The War of the Prophets

by Judith

  interest in or outrage at what tran­spired next. More escape pods shot free of

  the station, only to be drawn back to disappear into the opening maw of the

  red-tinged wormhole.

  Like the mouth of the human hell, Garak thought. How fitting. How poetic.

  And then, faster than the sensor log had been able to record, the image of Deep

  Space 9 shrank and was gone, replaced by what could almost pass for the open­ing

  to the Bajoran wormhole. Except that that swirling mass of forces always seemed

  to have a blue cast to the energies it released, and this second wormhole was

  most definitely color-shifted to the red half of the visi­ble-light spectrum.

  Captain Sisko's voice disrupted the silence in the briefing room. "That wasn't

  how we experienced the station's collapse."

  Sisko, Major Kira, and Commander Arla were seated up front in the first row of

  hard Klingon chairs, to which they had been escorted by Romulan security guards

  only moments before the briefing began. Garak could understand why the captain

  of the Defiant had been sep­arated from the other passengers and crew when they

  had been beamed to the Boreth. But he didn't know why the major and the

  commander had been taken with him, unless it was because they were the only two

  Ba­jorans among the eighteen. He would, however, en­deavor to find out. Though

  Garak knew he would never admit to curiosity—at least, not in a public sense—he

  was fully aware mat he lived his life in a perpetual haze of it.

  Sisko continued his correction of the sensor log's ac­count. "We saw the

  collapse of the station proceed more slowly while we were under attack by

  Terrell's ship."

  How very interesting, Garak thought, only his long

  years of training allowing him to keep Ms face com­pletely composed.

  A young Romulan who stood at the side of the brief­ing room, improbably

  outfitted in a poorly fitted variation of a Bajoran militia uniform, switched on

  a padd so that his angular face was illuminated from below. Then he looked over

  to Sisko and said, "That tends to confirm the hypothesis that the Defiant was

  caught within the bound­ary layer of the opening wormhole. Your ship would men

  have been subjected to relativistic time-dilation effects."

  "Then shouldn't the same have happened to Terrell's ship?" Sisko asked.

  Garak waited eagerly for the answer. But the Romu­lan was not forthcoming.

  "There are no records of that ship as you described it—" The Romulan looked down

  at his padd again. "—A Chimera-class vessel disguised as a Sagittarian passenger

  liner. In any event, the Defiant was the only vessel to emerge into this time

  period."

  Pity, Garak thought. He would have enjoyed one final meeting with Terrell. He

  would have liked to have seen her face when she learned that their precious

  Cardassia no longer existed. Its history, its culture, and all except a handful

  of its people erased from the universe, as if they had been nothing but a

  half-remembered dream.

  He himself had learned the fate of his world just a few hours earlier from two

  young Klingon soldiers, also in badly tailored Bajoran uniforms. He had noted

  their intense interest in observing him, and upon ques­tioning them had learned

  that they had never encoun­tered a Cardassian before. Then they had told him

  why.

  At that precise instant, Garak had to admit—if only to himself—he had felt a

  true pang of regret. But only

  for an instant. Immense relief—not sorrow—had im­mediately followed. In this

  time period, there was now nothing left for him to fight for. His struggles were

  over.

  It was, he had decided, a quite liberating experience.

  A Bajoran colonel now appeared on the main viewscreen, obviously reading from a

  script, droning on without much clarity of detail about the events of the few

  weeks that had followed the opening of the second wormhole. Apparently, the

  space-time matrix of the Ba­joran sector had been altered in some obscure

  technical way by the second wormhole's gravimetric profile. Garak couldn't

  follow what the implications of that were, nor was he particularly interested.

  But supposedly the behavior of the first wormhole had become more er­ratic

  because of those changes. It had rarely opened after that, and travel through it

  had proved impossible.

  Then, the Bajoran colonel recounted at tedious length, with the

  Cardassian-Dominion alliance mount­ing a major offensive throughout the region,

  a small battle group had broken through Starfleet's crumbling lines and reached

  the Bajoran system.

  Garak covered his mouth with his hand and yawned outright. This time it wasn't

  an affectation. The briefing room was getting uncomfortably hot. He glanced at

  the unfinished metal walls, willing himself to see them move away from him and

  not close in. His claustropho­bia—again a personal idiosyncrasy he avoided

  reveal­ing to any other being—was becoming more noticeable of late. He redoubled

  bis efforts to suppress it.

  Another new sensor-log screen appeared on the viewer, and Garak welcomed it as a

  distraction from the heat and closeness of the room. This next recording had

  apparently been made by the {7.5.5. Enterprise, also in the Bajoran system, on

  Stardate 52145.7.

  The new sensor recording began, and for a few sec­onds all Garak could see was

  streaking stars and lances of phaser fire. Then the image stabilized, and he was

  able to make out a tightly grouped formation of three Galor-class Cardassian

  warships surrounded by a cloud of Jem'Hadar attack cruisers, purple drive fields

  aglow. In the background, Garak could once again see the shifting energy curtain

  of the Denorios Belt, so he had a reasonably good notion of what he was

  watching: the departure of Kai Weyoun's expedition.

  Kai Weyoun, Garak mused. He almost felt sorry for poor Major Kira, having to

  deal with that corruption of her deeply felt religion. Almost felt sorry. The

  major was a Bajoran, after all, and they were a far too sensi­tive people,

  regrettably quick to find fault or take of­fense. And judging from how they had

  created an entire religion around a few sparkling artifacts discarded by a more

  advanced species, rather easy to deceive as well.

  The new sensor log continued, and Garak's conclu­sion was confirmed. Just as the

  Enterprise swooped in on what seemed to him to be a rather remarkably risky

  attack—which nonetheless resulted in the loss of a Car­dassian warship—the red

  wormhole popped open, just as the blue wormhole so often had. At mat, the two

  re­maining Galor-class ships and their Jem'Hadar escorts vanished into the red

  wormhole, which then collapsed. Though the Enterprise continued on a matching

  course, unlike the blue wormhole the red wormhole did not open again.

  Very selective, Garak noted. Which meant it was quite likely that the red

  wormhole was also home to an

  advanced species, or was otherwise under intelligent control.

  The current sensor log ended, and the boring Bajoran colonel returned to the

  viewscreen to explain that the Weyoun expedition had been intended to traverse

  the new phenomenon and attempt to discover if it had a s
econd opening in normal

  space, as did the existing phenomenon.

  Garak's eyes began to close. Really, the colonel was almost soporific. Even he

  could guess that the unstated goal of the expedition had been to determine if

  the new wormhole led to the Gamma Quadrant.

  But then Garak's eyes opened abruptly. The colonel had not referred to the

  wormholes as wormholes. He had pointedly called them phenomena. Why?

  Listening more closely now, Garak heard the colonel go on to say that although

  it usually took less than two minutes to travel through the existing phenomenon,

  the Weyoun expedition remained in the new phenomenon for more than three weeks.

  At which time, of the 1,137 valiant soldiers who had made up the expeditionary

  force, only Weyoun managed to return. Though he brought with him new allies.

  Now another new sensor log began running, this one from a Bajoran vessel, the

  Naquo, beginning with a rapid sweep across the Denorios Belt to catch the red

  wormhole in the process of opening. And then, from that cauldron of

  hyperdimensional energies, Garak saw seven ships appear.

  Despite himself Garak leaned forward in his chair, as if those tew extra

  centimeters might help him better un­derstand the nature of the seven ships.

  Are they transparent? he wondered, for certainly he

  could see the glow of the wormhole and the Belt through their elongated, ovoid

  shapes.

  But as the sensor log displayed a progression of in­creasingly magnified views,

  Garak realized that the seven ships were little more than skeletons—collec­tions

  of struts and beams, each vessel slightly different from the rest but with no

  obviously contained areas that might correspond to crew quarters.

  A sudden flash of light from one of the ships ended the sensor recording.

  Sitting back once again, Garak de­cided the flash of light had been weapons

  fire. Wher­ever the second wormhole had reemerged into normal space, it was

  clear that Weyoun had returned with allies.

  Once again, the Bajoran colonel returned to the screen. This time Garak did not

  feel at all sleepy.

  The colonel now stated that the new phenomenon had connected the Bajoran Sector

  to a region in the far­thest reaches of the Delta Quadrant. There, Weyoun had

  made contact with the Grigari, who returned the Vorta when the rest of his

  expedition had been lost.

  Garak waited for more details, but the colonel of­fered none. An omission Garak

  found distinctly amus­ing in its circumspection. He himself had heard rumors of

  the Grigari most of his Me. Though he could recall no convincing report of

  direct contact with the species, their medical technology was often traded at

  the fron­tier, having been obtained from other, intermediary species.

  Furthermore, that particular type of medical technology was banned on virtually

  every civilized world in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

  He recalled once reading a report outlining the re­sults of the Obsidian Order's

  analysis of a Grigari flesh regenerator, which some had hoped would enable cer-

  tain torture techniques to be used for longer periods of interrogation. The

  Order's conclusion: too dangerous.

  If but one contraband Grigari device had been deemed by the Obsidian Order to be

  too dangerous, then it was daunting to consider the damage a Grigari fleet might

  be capable of inflicting. Clearly, what the Bajoran colonel was not saying in

  this sanitized brief­ing was that Weyoun's expedition—Jem'Hadar and Cardassian

  alike—had been utterly decimated by the Grigari. Which begged the only questions

  worth ask­ing: How had Weyoun survived, and why had the Gri­gari come through

  the wormhole under his command?

  Garak repressed the hope that threatened to surface as a smile on his face. A

  universe of mystery to explore, he thought It could actually be that there would

  be no one here he could bribe, threaten, or seduce into taking him back to his

  own time. And if so, he might grow to like it here.

  He settled back to see what else would unfold from this selective presentation

  of the past twenty-five years, and what answers, if any, might be forthcoming.

  So far, it seemed, for each mystery described and explained two new ones were

  being revealed and left enigmatic.

  As the briefing continued, the ever-curious Garak was not disappointed.

  CHAPTER 9

  with seven lifetimes of experience to draw on, Jadzia Dax recognized a dying

  Starship when she saw one, and the Augustus was dying.

  It obviously had been launched before completion— its environmental controls

  were malfunctioning. The nature of the vessel's exposed wires, pipes, and

  con­duits also told her that redundancy and self-repair capa­bilities were

  nonexistent. And there were appallingly few signs of any attempt to make the

  ship a secure home for her crew. Even the earliest starships had used paint and

  colored lights to vary the visual environment and prevent boredom from setting

  in on long voyages or tours of duty. Yet even those simple grace notes were

  missing from mis ship.

  And just as the yellowing of a single leaf can indi­cate the failing health of a

  tree, Jadzia was further con­vinced that the decline of the Augustus was not an

  isolated event. It was a symptom of a greater disease, one that must infect all

  of Starfleet.

  None of these conclusions had she shared with Worf, however. Even as she had

  walked with him through the narrow, unfinished corridors of the ship escorted by

  Vulcan security guards, each wearing phaser-visors, Jadzia had remained silent,

  as had he. Now, with little more than a look exchanged since she and her husband

  had been escorted to the cramped cabin that was to be their prison cell, Jadzia

  knew that Worf had reached the same conclusion she had.

  They were under surveillance.

  The fact mat the Vulcan captain of this vessel could subject them to the

  barbaric test of their humanity on the hangar deck was proof enough that this

  Starfleet had de­viated from the ideals that had drawn Jadzia to serve in it The

  computer briefing she and Worf had watched on the holographic screen had been

  further evidence of what­ever disease was responsible for the decay around them.

  Whether the briefing had been a complete lie or not Jadzia couldn't be certain.

  But she was convinced that it had not been the complete truth.

  She had seen that same realization hi Worf's eyes as well.

  Because no matter how limited Starfleet's ship con­struction and maintenance

  capacities had become, no matter how brutal and arbitrary its commanders, Jadzia

  could not for an instant believe that in a mere twenty-five years Starfleet and

  the Federation had degenerated to the point that they would take part in a

  religious war. It was unthinkable.

  Yet according to the computer briefing, mat's exactly what was under way—the War

  of the Prophets.

  Somehow, since the destruction of Deep Space 9 a new religious movement on

  Bajor, centered on the be­ings discovered to live in the second wormhole, had

  be­come a rallying point for a new interstellar political entity—the Bajoran

  Ascendancy. If the briefing was to be believed, the Ascendancy had early on


  launched a series of unprovoked attacks against Federation terri­tory that had

  resulted in years of tense negotiations and border skirmishes, each side

  accusing the other of on­going acts of terrorism.

  Had that been the end of the story, Jadzia might have understood how a state of

  war could come to exist, with the Ascendancy attempting to take over new systems

  and the Federation attempting to maintain its borders.

  But according to the briefing that was not the point of the undeclared war.

  The goal of the Ascendancy was not to acquire new territory. It was simply to

  prohibit the passage of non-Ascendancy ships through the Bajoran Sector,

  includ­ing the homeworld system and the four closest colony worlds. In Jadzia's

  time—in fact, throughout the exis­tence of the Federation—Starfleet had always

  respected the sovereignty of independent systems. The Prime Di­rective permitted

  it to do nothing less.

  But according to that same briefing, which Jadzia had found to be a particularly

  deplorable piece of prop­aganda, long on emotion and short on facts, the goal of

  Starfleet in this war was not to defend Federation terri­tory, not to contain

  Ascendancy forces within their own boundaries, but actually to invade the

  Bajoran home system and destroy the second wormhole, ending the new Bajoran

  religion.

  Even seven lifetimes had not prepared her for the

  utter revulsion she felt for the Starfleet of this time. What had happened to

  the Prime Directive? What had happened to the Fundamental Declarations? For a

  mo­ment the Trill had even found herself wondering if, in addition to traveling

  through time, the Defiant had somehow crossed over into a parallel universe, one

  closer to the horrors of the Mirror Universe than to the one she had lived in.

  Their Vulcan captors had told them that the briefing would answer all their

  questions. But so many new ones had been raised in Jadzia that she had come to

  feel liberated. When she had entered the Academy, she had pledged herself to

  uphold the ideals of Starfleet and the Federation. When she had graduated, she

  had taken her oath as an officer to do the same. As a result, she felt no

  conflict in her present resolve to behave according to that pledge and that

  oath—both made to the Starfleet of the past and not to this hollow, dying