“Sure,” Jake said. He grinned.
Bashir said, “I’ll just continue to watch, if that’s all right.”
“Okay,” said Ferin.” I wonder what’s taking them so long to get the ball.”
Jake turned to face the building.
“The library was constructed using the most advanced techniques of the time,” Vedek Tanin continued. “Note the complexity of the walls and columns.”
“Amazing,” Sisko whispered, placing his palm against one of the great, blackened blocks that formed the outer walls of the library and finding it cold to the touch. Instead of conventional right angles, the stones had been meticulously hewn—by hand, it seemed—into a harmonious variety of curvilinear shapes and somehow fitted together flawlessly. His mind reeled at the thought of the advanced mathematics, craftsmanship, and aesthetics that the library’s ancient builders had combined to create such a structure. Order from chaos, he thought. But not really chaos at all. ...
His Starfleet mission briefing had included a great deal of information about Bajor, of course. Not just its current political situation and turbulent recent history, but also its rich and ancient cultural heritage—how the Bajorans had developed art, science, and philosophy long before humans had even walked upright. Reading about it was one thing, though. Experiencing the sheer power and age of that past as a tangible reality was something else entirely.
And, of course, nothing in the briefing had prepared him for the discovery of the wormhole, or his life-altering encounter with the beings within it only a few days ago. That led his thoughts, inevitably, to Wolf 359, where his heart had lingered for the last two years.
When he had first gone to see the kai, Opaka had exposed him to the Orb of Prophecy and Change—an energy construct of some kind that not even Dax understood. The Orb showed him a glimpse of the past—of Jennifer, his dead wife. His heart sank even now as he thought of her—so beautiful; so fragile. Her death at Wolf 359 had plunged him into a chasm of bitterness too deep and dark to climb out of on his own. His encounter with the wormhole aliens had changed him—healed him. He had gone to them lost and angry, and had returned as a man ready to make peace with the ghosts of his past.
He loved Jennifer so much. He would always love her, but he saw now that he had to start living his life again. He owed her that much. He owed it to Jake, and he owed it to himself.
But now ... What did he owe Bajor? Opaka had been the one to propel him toward the wormhole aliens with an apparent certainty that he would encounter them. She had known, somehow, that by going to them, Sisko would take back his life. She’d even suggested that his future and that of her people were tied together.
“Ironic. One who does not wish to be among us is to be the Emissary.”
Emissary. She had used the word again on the monastery steps, and the reaction of the crowd had been disquieting, to say the least—as had the look in Vedek Tanin’s eyes when he asked for Sisko’s blessing. Even Major Kira kept staring at him now. It was just too much. What did these people expect from him?
Sisko’s thoughts returned to the library when he heard the voices of children. He turned, and saw two young Bajorans enter the building.
Kira had strayed to the far side of the room, her thoughts in turmoil. She knew the prophecies that formed the bedrock of her faith as well as any devout Bajoran. She’d known the coming of the Emissary was an event long anticipated, and that he would be known by his opening of the Temple gates. Sisko had explained some of what happened to him inside the wormhole, but for some reason, until Opaka’s startling words at the monastery, she hadn’t connected the wormhole to the Celestial Temple. But if they were really one and the same ...
Could Opaka be right? And if it was true, what did that mean for Bajor? That an alien representing a people Kira considered no better than the Cardassians should turn out to be the Emissary of the Prophets—
How did it all happen so fast?
Kira could remember, as a child, looking up into the sky after a day of backbreaking labor in the Singha refugee camp. She could remember seeing the light of Terok Nor hanging over Bajor like a dying star, and wondering bleakly if there was any hope left in the world. That she herself had, only days ago, given the order propelling the station to the mouth of the wormhole (the Temple?) was an irony not lost on Kira, nor the station’s abrupt transformation in her mind from beacon of despair to one of hope.
Hope. Faith. Sometimes those concepts seemed so hard to take hold in Kira’s mind. Fighting was easy. Blowing up buildings and making the Cardassians pay dearly for every inch they stole, every life they took, all that came naturally to her. But to live through the age of Ha’mara, the time of the Emissary—it scared her to the very core of her pagh.
A commotion startled Kira from her thoughts; she saw two children enter the building. They seemed to be searching for something.
They took no notice of the group standing in the foyer. “Over there,” said the boy, moving toward a stairway leading down. The girl followed him. Vedek Tanin looked as if he was about to say something, to call out to them.
The children had just taken their first step onto the stairs when the building exploded.
Jake was being taught how to swing a springball paddle when he heard the blast. He turned to face the library—everyone did. They watched in sick fascination as the building began to collapse, engulfed in black smoke and flames.
“Dad!” Jake screamed. Memories of Wolf 359 played out in his mind. He dropped the paddle and lunged toward the building. He would have rushed headlong to his death, but Doctor Bashir caught him and dragged him away.
“Jake, no!” the doctor shouted. A cloud of dust rushed toward them as Bashir herded as many children as he could around the corner of the alley, out of the path of the billowing gray wave. Fortunately, those out of his reach had the sense to flee on their own.
“Let me go,” Jake pleaded. He pummeled Bashir’s chest. “Please, my dad’s in there.”
There was a deafening rumble and the street shook beneath them. The dust cloud spread into the alley, throwing Jake’s vision into darkness. Jake clung to Bashir, crying, “My dad! My dad!” But he couldn’t even hear himself over the screaming around him.
There followed an eerie silence as the ground settled, broken only by the sounds of coughing and a rain of grit descending on the alley. Time seemed to slow to a crawl until, finally, Jake sensed light against his eyelids. He felt himself being pulled again, led away somewhere. He heard voices, felt himself moving into sunlight. Eventually someone splashed water into his face. Slowly, as the grit in his eyes washed away, Jake opened them.
Dr. Bashir, covered from head to foot in a thin layer of gray dust, looked at him in concern. “Are you all right, Jake?”
Jake said nothing.
“Jake, if you think you’re injured, I need to know now. There may be people here who need my help.”
Jake’s throat constricted as he tried to form words. “I’m—I’m okay. But my da—”
Bashir gripped his shoulder. “Jake, I need you to stay put for now. Can you do that?”
Jake nodded as sobs began to wrack his chest. Bashir squeezed his shoulder once more and left him, looking for people who may have been injured.
In the distance, Jake saw a pile of rubble, and could only watch as a trail of dark smoke rose from it into the clear sky.
* * *
Across the city, in the monastery, Kai Opaka felt the ground tremble. She heard the explosion—heard the building collapse. For a moment it was like she had gone back in time. The Occupation had never ended—the resistance had lashed out once more at their oppressors.
Opaka stood at her window, her heart sinking as she saw the plume of smoke rising over the city. She immediately moved to her desk and sought out a newsfeed over the comnet. It wasn’t long before she found one and saw that it had been the Taluno Library. The Militia was already on the scene, speculating that an explosive device, left by the Cardassians and
overlooked after the withdrawal, had somehow detonated. Soot-covered people, some bleeding, could be seen in the background around the ruins. Even worse, witnesses were reporting that several people had entered the library before the bomb had gone off. Opaka hung her head in sorrow.
A monk entered her chambers. “Your Eminence,” he said, his voice cracking. Opaka turned to look at him, her face streaked with tears. “We’ve just been informed,” the monk began. “The people that were inside the library—witnesses are saying it was Vedek Tanin’s group.”
Opaka felt her knees quiver. She leaned heavily against her desk. Dearest Prem ... Commander Sisko and his son ... Major Kira and the doctor. ... How can this have happened?
She watched the scene still unfolding over the comnet, saw the massive stones that had formed the walls of the building strewn in a low pile of rubble. It was horrific, more so for being the likely tomb of innocent people, but Opaka forced herself to look, studying the scene for some ray of hope.
She blinked, replaying her own thoughts. A low pile of rubble. Why is it so low? She looked carefully. Though they had clearly been blown apart from one another, most of the stones of the library appeared to have survived the blast intact. Then why does there seem to be so few of them? Unless ...
“The Paths of the Lost,” she said suddenly.
“The catacombs?” asked the monk.
“The library rests above the labyrinth,” Opaka said. “It’s only a slight chance, but if the force of the collapse broke through the earth, Vedek Tanin’s group may have fallen through as well.”
“That seems impossible,” the monk said. “Those stones weigh—”
“With the Prophets,” Opaka said, “all things are possible.” Driven by renewed hope, the kai pushed away from her desk. She strode across the room, her legs carrying her like a woman half her age.
“Where are you going?” the monk asked.
“Taluno Library,” answered Opaka.
“To pray over the fallen?”
“To organize rescue efforts.”
The monk stared after her in disbelief as Kai Opaka headed out of the monastery.
A light shone in the darkness.
Sisko felt the floor shift beneath him as he propped himself up on his elbows. His eyes narrowed, trying to make out the source of the light.
The floor must have collapsed, he realized. The weight of the entire building had fallen on top of them.
“Kira!” Sisko called. “Major, are you there?”
He heard someone moan. Sisko had no idea if it was his first officer or the vedek.
“Tanin!”
No answer.
The floor shifted again as Sisko sat up. He bumped his head on the ceiling that was now just centimeters above him.
“Damn,” he said.
Sisko rubbed his head as he carefully turned himself around. He realized that death was almost inevitable at this point, but something drove him forward. He crawled. The stones were sharp and uneven, but he managed to gain a few meters.
Focus on your objective; that was what they taught him at Starfleet Academy. Kira might be dead. Tanin might be dead. The children he had seen just before the explosion were almost certainly dead, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that.
Don’t think. Don’t feel. Just act.
There was a light burning in the darkness, and Sisko was going to make it to that light. He kept crawling.
Had he lost consciousness? He was unsure how long he’d been buried; it felt like he had been down here for hours—maybe even days. For all he knew it was only a few minutes. The jagged stones tore into his knees and the palms of his hands as he moved. He pushed himself even harder.
After an agonizing length of time had passed, Sisko finally reached the source of the light. He collapsed when he realized where the glow was coming from—the yedek’s handlight.
Tanin Prem was dead.
The first thing Major Kira saw when she awoke was his face. He hovered over her, his features framed in white. The effect unnerved her.
“Major,” Sisko said. “Are you all right?”
Kira felt the world spinning as she leaned forward. She closed her eyes and saw Sisko’s silhouette outlined on her eyelids. She slumped backwards.
“Easy, Major,” the commander said.
A moment later, Kira felt his strong hands lifting her, easing her into a sitting position. Her forehead stung and she could feel blood streaming down her face. Must be a gash.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sisko said. “There was an explosion, the building collapsed. ...”
The last thing Kira remembered was seeing two of the kids from the springball game, and then everything was thunder and fire and falling stone. She rubbed her hands through her hair, feeling a sticky residue in her short tresses. Her fingers came away slick and red.
“Tanin is dead,” Sisko told her. He leaned back and gave his combadge an anxious tap.
“Sisko to Bashir,” he said.
There was no answer.
“Sisko to Rio Grande.”
The runabout they had used to travel from Deep Space 9 failed to respond. Kira tried her own combadge and had the same results.
“Maybe they were damaged when the building collapsed,” Sisko speculated.
“No,” said Kira, realizing the truth as she stared at the oppressively low ceiling. “It’s the earth around us. We’re in the Paths of the Lost.”
Sisko took that in. “Those refractory minerals in the ground you mentioned earlier. They’re keeping our signals from getting through.”
Kira nodded absently. “It also applies to sensor waves and transporter beams. We’re on our own down here.”
Then she heard someone crying in the darkness.
Sisko turned toward the sound. “Not entirely on our own, it would seem.”
One of the kids, Kira realized dimly. She rubbed her temples, trying to focus. She looked around, saw that Sisko was shining the handlight across the room, searching for the source of the sobs.
Finally, his light settled on two frightened children.
“Hello there,” Sisko said.
Kira heard his voice echo softly through the shattered room.
About twenty meters away, a young girl was sitting with her legs crossed, her back leaning against the wall. She held a boy in her arms. The boy was weeping.
“Why don’t you and your friend come over here?” Sisko asked the girl. She stared at him blankly.
“They’re terrified,” Kira said, gritting her teeth to stay focused.
When it became evident that the children were not going to answer, Sisko said, “Then why don’t we come to you.” He turned to Kira and whispered, “Major, do you think you can move?”
Kira steeled herself. She had lost a lot of blood, she was dizzy, but she wasn’t about to admit any weakness to a Starfleet officer, even—especially—not this one.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
Kira leaned forward and crept along the rough floor, her mind working to figure out what caused the explosion. What if the Cardassians had returned? What if they had attacked Bajor and were even now marching through the streets above?
Kira pushed the ugly thoughts aside, trying to stay focused on the here and now. Their first priority was to get out of this building before what was left of it finished falling on top of them.
As they neared the children, Kira saw that though they were clearly dirty and frightened, they seemed otherwise unscathed. The commander tried talking to them again.
“My name is Ben Sisko,” he said. He offered as warm and reassuring a smile as Kira suspected he could manage in such dismal surroundings.
“Sisko?” the boy asked. He rubbed his eyes with his fists.
“Sisko,” repeated the girl. “You ... you’re the Emissary.”
Kira looked at the commander. The recognition in the child’s voice was startling. Opaka had named him Emissary only a short t
ime ago, a matter of hours at most, yet word had already spread throughout the city.
“Emissary,” the girl said, “can you take us out of here?”
Before Sisko could answer, the boy cut in. “Can you blast a tunnel through the stones with your phaser vision?”
Sisko laughed.
“No, I’m afraid ...”
“Commander,” Kira said suddenly, not at all liking where the conversation was going. “We don’t have time for this. We aren’t safe here. Our only chance is to find a way into the catacombs as quickly as possible.”
Sisko nodded. “Agreed, Major.” He turned back to the children and asked, “What are your names?”
“Oden Jek,” the boy said.
“And I’m Eleth Loral,” said the girl. “But you can call me Loral. Jek and I are cousins.”
“This is Major Kira,” Sisko said, and Kira nodded, but the dizziness swirled back all of a sudden. She managed to steady herself. “I want you both to be very careful,” the commander went on, “because we’re going to have to help each other to get out of here.”
“We’ll help,” Jek said.
“We’ll do anything for you, Emissary,” Loral added.
Kira wanted to correct her, but she stopped herself. This was neither the time nor the place.
“We’re looking for a tunnel,” Sisko said. “Do you think you could help us look?”
The children agreed.
The group spread out. Kira groped blindly through the dark, trying not to think about the kilotons of stone hanging over their heads.
Eleth Loral knew she was going to live.
When the explosion occurred and the building came down, she was sure that she would die. When she awoke in the darkness to the sound of Jek crying, she was sure that they would never be found, that they would starve or be crushed to death.
But when the Emissary came to her, when he told her there was a way out, she knew that she would live to see her father once again.
Loral could almost stand up straight. She squinted into the darkness as she took a cautious step forward. She screamed as she felt the floor give way beneath her.
STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change Page 3
