by Неизвестный
"He's found a way down. The Orb's not far."
Terrell began trudging toward Dr. Betan. Sisko walked beside her. He checked his suit display. Thirty-two minutes of life remaining. If the Cardassian suit design could be trusted.
Halfway to Dr. Betan, Sisko caught sight of the liq-uid wave of rock that rose up behind the Cardassian, then swept forward, heading directly for him.
Instinctively he cried out, "GRAVITY WAVE!" then spun around to see Terrell beside him, screaming silently in her helmet to warn her associate.
Sisko dropped to his knees and wrapped both arms tight across his helmet. A moment later he felt as if he were falling, as the local gravity gradient dropped by at least ninety percent and then shot up by an almost instant tripling.
He was driven into the rubble so hard he felt stones push up into his flesh through all the insulating layers of his suit. Sisko lay unmoving on his back, instinc-tively holding his breath as he listened for the telltale hiss of atmosphere that would mean his death. But finally, all he heard was Terrell's harsh voice telling him to get up and hurry.
Apparently, Dr. Betan had also survived the sudden gravitational anomaly, but the hole the Cardassian had blasted into the stone floor of the building was now half-filled with rubble. Under one arm, Dr. Betan still held the Red Orb Vash had brought to the station. It glowed steadily now. The red light within seeming almost to pulsate.
"Down there," Terrell ordered as she aimed her shoulder lights into the pit Dr. Batan had created.
Sisko moved cautiously to the side of the opening, then peered down, awkward in his stiff suit. There was another stone floor about four meters below. Dr. Betan had already thrown a rope down to assist Sisko's descent. The other end was attached to an anchor loop on his belt, and Terrell stood beside him, coiling the rest of the rope in her gloved hands.
"Dr. Betan says that according to the way the Orb is glowing, the other Orb is no more than five meters in that direction." She pointed, and Sisko found a refer-ence mark on the floor below. He took the rope in his clumsy Cardassian gloves and slowly edged himself off the side and into the hole.
Sisko dropped the first two meters at an alarmingly rapid rate before Terrell and Dr. Betan steadied him. A few seconds later, he was standing on the floor and looking around at-
Sisko gasped.
Across from him, in the direction in which the sec-ond Orb was supposed to be found, was a pristine wall carved with the largest Bajoran mural he had ever seen.
"What's wrong?" Terrell's voice crackled in his helmet.
"Nothing," Sisko shouted back. "If the Orb's down here, it might be hidden in a wall. I'll check it out."
Then he walked slowly over to the mural and lightly traced its exquisite details with his gloved fingers. He recognized some of the older word-forms that ran along the top and bottom of the mural and felt an odd combi-nation of relief and disappointment when he could not find any reference to "the Sisko." But still, whatever events were depicted in the carving, they involved the Bajoran wormhole and the Prophets. Those word-forms and symbols he was able to read easily.
"Twenty-five minutes," Terrell's voice announced.
Sisko couldn't let this opportunity go to waste. He fumbled with the Cardassian tricorder built into his suit and programmed it for a full spectral scan of the mural. At the same time, he stepped back to see if he could find any place that an Orb might be...
There. In the mural. The distinctive Bajoran spiral that signified the opening of the Celestial Temple. Though this spiral curved the opposite way from most others Sisko had seen.
"I think I might have found something," Sisko called out. "Just a minute."
He moved closer to the stone block in which the spi-ral was carved. It didn't fit tightly to the other stones in the wall. He pressed his body against it.
The stone block swung up, little more than a slender slab of rock.
And behind it, in a hollow chamber no larger than an Orb Ark, a second Red Orb glowed brightly, throw-ing off small flares of red light, almost like the Blue Orbs Sisko had seen in the past.
"I've found it," Sisko reported to Terrell.
Her only answer was, "Nineteen minutes."
Carefully, Sisko removed the Orb from its protective shelter. As he did so, he felt no ill effects. Heard no voices. Sensed no sudden disorientation, the way he usually did at the start of an Orb experience. Whatever this thing was, it was not an Orb of the Prophets. At least, there was nothing in its behavior to suggest it was one.
Sisko carried the Orb back to the point at which he was below the opening Dr. Betan had made. He paused, half-expecting to hear Terrell tell him to tie the Orb to the rope for them pull it up, to be left here to spend the rest of his life-all eighteen minutes of it- to contemplate their betrayal.
Instead, Terrell told him to tie the rope to his belt, so they could pull both him and the Orb up.
Sisko did, keeping a tight grip on the Orb.
By the time he had emerged from the hole in the
floor, both Orbs were blazing brightly enough that they couldn't be looked at directly. The brilliance of their internal light also made it clear how badly his own helmet had been scarred and etched by Jeraddo's atmosphere.
Terrell's helmet glowed as if lit from within by flames. Sisko couldn't see her face. "Excellent," he heard her say before she called out for Atrig. "Lock onto our beacons and energize."
In that split second, as he waited for the transporter effect, Sisko suddenly knew that Terrell couldn't be allowed to control the Red Orbs.
Almost without thought, he swung the Orb he had retrieved directly at Dr. Betan's helmet.
As the Cardassian doctor stumbled backward, horri-fied, dropping Vash's Orb to press his gloves to the rapidly growing network of cracks that spread across his corroded helmet, Sisko yanked his own transporter beacon off and threw it away.
Terrell was still fumbling for her phaser as she began to dissolve in the transporter beam.
Dr. Betan's helmet suddenly exploded like fine crys-tal an instant before he was beamed away as well. And then, a moment later, Sisko saw the pale glimmer of his own discarded transporter beacon as it also disappeared.
Sisko didn't stop to ask himself what he thought he had done. Instead, with only fifteen minutes of life remaining, he concentrated only on what he still had to do.
He tucked Vash's Orb under one arm, secured the second Orb under his other arm, then began to run.
He knew he had only fifteen minutes in which to hide the Red Orbs so they could never be found again. Not by Terrell, not by anyone.
Within seconds, Sisko was through a breach in the wall and onto a narrow path between two collapsed buildings. The Orbs, so close together now, were throwing off almost the same amount of light as his shoulder lights. But visibility was still less than a handful of meters. By now, he knew, with the subspace distortion Terrell's ship would never be able to scan for him.
In fact, Sisko realized, if he were Terrell, he wouldn't come chasing after him at once. Instead, he'd wait the fifteen minutes for his target to die and use the time to put on a new environmental suit, knowing that when his target's suit finally succumbed to the atmos-phere, the Orbs would not be going anywhere.
Reasoning that he would not be pursued at once, Sisko paused to get his bearings, recalling that there was another large building to his left. One with a sin-gle standing wall. If he could place the two Orbs near that wall and somehow topple the wall onto them, with any luck he'd shatter one or both Orbs, or at least make certain they were buried under tonnes of rubble.
Terrell's cruiser couldn't remain in orbit of Jeraddo for too long. All Sisko had to do was introduce a delay.
This last mission would become his life's work. All twelve minutes of it.
Sisko hurried through the ground-level twisting, crimson clouds, the red of the atmosphere swirling around him merging with the red nimbus of the glow-ing Orbs he carried.
Finally, he located the wall
, and made out the shape of a relatively flat paving stone on which he could place the Orbs. All that he needed now was some way to dislodge the wall, get it started falling in the right direction.
He decided to check out the far side. He couldn't afford to waste the time it would take to make his way around it. So he risked tearing his suit as he half-clambered over a pile of rubble at its side and-
-wedged his boot.
Sisko groaned.
He was trapped two meters above ground level, visi-ble from any direction, with no place to hide the Orbs.
To die for a cause was something every member of Starfleet had to prepare for. It was part of their oath.
But to die for nothing?
Sisko trembled with frustration as he tugged at his boot. He picked up another rock and bashed the offending boot with it. But ah1 he managed to do was wedge it in deeper.
"Warning," his suit's computer suddenly announced. "Loss of atmospheric integrity in three minutes."
"No!" Sisko roared. "You're wrong. I have ten min-utes at least!"
But there was no arguing with his internal displays. The insulation field was within five minutes of failing. His backup air supply was completely exhausted, its tanks probably already dissolved by the acid air.
He wondered how far he could get if he took off his boot and decompressed. Maybe he could last thirty seconds. But would he even be able to move with his exposed foot contacting 800-degree rocks?
"No," Sisko whispered. And then there was nothing for him to do but to lift up the rock in his hand and smash it against the Red Orbs of Jalbador.
Again and again he brought the rock down.
His suit informed him that only two minutes remained before loss of atmospheric integrity.
Again he smashed the Orbs.
But the simple matter of normal space-time was no match for the solidified energy vortices of a nonlinear realm.
The Orbs withstood his attack. Untouched.
"One minute..." his suit announced.
Sisko absolutely refused to give up without achieving his last mission. He lifted one Orb over his head and with all his strength brought it down on the other Orb.
The light they both shed did not change in the least.
Sisko girded himself to try again. Maybe I didn't do it hard enough, he told himself. Maybe it will work the next time.
Again he lifted the Orb above his head, swung it down.
Again, nothing. "Thirty seconds The next time... Once more he
it has to work the next time... lifted. He swung. He lifted. He swung.
"Five seconds..."
With a cry of hope, rage, determination, he lifted that Red Orb as high as he could possibly stretch and-
-he couldn't swing it down.
His arms were locked in position. Something was holding them.
He twisted around in the bulky Cardassian suit to see a white shape glowing in the brilliance of his shoulder lights.
A luminous being.
Sisko gazed up at that form, at that being, and in that moment, without knowing what he saw or how it could be that he saw anything on this hellish world on which he was destined to die within an instant, he knew the Orbs were safe.
The luminous being moved closer to nun, leaned down, details of its existence impossible to see through the clouded corroded surface of his helmet.
The luminous being put its arm around Sisko's shoulders, tapped itself once, then all was still.
And an endless eternity later, an endless moment later, a new light played over him as he stood locked in the embrace of the luminous being, in the depths of this inferno.
In the light of a transporter beam, Sisko could finally see through his helmet and the helmet of the angel who had come to save him.
Everything would be all right now.
It was Jake.
CHAPTER 26
"emissary," kira said, "are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do?"
Sisko stood on the Promenade, outside the entrance to the Bajoran Temple. In each hand he carried a sim-ple cloth bag. And in each bag was a Red Orb of Jal-bador.
Less than twenty-six hours after his dramatic rescue on Jeraddo, Deep Space 9 was nearly back to normal, if not yet fully recovered. There was still a slight slant to the deck, but O'Brien had been released from the Infirmary and was now leading the gravity-repair teams himself.
While most automated computer systems were still off-line, Jadzia, with an unexpected assist from Garak, had finally located the long-hidden Cardassian over-ride programs Terrell had activated, and was replacing all the individual isolinear rods on which they had
been encoded. Nog was fully recovered from his run-in with the holographic forcefield and was in Ops with Jadzia and Garak, helping them with their restoration efforts.
Of Terrell's fate no one knew. There was no record of a Sagittarian cruiser breaking orbit of Jeraddo. The Bajoran Lunar Power Commission had searched its records and had found sensor traces of the ship's arrival. But preliminary evidence seemed to indicate a gravity disturbance might have pulled it into a deadly descent.
Sisko had told Quark, Odo, and Garak what Terrell had told him about what had happened to them on the Day of Withdrawal. Garak and Odo flatly refused to believe her account. But Quark had started talking to Jake about collaborating on a novel based on the inci-dent-Marauder Mo and the Treasure of Jalbador Quark wanted to call it. Jake had already warned Quark there might be some copyright problems with his main character.
The Defiant was safely in dock again, after fielding the massive search party that had led to his discovery at the very last moment. Sisko had since learned that more than forty Starfleet personnel had taken part in the intensive search of the abandoned village.
Moreover, Sisko reflected thankfully, in the time since the Defiant's return, Commander Arla Rees hadn't engaged him in a single discussion about Bajoran religion. Nor had she taken him up on his din-ner invitation to meet Kasidy Yates. And Prylar Obanak and his followers appeared to have disap-peared just as thoroughly as Terrell had managed to vanish over the clouds of Jeraddo. Though no doubt the group of monks had gone back to ground on Bajor.
"I'm sure," Sisko now said to Kira, satisfied that he was doing the right thing. "It's time to end it."
"We still don't know who killed Dal Nortron."
"Or who hid the Orb on Jeraddo," Sisko agreed. He lifted the bags. "But with these in safe hands, we'll have time to sort it all out at our leisure. The important thing is, the Orbs won't be in Cardassian hands."
"I'd still feel better if Vash were off the station."
"And Satr and Leen. And Base. But Odo's dealing with them. When it comes down to it, those four scoundrels are just petty thieves, led astray by what these Orbs represent."
Kira suddenly looked serious. "What do they repre-sent?"
Sisko smiled at her. "Let's leave that to the experts." He entered the Temple, once again marveling at how each time he stepped through the doorway, it felt like the first time.
Kai Winn was there to greet him, and she bowed her head much too graciously. "Welcome, Emissary. It is always a pleasure to receive your summons and put aside all that I am doing to come and see you here. I find the long ride from Bajor to be an especially pro-ductive time for meditation and prayer."
Every once in a while, Sisko was sorely tempted to just tell the Kai to stow it, but he let her play out her little game.
"And you, my child," Kai Winn said ingratiatingly to Kira, "how fulfilled you must be to stand at the Emissary's side during these important events, watch-ing all that he does."
"Very fulfilled," Kira replied, not a trace of convic-tion within her voice.
"And these are the artifacts?" the Kai asked, looking at the bags.
Sisko carefully pulled the Orbs from their wrap-pings and placed them on a small table. The steady glow they had developed on Jeraddo had now become a gentle pulsing, slowly dimming, slowly brightening, three times each minute.
"Oh, my," the Kai said, "they are clever, aren't they? I could see how many people might think they are somehow related to the Orbs of the Prophets."
"I beg your pardon?" Sisko said. "These are the Red Orbs of Jalbador."
The Kai smiled beatifically at Sisko. "Oh, Emissary, I know you are new to our ancient traditions. Indeed, sometimes I wonder if anyone not born on Bajor could ever come to grasp the rich complexities of our beliefs. But I am not here to discuss the wisdom of the Prophets. Still, these... Red Orbs of Jalbador, they are but a legend from a troubled time in our past." She shook her head. "And since they do not exist, I do not believe that I, as a humble servant of the people of Bajor, can accept them. It might lend an unwanted cre-dence to their existence, and to other unfortunate leg-ends best left in children's storybooks."