Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation)

by George III, David R.

  “I think I’m going to have some tea,” Kasidy called out to him from the kitchen. “Would you like some? I’ve got a new Vulcan blend I think you’d like.”

  “No, thanks,” Sisko said. “Nothing for me.” He’d come directly from Adarak after he and Jasmine Tey had taken Rebecca to school. Just turned seven, Rebecca seemed remarkably happy and well adjusted. Though she remembered her abduction at the age of three—she’d made reference to it a few months earlier—she showed no signs of any continuing trauma from that experience.

  Likewise, although Sisko had not lived in Kendra Province with Kasidy and Rebecca in the past two and a half years, and even though, at one point, he’d gone nearly a year and a half without seeing or speaking to his daughter, she did not appear much affected by that either. Sisko did not lie to himself that his absence had not had an impact on Rebecca; he knew that it had, and that he must do everything he possibly could—short of compromising her safety—to make up for it. Their frequent subspace messages to each other between Robinson and Bajor helped, he thought, but nothing compared to the two of them spending time together. He relished every leave, when he would return to Kendra specifically to see her. Even with everything that had happened before his arrival, the previous two weeks had been no exception; they had been among the very best days of his life since his return to Starfleet.

  It hurt him that those days had to end.

  Depending on the repairs to his ship, he would have about two more weeks before being recalled to duty. He felt conflicted about returning to Robinson. Initially a refuge for him, a place he had escaped to after abandoning his family, the ship had become a great deal more than that to him. In some ways, it actually felt like a home. After a year of holding himself apart from his crew, he thawed, grew closer to the people with whom he served, and even made some genuine friends. And the recent mission to the Gamma Quadrant demonstrated unequivocally to him that his spirit had turned toward exploration.

  But even with all of that, Sisko understood that the ship could never truly be a home to him. No place could, not without his family by his side. But he understood too well why that could never happen.

  Thinking of the well-being of Kasidy and Rebecca brought to mind the terrible events at Deep Space 9. Seeing his wife’s ship demolished before his eyes had hurt him badly, and even though she hadn’t been on the ship, even though she had survived, the incident had left him scarred. So too did witnessing the destruction of the station, which for so long actually had been his home.

  Sisko had not yet read through the casualty list from the station, but he had no doubt that people he had known, probably even some he’d considered friends, had perished. Such had been the case aboard Robinson, where a Tzenkethi attack had left thirty-two of his crew dead. He had also known most of Kasidy’s crew aboard Xhosa, although many of them had also survived; so that the freighter could carry as many people as possible from DS9 to safety, most of Kasidy’s crew had stayed behind on Bajor after bringing their first group of evacuees there. But her chief engineer, Luis García Márquez, had died, and crew members Brathaw and Pardshay as well.

  The losses had hit Kasidy hard, and Sisko had spent time helping her through it. He contacted families with her to explain what had happened, though Starfleet and the Federation president’s office also provided a great deal of assistance with that. Kasidy cried a lot, though never in front of Rebecca. It amazed Sisko how she could compartmentalize her grief, tucking it away when she needed to in order to provide a continuous, steady presence for their daughter.

  After the disaster, Admiral Akaar had contacted Sisko aboard Robinson. Starfleet’s commander-in-chief informed him of the concern that the Typhon Pact might be seeking to ally with the Dominion. Starfleet intended to send Defiant into the Gamma Quadrant to ascertain whether or not the Federation faced an impending threat from the Founders or the devoted soldiers they bred, the Jem’Hadar. The admiral wanted to know, if such a threat should materialize, whether Sisko possessed either the ability or the knowledge to collapse the Alpha Quadrant terminus to the wormhole. Akaar knew that Sisko had a relationship with the Prophets—the admiral called them aliens—and that he had spent time himself within the wormhole after the Dominion War. Sisko explained that, despite his experiences, he had no means or understanding of how to do such a thing.

  Akaar had appeared to sense something during their conversation, and near its end, he asked a question. He wanted to know if Sisko remained in contact with the wormhole aliens, even on a sporadic basis. Sisko told him the truth: that he’d had no contact with them at all in years, and further, he never expected to again. The response seemed simultaneously to please and disappoint the admiral. Sisko felt that same mix of positive and negative emotions about the absence of the Prophets from his life.

  For two days after the Typhon Pact attack, Sisko had dealt with the repercussions to his crew. As he would later with Kasidy for her crew, he contacted the families of those aboard Robinson who had lost their lives in the Tzenkethi attack. He worked with his first officer, Anxo Rogeiro, and his chief engineer, Relkdahz, on a repair plan for the ship. His crew had been scheduled for shore leave after their return from the Gamma Quadrant, and since the ship would require weeks at Starbase 310 to fix the damaged primary hull, Starfleet Command extended the crew’s leave and released them from their duties. Sisko headed for Bajor.

  “You sure I can’t get you anything?” Kasidy called from the kitchen.

  “No, thanks.”

  Kasidy had expected Sisko later in the day, after their daughter returned home that afternoon, but he’d acted spontaneously on an urge to see his wife without any of the family around. She invited him in with an ease and acceptance that, given the pain he’d caused her in recent years, seemed startling. The two weeks since the destruction of Deep Space 9, since he believed Kasidy dead, represented the greatest amount of time they’d spent together since he’d left Bajor and taken command of Robinson. They saw each other when he visited Rebecca during his leaves from Starfleet, but on those trips, he typically spent most of that time alone with their daughter.

  Since Sisko had arrived back on Bajor after the attack on DS9, though, Kasidy had chosen to stay around when he came over to the house. Although the warning of the Prophets never strayed far from Sisko’s mind, he could not object. Kasidy had endured—and continued to endure—a terrible emotional strain; she’d lost members of her crew, her ship had been destroyed, and she’d faced her own mortality when the station had exploded. He knew he would soon enough head back to Robinson, and so he opted to provide whatever solace he could for her. For some reason, the usual underlying tensions between them never appeared, and he felt no pressure from her to ignore the Prophets’ warning and stay home with his wife and daughter for good.

  Sisko also had to admit that he found comfort in Kasidy’s company. That scared him to a degree too, worrying him that he would fail to find the strength to leave when the time came. For that reason, he focused often on his understanding that spending his life with Kasidy would put both her and their daughter in grave danger.

  As he waited for Kasidy, Sisko heard the insistent tones of a companel. The kitchen contained a small interface, and he heard it react when Kasidy worked its controls. Footsteps followed, and his wife stepped out of the kitchen. He turned to regard her.

  “It’s Starfleet,” she said, her voice a monotone, her face a frozen mask. That quickly, everything good they’d recently experienced seemed to fall away, as though all of the positive emotions and effortless interactions had been merely a façade.

  “Oh,” Sisko said. His scheduled return to duty remained days, if not weeks, away, but he surmised that somebody might want to update him on the status of the repairs to Robinson. He stood up and began to walk around the sofa. “I guess I’ll use the companel in the office.”

  Kasidy said nothing more, but she also didn’t head back into the kitchen. Rather, she watched him make his way across the living room, past t
he dining table, and into the hall that led to the rooms at the back of the house. When Sisko ducked into the home office—which also doubled as a guest room when needed—he glanced to his right and saw Kasidy still standing in place, staring after him.

  Inside, Sisko moved to the companel mounted on the inside wall. He sat down and tapped at the controls. The Starfleet insignia blinked onto the screen, above the words INCOMING TRANSMISSION—ENTER SECURITY VERIFICATION. Sisko keyed in his lengthy access code, expecting to see the image of Admiral LaChance, who commanded Starbase 310, where Commander Rogeiro had taken Robinson for repairs. Instead, the imposing form of Starfleet’s commander-in-chief appeared.

  “Captain Sisko, this is Admiral Akaar,” he said in his deep, resonant voice. “I am contacting you for two reasons. First, to inform you that the Defiant crew’s reconnaissance of the Gamma Quadrant has revealed no Dominion activity outside of their space. More specifically, there are no Jem’Hadar squadrons on their way toward the Bajoran wormhole.”

  The news relieved Sisko, though he had in no way anticipated anything different. During the nearly eight years that followed the devastating war that had battered the inhabitants of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, the Dominion had shown no signs of returning to the battlefield. Though he did not necessarily agree with their general policy of isolationism, he understood why the Founders would want to withdraw into themselves and close their borders.

  “Additionally,” Akaar continued, “the Defiant crew located and disabled a cloaked communications drone near the Idran system. Of Romulan origin, the device was responsible for hindering your ability, and that of the Enterprise crew, to contact Deep Space Nine from the Gamma Quadrant.”

  Sisko grasped why the Romulans had elected to block such transmissions: so that they could prevent Captain Picard from informing Starfleet Command of the apparent loss of Eletrix. Had the Enterprise crew succeeded in reporting that incident to Starfleet, a state of high alert might have compelled the crew of DS9 to search for cloaked vessels traveling through the wormhole. Perhaps ironically—since they seemed to have been a part of the same assault on the station—the four bombs planted aboard Deep Space 9 had provoked a high alert anyway, which had resulted in the discovery of the cloaked Eletrix returning to the Alpha Quadrant.

  “Second, we now know that the Typhon Pact did have contact with one or more Changelings in the Gamma Quadrant,” Akaar went on. “We do not know to what end, but we are understandably concerned about such an interaction. President Bacco therefore believes, and I agree with her, that we must find out the nature of the relationship between the Pact and the Dominion.”

  Sisko knew from bitter experience the formidable nature of the Founders. If they joined forces with the Typhon Pact and launched an offensive, he saw no chance of victory for the Federation and its allies.

  “Captain Sisko,” Akaar said, “in all of Starfleet, you have by far the most experience with the Founders. Because of that, I want you to travel to the Dominion and speak with them. We need to find out the reason for their meeting with the Typhon Pact, but we must also impress upon them that we have no desire at all to go back to war.

  “I know that the Robinson is currently undergoing repairs at Starbase Three-Ten and that your crew are on leave. But Captain Ro is presently relocating her crew to a temporary facility on the surface of Bajor, so you will lead your mission aboard the Defiant. Lieutenant Commander Wheeler Stinson will beam you up to the ship from the Adarak transporter facility at fifteen hundred hours, local time. You will take command from Stinson, who will serve as your exec during your time aboard. You will find a detailed mission profile waiting for you, but I am giving you wide latitude to do what you deem necessary to keep the peace with the Dominion. Akaar out.”

  The Starfleet emblem replaced the admiral’s visage. Sisko reached forward and shut the companel down, then let himself fall against the back of the chair. He had just come from the Gamma Quadrant a couple of weeks ago after nearly six months there. Now he would have to return, not on a mission of exploration, but in an attempt to avert yet another war.

  He didn’t entirely know if he could face that.

  Kasidy stood like a statue just outside the kitchen. She felt hollow and fragile, as though if she attempted to move, she might break into a thousand tiny pieces. So she didn’t move as she watched her husband march down the hall and into the office, where, she had no doubt, he would hear from Starfleet that he had been recalled to duty.

  And he’s going to go, she thought. Of course he’s going to go. A rage burgeoned within her, but not just at Ben. She railed at herself for foolishly believing that things had changed. But they hadn’t. Yes, she and Ben had spent more time together than they had in a while, but they had never spoken of the future—a joint future that she’d simply assumed lay ahead of them.

  Why? she asked herself. Why didn’t I bring it up?

  It wouldn’t have mattered, she knew. It wouldn’t have mattered because Kasidy wouldn’t have been able to convince Ben to stay.

  But if I had . . .

  If she had, Kasidy knew that it still wouldn’t have mattered, because when Starfleet—or anything or anybody else—eventually came calling, she would have had to let him go. She would have had to let him go because . . . because . . .

  Kasidy didn’t want to think about it. Couldn’t think about it.

  When finally she moved, Kasidy simply leaned back against the wall that divided the living room and the kitchen. Then, slowly, as though air gradually leaked out of her, she slid down the wall to the floor. She didn’t break, but she felt broken.

  She didn’t want to think about why she would have to let Ben go. She couldn’t think about it. About what she’d experienced when she and Nerys had been trapped aboard the piece of wreckage from Deep Space 9’s docking ring. About what she’d experienced in the wormhole.

  But then Kasidy closed her eyes, and she did.

  Cassie Johnson stood in the front room of the police station, wringing her hands. Her feet scuffed on the shabby green tiles that covered the floor. Scared down to her marrow, she felt like running back through the big, heavy doors, down the stone stairs, and off down the street. Determined, Cassie held her ground, eyeing the doors in the side walls, each with frosted glass covered by a grille, and understanding that they led deeper into the precinct house. She watched as the woman in front of her looked up to the top of the tall desk and addressed the police officer Cassie herself had just tried to speak to, without success. But Cassie stopped seeing the woman and the policeman and the desk, instead picturing herself running from one side door to another, throwing them wide and calling out to Benny.

  Benny.

  Cassie wanted to help the man she loved. A good man, a kind man, a deep man, he loved her like no one else ever had. For so long, she’d just wanted him to get better, and she still wanted that, but she had the sense that everything had changed that day.

  That morning, Cassie had gone in to work the breakfast and lunch shifts at Fatty’s, but on Wednesdays, she had the afternoon off after two. That gave her just enough time to get to Riverdale and visit Benny for a couple of hours before she needed to pick up Becky from Mr. Tayman’s niece, Jessie, across the hall. She had to take a subway and then a bus to get to the asylum.

  For months, Cassie had seen a great deal of improvement in Benny, to the point where she had begun to believe that he might actually leave Riverdale sometime soon. He always agreed to see her when she came—in the past, he hadn’t always—and he looked good, looked healthier, whenever an orderly escorted him to the visitors’ lounge. And Benny smiled so much more often. That smile, filled with his gleaming white teeth that looked so vibrant in his dark, handsome face. That smile, so wide that it drove his cheeks up and wrinkled the corners of his eyes. That smile that had won Cassie over back in the day. She loved seeing it again.

  Except that she hadn’t seen his smile that afternoon. When she’d arrived at Riverdale, she’d been informed that Be
nny had tried to escape that morning, and that he’d fought with a couple of orderlies when they’d caught him. As a result, the asylum’s administrator had turned Benny over to the police.

  Cassie had raced through the city to the police station. She ran until she could run no more, a stitch in her side and her breath rasping in her throat. But she kept walking, making her way through the streets until she stood in front of the precinct house where they’d taken Benny. The building loomed before her like a fortress. Wide stone steps led up to a landing with a pair of large wooden doors. She saw that the paint had rubbed away around the knobs.

  Cassie placed her foot on the first step, intending to climb them and go inside so that she could find out what had happened to Benny. She wanted to know what would happen to him. She wanted to know if she could see him. Cassie saw herself asking all of those questions. She could not see herself receiving any answers.

  She stood like that for minutes, like a statue. She felt hollow and fragile, as though if she attempted to move, she might break into a thousand tiny pieces. So she didn’t move.

  Several police officers came and went. They traveled in pairs, she saw. Most of them looked strong and powerful. All of them were white.

  Cassie wanted to help Benny, but she realized that she would need help herself. And nobody she knew would be able to do so. Nobody she knew was the right color.

  But then Cassie thought of the people Benny knew, the people over in the office where he used to work. She tried to remember their names, if she even ever knew them, and then she worked hard to recall their faces. Like Benny, they wrote stories . . . and it struck her that one of them was a woman.