by Diane Carey
* * *
Through black open space, the massive Federation-Klingon-Romulan offensive fleet moved like a great shoal of herring seeking a spawning ground. They were many, but with a single purpose. When a thousand ships come together, the logistics of not knocking into one another becomes a moment by moment obsession for a thousand captains, a thousand engineering chiefs, and a thousand helmsmen. Space, normally wide enough for galaxies to pass through each other without collision, suddenly becomes very crowded and limited indeed.
They knew they couldn’t hide anymore, and therefore speed and organization became the primary factors. Who would be the vanguard? Who would flank? How much strength would be committed to a first wave and how much held in reserve? Commodores from each allied division powwowed through the night, causing reports and rumors to chitter constantly despite the reduction of general communication.
And each ship had its private problems. Systems were imperfect in general—on a ship, it’s never a matter of whether something will break down, but when it will. Mechanics had no loyalties, no stamina in adversity, no idea that today was of particular importance. If the last molecule cracked, something would break and would have to be fixed.
Between the captain’s chair and the helm on board the new Defiant, Ben Sisko was listening to something that only long experience allowed him to perceive.
“You hear that, Chief?”
At his engineering console, O’Brien frowned. “Sounds like the Doppler compensators are out of phase.”
Sisko looked at Nog. “How’s she handling, ensign?”
“She’s not quite as smooth as the old Defiant, sir,” the young Ferengi said. “Feels a bit sluggish.”
“Chief?”
“I’m on it,” O’Brien said, annoyed. “O’Brien to engineering. Recalibrate the inertial dampers and check the plasma flow regulators while you’re at it.”
“Right away, Chief.”
Sisko understood how the senior engineer felt. The ship might or might not be a good ship—they didn’t know yet. She hadn’t even had time for a shakedown cruise at high warp, or a sustained cruise at impulse to weed out her problems. There had throughout history been beautiful ships, powerful ships, bigger-than-ever-before ships that had proven very quickly that they weren’t among the “good ships.” Some had been lucky enough to survive the discovery of their inner weaknesses. Others fell apart, sank, failed, or couldn’t stand up to trouble on their first or second voyage. Until a ship was tried by real use, there was no way to know how well all the engineered parts would actually work together—no matter how tight, no matter how exactly manufactured—no way but work to find the flaws. Time was the only saturation treatment for a ship. Sail out, see how she stresses, see what breaks and replace it, see what bends and strengthen it … only time and trouble could hammer a new ship into a good ship. Defiant hadn’t yet been given that time.
He tried not to resent the new ship, even as he wished for the security and familiarity of the old ship. The old Defiant had hammered through every test. They’d repaired her themselves, with their own hands, not having to take anybody else’s word that fixes had been done and done well. They knew her weaknesses and could circumvent them. They knew her strengths and could use them. Going into an invasion scheme with a brand new untried ship—it demanded a trust he just couldn’t give yet.
At the engineering console, Miles O’Brien grumbled at the acknowledgement from engineering. His mood could stand improvement. Beside him, passively watching the fleet on the main screen, Julian Bashir just had to be sitting right here on this side of the bridge—why couldn’t he be down in sickbay treating a hangnail or something?
“You’d think someone would’ve come up with a better inertial control system,” O’Brien grumbled. “Just because a man has plans to return to Earth and teach at a nice quiet academy doesn’t mean he’s not … oh, the devil with it … what idiot changed the color code on this panel?”
Bashir finally turned and asked, “What’s that you’re saying, Miles?”
“I said, could you please wipe that grin off your face? You’re not the first person to ever fall in love, you know.”
The grin fell away. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”
“I am happy for you. O’Brien to engineering. Try realigning the induction coils.”
“Aligning the induction coils now.”
“You do that … look, Julian …” He forced himself to swivel halfway around. “There’s something I have to talk to you about …”
Bashir gently bridged, “You’re getting pressure from Keiko, aren’t you?”
“How’d you know!”
“It’s a big decision. I’m surprised it didn’t come up sooner.”
Sunken partially by relief and partially because he’d been so easy to read, O’Brien felt his shoulders sag. “Actually, we’ve been talking about it for quite a while.”
“Well, you can stop talking about it,” the doctor offered. “You can put the model of the Alamo into my quarters.”
“Oh … model …”
At the helm, Nog turned toward port. “I could still use a little more equalization on the torque buffers.”
O’Brien flinched. “Oh—right. I’ll try to compensate with the impulse response filters.”
“That way,” Bashir accommodated, “your quarters won’t be so cluttered, and you can still use it whenever you want.”
He worked a moment or two, forcing himself to concentrate. There had to be equalization, or Nog wouldn’t be able to hold the ship laterally in this crowd. Usually it didn’t matter so much, when all of space was there for moving around in, but in the middle of a fleet—
“I wasn’t talking about the Alamo model,” he suddenly said. “Besides, it’s too big for your quarters.”
“You let me worry about that,” Bashir offered. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”
Ouch—he knew there was something else going on. O’Brien surveyed his own reaction to moving to Earth, leaving his long-time post, and recalled that when he’d first worked with Bashir he hadn’t really liked him much. Strange how completely things could change over the years. He’d never expected to find so much in common with the young doctor, never mind ultimately building models together and playing out historical problems of battle—and really liking it.
“It’s nothing that can’t wait,” he finally lied. “Is that any better, Nog?”
“Torque buffers are stable,” Nog said from the helm.
Bashir nodded in silent agreement. He knew he was being put off, and it worried him. Why wouldn’t Miles tell him what was the problem? He watched as his friend disappeared into the aft lift and was swallowed by the ship. Why did happiness and problems have to balance each other? Why couldn’t everything just go well for once?
He swiveled around forward again, and as he did that his eyes fell upon Ezri, sitting at her station beside Worf. The two of them were as different as feathers from stone, yet it disturbed him to see them together. They were speaking to each other now. If he watched, he might be able to know what they were saying. They were keeping their voices down—quite a trick for Worf.
No, he shouldn’t watch. He really shouldn’t.
* * *
“The color coding on the weapons display panel is different from that on our Defiant.”
Worf’s chunky declaration was a poor effort to avoid the problem between them. Ezri watched his face, and she knew he was aware of her, very much too aware. She remembered how his eyes changed when they kissed. So many lives were roaming within her mind, but the one she could focus most easily on was the one that made the two of them most uncomfortable. The most recent life … his dead wife.
Yes, Jadzia was dead. There was undeniable finality even for a Trill, though the essence lived on in the next host. The Dax symbiont within Ezri was a stranger in many ways, having invaded a girl who had never prepared for symbiosis. That was strange for him, too. All the other hosts had been r
eady, even eager. Ezri continued to struggle, her mind cluttered and disorganized. Controlling the impulses of the Dax’s former lives, and all the memories, was like trying to conduct an orchestra when she had no idea how to hold the baton.
“You sure you’re not angry?” she urged, insisting that the panel’s color code would not be the subject.
“About the weapons display?” Worf toyed.
She tipped her head. “About Julian.”
Worf’s face hardened visibly. “Why should I be angry? I’ve been asking you to tell the doctor how you feel about him for the past month.”
“Well, now that he knows how I feel—”
“I am happy for you.”
In a mountainous kind of way.
She smiled. “That’s a relief.
“But I am going to kill him.”
Ezri tilted forward a little, trying to read his eyes, and rewarded him with half a giggle.
His eyes bothered her.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
Worf made a grumble in the bottom of his throat. “And Jadzia complained I had no sense of humor.”
On the main deck, Captain Sisko listened in frustration to the imbalances of his new ship and also noticed the sad imbalance among his crew. He heard the rumblings of Worf and the musical lilt of Ezri behind him, though he consciously refused to pay attention to what was obviously a private conversation. He missed Jadzia almost as much as he had missed Curzon Dax before her. Yes, it was a little prejudicial, but Jadzia hadn’t really been able to take Curzon’s place. She’d become a special friend in her own right. Now, Ezri was doing her best to take Jadzia’s place, and she couldn’t. Not for Sisko, and certainly not for Worf. No essence of memory could replace a living, breathing person, and no other person could slip into a haven of special affection. That was asking and expecting too much.
Both men were dealing with the handicap of not being Trill themselves. Both Sisko and Worf were single individuals, living out their lives as one and only one. He knew in his mind that all the Dax’s and hosts were in there somewhere, and yet his heart wanted to grieve. He could only imagine what Worf must be feeling behind that armored personality.
Beside him, Odo gazed up at the tactical station where Worf and Ezri were talking. Sisko watched him without really looking. Another cracked soul.
“I wish she was here, constable,” he offered. Odd—he actually meant two different women with that “she.”
Odo averted his gaze from up there, a little selfconscious now. “Actually, captain, I wasn’t thinking about Kira just then.”
He paused, and Sisko had the sense not to pointedly ask what he meant. If Odo wanted to talk—
“For years now,” the shapeshifter began tentatively, “I’ve been ashamed of my fellow Changelings … knowing about the races they’ve enslaved … the atrocities they’ve committed … but now, knowing that it was Section Thirty-One—that it was a band of rogue Federation citizens who’d infected my people with the Changeling disease … an act of genocide as cold and calculated as anything the Dominion ever did—”
“You can’t help but feel some sympathy for your people,” Sisko completed.
Odo nodded. “It makes a difficult situation even more complicated. This war, Captain … it has to end.”
“One way or another,” Sisko agreed. “It will, and soon. Wars always—Odo? Odo? Is something wrong? You look—”
Why was Odo’s heart beating so loudly? Why had a spotlight come on at the bridge ceiling? Sisko flinched and squinted into the light. He wanted to turn and order the light off. Malfunction, obviously. O’Brien? What’s going on?
“My … son.”
The heartbeat grew louder. He could feel it physically now. Was it his own? Odo had no heart….
Before him a physical form began to take shape. A building. Pillars. A shrine. A Bajoran shrine. Instinctively he recognized it, though the lines were muddled by brightness.
And another form. A pillar changing shape, moving toward him.
“Mother?” he began.
What a bizarre thing. His natural mother, not the mother he knew in childhood, but the one who had abandoned him to grow up human, to think he was normal, ordinary, fit to face the challenges of humanity. The Prophets were calling to him through this woman of nonessence, this ethereal being who had ceded him to his place so long ago, forcing him to live two lives now.
“Why have you brought me here?” he demanded.
“This is the last time I will ever speak to you like this,” the Prophet said in her musical voice. “The Emissary’s task is nearing completion.”
What was that supposed to mean? Was he out of a spiritual job? Day after day, he’d managed to put aside his mystical assignment and do the duty he preferred—and now, right in the middle of trouble, this.
“You mean the war is coming to an end?” he asked.
“You have walked the path the Prophets have laid out for you, Benjamin. Do not falter now.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Know this, my son. Your journey’s end lies not before you, but behind you.”
Oh, fine. Sisko felt a very tangible groan rumble through his chest despite the dreamy circumstance. Why must highly advanced superbeings always speak in vague riddles? Why did they have to be the wind? Just once couldn’t they say, “Go over to this specific place and kick the behind off this specific person and come home and have a brew?”
“Captain? Captain?”
“I hate poetry,” he muttered. “I’m a Starfleet officer. Why can’t you just give me a direct order? And I refuse to look backward. The future isn’t set or I wouldn’t bother to get up in the morning. Do you hear me?”
His prophet-mother lowered her hands, and the light went away. The bridge filtered back to solidity before him.
“Captain, are you all right?”
Odo was watching him, his plastic face tight with concern.
Sisko thought about explaining, describing the vision forced upon him by his mystical connection. He thought about voicing the frustration of living two lives—one as a Starfleet captain with a real ship and solid crew to handle, the other as a mysterious floaty being from the Wormhole Collection, without awareness of concrete purpose. He’d come to realize that he didn’t like talk of destiny. He had defied prophesy before and was ready to do it again. He’d rather have free choice and make the honest wrong one.
“The Prophets just came to me in a vision,” he said bluntly, hoping it didn’t sound as silly in the receiving as it did in the saying.
Odo seemed cautious. “I take it they weren’t bringing good news.”
“I’m not sure,” Sisko muttered. “I suppose only time will tell.”
* * *
“Hello, Adami.”
Dukat didn’t wait for the Kai to turn at his greeting before walking right in on her. In fact, Kai Winn didn’t even look up from her reading of the Kosst Amojan. So she knew it was Dukat intruding upon her and was determined to let him know she was unimpressed. Ah, well.
“You’re back,” was her manner of greeting.
He wanted her to look up. He wanted her to see him as a Bajoran, a surgically altered Cardassian quite insisting upon looking like one of the native people on this planet. His clothing was ragged, caked with dust from the streets of Bajor. Somehow he was proud of that, proud that he had survived being the lowest of the low, the condemned, the downcast, and had yet somehow kept his identity through the great wringer of adversity. All his years as a Cardassian officer, eventually as high commander, leader of planets, and leader of fleets; through all the dozen changes of circumstance in the struggles between the Federation, the Alpha Quadrant Empires, the Dominion, and the Cardassians, through the many shifts of power—somehow this latest incarnation satisfied him most of all, for it proved he could go low and still return.
Would she speak to him? Was she still sufficiently insulted by the Prophets’ choice of Sisko as their Emissary instead of her
, or had she repented in the time Dukat had been banished to the streets?
He wanted to know, but he stayed back, on the opposite side of the room, near the door. He would never again go near that forbidden book. His eyes still stung with its vengeful magic.
“Is that all you have to say to me?” he asked eventually.
Kai Winn dawdled over her book, then finally looked up. “I see the Pah-wraiths have restored your sight.”
A warning triggered in Dukat’s head. Blindness had given him insights he never expected. He needed the Kai’s good graces. Resentment must be controlled. If she still resented the Prophets, if she would still help him free the anti-Prophet Pah-wraiths, then Sisko and the Prophets could be overthrown with a power that matched their own.
He hid his anger behind a smile. “The Pah-wraiths have forgiven my trespasses. They have accepted that my attempt to read the Kosst Amojan was a desperate mistake. I hope you can find it in your heart to do the same.”
The Kai leaned back in her chair and eyed him coldly. “Forgive you? I don’t forgive Cardassian war criminals.”
Dukat remained silent. Might as well take whatever she had to say. Hereafter they would both know the wound had been purged, that she had said what needed to be said.
“All you’ve ever done,” she continued after a moment, “is lie to me. Pretending to be a poor farmer from Bajor when in actuality you’re a Cardassian war criminal. To think I took Gul Dukat to my bed, one of the most hated men in Bajoran history—”
“I wasn’t lying when I offered you my heart,” he claimed bluntly.
“Of course not!” her scorn painted the room. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that I have completed my study of the text of the Kosst Amojan. Its secrets are now my secrets.”
That didn’t sound very hopeful, did it? It meant she had more power than he could have, and influence with the Pah-wraiths, which he had failed to acquire. She was the Kai, the religious leader of Bajor, and the Pah-wraiths had let her read their book without blinding her, while the Prophets had never even let her have a single vision and had chosen an offworlder as their representative.