by Judith
Nog looked up to meet her gaze. Realizing that what he held in his hands was the
proof that everything he had struggled for in these past five years on Mars,
everything he had sacrificed, had been for nothing. Nothing.
He could barely speak the words. "You are asking me to betray Starfleet, the
Federation—everything I believe in."
"No, Captain, I am offering you a chance to save those very things. The only
chance you have. We came here to put this question to Admiral Picard, but his
time has passed. So I put it to you, Captain Nog. In all the universe, you are
the only one who can save it now. Will you join us?"
It took Nog a long time to make his decision.
And time was the one thing he no longer had.
CHAPTER 7
if sisko closed his eyes, he could almost believe he was on Bajor, in the kai's
Temple, in his own time. The gentle splash of water on stone in the meditation
pool. The sharp peppermint-cinnamon smell of the b'nai candles. Even the cool
breeze that brought with it the rich, loamy scent of the contemplation gardens.
All these sensations brought back to him the world he had hoped someday would
become his adopted home.
But even these sense memories faded when he opened his eyes and looked out
through the curving viewports of the Boreth's observation deck to see the
Defiant being pulled through the stars at warp speed, ensnared in the purple web
of a tractor beam and trailing half a kilometer behind the angular engineering
hull of the advanced-technology Klingon battlecruiser.
At his right, he saw in Kira a reflection of his own distress at the sight of
their ship—so distant, so power-
less. At his left the tall, lean form of Arla Rees stood rigid, tense, though
Sisko knew the defeat of the Defiant could not inflict the same emotional toll
on her. The Bajoran commander had only served on Deep Space 9 for a few weeks,
and she had not served on the Defiant before the events of the station's last
day—or of the last twenty-five years.
"How do you think it happened?"
Sisko knew what Kira was really asking him. His conclusion—that the Dominion had
won its war with the Federation—had been shared by all the others on the Defiant
once they saw or heard of Weyoun's appearance in Vedek's robes. And now, the
fact that they had been been transported to Weyoun's Klingon ship and had
discovered a Bajoran meditation chamber reconstructed to the last detail in its
observation lounge was more proof. There could be no doubt that in this future
the Dominion had won the war, and had assimilated the cultures of the Alpha
Quadrant as omnivorously as had the Borg.
"Maybe it was Deep Space 9," Sisko ventured. "Once the station was gone,
Starfleet had no forward base to guard the wormhole."
Kira sighed. "So we really were accomplishing something. This isn't the way I'd
like to find out, though."
Arla turned away from the Defiant. "I thought the wormhole was no longer an
issue in the war, because the aliens kept Dominion forces from using it."
Sisko saw Kira stiffen at the Bajoran commander's casual use of the term
"aliens" to describe the beings in the wormhole.
"The Prophets," Kira said emphatically, "chose to stop one fleet of Jem'Hadar
ships from traveling through their Temple. But if the Bajoran people failed
in their duty to protect the Temple's doorway, then it is entirely possible that
the Prophets withdrew their blessing—just as they did when the Cardassians
invaded."
Arla persisted. "Major, if the wormhole aliens are gods, how could they let the
Cardassians inflict such evil on our world?"
Kira's smile was brittle. "I won't pretend to understand the Prophets, but I
know everything they do is for a reason."
Before Arla could further escalate what was for now merely a discussion, Sisko
intervened to keep it at that level. This argument could have no end between the
two Bajorans of such dissimilar background and belief.
Kira had been bom on occupied Bajor. She had grown up in relocation camps, and
had fought for the Resistance since she was a child. The only thing mat had
enabled her—and millions of other Bajorans—to survive the horrors of the
Cardassian Occupation of their world was a deep and unquestioning faith in their
gods—the Prophets of the Celestial Temple.
But Arla Rees, only a few years younger than Kira, had been born to prosperous
Bajoran traders on the neutral world of New Sydney. She had enjoyed a Me of
privilege in which the Cardassian Occupation, though an evil to rally against,
had never been experienced firsthand. For Arla, now a Starfleet officer, as for
many Bajorans of her upbringing, the Prophets were little more than an outmoded
superstition perversely clung to by her less sophisticated cousins on the old
world.
Sisko knew mat as fervently as Kira believed in the Prophets and their Celestial
Temple, Arla held an equally strong belief that the Bajoran wormhole was
inhabited by aliens from a different dimensional realm,
and that their involvement in the history of Bajor had been more disruptive than
benevolent.
He himself had been wondering of late if reconciling these two opposing beliefs
was one of the tasks that he, hi his ill-defined and unsought role as the
Emissary to Bajor's Prophets, was supposed to be able to accomplish. If so,
then he was still unable to see how one could ever be reconciled with the other.
"That's enough," Sisko said to both Kira and Arla. 'This debate is nothing we're
going to resolve here and now."
"Oh, but we are," Weyoun proclaimed from behind them.
Sisko and the two Bajorans turned as quickly as if shot by disruptors, to see
that the Vorta had apparently beamed into the observation deck behind them, just
beside the meditation pool. Across the deck, the doors to the corridor were
still closed, and there was no other obvious way in.
"Captain Sisko," Weyoun purred, "Major Kira, you have no idea how delighted I am
to meet you again after so many years. And Commander Arla, it is such a pleasure
to make your acquaintance." The Vorta smiled ingratiatingly at his guests and
clasped his hands eagerly before him. "I trust you've found your quarters to
your liking."
Sisko forced himself to control his initial impulse to angrily demand an
explanation for everything that had happened to them. Weyoun's irritatingly
obsequious manner had simply—like everything else about him and his species—been
genetically programmed by the Founders in order to better serve the Dominion as
negotiators, strategists, scientists, and diplomats.
In this sense, this latest version of Weyoun had changed not at all over the
past twenty-five years. The clone's thick black hair, brushed high above his
forehead, showed no trace of gray. His smooth, open face, framed by
dramatically ribbed ears that ran from his chin halfway up the sides of his
head, showed no sign of age-related lines or wrinkles. Indeed, the only aspect
of the cloned Vorta that had changed from the time Sisko had last crossed his
path was that this Weyoun now wore a Bajoran earring, complete with a
gleaming
silver chain.
But at the moment none of these details was important to Sisko. There was only
one thought that claimed his mind. "What happened to my people who were beamed
off the Defiant?" He did not add mat his son Jake had been among them.
"Sadly," Weyoun began mournfully, "we must consider them dead. The attackers
are not known for taking prisoners. And those they do take do not live for
long."
Kira's outraged question filled the terrible silence that followed the Vorta's
pronouncement. "What are you doing hi those robes?"
Weyoun glanced down at his saffron-and-white Vedek's robes, as if to be sure his
clothing hadn't changed in the last few seconds. "Why, they were a gift. From
the congregation of the Dahkur Temple. I believe that's in your home province,
Major."
Kira's face tightened in disbelief. "None of the monks I know would ever accept
a Dominion lackey as a vedek."
Weyoun gazed at Kira in hurt sadness, as if her words had wounded him cruelly.
"The Dominion," he said, almost wistfully. "A name I have not heard in many
years."
Kira's quick glance at Sisko revealed her lack of
understanding, but he was unable to offer her any of his own.
"Why not?" Sisko asked Weyoun. "Did the Founders change its name?"
"Founders," Weyoun repeated, as if that word hadn't crossed his lips for a long
time either. 'To be honest, I don't know how the Founders reacted to their
loss."
"What loss?" Sisko asked. Now he needed enlightenment.
"Of the war, of course," Weyoun answered. "With the Federation."
Kira shook her head. "Wait a minute. The Dominion lost the war?"
Weyoun looked troubled. "In ... a manner of speaking."
"And what manner would that be?" Sisko demanded.
Weyoun nodded thoughtfully. "I understand your confusion, Captain. Twenty-five
years is a long time. And I will see to it that you have access to briefing
tapes that recount the thrilling historic events you've missed. But for now,
simply to put your minds at rest, I will try to... get you up to speed. Isn't
that what you say?"
"Just start at the beginning," Sisko said. "Who won the war?"
The Vorta's smile was vague. "In a technical sense, no one—but the war is over,"
he hastened to add, as Sisko took a step toward him. "In fact, it ended almost
one year to the day after the loss of Deep Space 9 and the beginning of your...
miraculous voyage."
Sisko was no longer interested in even pretending to be patient. "How did it
end?"
The Vorta pursed his lips. "With the destruction of Cardassia Prime, I'm sorry
to say. A terrible battle. A
terrible price to pay for peace. But the Cardassians were a proud people. And
Damar and the Founder he served refused to surrender. Then, when—"
Arla interrupted suddenly. "What do you mean, the Cardassians 'were' a proud
people?"
Weyoun fixed his remarkably clear gray eyes on hers. "I don't play games with my
words, Commander. At all times, you can be sure I mean exactly what I say.
Today, the Cardassians as a species are virtually extinct. Cardassia Prime. The
Hub Colonies. The Union Territories. All destroyed."
"Destroyed?" Sisko repeated. "We are talking about planets?"
Weyoun nodded. "Entire worlds, Captain. Laid waste. Uninhabitable. A death toll
in the tens of billions. ... A mere handful of Cardassians left now. Traders.
Pirates." He paused, then added with unexpected anger, "Madmen."
Kira sounded as shocked as Sisko felt. "But you— you somehow escaped all that
destruction?"
Weyoun's facial expressions disconcertingly flickered back and forth between an
overweening smile of pride and an exaggerated frown of sorrow. "No, Major. In a
sense, / brought about that destruction."
Now Sisko, Kira, and Arla all began to speak at the same time. But Weyoun
ignored their questions and protests alike.
"No, no, no," he said, tucking his hands within the folds of his robes.
"Whatever you think of me, you're wrong." He stood with his back to the
observation windows and their backdrop of warp-smeared stars. "Captain Sisko,
you must believe me. I begged Damar to accept the inevitable. I implored the
Founder to accept
that it was time she and her kind accepted their fate to be partners in a new
cause, not the leaders of a dying one. Yet—"
Sisko regarded him with disbelief. "Are you saying you turned against the
Founders?! "
"But... they were your gods," Kira said.
Weyoun shook his head. "The only reason the Vorta believed the Founders to be
gods was because that was programmed into the basic structure of our brains. Our
belief in the Founders was achieved through the same genetic engineering that
raised us from the forests of our homeworld."
"But you've always known about your programming," Sisko said.
'True. And our belief, engineered or not, did sustain the Vorta—sustained
me—through the most difficult times. But then..." Weyoun withdrew his arms from
his robes and spread them wide, as if to embrace Sisko and the others. "... The
day came when those difficult times" ended and... and / met the true Gods of all
creation—the Prophets." His transformed face shone with bliss.
Sisko stared at the triumphant Vorta. "You.... met the Bajoran Prophets?"
Weyoun nodded, his beatific smile never wavering.
"Through an Orb experience?" Kira asked doubtfully. "Or—"
"Face to face," the Vorta said in a humble voice. "In the True Celestial Temple.
I traveled through it. A desperate expedition to see if it led to the Gamma
Quadrant." He laughed quietly to himself in remembrance. "The Founder herself
ordered me to go. Two Cardassian warships. A wing of Jem'Hadar attack cruisers.
Yet... I was the only one to return."
And then, an icy hand gripping his heart, Sisko made sense of Weyoun's
astounding story. "You traveled through the second wormhole."
The Vorta held a finger to his lips. "Oh, Captain, I must caution you. I have a
very devoted, very religious crew. We don't call them... 'wormholes' anymore."
"Two Temples, then," Sisko said. "Just like the legend of the Red Orbs of
Jalbador."
Weyoun stared at Sisko, abandoning all traces of the false veneer of a
genetically engineered negotiator he had always maintained in their previous
encounters. "In your time," he said seriously, "the legend of Jalbador existed
in many different forms, distorted by the inevitable accumulation of error over
the millennia of its retelling. But in essence, Captain, each variation of that
legend possessed a fraction of the truth. A truth which you helped bring back to
a universe that had lost its way."
"And that truth would be?" Kira asked grimly.
Weyoun's response was uncharacteristically to the point. "The Prophets are the
Gods of all creation, and the True Celestial Temple is their home."
Then, pausing as if to compose himself, the Vorta studied his audience of three
before focusing his attention on Arla. "Now I know this is not what you
believe, Commander. I overheard what you were saying before I joined you
. If the
Prophets are Gods, then how can they let evil exist? That is a valid question.
And it has a valid answer."
Weyoun stepped closer to Arla, addressing her as if Sisko and Kira were no
longer present in this reconstruction of a meditation chamber. "You see,
Commander, the Prophets do not wish their children to be afflicted by evil. But
uncounted eons ago, when the
universe was a perfect ideal contained within the Temple, some Prophets
rebelled. Oh, they believed they had a just cause. They thought that a universe
within the Temple could only ever be a reflection of perfection, not perfection
itself. And so they fought to free creation from its timeless realm. And in
that great and terrible battle—beyond the comprehension of any linear being—the
One Celestial Temple was—" Weyoun clapped his hands together unexpectedly,
startling his three listeners,"—split asunder!"
The Vorta smiled apologetically at Arla. "The battle between the two groups of
Prophets ended men. But the damage had already been done. The stars, the
galaxies, the planets... everything the Prophets had created in their image of
timeless perfection spilled out into the void created by the Temple's
destruction. And in mat void, perfection was unattainable. Evil was loosed upon
the face of creation. And all because of the pride of one group of Prophets, who
thought they knew better."
"The Pah-wraiths," Arla whispered.
Weyoun brightened at Arla's response. "Ah, so you have had some religious
instruction, Commander. Yes, of course. But the Pah-wraiths you know from your
time are those poor beings who spilled from the Temple at the time it was torn
in two. They could not cany on the fight in the False Temple, neither could they
join their fellows in the True Temple. Instead, they sought shelter near the
entrance to both shards of the One Temple, deep in the Fire Caves at die core of
Bajor, lost and abandoned by both sides."
"This is all blasphemy!" Kira protested. "There was no battle in the Temple!
There are no fallen Prophets! There is no second Temple!"
Undisturbed, Weyoun pointed an accusing finger at the livid major. "Then how do
you explain your presence here and now, exactly as foretold by Naradim's Third
Vision as recorded on the tablets of Jalbador?"
"What do you mean 'our presence' was foretold?" Sisko asked quickly, before Kira
