by Неизвестный
Sisko fell back in his chair, gripped the arms. "Now, Major!"
"Never!" Terrell's voice echoed from all the bridge speakers at once.
And then a final blast of phaser fire hit the Starship just as she went to warp. And the first tendrils of the wormhole brushed across her hull to claim her.
No one on board the Defiant had a chance.
They were all engulfed in a red flash of overwhelm-ing intensity, the sheer magnitude of which exceeded anything in their entire experience of existence.
And then each moment dissolved into the next.
Until there was only the silence and the darkness of endless infinite space...
CHAPTER 29
she tumbled dead in space. No running lights. No engine glow. Her only signature a faint infrared glow which testified to a barely functioning life-support sys-tem, and the fragile lives of the thirty-three people who still survived onboard.
There was no wormhole near her now. No sun. No planets.
And no hope.
Sisko awoke to the cool sting of a hypospray.
The bridge was dark, but enough display screens functioned for him to see Bashir kneeling at his side.
"Casualties?" It was any captain's first thought, first worry.
"Five dead in engineering," Bashir said. "A coolant leak. A dozen injuries. Nothing serious. And Jake's fine. He's helping clean up sickbay."
"Thank you, Doctor."
Sisko reached out, found the edge of his command chair, and used it to brace himself as he rose to his feet.
He could smell smoke and ozone, and the damp soapy scent of the fire-suppression sprays. But there were no wailing sirens. The ship was in one piece. They had survived.
Then he looked at the viewer, saw only stars there.
Closed his eyes. Saw Deep Space 9.
He found Jadzia. A small medical patch on her fore-head. "Your hair's a mess, Old Man," he said.
Jadzia smiled up at him, tightly. "Thank you, Ben-jamin. You know exactly what to say to make a girl feel her best."
"Any sign of Terrell?"
Jadzia shook her head.
"Communications back on-line?"
"There's no subspace distortion, if that's what you mean. But I'm not picking up anything."
Sisko looked back at the viewer with a sudden rush of apprehension. "Did we travel through the worm-hole?"
The last thing he wanted was for the Defiant to become another Voyager, tossed tens of thousands of light-years from home.
"No. Those are local stars," Jadzia said. "But we are having trouble getting a fix on exactly where we are."
Sisko was suddenly aware of Major Kira beside him. Her face drawn, her eyes dark. She held out a padd. "I found out why our navigation charts aren't
working." She handed Jadzia the padd. "It's not a question of where we are. It's when we are."
Sisko squinted sideways at the calculations Jadzia scrolled through on the padd. "We've travelled through time?"
Jadzia nodded. "From the drift in star positions... twenty-four... almost twenty-five years." She looked up. Her face held the same haunted expression as Kira's. "Benjamin, we've come forward to the year 2400."
Sisko exhaled in shock. "How can that be?"
"It has to be the wormhole," Jadzia said.
"Captain," Kira asked, "we will be able to go back, won't we?"
"Of... of course," Sisko said. "We can... we can slingshot back around a star...."
"Not really, Benjamin." Jadzia seemed apologetic. "If we didn't travel here along a slingshot trajectory, we have no path to follow back."
"But there has to be a way, doesn't there?" Kira asked.
Sisko mind raced with possibilities. "We'll find a way. We'll contact the Federation Department of Tem-poral Investigations. Twenty-five years is a long time. There must have been some major breakthroughs in temporal mechanics. They'll be able to help us." Sisko turned to address his bridge crew. "Just remember, we have to follow Starfleet regulations to the letter. We can't afford to learn anything about the time we're in, so we won't alter the timeline when we-"
Sisko flew through the air as the bridge echoed with thunder.
"We are under attack again!" Worf said. "Cloaked vessel dead ahead!"
Sisko forced himself to stand. He could taste blood in his mouth from his fall. "Terrell..." he said. "However we got here, she came with us."
"I do not think so," Worf said as a collision alarm began sounding. "The ship is decloaking, and it is not hers."
Sisko stared at the viewer as a strange rippling checkerboard effect, unlike any cloak he had ever seen, distorted the stars until a ship became visible.
And though it was a class he didn't know, his apprehension became relief as he recognized the hall-marks of Starfleet design: twin warp nacelles set back for safety, a lower engineering hull, an upper command hull. Each element was elongated to an extreme degree, and the command hull had what appeared to be two forward-facing projections that resembled battering rams, but overall it was a wel-come sight.
"That's quite a ship, Benjamin. It's close to a kilometer long, and I'm reading eighteen different phaser systems onboard. At least I think they're phasers."
Sisko smiled. "That's all right, Old Man. At least it's on our side. Commander Worf, open a channel."
"Channel open, sir."
"Attention, unidentified Starfleet vessel. This is Captain Benjamin Sisko of the Starship Defiant. My crew and I have been displaced in time and-"
"That's impossible," Kira said.
Sisko saw it, too. Didn't understand.
The huge vessel had come about so that its forward hull filled the viewer. And from that angle, the ship's name was clear.
[7.5.5. Opaka.
"How could a warship be named for a woman of peace?" Kira asked, incredulous.
Sisko was uncomfortable with even seeing the details of the ship's design and learning its name. "Dax, degrade viewer resolution by fifty percent and disable recording. We can't take any of these details home with us."
He returned to stand by his command chair. "This is Captain Sisko of the Defiant to the captain of the U.S.S. Opaka. We are displaced in time. Under Starfleet regulations, we request that you do not com-municate directly with us in order to allow us to pre-serve our timeline. We will require-"
"Incoming message," Worf interrupted.
"They have to know better," Sisko said. "We can't risk receiving it. Jam it, Mr. Worf."
"No good, Captain. They're using a type of multi-plexing I have not-"
And then a familiar face formed on the viewer. His hair and beard were pure white, his features lined and wrinkled, but he was unmistakable to everyone on the Defiant who had encountered him four years ago-or twenty-nine years ago.
"Captain Sisko," the commander of the Starship Opaka began, "this is Captain Thomas Riker. Good to see you again, sir. And welcome back."
Sisko tried to make sense of the uniform Riker wore. It seemed to be closer to a Bajoran style, though in black and rust colors. Yet on his chest he wore a ver-sion of the classic Starfleet delta in gold, backed by an upside-down triangle in blue.
"Captain Riker," Sisko said. "I appreciate the con-tact, and I'm glad to see you're no longer in Cardas-sian custody. But by talking to us directly, you're
making it difficult for us to go back to our own time."
Riker laughed. "I wouldn't worry about that, Cap-tain. You can learn all you want about the future- because this is where you and your crew are going to stay."
Sisko squared his shoulders. "No, Captain Riker, we are not. One way or another, we want to return to our own time and our own lives."
Riker leaned to the side of his chair as if his back was sore. "Captain, I don't care what the hell you want to do. Your place is here and always has been. As for your ship and crew, every resource is needed for the war, and I'm not letting the Defiant get away."
"What war?" Sisko asked. Could it be possible that the Federation a
nd the Dominion were still battling for control of the quadrant?
"Sir!" Worf suddenly announced. "Three ships approaching on an attack vector!"
"Cardassian?" Sisko asked. "Jem'Hadar?"
Worf looked up at Sisko in surprise. "No, sir... from their identification signals, they are also Starfleet vessels."
Suddenly a barrage of explosions surrounded the Defiant, shaking her badly.
On the viewer, Riker vanished and was replaced by an image of the Opaka firing needle-thin lances of sil-ver energy at the approaching ships.
"All three of the new vessels have locked their weapons on us," Worf reported.
Riker reappeared on the viewer, eyes afire with rage.
"The War of the Prophets is coming! Choose your side, Emissary-because this is your war now!"
Then the bridge of the Defiant fell silent, as everyone turned to their captain. And waited for Sisko to make his decision.
TO BE CONTINUED IN...
DEEP SPACE NINE
MILLENNIUM
BOOK II of III
THE WAR OF THE PROPHETS
The End