by Judith
of the deep-time charges we're currently carrying. That means we did not deploy
the charges. And that means our mission will be a failure—because it already
was."
"And you believe the Romulans?" Bashir asked, his sarcasm leaving no doubt as to
what he thought the answer was.
Centurion Karon responded before Nog could. "Dr. Bashir, I understand your
reluctance to trust us. If you were Vulcan, I would call upon your logic. But as
it is, I shall ask you to employ that human characteristic known as 'common
sense.'
"The mission of the Phoenix as planned makes good sense—to stop the Ascendancy
without changing the timeline. Surely it is to all our advantages for it to
succeed. The Star Empire—old or new—would embrace that result.
"The facts, however, indicate that this mission will
fail. That suggests that sometime in the next six standard days the universe
will end, as the Ascendancy plans. Our position then becomes, why waste this
resource, this magnificent vessel? As much as it distresses us, changing the
timeline is preferable to allowing the universe to die."
Jake wasn't an expert, but he had heard his father discuss the terrible
equations of the Dominion War with Admiral Ross. And he had come to believe as
his father did: There was no escaping the fact that in order to accomplish
good, sometimes bad things had to happen.
In the case of the war to save the Federation, that had meant that soldiers had
to die. And Jake could see the same inescapable equation at work here. "It makes
sense to me," he said quietly, and was suddenly aware of everyone in the room
staring at him. "I mean, if I had the chance to take back some tragedy by
changing time, I'd do it."
"Even if it meant wiping yourself from existence?" Bashir asked.
"If the tragedy was big enough, I'd have to, wouldn't I? Wouldn't all of us?"
Karon nodded approvingly at him. "This young man is correct. What we are
proposing is no different from sending a group of Imperial Commandos on a
one-way mission to inflict terrible damage on an enemy and thereby win a war.
Perhaps we will die, but billions more will live because of our sacrifice.
Perhaps trillions."
Jake didn't understand why Jadzia hadn't yet offered her opinion, and why Bashir
now seemed unwilling to say more.
Karon tried to prompt a reaction from them. "Dr. Bashir, Commander Dax, you and
your fellow travelers
through time were willing to risk your lives for the mission of the Phoenix.
Why are you not willing to risk your lives on a plan that has a real chance of
success?"
"Maybe because it's a Romulan plan," Bashir said. "And I'm just not comfortable
with taking this ship back twenty-five years into the past and laying waste to
an entire world."
At that, Karon rose abruptly from the table, the sound of her chair echoing
harshly in the unfinished room, and Jake could see her hands were clenched into
fists at her side. "I apologize for being Romulan. But I invite you to work
through the problem yourselves. One world and twenty-five years balanced
against the universe and infinity. Which would you choose if I had been human,
Doctor? Or Andorian, or Klingon?" Obviously upset, the Romulan centurion
inclined her head briefly in a nod of leave-taking. "I suggest you discuss your
options. Because one way or another, this ship is on a new mission, with or
without her crew."
Karon headed for the doors, where, as the doors to the corridor slid open, Jake
saw two Romulans with disruptors standing to either side of the doorway. Then
the doors closed and they were alone.
"What were you thinking?" Bashir snapped at Nog.
"Me? You insulted her." Nog said. "Besides, the mission fails. It doesn't need
thinking about. The facts are the facts!"
"The Romulans almost killed Worf!" Jadzia said heatedly.
Jake knew that Jadzia's mate was in the ship's sickbay being tended to by an
entire holographic medical team, even though they weren't programmed for
Klingon physiology. Fortunately for Worf, his disruptor burns were superficial.
Jadzia's accusation hung in the air. But strangely enough, Nog did not fight
back. More than anything, Jake thought, the Ferengi looked sad.
"I am truly sorry for the commander," Nog said, "but I know I did the right
thing. If this ship had been taken out on her mission as planned, we would have
accomplished nothing. It's as simple as that."
Jake hated seeing his friend so beleaguered, so defensive. Nog was looking
twice as old as he had on Starbase S3. Jake tried to remember what Bashir had
said about the little capitulations and loss of ideals that accompanied
adulthood. How many small defeats had Nog had to endure in the years they had
been apart? What had brought him to this state—a troubling and troubled person
who had sold out every ideal he had ever believed in?
Unless, Jake suddenly thought, Nog hasn't changed at all...
"Nog," Jake said, reaching out for the plaque and holding it up, "what other
mishaps?"
Nog looked down the table at him and Jake saw in the Ferengi's sudden wariness
that he had hit on something.
The plaque. The plaque was the key. Somehow.
Jake put the plaque down on the table and ran his ringers over its raised
lettering. He felt excitement bubbling up in him.
"When you said you conducted tests on this, you said it showed signs of various
'mishaps.' That's an odd word to use."
Nog took a deep breath, and if his friend had still been only nineteen, Jake
would have sworn he was gathering his strength to confess some transgression of
youth to his father. Then Nog glanced at the closed door, and Jake leaned
forward, on the alert. Nog had something he was hiding from the Romulans.
Maybe his friend wasn't the traitor, the loser he seemed to have become.
Maybe there was still some of the old Nog—the young Nog—locked up in that
middle-aged Ferengi's body.
Now Nog leaned forward and dropped his voice to a low whisper.
"Do you know how the Ascendancy plans to bring on the end of the universe?" he
asked the three before him.
"By merging the two wormholes," Bashir said.
"Yes, but how?" Nog asked. "I mean, really—by what technique can you actually
move two energy phenomena held in place by verteron pressure?"
Jake, Bashir, and Jadzia all shook their heads.
"Well, Starfleet doesn't know, either. That's one of the reasons we were so slow
to react to the Ascendancy's plans. The best scientists just didn't think what
they planned to do was possible."
"But...," Jake said, grasping for enlightenment, "it is?"
"Yesss!" Nog hissed. "Most certainly. And I know what they plan to do, because
the evidence is all right here...." He patted the dedication plaque. "My
friends, I needed the Romulans to help me steal this ship from Starfleet, but
now I need your help to steal it back."
"Yess!" Jake thought. That's my Nog. Then he sat forward even closer to listen
to Nog's plan.
CHAPTER 22
"WE'VE lost, haven't we?" Kira asked.
> Sisko stared up at the night sky from his cell. Its narrow window faced north,
and the beams from B'hala's space mirrors did not interfere with his view of the
stars.
"We're still breathing," he said. As the stars appeared from Bajor, they were
almost as familiar to him as the stars of Earth.
Kira didn't sound convinced. "For how much longer?"
"Maybe... we shouldn't fight this anymore," Aria said from her corner of the
cell.
The enclosure imprisoning them, its walls made of the ancient stones of B'hala,
was small, with only three small piles of old rags for beds and a bucket for all
other physical needs. But Sisko and the two Bajorans had had no trouble sharing
it. There were bigger concerns facing them than mere physical discomfort and
lack of privacy.
Sisko turned away from the stars in time to see the look of shock on Kira's
face, but felt none himself. After witnessing Tom Riker's appalling death last
night, he felt numb to further surprise.
"You can't be serious " Kira said hotly.
"You believe in the Prophets, don't you?" Arla asked.
"Of course I do!"
Arla slowly got to her feet in one fluid, athletic movement, and smoothed her
robes around her. "Then isn't what's going to happen here what you've wanted all
your life?" she asked.
Kira's head bobbed forward in amazement. "The end of everything? Why would you
believe that / would want that?"
Any other time, Sisko might have thought that the secular Arla was merely
baiting the religious Kira, and might have intervened. But he recognized a new
undercurrent to Arla's questions, and understood that she was trying to
comprehend something that had never been part of her own life.
"Isn't it part of your religion that at some time good and evil will fight a
final battle?" Arla asked.
"So?" Kira answered.
"So isn't this it? When the two halves of the Temple are rejoined, the
Pah-wraiths and the Prophets will fight that final battle and existence will
end. That's what it says in your texts, isn't it?"
Kira exhaled noisily as if indignant at Arla's ignorance, but Sisko knew her
well enough to sense that she was stalling for time. "Yes. My religion says that
sometime there will be a final battle between good and evil. But it doesn't say
anything about there being two Temples!"
Arla folded her arms inside her robes like a monk. Sisko thought it was an odd
gesture for a non-believing Bajoran to have picked up.
"Major, I mean no disrespect, but are you really surprised that your side—the
good—has a slightly different version of events than the bad side? Doesn't it
make sense that alternate versions of the texts were written to... to sow
confusion, to lead people from the righteous path?"
Kira narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Are you saying you believe the texts?
That you accept the Prophets as gods?"
Arla shook her head, not defiantly, Sisko saw, but in confusion.
"I honestly don't know," she said slowly. "But I saw Dukat and Weyoun fight
like... like nothing natural should fight. I saw what Weyoun did to poor Captain
Riker. I can't deny that there is something going on here that goes beyond any
science or history or folklore I know. So... so I'm just trying to understand it
from a different hypothesis."
"And that would be?" Kira asked.
"That you're right. That the Prophets are gods, not aliens. That the Temples are
their dwelling place and not wormholes. That among the texts of Bajor's
religions are those that truly are inspired by gods and correctly foretell the
future."
Sisko interrupted the uncomfortable silence that followed.
"And is it working?" he asked Arla. "Does it help you accept what's happening?"
The tall Bajoran shook her head again. "What I don't understand is that if
everything that's going on is what
was prophesied in the Bajoran religion -..." She looked at Kira. "Allowing for
some technical discrepancies introduced by purely mortal error in the
transcription of the texts through the millennia, or by the deliberate,
malevolent interference of the Pah-wraiths ..." She turned back to Sisko. "Why
is everyone against it?"
"The end of the universe?" Kira demanded, as if she still couldn't believe the
question.
"But is it really the end, Major? If your religion is right, isn't this actually
the transformation that Weyoun claims it will be? Isn't this only the end result
of linear existence? The ultimate proof of your beliefs?"
Sisko saw Kira's chin tremble in anger. "/ believe that when the real Prophets
choose to change the nature of existence, it will be when every being has
reached a state of understanding. It will not be forced upon us. It will not
involve war or murder. It will be something that everyone will see coming and
will embrace, because they have come to know the Prophets and the time is
right."
Arla's calm seemed only to deepen as Kira's temper rose. "Is that what it says
in your texts?" she asked. "Or is that just what you'd like to believe?"
"It's in the texts!" Kira insisted.
"Where?" Arla asked.
Kira looked dismayed. "I... I don't have them here. Weyoun's probably burned all
of the real texts, anyway." She turned away from Arla, to end the conversation.
Sisko studied the commander, wondering if she could have some ulterior motive
for upsetting Kira, something he'd overlooked. But he knew nothing that
disturbed him. Other than the fact that her questions had merit.
Because as far as he knew, there were no passages in
any of the mainstream texts of Bajor describing the end of time as Kira had.
Time and existence would end for Bajor as it would for the cultures of a
thousand different worlds—in a final battle between good and evil, light and
dark, blue and red.
"I'm right, aren't I?" Arla asked quietly of Kira and Sisko. "We shouldn't be
fighting this."
Kira offered no other answer.
Sisko considered Arla's challenge. "It all... it all comes down to free choice,"
he said at last. "I suppose that we each have to make our own decision in our
own way."
"Well said, Benjamin!"
Weyoun was back.
He was standing on the other side of the heavy wooden door to their cell,
peering in through its small, barred window.
"I'm so glad to see that you're all exploring such important religious issues,"
the Vorta said. He backed away from the window, and Sisko heard the rattling of
the chain that kept it closed. "But if you'll just be patient a few more days,
you won't have to trouble yourselves with trying to second-guess the True
Prophets. I suggest you do what Commander Arla suggests. Embrace the coming
transformation."
Then the heavy door swung open to reveal the Vorta and his five Grigari guards.
"After all," Weyoun said beneficently, "this impending battle is described both
in my texts and yours, Major Kira. The only real difference between them is
which of us is on the winning side. And since the hallmark of any religion is
that the forces of good shall a
lways triumph in the end, I think it's safe to
say that
whatever we believe now, we'll all be pleasantly surprised then." He pursed his
lips in a mischievous smile directed squarely at Sisko. "Wouldn't you say,
Benjamin?"
Sisko laughed in spite of himself. "What 7 say is that if the True Prophets are
so powerful, so righteous, why do they need to wait so long—and why do they need
you to restore the Temple? If they're gods, shouldn't they be able to snap their
cosmic fingers and reorder reality to their liking?"
Weyoun made a tsk-tsk sound as he wagged a finger back and forth at Sisko.
"That, my dear Benjamin, is a philosophical conundrum that has puzzled scholars
for centuries. If I were you I'd keep it in mind to ask the True Prophets when
you next see them, because I'm certain there's a perfectly good explanation."
Weyoun bowed deeply and gestured toward the door. "And now..."
"Now what?" Sisko said.
"It's time to prepare."
"For what?"
Weyoun rolled his eyes. "Really, Benjamin. Why else are you here?" The Vorta's
eyes flickered with just a flash of red light. "Why else have I kept you alive?"
Sisko gathered his robes around him, glanced once at Kira and Arla, then stepped
through the doorway and out of the cell.
Weyoun was right.
It was time for the end to begin.
CHAPTER 23
bashir walked onto the bridge of the Phoenix, hands behind his back, whistling
tunelessly. He had been chosen for this role because his genetically-enhanced
capabilities were thought to give him an edge at remaining calm.
Certainly Nog didn't want to risk telling any more lies to the Romulans, not
given his track record with Jake.
And besides, Bashir thought, I'm a physician. Which makes what I have to say all
the more believable.
Aware of Romulan eyes watching every move he made, Bashir sauntered casually
over to Centurion Karen's command chair. On the main viewer, only a computer
navigation chart was displayed. Watching the strobing stars passing at transwarp
velocities had been too disorienting, for humans and Romulans alike.
The route that was charted took the Phoenix—or the Alth'Indor, as the Romulans
had rechristened her—on a
wide galactic curve away from Bajor and into what had once been Cardassian
space. This would enable the ship to make her final run toward Bajor from an
