by David Mack
Graniv’s penetrating gaze met its match in Sarina’s serene poker face. “No.”
“Have you ever served in that capacity?”
Sarina remained unfazed. “No comment.”
“What about your current civilian employment? Is it correct that you’re now assigned to the Andor office of the Federation Security Agency?”
A thin, taut smile played across Sarina’s face as the unanswered question hung between her and Graniv. Bashir knew that smile was not an expression of amusement but a warning sign. He set aside his menu, pushed back his chair, and stood. “Forgive us, Ms. Graniv, but we’re late for an appointment. Perhaps we could continue this another time.”
Graniv stood as Sarina got up to make her exit with Bashir. The Trill stepped into Bashir’s path. “I just have one last question, Doctor. Do you miss your life in Starfleet?”
He frowned, unable to conceal the emptiness he still felt when he thought of all that he’d given up in order to do what needed to be done. He ushered Sarina past Graniv as he answered her question in a low and somber voice. “More than you will ever know.”
Three
The Alternate Universe
The aft hatch of the command deck opened with a soft hiss, turning the head of Honored Elder Taran’atar. The Jem’Hadar acknowledged the arrival of his superior, the Vorta known as Eris, with a nod. “We have dropped back to sublight and are approaching the Idran wormhole.”
The violet-eyed commander stopped at Taran’atar’s side. They were a study in contrasts. He was tall, broadly muscled, and protected by a thick, scaly gray hide studded with chitinous spikes, a genetic inheritance that likely had evolved to thwart would-be predators. She was delicate of frame, with soft pale skin and a tall crown of tightly curled raven hair. Her long ears hugged the sides of her head and followed the elegant line of her jaw.
Compared to a Jem’Hadar, Eris might have appeared to be helpless. Taran’atar knew better. He had seen her wield telekinetic powers—a rare and special gift from the Founders—to devastating effect on unwary foes. But her true strength lay in her mantle of authority. She was a Vorta; that meant she controlled the ship’s daily ration of ketracel-white, which ensured the obedience of her legion of Jem’Hadar soldiers. Even though Taran’atar himself had no need of the white—a genetic anomaly even more rare than Eris’s psionic talent—he accepted it from her every day with gratitude, as an example to his soldiers.
This was the order of things, as the Founders had willed it.
Eris lowered her holographic eyepiece into place. “Have our escorts arrived?”
“Yes. All support ships are in position, awaiting final orders.” He tapped the side of his eyepiece’s headset, initiating a transfer of his tactical overlay to Eris’s eyepiece.
A subdued smile brightened her face. “Well done, First.” She studied the mission plan. “Battle Cruiser 815 will take the point position as our fleet enters the wormhole. Battle Cruisers 674 and 918 will flank Carrier Vessel 181. We’ll follow the carrier. Attack Vessels 319 and 560 will defend our flanks. The rest of the battle group will follow us in standard formation.”
Taran’atar reviewed his commander’s deployment strategy in his holographic eyepiece. “Permission to make a recommendation.”
“Granted.”
“I suggest Battleship 432 and its escorts stay behind to guard our side of the wormhole.”
Eris furrowed her brow. “For what reason?”
“Long-range sensors have detected Ascendant battle groups in adjacent sectors.”
She grimaced at the unwelcome news. “Is there reason to think they’ve detected us?”
“Not yet. But now that our fleet is assembled, we risk our presence being noted.”
Her voice dropped to a tense whisper. “We can’t let the Ascendants find the wormhole. Not until our mission on the other side is complete.”
“Battleship 432 and its combat group can deploy in a patrol pattern to mask the wormhole’s coordinates after we move the rest of the fleet to the Alpha Quadrant. If it encounters the Ascendants, it will do so away from the mouth of the wormhole.”
His advice mollified Eris, though only to a small degree. “Very well. See it done.”
“As you command.” He used a nearby panel to amend the deployment plan and then transmitted it to the other ships in the fleet. Within moments he verified confirmation codes from all the ships. He turned back toward Eris. “All orders confirmed.”
“Thank you, First. I’ll let her know we’re ready.” Eris moved aft so she could have some privacy while speaking to the ship’s most important passenger: a Founder.
In all of Taran’atar’s thirty-two years of life—which, to the best of his knowledge, made him the oldest Jem’Hadar who had ever lived—he had never seen a Founder. Through countless military campaigns and decades of deep-space exploration, his only companions had been his fellow Jem’Hadar and their Vorta commanders. On more than a thousand worlds he had met hundreds of intelligent species, most of whom he’d helped bring under the control of the Dominion and its reclusive godlike masters, but until a few days earlier, he had never had reason to think he was ever in the same star system as a Founder, much less on the same starship. Knowing he had been entrusted with the sacred duty of safeguarding a Founder’s life had filled him with a measure of pride he’d not felt in decades—not since his long-ago promotion to First.
He set his holographic eyepiece for an external view. The other ships of the fleet circled like raptors. They slipped past one another in graceful turns as they moved into their assigned positions for the journey through the wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant—a jump of more than sixty thousand light-years, to a distant and largely unexplored region of the galaxy. To date, only Eris and Taran’atar’s vessel, Battleship 774, had ventured to the far side of the subspace anomaly. For years, they alone had gathered vital intelligence about that far-off quadrant. In recognition of their initiative, they had been rewarded with the honor of escorting a Founder to the Alpha Quadrant on what promised to be a historic mission.
Eris returned to Taran’atar’s side. “She’s coming.”
Taran’atar raised his voice to fill the bridge. “Attention!” The crew turned from their posts to face him and held themselves ramrod straight, their arms pressed to their sides, their chins raised with pride. A moment later the aft hatch slid open. A feminine humanoid entered. Her mien was soft and without detail. The most prominent features of her visage were her deep eye sockets, narrow lips, and high forehead. Her face was framed by a pulled-tight helmet of flaxen hair. Only her head and hands were bare. From the neck down she was covered by a modest garment of loose-fitting beige cloth, and she wore simple footwear.
Eris stepped forward to greet the nondescript alien woman. The Vorta shut her eyes and bowed her head as she spoke. “We are honored to receive you, Founder.”
Taran’atar’s eyes widened. So this is a Founder. All his life he had wondered what it would be like to look upon the face of one of his gods. Now she stood before him, and he found himself perplexed. The Founder was almost a cipher, an approximation of a humanoid without definition. Regardless, Taran’atar knew on an instinctual level that she was who Eris had proclaimed her to be. If not for the genetic programming that compelled him to remain alert at all times, he would have bowed to her, just as Eris had done.
The Founder picked up a command headset, put it on, and lowered the holographic eyepiece. “Everything has been made ready?”
Eris kept her head bowed to show deference, but lifted it just enough to look upon her divine leader. “Yes, Founder. Honored Elder Taran’atar has seen to the details.”
A pleased nod. “Excellent.” The Founder raised the eyepiece and faced Taran’atar—showing her back to Eris in the process. “I’m well pleased with you, First.”
He remained silent because she had not asked him a question, nor had she instructed him to speak. Instead, he stood at attention and betrayed no sign that the Found
er’s unflinching stare felt as if it were drilling into the darkest corners of his being.
She stole a look over her shoulder at Eris, then fixed her eyes on Taran’atar. “I’ve paid close attention to you ever since you discovered this wormhole nearly five years ago. Your work has set the stage for what I expect will be the next great chapter in the history of the Dominion. But I wonder, Taran’atar—are you prepared to play the role I have in mind for you?”
“I live to serve the Founders in all things.”
She sighed with mild disappointment. “Of that, I have no doubt.”
Taran’atar had no idea what else he could have said. It was a truth into which he had been born and with which he would die. It was inescapable.
The Founder left him and returned to Eris’s side. “It’s time.”
Eris nodded to Taran’atar, who barked curt orders at his men, setting them and the rest of the fleet in motion. Through his eyepiece, he watched the wormhole explode into being from the emptiness of space, a swiftly unfolding blossom of blue fire and white light. When everyone was, at last, in position, he used his headset to open a subspace channel to the rest of the fleet.
“All vessels, this is Battleship 774. Proceed into the wormhole.”
* * *
Tensions were high aboard the wormhole jaunt ship Enterprise. Captain Jean-Luc Picard felt his crew’s rising tide of anxiety as he walked from his quarters to the turbolift. In the past few weeks, the almost palpable sense of dread had gone from mild to severe, and Picard hadn’t needed the empathic talents of his half-Betazoid security chief Deanna Troi to tell him why. There was one thing that had everyone aboard on edge, one thing driving an endless march of rumors.
The Dominion.
Nothing like a dose of the unknown to stir up people’s fears. He fought to keep his own doubts and concerns buried as deeply as possible. The crew needs to be able to believe in me, now more than ever. That was just one of many essential lessons Picard had learned during the past nine years he had spent commanding the Enterprise, on missions that had run the gamut from exploration to peacekeeping and everything in between.
The turbolift doors opened, and he stepped in. Troi was already inside the lift car. Her dark hair was knotted in a loose ponytail. She smiled at him. “Good morning, Jean-Luc.”
“Deanna.” He had tried for years to get her to address him as “Captain” while they were on the ship, but their years of informality prior to their recruitment by Memory Omega had forged habits too hard to break. She had, at least, taught herself to address him by rank when they were on the bridge. It was a minor concession, but a hard life marked by arbitrary cruelties and heartbreaking losses had taught Picard to be thankful for even life’s smallest victories.
Troi turned a sly, sideways look in his direction. “The crew knows something’s up.”
“Do they? And how, pray tell, do they know?”
The diminutive security chief struck a deceptively demure pose. “Apparently, our first officer had the engineering department up all night fine-tuning everything from the jaunt drive to the waste reclamators. It seems to have created the impression that we’re heading into danger.”
Picard was at a loss. Commander K’Ehleyr was a superb executive officer, and after serving with the half-human, half-Klingon woman for nearly a decade, Picard had come to think of her as indispensable. Her passionate approach to command served as a welcome balance to Picard’s more cerebral style of leadership, but her relentless pursuit of perfection—from both herself and the crew—had, on a few occasions, done more harm than good. Picard hoped this would not prove to be one of those times.
The turbolift doors opened with a whisper of sound, followed by the low susurrus of muted conversations and computer feedback tones that defined the ambience of the Enterprise’s bridge. K’Ehleyr noted Picard and Troi’s arrival. The tall woman stood from the command chair. “Good morning, sir. We jaunted into the Bajor system at oh seven twenty. We’re currently holding station approximately one million kilometers from the Denorios Belt.”
Picard settled into the center seat. “Any activity from the wormhole?”
“Not yet, sir. We’re keeping watch.”
At the forward duty stations were the regular Alpha Shift personnel: the Tellarite operations officer, Lieutenant Trag chim Pog, and the female Vulcan flight controller, Lieutenant Tolaris. Behind Picard, Troi relieved Ensign th’Fesh, a young Andorian thaan who manned the security and tactical station overnight during Gamma Shift. Troi reviewed the reports on her console and keyed in a few commands. “Captain, you have an update from Memory Omega.”
“On my panel.” As soon as he’d spoken the command, the communiqué appeared on the small touch screen mounted beside his command chair. He activated the biometric security scan, which checked his genetic profile, retinal pattern, voiceprint, and quantum signature—all in a matter of nanoseconds. From his perspective, it was over as soon as it began. The encrypted message from the secret benefactors of the Galactic Commonwealth opened on his screen.
He made a quick perusal of its contents and closed it.
K’Ehleyr had learned to read his moods at a glance. “Bad news?”
“Let’s just say it was far from encouraging.” He dropped his voice to a more confidential volume. “Fifteen jaunt ships are standing by to reinforce us if this goes badly.”
“If this goes sideways, fifteen ships won’t begin to stanch the bleeding.”
“Trust me, Number One—I’m well aware of that fact.”
An alert beeped on Pog’s console. The yellow-furred Tellarite turned and looked back at Picard and K’Ehleyr, his solid-black eyes wide beneath fear-arched brows. “Tetryon surge inside the Denorios Belt. I think the wormhole is—” The image on the main viewscreen finished his thought with a brilliant tableau of swirling light and glowing ionized gases. A chasm in space-time unfurled itself, a vortex of cold fire born of forces Picard couldn’t begin to fathom.
A fleet of Jem’Hadar ships surged up and out of the wormhole, cruising in a solid battle formation on an intercept course for Bajor—and the Enterprise.
It’s begun.
Picard knew the attention of the Commonwealth—and the rest of the Alpha Quadrant—would be trained upon this moment, waiting for the shape of the future to be revealed. He took a calming breath and prepared himself to face the inevitable. He stood, smoothed the front of his black uniform, and forced his face into a semblance of courage.
“Lieutenant Commander Troi. . . . Open hailing frequencies.”
Four
There was peace in submersion. Beneath the surface of his heated patio swimming pool, Bashir neared the end of his ninth consecutive fifteen-meter underwater lap. He had taken to swimming laps first for the cardiovascular value of the full-body workout, but he had come to revel in his late-night swims for their solitude. His aquatic retreat refracted light and muffled sound, rendering the surface world into impressionistic blurs. It was as close as he could come to shutting out the world without removing himself from it.
Knowing these escapes were temporary and fleeting made them feel that much more precious. Privacy had become a commodity in short supply now that he was a celebrity—famous in most quarters of Andor, infamous nearly everywhere else. Even if he had wanted to fade into obscurity, that was no longer a possibility. All he could do now was keep a low profile and hope that the public’s notoriously short attention span would soon latch on to some new shiny object du jour and allow him to slip away, into the fog of the forgotten.
His outstretched hand found the wall of the pool. He tucked and curled through a flip-turn, determined to swim one more length underwater before coming up for air.
One hundred fifty meters of submerged swimming was an impressive feat for a human being, though far from unprecedented. Centuries earlier, before the advent of genetically augmented humans, the Earth record for a man swimming underwater without equipment had been 186 meters. A handful of twenty-fourth-century
human men had pushed that record to 219 meters. Bashir had no illusions about his own athletic prowess. At the age of forty-four he was still very much in his prime, but he knew that he couldn’t last much beyond 160 meters underwater, and he had come close enough to death on several occasions that he no longer had a young man’s desire to flirt with its dark embrace.
The end of the pool shimmered into sight. Through the watery veil it resembled a mirage, but its glassy tiles were smooth and cool to the touch as his hand made contact. He exhaled what was left of the breath in his lungs, crowning himself with bubbles as he surfaced.
His face met the brisk night air. It was high summer in Sheras, on the western shore of the La’Vor Sea, but the frigid Andorian climate compelled Bashir to paraphrase an old human aphorism: The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer on Andor. He gasped, sending up a plume of vapor, then drew a long and much-needed breath as he wiped the chlorinated water from his eyes. Then he saw the man standing on the deck in front of him.
Bashir recognized his uninvited visitor at once. “Cole.”
“You flatter me, Doctor. After all this time, I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”
The middle-aged human looked just as he had the first time they had met, nine years earlier. He was of medium height and build, with dark hair cropped close to his handsome, symmetrical head. His eyes were the same arresting hue of emerald, and he was still clean shaven. Like his peers in the nefarious secret organization known as Section 31, he was garbed in a leathery black uniform.
Everything about Cole—from his grooming and attire to his steady and confrontational posture—put Bashir on edge. He eyed the older man with suspicion. “As I recall, the first time we met you dosed me with an aerosolized psychotropic drug. What’s tonight’s trick? Spiking the water I swim in?”
“Nothing so gauche. I’d like to think we’re past the need for such tactics, wouldn’t you?”
Bashir climbed onto the wood-planked deck that ringed the pool and nodded toward his towel, which was draped over a chair behind Cole. “Do you mind?”