“Ah. Here we are,” Garak said.
Yevir moved forward first, passing the inactive security devices, stepping over the dead guard, and stopped at the door. He found he had to yank hard on the massive portal. The door slowly swung wide and the brilliance beyond it washed over him like a mighty river. As his eyes slowly adjusted, he finally began to see what lay within the vast, brightly lit chamber.
His faith rewarded, Yevir was filled with a rapture more intense than any joy he had ever known…
19
Chief medical officer’s personal log, stardate 53580.5
Ezri tells me that all of us who were aboard the shuttle are about to go inside the big building we found floating out in space. Once we’re inside, we might be able to find a way to fix what’s wrong with me, and put Dax and Ezri back together.
I ask her whether this means Nog will go back to having to live with one leg. She won’t answer me. I tell her that I don’t see why Nog should have to lose his leg again, that it isn’t fair. Why can’t he stay home, on the Defiant, while Ezri and I go? I can feel my heart thumping fast, and I’m afraid.
Ezri’s trying to hide it, but I can tell that she’s afraid, too. And I want her not to be afraid so much that I pretend very hard that I’m not afraid.
Then I start thinking about Nog’s leg again. I can remember having to cut it off the first time, and the memory quickly makes me feel like crying.
I force myself not to cry because I don’t want her to be afraid. Because there’s nothing worse than being afraid.
Shar made a final check of the readings on his bridge science console, noting yet again that his calculations remained in agreement with those of Nog, Candlewood, T’rb, and the other science and engineering specialists. The complex motions of the icy Oort cloud objects now appeared to be a completely known quantity. The element of random chance had been reduced to as small a margin as possible—excluding, of course, the inevitable, minuscule quantum-level variances and measurement resolution errors that could always arise, causing one transporter relay’s signal to go awry, missing the next relay in the chain and thereby irrecoverably scattering the away team’s matter stream.
But he knew he could do nothing about any of those things. Such risks became irreducible at some level, beyond the ken of either brain or computer.
Shar rose and turned toward Vaughn, who sat in the captain’s chair, an anxious glint in his eye.
“Is everything ready, Mr. ch’Thane?”
Shar hesitated a beat before answering. “Aye, Captain. Chief Chao has confirmed that the first self-replicating transporter relay is already in place and operational on the first Oort cloud body.”
“You don’t sound very confident, Ensign.” Vaughn’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m sorry if I sound equivocal, sir. But as good as the numbers look, we are still operating on the very margins of what is possible. What we are about to attempt may work perfectly, or it may not. We still stand a good ten percent chance of losing everyone in the transporter beam. We have to face that.”
“Ten percent,” Vaughn said, frowning as he stroked his beard. “Versus the certainty of losing them if we don’t move ahead with Nog’s plan.”
Sitting behind the conn station, Tenmei displayed a look of anxiety that clearly mirrored Vaughn’s. Glancing at her chronometer, she said, “If we wait much longer, the cosmic rubber band will snap again and toss them into some other universe. Judging from the hourly increase in the quantum signature flux, it’ll probably be permanent the next time it happens.”
“Obviously,” Shar said through clenched teeth. He was growing weary of having the obvious pointed out to him—or perhaps he was simply growing weary. “But I would still feel more comfortable if we were to beam some inanimate objects in and out of the…cathedral.” He addressed his next words to Vaughn alone. “Before we attempt it on living people. Sir.”
“Couldn’t we use the first transporter relay to just replicate the entire series of relays needed to get the away team inside?” Tenmei asked. “That would be a good deal less risky than timing things so that the transporter relays materialize just ahead of the away team’s transporter beam.”
Vaughn looked thoughtful for a long moment, then shook his head. “If the Nyazen were to detect any use of the transporter too close to the cathedral, they’d most likely attack us right away. Then we’d never get a second opportunity to try to beam the away team in.” The commander’s gaze increased to an intensity that reminded Shar of his zhavey.“Give me your scientific appraisal, Ensign. In light of present circumstances, do the risks of proceeding appear acceptable to you?”
Shar knew well that the universe issued no guarantees, other than the eventual certainty of entropy and death. Nor did it care what became of starships, their clever engineers, or their intrepid crews.
Or the lives of three souls, now cast adrift. A trio of faces haunted him even now, weeping, glowering, raging. But these faces weren’t those of Nog, Bashir, or Ezri. They belonged to Dizhei and Anichent.
And Thriss.
“Well, Ensign?” Vaughn said, an edge of impatience in his voice. Shar noticed that every pair of eyes on the bridge was trained on him.
“I can see no alternative, sir,” Shar said. “We should proceed. With your permission, I’d like to assist Chief Chao and Lieutenant Bowers in transporter bay one.”
Nodding, Vaughn said, “Granted.”
As he entered the turbolift, Shar reflected on how little assistance he could actually offer at this point. The beam-out parameters were already set. The die had been cast. The operation would either save his friends or kill them. But at least he would have the opportunity first to bid them all farewell.
A privilege that Thriss had denied him.
Bowers felt his palms grow sweaty as he and Chief Jeannette Chao prepped the transporter console. Three of his colleagues—his friends—would shortly step onto the transporter pads and cast their fates to the whims of matter-stream physics that he didn’t even pretend to understand.
Give me a life-or-death tactical situation involving photon torpedoes over this any day.
He watched quietly as Shar and an environmental-suited Nog entered the room, carrying between them the artificial-environment tank in which the Dax symbiont floated. Silently, they mounted the transporter platform and placed the bulky container onto one of the pads before stepping back down toward the console. Nog and Shar immediately began double-checking the settings Bowers had just entered, too preoccupied even to exchange greetings with him. Bowers didn’t take it as an insult.
Ezri walked in with Dr. Bashir trudging beside her, both of them already clad in their EV suits, carrying their helmets at their sides. Ezri looked fairly anxious, which was to be expected. But the expression on the doctor’s face gave Bowers pause. Though his eyes were huge and fearful, Bowers thought he could see a bedrock of courage in them as well.
Either he’s made out of some pretty stern stuff, or he’s not smart enough anymore to understand the danger he’s about to step into. Still, Bowers wondered if Ezri was the one drawing emotional strength from Bashir, rather than the reverse.
Suddenly Bowers’s vision was overcome by an intense assault. His eyes blinked furiously, but he could see nothing but white for several seconds. “What the hell was that?” he shouted, his vision slowly returning.
Still blinking through tearing eyes, Bowers could see Chao shaking her head as if to clear it. Shar had his tricorder out and was slowly turning in a semicircle as he scanned. “That appeared to be another quantum effect,” he said, his antennae probing forward. “It was a sudden release of photons from other-dimensional space, caused by the shuttle crew’s rapidly oscillating quantum signatures.”
“I went someplace else again,” Ezri said, evidently unwilling to supply any details. She rubbed at her eyes with a thumb and forefinger.
“Me, too,” Nog said, sounding anxious.
Bashir was silent, looking more bewildered tha
n fearful.
“According to the ship’s combadge monitors, you all vanished for almost one-point-five seconds,” Shar said.
“I’ll take that flash of light to mean that we’ve come to the end of our, um, dimensional tether,” Nog said, his dazzled eyes still blinking rapidly. He patted the phaser on the side of his EV suit, evidently to reassure himself that it was still there. “We’d better get to the pads. Now.”
Ezri paused long enough to check her own phaser, then gingerly escorted Bashir onto the platform, helping him don his helmet and then putting on her own. She and Nog took turns checking the seals on all three EV suits. Then they took their places on pads flanking Dax’s container, with Ezri standing beside Bashir. After Nog took a moment to confirm that the subspace transponder mounted on the symbiont’s transport pod was operating, he signaled to Chief Chao that the away team was ready.
“Good luck,” Shar said from beside the console. To Bowers’s ear, it sounded more like a farewell.
Taking a deep breath, Chao energized the transporter. “Confirm activation of first transporter relay,” she said. “It’s transmitting its signal, beaming a second relay to the next Oort-cloud body in the sequence.”
“Beam us out,” Ezri said.
“Godspeed,” Bowers whispered as the beam engulfed the four shapes on the platform.
Vaughn clutched the arms of the captain’s chair so tightly that his fingers had grown numb. On the viewer before him was spread a velvet-black sky, bejeweled with countless points of light. In the left foreground drifted a computer-enhanced image of an icy, potato-shaped cometary body. To its right was a tactical image of the alien cathedral.
“The transporter beam’s away,” said Tenmei from the conn console, her voice businesslike and rock-steady.
“Passive scans confirm the beam has struck the first cometary body in the sequence,” said T’rb, leaning forward over the science console. “The first transporter relay has redirected the beam precisely toward the next body in the line. And the away team’s beam is right behind it.”
For a seeming eternity, T’rb gave a running commentary as each new transporter relay appeared on a comet body closer to the artifact’s position, followed in each instance a moment later by the arrival and retransmission of the away team’s transporter beam. Reduced to a coherent stream of energetic particles, the Sagan’ s crew was slowly working its way in an indirect, caroming zigzag pattern across a gulf of trackless space some ten million kilometers wide. With more than a little awe, Vaughn calculated that Nog and Shar had increased the transporter’s range by a factor of about twenty-five.
“How’s the signal attenuation, T’rb?” said John Candlewood from a secondary upper-bridge science console.
“Acceptable,” T’rb said, his voice and manner bereft of their usual jocularity. “So far.”
Moments later, Candlewood announced that the away team had just cleared the final relay—and that their transporter beam had finally reached the alien cathedral.
“Awaiting the combadge signals confirming beam-in, Captain,” Ensign Merimark said from the tactical station. Vaughn knew that the same relay network that had sent the away team would also carry their combadge signals after the materialization had been completed.
Long moments elapsed, time slowly piling up in drifts around Vaughn. What had surely been half a minute or less since the beam-out had begun seemed to be taking hours. We can’t have failed. We can’t have come this far only to scatter their molecules across the outskirts of some gods-forsaken Gamma Quadrant system.
“Anything, Mr. Merimark?” Vaughn said, his voice scarcely above a whisper. The relief tactical officer turned in her seat to face him with a stricken expression, her hand on her earpiece.
“Nothing yet, sir. I—”
A strident klaxon interrupted her, in concert with the urgent flashing of an alarm indicator on her comm panel.
Merimark’s smile was triumphant. “Confirming receipt of four tight-beam subspace blips, Captain.” The bridge was suddenly awash in the sound of applause, and T’rb gave out an enthusiastic war whoop.
They’re aboard the cathedral. Vaughn slumped backward in his chair, just for a moment. A tremendous weight had just fallen from his shoulders, though he knew that the mission was still far from complete.
“All right, people,” Vaughn said as order quickly restored itself. “We still have the problem of recovering the away team once they signal that they’re ready to leave.”
If they can signal when they need an evac. And a great deal else can still go wrong between now and then.
“Mr. T’rb,” Vaughn said, leaning forward and facing the science station. “Have the Nyazen blockade ships detected the away team’s signals?”
After glancing quickly at the science panel, T’rb shook his head. “No, sir. Given the subspace vibrations of these Oort cloud bodies, it should have been pretty hard to distinguish them from the galactic subspace background noise—unless you happen to be listening for them, the way we were. It’s highly unlikely that anybody else would even recognize them for what they were.”
“It’s also highly unlikely that three Starfleet officers would be yanked toward umpty-million parallel dimensions by an ancient alien construct,” Vaughn said. Sometimes these brilliant science-specialist types needed to be reminded of the dangers of overconfidence.
“Aye, Captain,” T’rb said, sounding chastened.
Addressing the entire bridge crew, Vaughn said, “Maintain yellow alert, but keep our shields down for the moment. Watch those Nyazen ships for any hostile moves. If they so much as dump their waste overboard, I want to know about it.” He punched a button on the arm of his chair. “Vaughn to transporter bay one.”
“Bowers here, Captain.”
“Maintain a constant transporter lock on the away team.”
“Not a problem, sir, unless we have to change our position in a hurry. But we can’t maintain the lock if we’re forced to move out of transporter range of the first relay unit.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Vaughn out.”
Merimark spoke up in alarmed tones. “Four of the Nyazen blockade ships have broken away from the main group, Captain. The Nyazen flagship is leading them. They’re approaching us at high impulse speeds, close to warp one. They’ll be on top of us in thirty seconds. And they’re powering up their compression disruptors.”
“Our shields can probably handle a simultaneous barrage from four of them, Captain,” Tenmei said. “For a while, at least. But extensive combat maneuvering might break the transporter lock.”
“The flagship is hailing us on subspace bands,” Merimark said.
“On screen,” Vaughn said.
The starscape fluttered for a fraction of a second, to be replaced almost instantly by a view of the bridge of the Nyazen flagship. It was a collection of blocky shapes whose functions were obscure. In the foreground stood—or perhaps sat—a blotchy, off-white figure, visible only from the shoulders up. An inarticulate bellow issued from the creature’s oval mouth, and its whiplike limbs twirled in apparent outrage.
“Firing of weapons at the cathedral/anathema is not acceptable practice,” shouted the Nyazen commander, its voice rendered into incongruously mellow, bell-like sounds by the universal translator. “Withdraw from this system presently, or face decompression/discorporation.”
So they did detect the transporter beam, Vaughn thought, wondering if they possessed transporter technology themselves. Judging from their instant assumption of an attack, he concluded that they probably did not. But he also knew that he was in no position to tell the Nyazen the whole truth—not unless he wanted to provoke an angry reprisal by beings determined to protect their sacred object from outsiders.
Vaughn raised his hands in what he hoped his counterpart would see as a gesture of peace. “I assure you, we fired no weapons at the cathedral.”
“Lies/prevarications,” the alien said. “Energy beams directed into cathedral/anathema
originated on your vessel. Withdraw!” The creature’s image vanished.
“The Nyazen commander has closed the channel,” Merimark said. “And they’re opening fire!”
“Red alert! Evasive maneuvers!” Eight decades of training and experience immediately shifted Vaughn from peacemaker to warrior.
Tenmei hastily tapped commands into her board, and the bridge shook fairly hard a moment later. Warning klaxons blared.
“Two direct hits on our forward shields,” Merimark said. “But they’re holding. Return fire?”
“Not yet. Mr. Bowers, how’s the transporter lock?”
Bowers’s voice came through the intercom, an agitated edge underlying it. “We’re doing our best to maintain it, Captain. But we won’t be able to keep it up much longer unless things settle down in a hurry.”
“Understood.”
“More of the Nyazen vessels are heading our way, Captain,” Merimark said.
The bridge rocked again, more roughly this time; the viewer flared with a painful brightness, a half second ahead of the automatic light filters. “At least five direct hits, fore and amidships,” Merimark said, one hand hovering over the weapons controls as she struggled to evade further hostile fire. “Shields down to eighty-two percent. Return fire?”
“No,” Vaughn said. “Just stay ahead of them.”
A deep rumbling sound briefly drowned out everything else, until Vaughn heard Merimark’s shout rise above it. “Aft shields are down! Ablative shielding’s taking some damage as well.”
The tumult and noise faded somewhat, though Tenmei still worked frantically to evade the hostile fleet, obviously paying particular attention to safeguarding the newly vulnerable stern section. The lights failed, replaced seconds later with red-tinted emergency illumination. An overhead conduit ruptured in response to another salvo, and ozone-tinged vapors filled the bridge. Vaughn coughed, trying to focus past his discomfort.
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