“This is the Fire,” she intoned. “We have just passed through the Fortress of the True. All of you—even those doubters among you—know this. You observed it for yourselves, you sensed its majesty and power, felt the great presence that looked down upon us.”
As Ghemor delivered her address to the faithful, indicators on the communications console winked off, signaling a decrease in the number of incoming transmissions. “We were cast out by the Unnameable,” she continued in a solemn tone. “The True looked down upon us from on high, but they did not find us worthy to burn beneath their gaze and join with them. They did not find us deserving.” She paused in order to emphasize her next words: “Not yet.”
The messages from the Archquesters had almost completely stopped. Tension and anticipation filled the cockpit around Ghemor, almost as though the Ascendants in the vessels spread out in space behind her had propelled a wave of desperation ahead of them. She understood that many of them believed her, but even if some didn’t, she knew that they all wanted to believe. That was why they had accepted her leadership without question. It would allow her to provide them with the impetus to at last deliver to her what she wanted.
“In the Fortress, the True spoke to me,” Ghemor went on. “They commanded the Ascendants to their destiny. We have but one final act to perform, one last deed to commend ourselves to our ultimate fate. We must annihilate the blasphemous population of Bajor, the planet that lies ahead of us.”
The communications panel grew wholly dark. Ghemor knew that the army she had assembled and led exulted in her words. They understood heresy, and they recognized it. They not only had long experience in eliminating those aliens who dared to worship the Ascendant gods, but they reveled in that great cause.
“We will return to the Fortress of the True and face the Unnameable,” Ghemor said, her voice ringing out with purpose, “once we have laid waste to Bajor.”
* * *
Raiq peered through the transparent canopy of her vessel into the depths of space. She could not discern the Grand Archquester’s vessel in the blackness, but the light of the system’s star occasionally glinted off the surface of the metaweapon. Raiq felt no nearer to Votiq and the Fire, and no farther from them, than when she had first begun her pursuit. Her sensors confirmed the fact: her ship paced theirs.
Raiq had listened to the Fire’s address to the Ascendants. The words and the sentiments behind them roused her. Like all her fellow knights, she had spent her entire existence on the Quest, searching for the Fortress of the True. To know that they had almost reached their goal, that they would soon achieve their greatest aspiration and that of generations past, threatened to overwhelm her. It almost seemed enough to discover that she had actually entered the Fortress, no matter for how brief a time.
If the Fire is telling the truth. The suspicion troubled Raiq—especially if she would soon burn beneath the gaze of the Unnameable. But she felt skeptical. It occurred to her that the Ascendants had done more than accept the Fire at her word: they had placed many millennia worth of hopes and struggles in her hands. They had traveled so long and so far, only to surrender their self-determination in the final moments, across the final distance, to an alien stranger among them.
But all of this was foretold by scripture. How often had Raiq read the sacred texts? How many times had she digested the holy words, internalized them, converted them into motivation and optimism and bearing. Like all her fellow knights, she had used scripture as a guiding light, a means of illuminating the path of her life. But while that light glowed brightly, it did not reveal every detail ahead.
Is that why there is nothing in the hallowed writing about the Ascendants entering and then leaving the Fortress of the True before the Final Ascension? Raiq wanted to know. Or is it because that’s not a part of the Unnameable’s plan for us?
Each question begat doubt, and each doubt, another question. Am I not worthy? Raiq asked herself. Or is this when and where and how I fully prove myself to the True?
Despite her uncertainty, Raiq chose to follow her intuition, which had, after all, been shaped by her experiences on the Quest and her understanding of the Ascendants’ purpose. She found that she honestly believed that she and the rest of the armada had followed the Fire into and then out of the Fortress of the True. Even with her misgivings about the actions of the Fire, Raiq felt that, from the fragments visible to her, she could almost make out the completed mosaic. She believed that the End Time had come, and that the reckoning of the Final Ascension would soon be at hand.
And how will that happen? Raiq wondered. For her, all of the pieces fit together: the gathering of the Archquesters, the appearance there of the Fire, the discovery of the metaweapon and the harvesting of its fuel by Aniq, the return of the Eav’oq on the threshold of the Fortress, and the presence nearby of a new breed of heretics. It made sense to her that the Ascendants, right there and right then, should demonstrate their reverence for the Unnameable by committing one final, glorious act on their generations-long crusade to rid the universe of those who dared to worship the True.
And then we will burn. The thought coursed through Raiq like an electric charge. She envisioned returning to the Fortress, where the Ascendants would face the judgment of the Unnameable, with the worthy among the knights enveloped in a sea of flame to join with their gods.
To Raiq, that meant detonating the metaweapon—not on the world of blasphemers ahead, but in the Fortress, as a means of uniting the Ascendants with the True. But it remained unclear whether the Fire meant to use the device on the population of heretics on the planet they approached, or if an attack by the armada would suffice. She had to find out.
Either way, regardless of what the Fire intended, Raiq vowed to make sure that her people would have what they needed when they faced the Final Ascension.
* * *
At last, the wormhole closed. Ezri Dax reported the event from her position at the tactical station, and she saw the captain immediately look up from the situation table at the main viewscreen. If Kira felt relieved, she gave no indication. Instead, she gazed over at Dax.
“How many ships?” the captain asked.
Dax had been tracking the number, reporting it whenever it reached a milestone: One hundred. Five hundred. A thousand. The size of the Ascendant fleet had grown beyond any expectations she’d had when the first waves of ships had appeared, and well past the ability of Deep Space 9 to mount a defense of Bajor. Which is why we should have acted sooner and more decisively, she thought, not for the first time.
“Thirteen thousand one hundred seventy-one,” Dax said. Kira had fired on the first ship, and when that had failed to produce a positive result, she had sheathed DS9’s weapons. Attacking the trailing end of such a sizable fleet, even if completely successful, would have little impact on the many ships ahead of them, already well on their way to Bajor. Dax had waited for the captain to give further orders to discharge the station’s phasers and quantum torpedoes on the invaders, but that moment had never come. The lack of action confused the lieutenant, but more than that, it frustrated her. Had Kira chosen even to attempt to make good on the warning she had issued to the Ascendants, the DS9 crew might have been able to prevent them from bringing their entire fleet through the wormhole.
I would have made that call. Ever since she had first taken the center seat aboard Defiant more than a year and a half earlier, during an attack by rogue Jem’Hadar that had resulted in the death of the ship’s commanding officer, Tiris Jast, Dax had discovered a vein of leadership within her. Both Kira and Vaughn had supported her request to shift her career path from the sciences to command. Since then, Dax exchanged her position as a counselor for that of second officer on DS9, and exec aboard Defiant. More than that, she consistently demonstrated her abilities, and she added significantly to her education, both on the job and in the classroom—including her most recent participation in Advanced Tactical Training.
My decision would have been to launch an all-o
ut assault on an invading alien force, she thought. The experience and instruction Dax had gained over the prior twenty-one months had contributed to her confidence to such an extent that she recognized when her superiors erred in their command decisions—particularly when, in their places, she would have issued different orders. She had a great deal of respect for both Captain Kira and Commander Vaughn, but she had of late grown restive serving under them.
Maybe it’s this place, Dax thought. She had made her way through Starfleet Academy with the objective of serving aboard a starship, with its continually changing locales, rather than on a space station, with its fundamentally static environment. She did get to function as Defiant’s first officer, and even occasionally as its commander, but—
But Sam’s out on the Defiant, and I’m stuck here.
Except that there was more to the way Dax felt than just any one specific assignment. She had never really chosen to come to Deep Space 9; needing a steadying influence after Ezri Tigan had joined with the Dax symbiont, she had accompanied Curzon and Jadzia’s old friend Benjamin there. Initially, she thought she would leave the station and return to her posting on U.S.S. Destiny, and later, she considered resigning from Starfleet, but then she connected with the people on DS9—or reconnected—and decided to stay.
And then Julian and I developed feelings for each other, Dax thought. Or maybe we just danced around his residual feelings for Jadzia, and hers for him. It had taken Ezri and Julian a long time to get together, and less time to discover that, despite their genuine affection for each other, they did not belong in a romantic relationship.
The tactical console emitted an alert, and a secondary display came to life. “Captain,” Dax said at once, “the wormhole is opening again.” Dax redirected the view on the main screen away from the rear of the alien fleet even before Kira asked her to do so. Once more, radiant eddies of light curled open in shades of blue and white. Dax expected yet another rush of Ascendant ships to appear, but instead, she saw only a single vessel. A moment later, the wormhole receded into nothingness, withdrawing back into its subspace lair.
“Magnify,” Kira said, even as Dax worked her controls.
“It’s much larger than any of the other vessels we’ve seen,” Dax said. She read off its dimensions, then glanced at the viewer. The ship appeared somewhat boxy, with a hull that looked like a mélange of contrasting engineering designs. Dax consulted the sensors again. “The ship is heavily shielded,” she said.
“Is it an Ascendant vessel?” Kira asked.
“It is following the same path, but it doesn’t resemble any of the other ships,” Dax said. “Its shields are also configured differently, but my attempts to scan the interior of the vessel are still being blocked.”
“Open a channel,” Kira said.
“Hailing frequencies,” Candlewood said.
“This is Captain Kira Nerys of Deep Space Nine, to unknown vessel. Please identify yourself.”
Dax assumed that they would receive no response, but then Candlewood said, “Captain, we’re being hailed.”
“Put it on-screen.”
Dax peered over at the main viewer, unsure of what she would see. The image of the ship disappeared, and then Dax felt her mouth drop open in surprise as she saw a Jem’Hadar standing alone on what looked like the vessel’s bridge. She recognized him at once: Taran’atar.
* * *
When he heard her voice, Taran’atar at first thought that the message had come from Even Odds’ dropship. Sensors had shown Kira pursuing him in the auxiliary craft, from the surface of Idran IV and toward the Anomaly, but she shouldn’t have been able to close the gap so quickly. When the captain then asked him to identify himself, he checked the communications console and saw that the transmission came not from behind the ship, but from ahead and off to starboard—from Deep Space 9.
Taran’atar immediately suspected the treachery of Iliana Ghemor. Back on Idran IV, Kira had contacted him aboard Even Odds to tell him that the mad Cardassian woman had taken control of the Ascendant fleet, and that they had in their possession a subspace weapon of some kind. He didn’t know how the captain had learned that information, but he trusted her.
On Idran IV, the Jem’Hadar had also heard the urgency in Kira’s voice. He trusted that, too, because he felt his own sense of resolve with respect to Ghemor. She had been thought lost inside the Anomaly, but if she had returned, she posed too much of a threat for Taran’atar to allow her continued existence.
The Jem’Hadar opened a channel to Deep Space 9. On the main viewscreen on the Even Odds bridge, the tiered spread of Ops appeared. Taran’atar recognized members of the DS9 crew—Lieutenant Ezri Dax, Lieutenant John Candlewood, Ensign Aleco Vel, and others—but he focused on the woman standing at the situation table in the middle of the scene: Captain Kira Nerys.
“Taran’atar,” she said.
“Captain Kira.” He wondered which of the two was the imposter—the woman who had been recovered by the crew of Even Odds from an Orb floating in the Gamma Quadrant, or the woman who regarded him from the center of DS9’s operations center. Before Taran’atar had chosen to leave the space station and return to the Dominion—a journey he had never completed—he had encountered multiple “versions” of Kira Nerys, including the surgically altered Iliana Ghemor, as well as Kira’s doppelgänger in an alternate universe, who functioned under the title of Intendant. It seemed reasonable to assume that either the woman he had left behind on Idran IV or the one facing him on the viewscreen, or possibly even both, were not the genuine Kira.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Are you a part of the fleet that has entered the Bajoran system? Is this a Dominion operation?”
“I am part of neither the fleet nor the Dominion,” Taran’atar said. He noted that the woman he spoke with wore a Starfleet uniform, rather than the civilian clothes attiring the woman he had left behind on Idran IV. She also had shorter hair. More than those surface differences, Taran’atar saw in the few words she had just uttered a demeanor at variance with that of the woman with whom he had spent so much time on Even Odds. The Kira on the viewer conducted herself with a stiffer back, a sharper tongue, a more authoritative bearing.
But she is Kira, Taran’atar thought. He had grown to know her well enough to feel confident in that determination. But then who has been aboard Even Odds?
Taran’atar considered his time spent with that Kira. When she had first been brought aboard, he had noticed the superficial changes in her, but he had also been certain of her identity. She had shown a greater calm than he had previously seen in her, as well as a watchfulness that contrasted with the headlong manner he had come to know.
They are both Kira, Taran’atar concluded, trusting his instincts. They’re both Kira, but at different points in her life. Time travel seemed the likely explanation. He considered the various permutations—him moving into the past or into the future, or the captain doing so—and deduced that the Kira recovered in the Gamma Quadrant must have arrived in the present from a time yet to come. Among other things, that would explain how she could have known that the Bajoran kai had been visiting Idran IV, and that Iliana Ghemor had taken command of Ascendant forces.
“If you are not with the Ascendant fleet,” Kira asked, “then why are you here?”
Taran’atar contemplated how to respond to the captain’s question. He could lie, or prevaricate, or simply elect not to reply at all. But it occurred to the Jem’Hadar that the Kira aboard Even Odds had been determined to return to the Alpha Quadrant and Deep Space 9, and to save the kai and to stop Ghemor. He would honor her wishes.
“I am in pursuit of the Ascendant fleet,” Taran’atar said. He glanced at the sensor readouts and saw the thousands of vessels heading for Bajor. He also noted that the dropship had not followed him out of the Anomaly. If the Kira he’d left behind in the Gamma Quadrant had indeed come from the future, then perhaps she had chosen not to reenter the Bajoran system for fear of disrupting the t
imeline. The Jem’Hadar did not necessarily agree with Starfleet’s Temporal Prime Directive, but Kira did serve as one of the space service’s officers, and so she might have wanted to abide by their strictures.
“Why are you pursuing the Ascendants?” Kira asked. “What do you know about them?”
Again, Taran’atar deliberated about how he should answer the captain’s question. In the end, he decided to tell her what the other version of Kira Nerys had told him. “I want to stop them from attacking Bajor,” he said. “They are being led by Iliana Ghemor.”
* * *
The name cut through Kira like a knife. For a moment, she could say nothing. The last time she had seen Ghemor had been when the two of them, along with Ghemor’s counterpart in a parallel reality, had fallen into the Celestial Temple. There, the three women encountered the Prophets, who communicated with them via the images of people in their lives. They declared the mirror Ghemor the Voice, and then reinserted her into her life so that she could function as Their Emissary in the alternate universe. They likewise returned Kira to her own existence to act as Their Hand—whatever that meant. They also dubbed Iliana Ghemor the Fire, and then They extinguished her.
Or at least that’s how I interpreted events, Kira thought. Ghemor had posed a grave threat, not just to Kira, but to the people of Bajor in two different realities. The captain naturally construed the insane Cardassian’s disappearance from the Celestial Temple as evidence that the Prophets had dealt with her, consigning her to some well-deserved and distant fate.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. In either event, Kira had never expected to see Ghemor again—and she had certainly never wanted to see her again. It pained her to think of the madwoman leading a fleet of religious extremists against Bajor.
I let it happen, Kira thought. She had warned the crew of the first alien ship that, if they did not identify themselves and their reasons for entering the system, she would fire on them, but she had barely carried out that warning. Her attack on that vessel had proven ineffective, and when groups of ships soon swarmed out of the wormhole, continuing the battle quickly became a losing proposition. With no conclusive evidence that the fleet threatened Bajor, Kira did not want to risk the lives of more than seven hundred fifty crew members on DS9, and more than five thousand civilians.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Ascendance Page 5