing; it lay on its side in the fetal position. Ro could not see the face from her position, but she recognized enough details of the figure that when Taran’atar identified it, it did not surprise her.
“Iliana Ghemor,” he said. “She did not survive the blast of the metaweapon. Like many of those nearest the point of detonation, she died in its initial fire.” Around the silver-clad figure of Ghemor, other forms began to appear, all of them Ascendants. But for the shoots of shape-shifting material that bound them to the deck, and the large eyes that did not show as gold but as silver, they looked very much like Raiq, the lone Ascendant Ro had ever met.
A thought occurred to the captain, and she immediately voiced it. “What about the Bajorans on Endalla? Are any of them with you?”
“There are no Bajorans within our link,” Taran’atar said.
“A subspace fracture was drawn by the power sources on the moon,” Ro explained. “It obliterated the ecosphere on Endalla, ripped away the atmosphere, destroyed the scientific facilities there. Everybody there—thousands of men and women—were killed.”
“Their violent ends must have come before they could be encompassed by the biomimetic material,” Taran’atar said. “Or maybe that material never reached them. Maybe it had all been fused to others. I don’t know what happened. I only know that they are not here.”
The information saddened Ro anew. The people of Bajor had mourned the loss of those lives eight years earlier, but in some ways, the enormity of it never completely left them. It also reminded Ro that two scientists had been killed on a Federation research facility, and Odo had been badly, perhaps mortally, wounded.
“You killed two scientists yourself,” Ro said. “And you attacked Odo.”
“I know of what you speak,” Taran’atar said, “but what you say is not accurate. We know from Odo that we were found on the asteroid by a Starfleet vessel. Its crew had been drawn to our location by readings of an energy burst, which I assume was generated when we reentered normal space. Once in the system, the crew tracked some anomalous subspace scans to our location. They removed us from the asteroid and brought us to a place Odo knew as Newton Outpost.”
Ro had never heard of Newton Outpost, but the Federation research facility from which the shape-shifte
r had fled had never been identified to her. Taran’atar also provided additional information of which she had been unaware, including the name of the ship whose crew had found the specimen. Other details, such as how the Nova crew had discovered the shape-shifter on the asteroid, tracked with what little Ro had been told.
“We did not know where we were,” Taran’atar said. “We did not know anything but our internal life and our link.”
“Could you perceive your surroundings?” Ro asked.
“Mostly no, and not at all in the way you mean,” Taran’atar said. “And then Odo linked with us, and everything changed. In an instant, all of his knowledge became ours. The experience completely overwhelmed us, but of all the information we learned, one piece of knowledge superseded all others: we suddenly knew how to change our form. The second-most important thing we knew was that we were being held prisoner, and that we must escape.
“We foolishly viewed Odo as a threat in those first moments, and we did strike him,” Taran’atar said. “But we did not attack the scientists. If they were injured or killed, it must have been an inadvertent consequence of our hurried attempt to flee.”
Ro believed Taran’atar. “I understand wanting to escape captivity, but what are you doing now?” she asked. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to speak with you,” Taran’atar said. “I would have wanted to speak to Kira Nerys as well, and to Elias Vaughn, but I know from your records that they are dead.” He paused before continuing. “But that is what I want. It is not what we want. What we want is to return to the Fortress of the True. That is what the Ascendants call the Anomaly, what the Bajorans call the Celestial Temple. Once we escaped from Newton Outpost, we knew that was where we had to go.”
“So you were heading for the wormhole all along,” Ro said. “Not for Bajor, nor for Deep Space Nine.”
“We were heading for the wormhole,” Taran’atar confirmed. “When you attempted to make contact with us, I heard you identify yourself, I wanted to speak with you, to see you. I convinced the others to allow me to do so.”
“Why?” Ro asked.
“Because you are the last available connection to my life as I once knew it,” Taran’atar said. “As alien to me as my assignment was to observe life in the Alpha Quadrant, it now seems like a natural part of my existence as a . . . as a solid. I believe—we believe—that once we enter the Fortress of the True, we will never leave it. I accept that, but it also made me want to make one final connection to my old life.”
“But why would you want to enter the wormhole?” Ro asked, and then she revised her question. “Why would you want to enter the Fortress of the True?”
“It has been the generations-long desire of the Ascendants, and the lifelong goal of those with whom I am linked,” Taran’atar said. “Even if I did not wish to go, I could do little to prevent it from happening. I cannot separate myself from the link.”
“Can’t you?” Ro asked. “Odo could. Other Founders could.”
“I do not know how,” Taran’atar said, “but even if I did, that would not change the situation. I am part of this link . . . this community . . . and I do not wish to leave it. I am also eager to enter the Fortress of the True and see it as something more than the Anomaly that I knew. My life . . . my former life . . . was beset by doubt—doubt in myself, and doubt in my gods. I look forward to reestablishing my faith, this time in the truly divine.”
“Are you talking about the Prophets?” Ro asked.
“I do not know,” Taran’atar said. “We do not know. But yes, we think that Prophets is just another name for the True.”
“What do you expect to happen when you enter the wormhole?” Ro had no doubt that the first minister and the kai and probably just about everybody else on Bajor would not want to allow a link of shape-shifters—comprising a Jem’Hadar soldier and some number of Ascendant zealots—to enter the Celestial Temple. The captain didn’t know whether she wanted to permit that either. Based on all that had taken place, though, she had no idea how she and her crew—or anybody else, for that matter—could realistically prevent that from happening. Perhaps the scientists on DS9 could eventually figure out a solution, but she doubted that the Ascendants would wait.
“We do not know what will happen,” Taran’atar said. “Once, the Ascendants believed that they would burn beneath the gaze of their gods, and then join with them, but they see that the events alluded to in their holy texts have already taken place. At Bajor, they burned—we burned—and none would disagree that the event fell within the perception of the True. The surviving Ascendants then joined, not with their gods, but with each other. There has been debate, but it seems settled that what has transpired is a valid interpretation of scripture. The only action that remains is for the Ascendants to reside in the Fortress of the True. There, we expect to live as we were ultimately meant to: within the gaze of the Unnameable, joined to them in a spiritual way, and joined to each other physically.”
Ro nodded, not to agree, but as a simple response to an overpowering narrative. She saw one of the inert bodies—or body-shapes—on the deck behind Taran’atar, and she looked around at all of them, including the one approximating Iliana Ghemor. “What about the dead?” she asked, pointing to the form of the Cardassian madwoman.
“These are not the true corpses of the dead,” Taran’atar said. “They were reduced to ashes. Some of that material does reside within our link, but without consciousness, without life.” Around them, the body-shapes began to dissolve back into the deck. In short order, none of them remained.
“I’m glad that I’m getting to speak with you,” Ro said. “I’m glad that I can tell you that your note meant a great deal to me . . . that your friendship meant so much to me. I’m glad that I can show you that I’m all right, that I’ve recovered. But mostly, I’m glad that you’re alive.”
For a long while, Taran’atar did not move, and he said nothing. At last, he closed his eyes and nodded once, slowly. When he looked at her again, the moment had passed, and he said, “The Ascendants have a request.”
“Yes?” Ro asked, immediately on her guard.
“We know from Odo that Raiq is still alive,” Taran’atar said.
“Yes,” Ro said. “As far as anybody knew, she was the lone surviving Ascendant.”
“She is living on Bajor,” Taran’atar said. “At the Vanadwan Monastery.”
“Yes,” Ro confirmed, understanding that there was no point in denying it.
“According to Odo, she has taken a vow of silence until either an Ascendant returns, or Kira Nerys does.”
“I’ve heard that,” Ro said.
“Raiq should know that the Ascendants have returned,” Taran’atar said, “and that we would welcome her to join us.”
Ro did not know how to respond to that statement, so she chose to agree. “I can speak to Raiq,” she said. “I can inform her of everything that’s happened. The choice would have to be hers.”
“Of course,” Taran’atar said. “On behalf of the Ascendants, thank you. And for myself, I also thank you . . . for everything.”
Ro again felt pressure behind her eyes. She fought it, and she fought the impulse to embrace Taran’atar. He seemed to perceive the emotion within her, as well as the fact that their conversation seemed to have reached a natural end. Without saying anything, the shape of Taran’atar began to lose its form, almost like an ice sculpture thawing. The hangar bay flickered, once, twice, thrice, the color draining out of it each time, until only silver remained.
The captain took a long look around, and then she boarded her runabout. She unmuted her comlink to Deep Space 9 and was immediately faced with questions. Ro shut her crew down, telling them that she was all right, and that she would soon be back on DS9.
Once Ro boarded the runabout, the shields surrounding the phantom starbase dropped, and the exterior hatch opened. The captain piloted Senha upward, taking it back out into space. Then she pointed the bow of the runabout towar
d the real Deep Space 9.
* * *
Raiq sat beside Captain Ro at the forward console of the runabout. The Starfleet officer had contacted her the night before and requested that she travel to Deep Space 9. Ro had been circumspect about the reason for the journey, but she’d hinted that she possessed information that the Ascendant would want—likely about Kira Nerys, Raiq had thought.
The conversation had not been an actual conversation, since Raiq had not spoken since the disappearance of Vedek Kira more than two years earlier, when the wormhole had collapsed. Ro did all of the talking, although she didn’t say much either beyond presenting the invitation to the starbase. In the end, Raiq agreed with a nod.
The captain had said that she would send a ship for the Ascendant, but Raiq hadn’t expected Ro to be piloting it herself. The reason soon became obvious. The captain told a story to Raiq about the fate of the Ascendants, and since Ro had been the only person to hear the account firsthand, she had wanted to relate it herself.
The tale had been fantastic, and yet much of it made sense to Raiq. She remembered hearing Aniq tell the Fire and Grand Archquester Votiq that she had modified her powerful weapon with “transformative” fuel. The correspondence between the fact of the Ascendant fleet being caught in the detonation of the subspace weapon in the general vicinity of the wormhole, and the belief of the knights that they would burn beneath the gaze of the True, appeared too close to be coincidental. Likewise, the linking of the Ascendants via biomimetic material seemed similar to the notion of them joining with the Unnameable.
And I felt that there were still Ascendants out there somewhere, Raiq thought. That might have been hope masquerading as intuition, but it had turned out to be true after all.
Raiq believed what the captain had told her. She felt ecstatic to learn of the survival of many of her people, even though their physical nature had changed. That they had come back for her before reentering the Fortress of the True touched her deeply. While she did not wish to relent on the vigil she held for Vedek Kira, Raiq could not possibly turn down the opportunity to rejoin her people.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Ascendance Page 29
