Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Ascendance

by David R. George III

  As Quark let go of Nog’s arms and moved back around the companel console, he said, “Have you spoken with your father? He’s got some addlepated idea about normalizing the currency exchange . . . something about eliminating the intrinsic unfairness of high-speed transactions . . .” He finished his comment with a disapproving grunt, but Quark clearly just wanted to make sure that Nog had let Rom know that he was safe.

  “I talked to Father just before I came here,” Nog said.

  “It’s amazing he hasn’t been overthrown yet,” Quark grumbled, referring to the nearly ten years Rom had spent as the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance. Already, though, his attention had returned to his padd, which he retrieved from atop the companel.

  “Uncle, I was hoping you’d let me into a holosuite this afternoon,” Nog said. “I’m not on shift until tomorrow morning, so I thought I’d continue my work on Vic’s program.”

  “The holosuites are for paying customers,” Quark said without looking up. It seemed as though he spoke out of reflex.

  “Uncle, I know you want to be able to run Vic’s program again,” Nog said. “He brought in a lot of business.” Quark continued working on his padd. “Uncle, I need a holosuite.”

  “What?” Quark said, at last glancing over at Nog.

  “I want to work on Vic’s program.”

  “Vic? Oh, a friend of yours stopped in while you were away,” Quark said. “He worked on the software and interface.”

  Nog felt a tingle shoot through his lobes—and not the good, oo-mox kind of tingle. “What?!” he said, crossing the office to stand directly across the companel from Quark. “Uncle, how could you let somebody else work on Vic’s program? I told you how delicate the matrix is. Somebody un­familiar with it could easily cause permanent damage. We could lose Vic.”

  Quark shrugged. “You could just reboot him.”

  “Uncle!” Nog said, his voice rising in alarm. “Then Vic would lose all of his memories, all of his experiences . . . he wouldn’t be the same Vic Fontaine anymore.”

  “He hasn’t been in one of my holosuites in two years, and I seem to be surviving,” Quark said. “Besides, it wasn’t my fault. Broik let them into a holosuite.”

  “ ‘Them’? I thought you said one person worked on Vic’s program.”

  “I said one of your friends came by. He had somebody with him.”

  Nog looked down and shook his head, his concern for Vic growing. It would have been so easy for somebody unacquainted with Vic’s matrix to—

  “He left you a message,” Quark said.

  “What? Who?”

  “Your friend who worked on the program.” Quark looked around his office, then reached to a shelf behind him. He pulled out another padd and examined it. “Here it is,” he said, handing it over across the companel.

  Nog grabbed for the device and quickly scanned its contents. He found a file marked FOR NOG and activated it. When a face appeared on the display, he felt a surge of relief: it was Geordi La Forge.

  Nog knew few better engineers than La Forge. The two had worked together for a short time when both had served aboard U.S.S. Challenger. Nog would have preferred to be the only one permitted to work on Vic’s program, but if he had to choose another engineer to do so, it would have been La Forge.

  “Hello, Nog,” the recording began. “I’m sorry that I missed you on my visit to the new Deep Space Nine. You’ve got quite a facility here, and you and Chief O’Brien did a fine job helping design it.” The encomium from an engineer as fine as La Forge gratified Nog.

  “I came to the starbase because it was very important for a friend of mine to speak with Vic Fontaine,” La Forge continued. “We weren’t aware that Mister Fontaine was a hologram, or that there were problems with his matrix. I looked at the program and saw the work that had been done on it—I’m guessing those were your efforts. It looked like you were close to solving all the incompatibilities and other issues. I made a few modifications myself, just in how the emitter array handles the power.”

  “Yes, the power distribution,” Nog exclaimed. “I knew I was on the right track.”

  “I managed to bring the program online, but not in the entire holosuite.” Nog had encountered a similar difficulty the last time he’d worked on the program. “My friend did get a chance to speak with Vic Fontaine. I wanted to let you know that I think the issues with power are being exacerbated by the high resolution of the new holosuites. I think you might need to reroute the main buses. I’ve appended a file detailing all the work I did, and some suggestions for what you might try next.”

  “Yes,” Nog said, thrilled by the news.

  “Be well, Nog.” The display on the padd blinked, and a link to a data file appeared.

  “Uncle,” Nog said at once. “I need a holosuite right now.”

  * * *

  Nog worked through the afternoon and into the evening. Well past dinnertime, he contacted Broik and ordered a grub steak and an eelwasser, and it delighted him when Ulu Lani delivered it to the holosuite. The last time Nog had been in the bar, before he’d departed on his classified mission, the beautiful Bajoran woman had actually flirted with him. She did so again that night, making him promise that he would take her to Vic’s casino and nightclub once he succeeded in restoring the program.

  Now I have two good reasons to make the program work, Nog thought. Vic . . . and Lani.

  The evening hours wore on, and the night grew long. Nog made sure he fully understood both the work La Forge had done, and the recommendations he’d left. He attempted to power up the holosuite and upload Vic’s matrix twice, and both times, only a strip of it showed in the center of the compartment. Undeterred, he soldiered on, until just after midnight, when he thought he had finally solved all of the issues.

  Nog kneeled down before the simulation tester. The gray metal cube balanced on one vertex atop a black base. An isolinear optical rod—a piece of old Cardassian technology that held Vic’s program—filled one of the four input slots, and a series of indicator lights burned in different colors. An optical data network cable ran from an open access panel in the bulkhead, across the deck, and over to the tester.

  If I can just get the program to load fully once, Nog thought, I can transfer it to the starbase’s storage drives. That would provide added stability to Vic’s matrix, which had continued to run for the two years it had been inside the testing unit. Nog felt thankful that La Forge had been able to upload the program to a holosuite and run it, and that he and his friend had gotten to speak with Vic, however briefly, because that confirmed that the matrix hadn’t degraded.

  Nog reached to the tester and activated the upload. Immediately, the deck, bulkheads, and overhead vanished, replaced by photons and force fields organized by Vic’s program. It filled the entire holosuite. Nog felt elated—but only for a moment.

  As he looked around, he saw a setting unfamiliar to him. He saw no tables and chairs, no stage, no bar. He did not hear the chirrups of slot machines or the roar of voices around gaming tables. He saw none of the furniture in Vic’s apartment.

  Instead, Nog stood in a dingy, poorly lighted hallway. Scuffed, uneven planks formed the floor, and several grimy doors lined the space. A dirty window at the end of the hall looked out onto a brick wall. He neither saw nor heard anybody.

  By degrees, the painfully obvious truth sank in: Nog had failed. Sorrow overwhelmed him. He didn’t know if his tampering that day had altered Vic’s program, or if it had been something that La Forge had done. It didn’t matter. Vic had been lost.

  As Nog put out a hand toward the wall to steady himself, he heard a muffled thud behind him. He spun around quickly, but the hallway remained empty, stretching away to a set of stairs that led down to the left. The noise must have come from behind one of the closed doors.

  “Vic?” Nog said, his voice tentative. He no longer believed that he would ever see his friend again—at least not the same friend he had once known—but he didn’t want to give up hope.
He took a step down the hall and stopped at the nearest door, upon which hung a pair of numbers, both 2s, with the second hanging askew. Nog listened. He heard nothing more.

  Nog moved to the next door, on the other side of the hall, marked with the number 23. “Vic?” he called out again, a little louder and steadier. His hope seemed desperate, but—

  A footstep reached Nog’s ear, and the door in front of him suddenly swung open on a creaky hinge. He instinctively stepped backward, but then somebody lunged forward, seized his arm, and pulled him through the doorway. Nog tried to keep his balance as he staggered forward and past whoever had grabbed him. The door slammed behind him, and when he turned—

  When he turned, he fixed his gaze on Vic Fontaine. Nog had not seen or spoken with his friend since the destruction of the original Deep Space 9. Thrilled, Nog took a step forward, but then he stopped.

  Vic did not look the same. Nog worried again that the program had been changed or damaged, and that the man standing in front of him was not the friend he had known. Instead of the formal attire Vic donned when he entertained, or the natty outfits he favored when not onstage, he wore a pair of shapeless brown pants and a checked, long-sleeve shirt. Worse, Vic appeared as crumpled as his clothes, as though he had slept in them, but only fitfully.

  But then Nog saw recognition in Vic’s eyes. “Kid!” he said excitedly, though the word came out of his mouth as a loud whisper.

  Relief flooded through Nog. “Vic,” he said, “it’s so good to see you.”

  “Shhh,” Vic urged him. “Keep your voice down. The walls have ears.”

  Nog thought he must have heard Vic wrong because he could make no sense of the last thing he’d said. The walls have ears? Nog peered around, imagining huge lobes hanging around the room, but he saw only fading, cracked plaster. A rusting, iron-framed bed pushed up against one side wall, its mattress sagging and its sheets in tangles. A bare bulb hung by a wire from the ceiling, throwing a dim, yellow cast over everything. A gauzy piece of fabric covered a single, small window, a sickly red pall glowing on it from somewhere out in the night. The threadbare curtain ruffled inward, pushed by stale currents of air. The room in no way resembled the hotel attached to Vic’s casino.

  When Nog looked back at his friend, he saw a concerned expression on his face. It’s more than concern—it’s anxiety . . . maybe even fear. “What is it?” Nog asked, careful not to raise his voice. “What’s wrong?”

  In response, Vic pushed back one sleeve of his shirt and checked his wristwatch. “I can’t talk right now, Kid,” he said, still speaking in hushed tones. “There’s somewhere I gotta be.” He rushed to the bed, got down on his knees, and reached beneath the mattress. He pulled out a small, shopworn satchel, rose, and headed for the door.

  “Wait,” Nog said, louder than he’d intended. He reminded himself to keep his voice low before he continued. “Where are you going? Why can’t you talk?” He gazed around at their shabby surroundings, then asked, “What is this place?”

  “It’s the Fremont-Sunrise Hotel,” Vic said, one hand grasping the doorknob. “Meet me back here tomorrow evening.”

  Before Nog could say anything more, Vic pulled the door partially open. He stuck his head out into the hall and peered in both directions. An instant later, he threw the door wide and bolted out of the room.

  Nog stood there, dumbfounded. For a long time, he had worried about his friend, concerned that his program would fail while hosted in the simulation tester. It had never occurred to him that something might have happened to Vic in his own world. But what has happened?

  Nog rushed out into the hall. It was empty, but he heard Vic’s footsteps thundering down the staircase. Nog thought about trying to follow him, but that didn’t seem like a good idea.

  Not knowing what else to do, he stepped back inside the dismal room. He looked around, searching for any clue that might help make sense of what he’d just experienced. When his gaze alit on the window, he raced over to it, swept the flimsy curtain aside, and leaned over the sill.

  A dark thoroughfare passed in front of the hotel. A flickering streetlamp proved inadequate to penetrate the shadowy fronts of the dilapidated buildings that crawled away in both directions. Nothing moved on the street until Vic ran outside. Nog wanted to call out, wanted to try to stop his friend, or help him in whatever way he could—for he surely seemed to be in some sort of trouble—but he remembered Vic’s admonition not to speak too loudly. Instead, Nog watched as his friend sprinted down the street, his footfalls clicking along the surface of the road. Half a block down, Vic turned sharply and disappeared into a gloomy alley.

  For several minutes, Nog didn’t move, hoping that his friend would reappear. He didn’t. Nog finally stepped back from the window, wondering what had just happened. He had found Vic, and then just as quickly, lost him again. He once more considered making his way out into the night to try and find his friend, but he knew virtually nothing about the layout of 1960s Las Vegas.

  “Computer,” Nog said, but then he hesitated. He had been about to order Vic’s program saved, which would protect it from any possible problems with the simulation tester, as well as from the risks associated with future uploads. But he also recognized that once he secured the matrix in DS9’s memory banks, he would also be storing the incident that had just occurred.

  I don’t have a choice, he thought. And it doesn’t matter, anyway: it’s not as though it’s possible to move backward or forward in time in Vic’s program. Doctor Bashir’s friend Felix had created a very special bit of code, one that unspooled in real time, and with as much fragility as real life.

  “Computer,” Nog said, “save and end program.” Around him, the run-down hotel room evaporated like a mirage disappearing in the desert. Nog disconnected the simulation tester and the ODN cable, then reset the access panel in place. He took one last look before exiting the holosuite and heading for his quarters, where he would try to get at least a few hours of sleep before his duty shift started.

  He could only hope that, when he returned to the Fremont-­Sunrise Hotel the next night, he would find Vic there.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Commander Selten strode into Newton Outpost’s infirmary. He crossed the empty antechamber to the main ward. He had never seen it so busy. Patients filled six of the eight bio-beds. In another compartment nearby, he knew, the bodies of T’Pret, a technician, and Bruce Prestridge, a scientist, had been placed in stasis; both had been killed during the creature’s escape from captivity.

  As Selten observed for a few moments, he saw that two of the medical doctors on staff tended to the injured, aided by a third doctor functioning in a nurse’s role. Across the ward, propped up on a bio-bed, the outpost’s chief of staff, Doctor Norsa, looked over and saw the security chief. She motioned to him, but before he walked over to her, he waited until one of the attending physicians had a moment to speak with him. “How is Doctor Norsa?” Selten asked Gellish, a Denobulan neurosurgeon.

  “She’s suffered a concussion,” he said. “She lost consciousness, but we’ve confirmed that she has no bleeding in the brain. We’ve given her an analgesic for her headache and an antiemetic for her nausea. Doctor Norsa should make a complete recovery, but she may experience other symptoms in the coming days or even weeks. The prescription is rest.”

  “She’d like to speak with me.”

  Gellish glanced over his shoulder at Norsa. “If there’s something she needs to tell you or that you need to find out, fine,” he said. “She’s foggy at the moment, so please don’t take any longer than is necessary, and certainly no more than five minutes.”

  “Understood,” Selten said. “Thank you, Doctor.” The security chief crossed the room to Norsa’s bio-bed. The chief of staff looked up at him.

  “Commander,” she said, and though Selten understood her perfectly, she sounded as though she spoke with a swollen tongue in her mouth. “I understand the creature is off the outpost.”

  “It is,” Selt
en confirmed. “It has departed the shepherd moon, altered its course utilizing the gravitational field of Larrisint Four, and is headed out into space.”

  “You’re implying the creature is intelligent.”

  “Yes,” Selten said. “It is possible that it is acting out of instinct, but when it came very close to me, I sensed emotion, a yearning—”

  “I did too,” Norsa said, sitting up quickly. She listed to one side, and Selten reached over to take firm hold of her. As he helped her back against the pillows, Gellish came over.

  “Please,” the doctor said. “She needs to rest.”

  Selten nodded, then leaned in and told Norsa, “I’ll speak with you later.” As he stood back up, she reached for his arm.

  “Wait,” she said. “Has the outpost been damaged?”

  Selten looked to Gellish, who gave a tight nod. “The ports around Compartment L have all been shattered, and the security door leading to Corridor Four has been compromised, but the outpost has suffered no structural damage and no breaches.”

  “Good,” Norsa said. “That’s good.” She closed her eyes, but as Selten took her hand from his arm, she looked up at him again. “One more thing: How is Odo?”

  Selten looked to Gellish once more, who said, “We’re still treating him.” Without giving Norsa the opportunity to ask another question, he said, “Now, I must insist that you get some rest.”

  Norsa nodded slowly. “Yes, Doctor.”

  Selten and Gellish walked away from the bio-bed together. Once they had crossed the ward, the security chief quietly asked, “What injuries has the shape-shifter endured?”

  “Come with me,” Gellish said.

  Selten followed the doctor out of the main section of the infirmary, down a short corridor, past the operating theater, and into the isolation ward. A half-dozen sealed chambers lined the circular compartment. Gellish motioned toward an observation port, the only one through which light shined. The two men walked over together.

  The security chief saw another bio-bed inside the isolation chamber, as well as a small table and chair, and a computer interface set into a bulkhead. The diagnostic panel above the bio-bed appeared operational, but it showed almost no activity. No body lay on the pallet—at least no humanoid body. Rather, a transparent container sat there, perhaps a meter tall and the same in diameter. A grayish sludge filled it three-quarters of the way to the top. Selten did not detect even the slightest motion in the container; he would have expected some movement in a liquid, simply from air currents passing across its exposed surface.