by Diane Carey
They could look forever, Kasidy realized as he said that. They could actually do that—pass on the search to generations to come, to enhanced technologies, better science—and they still wouldn’t find him. He wasn’t anywhere that living corporeal beings could possibly look.
Why did she feel so light? As if she were floating.
“The Prophets warned us … they said we’d know nothing but sorrow….”
She leaned her head back against the rim of the couch. The people around her faded into the wall, the wall drifted into the corridor, the Promenade and its many levels dissipated, and she was gazing at clouds as white and fluffy as Earth’s beautiful northern mornings.
She blinked. Suddenly frightened, she felt her bearings falter. Her balance—was she standing? She hadn’t been.
Yes, she felt her feet, her legs.
“Hello?” she murmured. “Is anyone there?”
Her own heartbeat bumped reassuringly. One of them was alive, at least.
The wind blew gently, touching her ears, running like fingers in her hair, down her shoulders.
“Ben? Is that you?”
Was he calling to her?
His voice, deep and resonant, as if he were speaking inside a cave—
“Kasidy.”
“Ben!”
She turned, found him in the mist, and ran into his arms. Her husband!
He was solid, real. His arms—she felt the muscles, she felt them bend to hold her, warm and secure.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t death.
“Where are we?” she asked, as if the answer would make all this be real and right.
“At the entrance to the Celestial Temple.”
Oh … that told her too much.
She backed away. “The Celestial Temple … then I’m having a vision.”
“That’s right,” Ben told her. He wasn’t going to tell her any false wishes or treat her like a child. At least that.
“This is scaring me, Ben,” she attempted. “I want us to go back to Deep Space Nine.”
Worth a shot, wasn’t it?
Even as she said it, she knew the answer.
“I can’t,” he told her immediately, without frills.
It was the destiny he had been born for, the mysterious truth that had been masked by his human existence. How the cloudy beings who called themselves the Prophets would have a link to the living, breathing worlds they could only observe.
“Oh, my God,” Kasidy breathed.
“It’s difficult to explain. It isn’t linear…. My life, my destiny—the Prophets saved me so that I could be with them.”
“Be with them?” she repeated.
Ben took her arm, then her hand in both of his. “They have so much they want to teach me.”
She felt like she was frozen—she could barely force out the words. “How long will you be gone?”
“It’s difficult to say….” He hesitated. “Time doesn’t exist here.”
A terrible breath rattled through Kasidy’s body, proving to her that she was alive and really here, not imagining all this in a muddle of grief or fatigue. What was all that supposed to mean? Time doesn’t exist here?
What was he trying to say?
“Then this is the sorrow the Prophets warned us about?” she whispered.
She wanted him to say it.
He smiled. His dark eyes were soft beacons for her.
“Kas—I’ll be back.”
“When?” she persisted.
“It could be next year.” He smiled suddenly, with an understanding she didn’t share. “It could be yesterday. But I will be back.”
She heard the grim determination in his voice and knew he would find a way to make it true. “I’ll be waiting,” she promished.
She thought he took her in his arms once more, but now she was back on the couch, her arms tingling from his touch.
“Kas?”
That sounded like him.
No, the voice was … younger….
“Can you hear me? Kas?”
Jake bent over her, looking relieved as she blinked at him.
Everyone else was looking too. Worf, O’Brien, the doctor, Ezri—
She was back with them. Had she ever left?
“You seemed pretty far away for a second,” Julian Bashir said, bending over her.
“Not that far,” Kasidy told them. She looked at Jake, and for some reason she found herself smiling. An unworldly contentedness came over her. Like the wives of a million space captains and adventurers and great men of past times, she would find herself called upon to raise his children and be their guide alone, benchmarked by the high standard Ben Sisko had set for them.
She could do that. As she gazed at Jake, she saw in his youth the bright hope of the child within her, a new chance for the future, and somebody to be with.
“I was talking to your father,” she said.
They would wait for him.
CHAPTER
15
“Today’s duty roster, Colonel.”
Kira Nerys looked down from Deep Space Nine at the distant orb of Bajor, and noticed that it was morning over her home province. Everything was dawning. A whole new day, a new life.
She took the padd from Nog and scanned it. Everything was back in order. The day-to-day procedure of station activity was the best therapy she could imagine, not only for herself but for everybody here. The military had something, she decided, in its order and sense, in the strict utility of rank and process. Somehow it helped everybody to have duties, watches, purpose.
“Nice work,” she told the young Ferengi. “And congratulations on your promotion, Lieutenant.”
Nog seemed a little small and uneasy to be carrying such a big rank.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “I guess putting me in for promotion was one of Captain Sisko’s last official acts.”
“I’m sure he’s very proud of you, Nog.”
“I’d like to think so, ma’am.”
Kira deliberately didn’t say “was.” She didn’t believe Sisko was dead. Nobody did.
Was he watching them? Now, there was a disturbing thought: no, he probably wasn’t acting as some kind of mystical voyeur. They were free to have privacy, and to make mistakes without a big daddy watching over them. He wouldn’t have wanted that for himself and she was betting he wasn’t eying them from the ethereal plane. He probably had his own duties out there, somewhere, teaching the Prophets a thing or two about life.
That made her smile.
But back to work. “Now, about the cargo inventories—”
Nog stepped back. “I’ll get right on it!”
He raced out of the room, delighted with his new job as station adjutant. A big job, a mighty station, very busy and getting busier as the sector stabilized. Starfleet was actually enjoying itself, and so was she. She too was proud of her own promotion—to station commander, carrying the authority of both the Bajoran military and Starfleet Command. It was a singular honor, and she was gratified by their faith in her.
They were showing faith in Sisko, too, she recognized, by giving her this post. He had trusted her, and that was good enough for Starfleet.
She appreciated their judgment. She could do the job.
—Well, not from here….
Ops. She suddenly wanted to be at the pulsing heart of the station, to spread her wings and really take over, to make sure they all knew that she was here to catch the ball.
The ball!
There it was—Captain Sisko’s little dutiful baseball, sitting on its stand where he had left it, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase, “You can’t take it with you.”
She plucked the ball into her hand and tossed it in the air and caught it a couple of times. With that, the mantle had shifted fully to her. She’d never dared to touch it before.
He must approve … she thought he was smiling on his cloud someplace out there in a universe much bigger even than it seemed to be.
Managing to ho
ld herself down from a run, she strode in amiable satisfaction to ops and plunged right in to the bleeping, humming center of activity that made Deep Space Nine a living place. In her hand the baseball was warm and solid. She rolled it in her fingers and scanned each post, taking solace in the steady information streaming from all over the quadrant to this single beacon in the darkness.
All around her at every station were new faces, young officers and trainees ready to tackle the next chapter in the conquest of the final frontier. Over there was the new chief of engineering. Beside him was the new tactical sergeant, and speaking to the new life sciences coordinator was the new chief constable of station security.
They nodded a polite greeting to their commander as they noticed her watching them. This was their time, and hers.
* * *
“What do you think?”
Julian Bashir had babbled away the morning after spending the whole evening transferring the Alamo from the O’Briens’ old quarters to his. And a bloody tight fit it was.
Despite a decidedly sour note to the move, the Alamo’s presence in his quarters somehow galvanized the idea that he was on his own for a while, without Miles.
Across the table from him in the replimat, Ezri was picking at her breakfast, with her mind obviously on something else. Her short dark hair reflected the overhead lights, separating them into the spectral colors green, blue, red, and yellow and making her eyes seem bright.
“What do you think of my new medical supply system?” he asked. “I’ve reworked the whole storage process.”
She blinked up at him. She hadn’t been listening. “I think maybe tonight, after dinner, we could go to Quark’s … maybe spend some time in the holosuites.”
Bashir thought about that. “I wouldn’t mind a little trip to Vegas.”
“Actually,” Ezri corrected, her eyes crinkling, “I was thinking about the Alamo.”
Sounded like a nice idea. Obviously she was trying to help him through this, working on adjusting the future to be as full as the past few years had been, even generously trying to replace the close friend who was no longer here with him.
But he shook his head. “We can’t go there.”
“Why not?”
He thought about coughing up some excuse, but the truth kept bubbling up and ultimately would do just as well. Probably because she already knew it.
“That was something Miles and I did.”
Would she understand? She was the repository of more than a dozen life forces, all those memories, relationships … she’d understand, more than most, wouldn’t she, that one person, no matter how loved, simply could not replace another?
“But,” he said, brightening, “we could try my new program. The Battle of Thermopylae.”
She gawked at him, her fork in midair. What? No human lifetimes lurking around in there?
Of course not. She hadn’t heard of that.
“You know,” he attempted, “where a small band of Spartans led by King Leonidas defended a mountain pass against the vast Persian army?”
“What happened?” she asked.
“For two days, the Spartans put up a heroic struggle.”
“Until they were wiped out.”
“How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess. I take it we’ll be the Spartans?”
“Fighting to the last man!” Bashir proclaimed.
“Just like the Alamo?”
“Exactly!” He thumped the table.
Ezri put her fork down and sat back. “Julian, have you ever talked to a counselor about these annihilation fantasies you seem to have?”
Bashir blinked. Hadn’t thought of that one.
“You think I should?” he asked.
“I’ll set up a session for us tomorrow.”
Hmm … how very enticing. A doctor and a Trill getting together to discuss annihilation … oh, that was better left alone … but why was she leering that evil glare at him?
He leaned forward. “And tonight?”
She smiled broadly, her eyes crinkling with unshielded happiness and commitment.
“Tonight … we defend the pass!”
* * *
Commander Kira of Deep Space Nine strode the Promenade with a purpose and vectored into Quark’s bar, feeling somehow fulfilled at the mundane duty she was about to discharge.
Over there. Quark.
He was arguing with Morn. He had his back to her, so she strode up without announcing herself and listened to the last couple of blurts.
“That’ll be ten strips of latinum—I know, I know, I’ll put it on your tab. Don’t worry! It’s guaranteed to grow hair within a week! If you ask me, your dome’s hairy enough as it is. Besides, hasn’t there been enough change around here already?”
“Quark!” Kira swung around in front of him and wagged a padd in his face. “Do you mind explaining this?”
Quark’s knobby eyes flashed. “That’s this week’s betting pool.”
Kira huffed with insult. “You’re taking bets on who’s going to be Bajor’s new Kai?”
He spread his arms. “It’s a wide open field! Just between you and me, the smart money’s on Vedek Ungtae.”
Lowering the padd, she scowled at him. “Well, just between you and me, all bets are off.”
“What are you talking about!”
“As of this moment,” she said, “betting pools of any kind are illegal on this station.” Oh, that felt good! “I catch someone placing a bet, you’ll spend fifteen days in a holding cell. Is that clear?”
Quark looked shocked, then leered at her suspiciously. “Holding cells? Ah … let me think. Fifteen days … can I brink my own pillow?”
“Quark!”
“It’s clear, it’s clear.”
“It better be.”
Quark shook his head as he strode away. “It’s like I said. The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Kira smiled. She let him go back to work. It felt good to do something so mundane and normal as chewing out Quark and telling he couldn’t do something. Anything. After a few days, she’d let him take bets again, but after the new Kai was appointed. Some things shouldn’t be matters of lot.
Strolling out onto the Promenade, Kira experienced an overwhelming sensation of peace and satisfaction. This alien station, once the very exemplar of despicable for her—a Cardassian outpost in claimed space—was now itself the embodiment of how things could change for the better. Despite its Cardassian design, this was a Starfleet station, a Bajoran holding, and a supreme victory for them all. They’d taken it, they’d lost it, they’d regained it, and now it was secure. The presence of Deep Space Nine secured the whole sector, indeed the quadrant. She believed now that it would never again fall.
She paused on the walkway overlooking the lower Promenade. Below, people freely roamed the shops, paused to talk, smiled, cried, comforted each other, and went on their ways. They all knew things were unconditionally different, but that somehow this was the brink from which they would all leap to the better.
There … that was where she and Odo had walked on their way to their last voyage together, where they had linked arms in a way that his native people could never imagine or know how to enjoy.
Over there, on the second level, Worf and Ezri strode together with Chancellor Martok, on the path to the docking pylon where the Klingon ships were serviced. Martok was doing all the talking. Worf and Ezri were looking at each other in silence. Worf carried his duffel bag. His bat’leth was slung over his shoulder. Kira imagined what Martok was saying—enthusiasms about the future of the Klingon Empire … great hunts and good songs … but Worf wasn’t listening. He turned instead, gazed at Ezri as he never had before, and all of them, even Kira way up here watching, began thinking about Jadzia.
Somberly, Worf removed his bat’leth from his shoulder and handed it to Ezri. A parting gift—to her who knew what it was to be his wife.
Kira shivered with emotion, and had to look away.
&nbs
p; As her eyes scanned the vast sweeping walkways of the station, they fell upon another quest for the future—Chief O’Brien shooing his family down the ramp toward Airlock Four. His own bags were slung on his shoulder, together with several more bags that must belong to his children. Before him ran Molly, while Keiko carried the baby and nipped orders at two yeomen who were carrying still more bags and boxes.
Kira watched the little face of Kirayoshi and tried not to remember what she had promised herself she could forget—the undying tie between herself and the O’Briens. That was a family she had helped build. She had to force herself not to call out to them before Keiko and the children disappeared under the walkway she was standing on. Now there was only O’Brien, shuffling along with all his burden—
Oh, there was Bashir, catching up to him, taking a couple of the bags from him. Then the doctor caught O’Brien by the elbow and stopped him.
They were too far down there for Kira to hear what they were saying—not much, judging by what she saw. In fact, they seemed to be having trouble speaking at all to each other.
She understood. After years here together, what words could be enough? She thought of Odo.
Bashir was making O’Brien put his bags down for a moment. Kira squinted as the doctor put something into O’Brien’s hand. What was that? A good luck charm?
Then she recognized it … it was one of those little figurines from the Alamo model they’d worked on together. O’Brien had showed it to her proudly—little Colonel Travis, the brave commander of the losing side.
O’Brien smiled and his cheeks reddened. He didn’t know what to say, so he was saying nothing. Shoring up his resolve, he nodded, and extended a hand to shake. Bashir put out his own hand and clasped O’Brien’s. See ya.
Kira shook her head and smiled at them scoldingly, but before she could shout an interruption that would embarrass them both, they had done her job—they were locked in a bear hug.
Much better.
She settled back and turned away to the other side of the walkway, letting them have their last moments in privacy.
There were other people to watch, people who were staying on Deep Space Nine. Putting one hand on the rail, she gazed downward custodially at the customers coming and going from Quark’s and the other shops below. They were hers to protect now, hers to understand. She would help them if she could.
