The War of the Prophets

by Judith

  going to beam Jake and the others to the bridge of one of those starships so

  that it could instantly warp into a slingshot trajectory around the mouth of the

  blue wormhole. The precise temporal heading would be unimportant, because

  wher­ever in the past the ship emerged, Jadzia would have more than enough time

  to calculate a precise trajectory to bring them back to their own time, before

  the Red Orbs of Jalbador were discovered.

  It would be an alternate timeline. The past twenty-five years could not be

  erased. But at least one universe would survive. Perhaps.

  Jake couldn't hold his emotions in any longer. He and Nog had been through too

  much together. "I'm going to miss you," he said.

  Nog suddenly turned his back on the viewer. "Me too, Jake. But there'll be

  another me back in your time." He reached out and gave Jake's shoulder a

  squeeze.

  Jake felt a lump tighten his throat. "Bet he'll be sur­prised when I tell him

  how things turned out here."

  But Nog shook his head. "Don't tell him. Please."

  "Why not?"

  "Back then I was just a kid, Jake. I wasn't sure what I wanted. I liked

  Starfleet. I thought maybe I had a ca­reer. But part of me still wanted to go

  into business. When things got bad after the station was destroyed, that's when

  I decided to stick it out in the Fleet. But if

  things are different when you go back... well, I wouldn't want some version of

  myself sticking with Starfleet just because that's what I did. I'd like to think

  I had a second chance along with the rest of the uni­verse. Okay?"

  Jake nodded. He understood. At least he thought he did. "I'm still going to put

  this all in a book," he told Nog.

  "Just make sure it's fiction."

  "Absolutely."

  "And make sure the brave Ferengi captain has really crooked teeth and

  spectacularly big lobes."

  "Gigantic!" Jake had to smile in spite of the way he felt.

  "And put in a scene like in Vulcan Love Slave—" Nog giggled, just the way Jake

  remembered he used to.

  "Part Two!" Jake laughed out loud as Nog's giggles became contagious.

  "The Revenge!" both young men, both little boys, shouted in unison.

  "Only this time, the Ferengi gets the girls! And they're all... fully clothed!"

  They collapsed against each other then, gasping in hilarity, laughing as they

  hadn't laughed in twenty-five years, Jake realized.

  Suddenly serious, Jake looked at his friend. "I promise," he said.

  "I know. You're a good man, Jake."

  Then the door to the battle bridge slid open. Quickly composing themselves, Jake

  and Nog turned together to see—

  Vash.

  And Admiral Picard at her side.

  "Where's Q when you need him? That's what I want to know," Vash said as she

  guided Admiral Picard onto the battle bridge, while gently holding on to his

  arm. The admiral was smiling happily.

  "Will! Geordi! Where have you two been hiding?"

  Everyone on the Phoenix knew the Old Man had his good times and his bad, easily

  distinguished by the names by which he addressed those he met. So both Jake and

  Nog respectfully greeted the admiral in turn without correcting him, and Vash

  helped Picard to his chair, from which all operational controls had carefully

  been removed.

  "Seriously," Vash said to Nog as she joined him by the viewer, "does anyone know

  what's happened to Q?"

  "The admiral's been telling you about him?" Nog asked.

  Vash nodded. "He says Q comes to see him almost every day. Is that right?"

  "No," Nog said. "I wish it were. A few years ago when all this started, there

  was a whole division at Starfleet that was trying to make contact with the Q

  con­tinuum. Q helped out the Old Man once before with time travel. We thought

  maybe we could ask him to help again. But no one's seen him for... well, since

  DS9 was destroyed. Except for the Old Man's stories, that is."

  "And you're really sure Q isn't in contact with him?"

  "Positive," Nog said. "At the shipyards, we even tried putting the Old Man under

  constant surveillance. He'd have conversations with an empty chair, men tell us

  that Q had visited him. Or Data. Sometimes it was Worf. Sorry."

  Jake saw how Vash watched Picard in his chair, saw the sudden liquid brightening

  her eyes. "So am I," she

  said. Then she squared her shoulders and looked down at Nog. "Okay, Hotshot,

  listen up. I'm coming with you."

  "No, you're not!" Nog sputtered in surprise. « "Yes I am, and you can't stop me

  because you need me."

  "I do not!"

  Vash pointed to the admiral. "But he does!" She held up a small medkit. "When

  was the last time you checked his peridaxon levels?"

  Jake was surprised by how flustered Nog became under Vash's stem scrutiny. "I've

  ... been busy. I was just going to."

  "And because you've been so busy," Vash said, "the greatest Starship commander

  in Starfleet history has been calling you Will Riker and him Geordi La Forge. He

  deserves better treatment, Captain Nog."

  "And what makes you think he can get it from you?"

  In the midst of this heated exchange, Jake saw Vash become unexpectedly quiet.

  And the only reason for her change in mood that he could see was that she was

  again gazing at Picard.

  "I owe that man," she said, without anger or hostility.

  "You knew him?" Nog asked. "I mean..."

  Vash nodded. "I know what you mean. Ever hear of Dr. Samuel Estragon?"

  Nog hadn't. Neither had Jake.

  "Doesn't matter. But I'm not leaving Jean-Luc. And I don't care if I have to

  chew your precious lobes off to make you agree."

  Jake saw Nog flush. "Do you know what you're get­ting yourself into?"

  "I do," Vash said simply. "An act of loyalty for one.

  An appreciation of a great man." She looked deep into Nog's eyes. "Maybe even a

  chance to help you out be­cause I just know you're going to need all the help

  you can get."

  "You're also risking getting trapped more than two and half millennia in the

  past."

  "I'm an archaeologist, Hotshot I should be so lucky." Then she tapped Nog's

  chest with her finger. "And just for the record, I've already been farther back

  in the past, farther forward in the future, and farther away than this

  two-credit quadrant."

  Nog stared at Vash in disbelief, but Jake thought he knew what she meant.

  "How is that even possible?" Nog asked.

  Vash grinned. "Jean-Luc and me, let's just say we've got a friend in high

  places. And maybe he hasn't shown up in this timeline 'cause he knows it doesn't

  amount to anything. And maybe when we show up a few dozen centuries out of place

  he'll look in on us again."

  "Q," Nog said, distrustful. "And what if he doesn't?"

  Vash rolled her shoulders. '1 speak and write ancient Bajoran. Maybe we can put

  on a traveling show."

  Nog was wary. "If I do let you accompany us on our mission, I will expect you to

  behave like a member of my crew and treat me with respect."

  "And I'll expect you to act in such a way that you'll deserve my respect."

  Vash and Nog stared at each other for a long mo­ment, and Jake could tell that

  neither one
of them wanted to be the first to give in.

  So Jake took the initiative.

  "I mink it's a good deal," he said. "I think you should shake on it before you

  change your minds." He

  put his hand on Nog's shoulder. "Think of the admiral. She's got a point."

  Nog grudgingly held out his hand. "All right. For the Old Man's sake. But don't

  make me regret taking you."

  Vash's smile was dazzling, and instead of taking Nog's hand she ran two fingers

  lightly around the outer curve of his ear, ending with a small scratch at his

  sen­sitive lower lobe. "Regret taking me? Are you kid­ding?"

  Jake thought Nog's eyes would roll up permanently in his head.

  Vash fluttered her long, slim fingers at him, then turned away and went back to

  Picard.

  "What have I done?" Nog marveled.

  "I think you've made the best decision of your life," Jake said heartily, not

  sure at all about what he was saying. But then Nog had never been able to tell

  when he was bluffing.

  "Really?"

  "Look at it this way," Jake told his friend. "With Vash along, whatever else

  happens she's going to keep things ... interesting."

  Nog sighed heavily. "That's what I'm afraid of."

  Then Jake looked at the time display on the main viewer.

  The universe had forty-seven minutes left.

  CHAPTER 26

  "IT won't work," Miles O'Brien said.

  "Uh... I agree," Rom added.

  Quark leaned forward and banged his broad forehead against the stone wall of the

  cell in B'hala. "Perfect, just perfect. Half the galaxy's convinced the universe

  is going to end in less than an hour, and my idiot brother just happens to

  figure out that this whole War of the Prophets is a big mistake." He banged bis

  head again. "Why not call up Weyoun? See if he'll let us go home now?" Bang.

  "Uh, maybe you shouldn't be doing that, Brother. You might hurt yourself."

  At that, Quark opened his mouth and screamed and flung himself at Rom with arms

  outstretched, and for a second it seemed nothing could stop one Ferengi from

  crashing the other into solid rock.

  Except me, Odo sighed to himself, as he reluctantly

  changed his humanoid arms into tentacles that snaked out across the length of

  the room to snag Quark.

  "Will you settle down!" he said, as he deposited a squirming Quark on the side

  of the cell opposite Rom. "Maybe the Chief is onto something. What are they

  going to do? Lock me up? Kill me?" "We can only hope," Quark said darkly. Odo

  grunted, more concerned about the grasping tentacles he'd formed so quickly,

  which were now be­coming tangled in the robes he'd been forced to wear. He

  swiftly solved the situation by puddling faster than his robes could fall, then

  surging to the side and re­forming in his humanoid shape again, his outer layer

  now a perfect reproduction of a Bajoran militia uni­form, circa 2374. "That's

  better," he said emphatically.

  "Good for you," Quark groused. "Now why don't you change into a balloon and

  float us all out of here? Wouldn't want to be late for the end of the universe!"

  Quark, however annoying a cellmate for the past seven days they had been

  incarcerated together, was not the real problem, Odo thought What was truly

  unfortu­nate was that their cell in this partially restored B'hala structure was

  ringed by the same type of polymorphic inhibitor Weyoun had used against him on

  the Boreth. Behind these walls and barred windows, Odo was as caged as any

  solid.

  But he refused to give in to self-centered neuroticism as Quark had done,

  though. Instead, he walked over to the wall where O'Brien and Rom had been

  scratching equations and diagrams into the soft stone for the past two days.

  "Why won't it work?" the changeling asked O'Brien. He had to. Somehow, he had to

  believe there was still

  hope in this universe, that somehow he would be re­joined with Kira. Because to

  find love and lose it in so short a time ... Odo refused to believe that Kira's

  Prophets would allow such agony.

  "In the simplest terms," O'Brien said, "it's inertia." Odo watched as the Chief

  used a long stick he had peeled off one of the timbers of a bunk to point to a

  di­agram of the Bajoran solar system and explain the or­bits marked upon it.

  Apparently, the entrance region of the blue wormhole of the Prophets maintained

  a nearly circular orbit around Bajor's sun, just at the edges of the Denorios

  Belt And sometimes the wormhole actually crossed into it

  The Chief indicated the entrance region of the red wormhole which, in contrast

  to that of the blue worm­hole, had a more eccentric orbit. Reminiscent, he said,

  of a comet's, travelling from the system's outer reaches and plunging past

  Bajor's own orbit before it returned to the realm of the gas giants.

  On the Chief's diagram Odo noticed that the red wormhole actually crossed the

  orbit of the Denorios Belt and the blue wormhole four times each orbit. And hi

  less than an hour, O'Brien said, for the first time since the red wormhole had

  been reestablished by the three Red Orbs of Jalbador twenty-five years ago in

  Quark's bar, the orbital harmonics of the Bajoran sys­tem were finally going to

  bring the two wormhole en­trance regions to their closest possible approach.

  "But that closest approach," the Chief emphasized, "is still going to leave the

  entrance regions approxi­mately five hundred kilometers apart."

  "Uh, four hundred and sixty-three kilometers," Rom corrected him. "More or

  less."

  From the other side of the cell, Quark moaned loudly. He was again leaning his

  head against the cell wall.

  "What's the difficulty presented by that distance?" Odo asked, deliberately

  shutting out the sound of Quark's com­plaining. "It doesn't seem very far,

  cosmically speaking."

  "The entrance effect of a wormhole is very constrained, Odo," O'Brien said. "I

  mean, that's one of the reasons it took so long for the blue wormhole to be

  discovered. If you're not within a kilometer or so of it when it opens, there's

  no force acting on you to pull you in. If this thing had been swallowing hunks

  of the Denorios Belt for the past few thousand years, someone would have noticed

  pretty early on. But its effect on normal space is very lim­ited. That's why we

  have to pilot a ship toward it with great precision to actually travel through

  it"

  "In other words," Rom added hesitantly but eagerly, "even if both wormholes open

  at the precise moment of their closest approach, they're both too far away from

  each other to have any attractive effect."

  From his corner, Quark called out to them. "Before you pay too much attention to

  that lobeless wonder, did I ever tell you how Rom once stuck a toy whip from my

  Marauder Mo playset into his ear? He was eight years old, and he was always

  playing with his ears. I was so embarrassed. But here he took this little—"

  "Shut up, Quark!" Odo, O'Brien, and Rom said it all together.

  "I'm just saying he's not right," Quark said loudly. "Always with the ears. Stop

  it or you'll go deaf, Moo­gie kept telling him. But did he listen? Ha? How could

  he? He had half my toys shoved up his ear canal!"

  "No one's listening,
Quark," Odo growled. "Please, Rom, Chief O'Brien—go on."

  Rom's cheeks were flushed red. "There's, uh, not much more to tell. The

  wormholes won't move through space. So they won't join. So... the universe won't

  come to an end. That's about it."

  "Why didn't Starfleet scientists discover this?" Odo asked.

  "Well, it's difficult to chart wormhole orbits accu­rately," O'Brien said. "They

  respond to interior vert­eron forces, as well as to the number of times they

  open and close in a given orbit. I'm guessing that Starfleet's first reaction

  was that the wormholes would never come close enough to represent a threat. What

  do you think, Rom?"

  Obviously pleased to have the Chief consult him, es­pecially after such abuse

  from his brother, Rom quickly nodded his support for this theory.

  "Further observations," O'Brien continued, "sug­gested mat the two wormholes

  would open close enough to merge today. But from what the Ascendants told us

  during those interminable briefings they kept giving us, the orbits are fairly

  well known for the next few months. And according to their own figures, they

  just won't be close enough."

  "Are you certain there's no way to move them?" Odo asked. 'Tow them somehow? Use

  a tractor beam? Con­nect them by a charged particle web?"

  O'Brien and Rom glanced at each other and both shook their heads. Odo saw little

  beads of sweat fall from their foreheads.

  "You see, Odo, most wormhole entrances are created by verteron particles

  impinging on weakened areas of space-time," O'Brien explained as Odo listened

  in­tently, doing his best to follow the technical language.

  "The opening they form is bound by negative matter, and it's kept open by

  negative energy, just as they sus­pected back in the twenty-first century. But

  not even the Iconians had the ability to manipulate negative mat­ter. It would

  be like..." The Chief frowned as he tried to come up with the most helpful

  comparison "... like trying to outrun your shadow."

  Odo stared at the scratchings on the wall. "Then why do you suppose Weyoun's

  people are so convinced that today's the day the wormholes merge? They're going

  to look awfully foolish tomorrow."

  Quark's indignant voice sounded from just behind him. Odo turned to see the

  Ferengi pulling out on his robes like a small child about to curtsey. "They're

  going to look foolish?"

  They all said it again. Only this time more emphati­cally. "SHUT UP, QUARK!"