by Judith
going to beam Jake and the others to the bridge of one of those starships so
that it could instantly warp into a slingshot trajectory around the mouth of the
blue wormhole. The precise temporal heading would be unimportant, because
wherever in the past the ship emerged, Jadzia would have more than enough time
to calculate a precise trajectory to bring them back to their own time, before
the Red Orbs of Jalbador were discovered.
It would be an alternate timeline. The past twenty-five years could not be
erased. But at least one universe would survive. Perhaps.
Jake couldn't hold his emotions in any longer. He and Nog had been through too
much together. "I'm going to miss you," he said.
Nog suddenly turned his back on the viewer. "Me too, Jake. But there'll be
another me back in your time." He reached out and gave Jake's shoulder a
squeeze.
Jake felt a lump tighten his throat. "Bet he'll be surprised when I tell him
how things turned out here."
But Nog shook his head. "Don't tell him. Please."
"Why not?"
"Back then I was just a kid, Jake. I wasn't sure what I wanted. I liked
Starfleet. I thought maybe I had a career. But part of me still wanted to go
into business. When things got bad after the station was destroyed, that's when
I decided to stick it out in the Fleet. But if
things are different when you go back... well, I wouldn't want some version of
myself sticking with Starfleet just because that's what I did. I'd like to think
I had a second chance along with the rest of the universe. Okay?"
Jake nodded. He understood. At least he thought he did. "I'm still going to put
this all in a book," he told Nog.
"Just make sure it's fiction."
"Absolutely."
"And make sure the brave Ferengi captain has really crooked teeth and
spectacularly big lobes."
"Gigantic!" Jake had to smile in spite of the way he felt.
"And put in a scene like in Vulcan Love Slave—" Nog giggled, just the way Jake
remembered he used to.
"Part Two!" Jake laughed out loud as Nog's giggles became contagious.
"The Revenge!" both young men, both little boys, shouted in unison.
"Only this time, the Ferengi gets the girls! And they're all... fully clothed!"
They collapsed against each other then, gasping in hilarity, laughing as they
hadn't laughed in twenty-five years, Jake realized.
Suddenly serious, Jake looked at his friend. "I promise," he said.
"I know. You're a good man, Jake."
Then the door to the battle bridge slid open. Quickly composing themselves, Jake
and Nog turned together to see—
Vash.
And Admiral Picard at her side.
"Where's Q when you need him? That's what I want to know," Vash said as she
guided Admiral Picard onto the battle bridge, while gently holding on to his
arm. The admiral was smiling happily.
"Will! Geordi! Where have you two been hiding?"
Everyone on the Phoenix knew the Old Man had his good times and his bad, easily
distinguished by the names by which he addressed those he met. So both Jake and
Nog respectfully greeted the admiral in turn without correcting him, and Vash
helped Picard to his chair, from which all operational controls had carefully
been removed.
"Seriously," Vash said to Nog as she joined him by the viewer, "does anyone know
what's happened to Q?"
"The admiral's been telling you about him?" Nog asked.
Vash nodded. "He says Q comes to see him almost every day. Is that right?"
"No," Nog said. "I wish it were. A few years ago when all this started, there
was a whole division at Starfleet that was trying to make contact with the Q
continuum. Q helped out the Old Man once before with time travel. We thought
maybe we could ask him to help again. But no one's seen him for... well, since
DS9 was destroyed. Except for the Old Man's stories, that is."
"And you're really sure Q isn't in contact with him?"
"Positive," Nog said. "At the shipyards, we even tried putting the Old Man under
constant surveillance. He'd have conversations with an empty chair, men tell us
that Q had visited him. Or Data. Sometimes it was Worf. Sorry."
Jake saw how Vash watched Picard in his chair, saw the sudden liquid brightening
her eyes. "So am I," she
said. Then she squared her shoulders and looked down at Nog. "Okay, Hotshot,
listen up. I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not!" Nog sputtered in surprise. « "Yes I am, and you can't stop me
because you need me."
"I do not!"
Vash pointed to the admiral. "But he does!" She held up a small medkit. "When
was the last time you checked his peridaxon levels?"
Jake was surprised by how flustered Nog became under Vash's stem scrutiny. "I've
... been busy. I was just going to."
"And because you've been so busy," Vash said, "the greatest Starship commander
in Starfleet history has been calling you Will Riker and him Geordi La Forge. He
deserves better treatment, Captain Nog."
"And what makes you think he can get it from you?"
In the midst of this heated exchange, Jake saw Vash become unexpectedly quiet.
And the only reason for her change in mood that he could see was that she was
again gazing at Picard.
"I owe that man," she said, without anger or hostility.
"You knew him?" Nog asked. "I mean..."
Vash nodded. "I know what you mean. Ever hear of Dr. Samuel Estragon?"
Nog hadn't. Neither had Jake.
"Doesn't matter. But I'm not leaving Jean-Luc. And I don't care if I have to
chew your precious lobes off to make you agree."
Jake saw Nog flush. "Do you know what you're getting yourself into?"
"I do," Vash said simply. "An act of loyalty for one.
An appreciation of a great man." She looked deep into Nog's eyes. "Maybe even a
chance to help you out because I just know you're going to need all the help
you can get."
"You're also risking getting trapped more than two and half millennia in the
past."
"I'm an archaeologist, Hotshot I should be so lucky." Then she tapped Nog's
chest with her finger. "And just for the record, I've already been farther back
in the past, farther forward in the future, and farther away than this
two-credit quadrant."
Nog stared at Vash in disbelief, but Jake thought he knew what she meant.
"How is that even possible?" Nog asked.
Vash grinned. "Jean-Luc and me, let's just say we've got a friend in high
places. And maybe he hasn't shown up in this timeline 'cause he knows it doesn't
amount to anything. And maybe when we show up a few dozen centuries out of place
he'll look in on us again."
"Q," Nog said, distrustful. "And what if he doesn't?"
Vash rolled her shoulders. '1 speak and write ancient Bajoran. Maybe we can put
on a traveling show."
Nog was wary. "If I do let you accompany us on our mission, I will expect you to
behave like a member of my crew and treat me with respect."
"And I'll expect you to act in such a way that you'll deserve my respect."
Vash and Nog stared at each other for a long moment, and Jake could tell that
neither one
of them wanted to be the first to give in.
So Jake took the initiative.
"I mink it's a good deal," he said. "I think you should shake on it before you
change your minds." He
put his hand on Nog's shoulder. "Think of the admiral. She's got a point."
Nog grudgingly held out his hand. "All right. For the Old Man's sake. But don't
make me regret taking you."
Vash's smile was dazzling, and instead of taking Nog's hand she ran two fingers
lightly around the outer curve of his ear, ending with a small scratch at his
sensitive lower lobe. "Regret taking me? Are you kidding?"
Jake thought Nog's eyes would roll up permanently in his head.
Vash fluttered her long, slim fingers at him, then turned away and went back to
Picard.
"What have I done?" Nog marveled.
"I think you've made the best decision of your life," Jake said heartily, not
sure at all about what he was saying. But then Nog had never been able to tell
when he was bluffing.
"Really?"
"Look at it this way," Jake told his friend. "With Vash along, whatever else
happens she's going to keep things ... interesting."
Nog sighed heavily. "That's what I'm afraid of."
Then Jake looked at the time display on the main viewer.
The universe had forty-seven minutes left.
CHAPTER 26
"IT won't work," Miles O'Brien said.
"Uh... I agree," Rom added.
Quark leaned forward and banged his broad forehead against the stone wall of the
cell in B'hala. "Perfect, just perfect. Half the galaxy's convinced the universe
is going to end in less than an hour, and my idiot brother just happens to
figure out that this whole War of the Prophets is a big mistake." He banged bis
head again. "Why not call up Weyoun? See if he'll let us go home now?" Bang.
"Uh, maybe you shouldn't be doing that, Brother. You might hurt yourself."
At that, Quark opened his mouth and screamed and flung himself at Rom with arms
outstretched, and for a second it seemed nothing could stop one Ferengi from
crashing the other into solid rock.
Except me, Odo sighed to himself, as he reluctantly
changed his humanoid arms into tentacles that snaked out across the length of
the room to snag Quark.
"Will you settle down!" he said, as he deposited a squirming Quark on the side
of the cell opposite Rom. "Maybe the Chief is onto something. What are they
going to do? Lock me up? Kill me?" "We can only hope," Quark said darkly. Odo
grunted, more concerned about the grasping tentacles he'd formed so quickly,
which were now becoming tangled in the robes he'd been forced to wear. He
swiftly solved the situation by puddling faster than his robes could fall, then
surging to the side and reforming in his humanoid shape again, his outer layer
now a perfect reproduction of a Bajoran militia uniform, circa 2374. "That's
better," he said emphatically.
"Good for you," Quark groused. "Now why don't you change into a balloon and
float us all out of here? Wouldn't want to be late for the end of the universe!"
Quark, however annoying a cellmate for the past seven days they had been
incarcerated together, was not the real problem, Odo thought What was truly
unfortunate was that their cell in this partially restored B'hala structure was
ringed by the same type of polymorphic inhibitor Weyoun had used against him on
the Boreth. Behind these walls and barred windows, Odo was as caged as any
solid.
But he refused to give in to self-centered neuroticism as Quark had done,
though. Instead, he walked over to the wall where O'Brien and Rom had been
scratching equations and diagrams into the soft stone for the past two days.
"Why won't it work?" the changeling asked O'Brien. He had to. Somehow, he had to
believe there was still
hope in this universe, that somehow he would be rejoined with Kira. Because to
find love and lose it in so short a time ... Odo refused to believe that Kira's
Prophets would allow such agony.
"In the simplest terms," O'Brien said, "it's inertia." Odo watched as the Chief
used a long stick he had peeled off one of the timbers of a bunk to point to a
diagram of the Bajoran solar system and explain the orbits marked upon it.
Apparently, the entrance region of the blue wormhole of the Prophets maintained
a nearly circular orbit around Bajor's sun, just at the edges of the Denorios
Belt And sometimes the wormhole actually crossed into it
The Chief indicated the entrance region of the red wormhole which, in contrast
to that of the blue wormhole, had a more eccentric orbit. Reminiscent, he said,
of a comet's, travelling from the system's outer reaches and plunging past
Bajor's own orbit before it returned to the realm of the gas giants.
On the Chief's diagram Odo noticed that the red wormhole actually crossed the
orbit of the Denorios Belt and the blue wormhole four times each orbit. And hi
less than an hour, O'Brien said, for the first time since the red wormhole had
been reestablished by the three Red Orbs of Jalbador twenty-five years ago in
Quark's bar, the orbital harmonics of the Bajoran system were finally going to
bring the two wormhole entrance regions to their closest possible approach.
"But that closest approach," the Chief emphasized, "is still going to leave the
entrance regions approximately five hundred kilometers apart."
"Uh, four hundred and sixty-three kilometers," Rom corrected him. "More or
less."
From the other side of the cell, Quark moaned loudly. He was again leaning his
head against the cell wall.
"What's the difficulty presented by that distance?" Odo asked, deliberately
shutting out the sound of Quark's complaining. "It doesn't seem very far,
cosmically speaking."
"The entrance effect of a wormhole is very constrained, Odo," O'Brien said. "I
mean, that's one of the reasons it took so long for the blue wormhole to be
discovered. If you're not within a kilometer or so of it when it opens, there's
no force acting on you to pull you in. If this thing had been swallowing hunks
of the Denorios Belt for the past few thousand years, someone would have noticed
pretty early on. But its effect on normal space is very limited. That's why we
have to pilot a ship toward it with great precision to actually travel through
it"
"In other words," Rom added hesitantly but eagerly, "even if both wormholes open
at the precise moment of their closest approach, they're both too far away from
each other to have any attractive effect."
From his corner, Quark called out to them. "Before you pay too much attention to
that lobeless wonder, did I ever tell you how Rom once stuck a toy whip from my
Marauder Mo playset into his ear? He was eight years old, and he was always
playing with his ears. I was so embarrassed. But here he took this little—"
"Shut up, Quark!" Odo, O'Brien, and Rom said it all together.
"I'm just saying he's not right," Quark said loudly. "Always with the ears. Stop
it or you'll go deaf, Moogie kept telling him. But did he listen? Ha? How could
he? He had half my toys shoved up his ear canal!"
"No one's listening,
Quark," Odo growled. "Please, Rom, Chief O'Brien—go on."
Rom's cheeks were flushed red. "There's, uh, not much more to tell. The
wormholes won't move through space. So they won't join. So... the universe won't
come to an end. That's about it."
"Why didn't Starfleet scientists discover this?" Odo asked.
"Well, it's difficult to chart wormhole orbits accurately," O'Brien said. "They
respond to interior verteron forces, as well as to the number of times they
open and close in a given orbit. I'm guessing that Starfleet's first reaction
was that the wormholes would never come close enough to represent a threat. What
do you think, Rom?"
Obviously pleased to have the Chief consult him, especially after such abuse
from his brother, Rom quickly nodded his support for this theory.
"Further observations," O'Brien continued, "suggested mat the two wormholes
would open close enough to merge today. But from what the Ascendants told us
during those interminable briefings they kept giving us, the orbits are fairly
well known for the next few months. And according to their own figures, they
just won't be close enough."
"Are you certain there's no way to move them?" Odo asked. 'Tow them somehow? Use
a tractor beam? Connect them by a charged particle web?"
O'Brien and Rom glanced at each other and both shook their heads. Odo saw little
beads of sweat fall from their foreheads.
"You see, Odo, most wormhole entrances are created by verteron particles
impinging on weakened areas of space-time," O'Brien explained as Odo listened
intently, doing his best to follow the technical language.
"The opening they form is bound by negative matter, and it's kept open by
negative energy, just as they suspected back in the twenty-first century. But
not even the Iconians had the ability to manipulate negative matter. It would
be like..." The Chief frowned as he tried to come up with the most helpful
comparison "... like trying to outrun your shadow."
Odo stared at the scratchings on the wall. "Then why do you suppose Weyoun's
people are so convinced that today's the day the wormholes merge? They're going
to look awfully foolish tomorrow."
Quark's indignant voice sounded from just behind him. Odo turned to see the
Ferengi pulling out on his robes like a small child about to curtsey. "They're
going to look foolish?"
They all said it again. Only this time more emphatically. "SHUT UP, QUARK!"