Over the next few seconds, several more salvos struck the Defiant’ s shields, including one that apparently got all the way through to the ablative hull armor before burning itself out. Then the attacks immediately trailed off as the Nyazen fleet began opening fire on their opposite numbers.
Vaughn watched as the viewer split its view; in addition to the face of the indecisive Nyazen commander, it also presented a tableau of two fairly evenly matched fleets bringing all their tubes to bear against one another. And in the unfathomable space beyond the warring spacefleets—one committed to destroying a much-feared anathema, another acting to defend its most sacred cathedral—the inexplicable spacebar artifact continued its heedless, eternal tumble across the dimensions.
The Nyazen captain had evidently seen enough. “This one agrees/assents,” it said, then vanished from the screen.
Vaughn smiled a canny gambler’s smile. “You heard the man, Tenmei. Bring us into transporter range. Shar, start scanning the thing’s interior for our people. Leishman, get those phasers up and running.”
The battle had been at a near stalemate from the beginning. But thanks to Tenmei’s skillful flying, some inspired jury-rigging by Celeste, Leishman, and Van Buskirk—not to mention Bowers’s pinpoint targeting—two of the Defiant’ s four pulse phaser cannons very quickly encouraged a critical handful of the D’Naali ships to withdraw to a safer distance. Vaughn was relieved to note that all it had taken to accomplish this was several shots across the bow.
Watching the massed Nyazen forces chase away the remainder of the D’Naali flotilla, Vaughn considered the difficulties that still lay ahead. Once our common threat is gone, the Nyazen are certain to turn on us.
Shar spoke up from the primary science console. “Captain! I believe I’ve made sensor contact with our away team.”
Bowers turned to Vaughn, displaying a look of delighted surprise. “I’m receiving combadge signals from inside the artifact. They’re the prearranged evac signals, sir. They’re very weak, and extremely red-shifted, as though moving away from us at great speed.”
“They could be temporally distorted by the artifact,” Shar said. “There’s no way to tell how long they’ve been transmitting.”
Vaughn was beside himself, but kept his emotions in check. “How many signals are you getting?”
“Two,” Bowers said, intent on both his earpiece and a complex wave-form display on his instrument panel. “No, three. And one subspace transponder.”
Dax’s transport pod. Vaughn grinned. It was about time for some good luck. Where better than a cathedral to go looking for a miracle?
“Good work, people.” Vaughn hit the intercom. “Vaughn to transporter bay one. Chief Chao, I want you to lock onto the away team. Shar and Hunter will feed you the coordinates.”
Chao took a moment to respond. “Sir? That last hit seems to have overloaded the entire transporter system. I can’t get a lock, either from here or with the secondary system.”
“Half the Nyazen blockade fleet is coming about in our direction,” Bowers said, not sounding a bit surprised. “Weapons powering up.”
“Shields?” Vaughn asked.
Bowers shook his head. “They’re still in pretty rough shape, sir.”
“We’ve still got warp power,” Tenmei said. “I can get us clear of these guys so fast they’ll think they’re hallucinating.”
So much for miracles. At my age, I ought to know better.
Vaughn summarily banished that train of thought. “We’ve also got an away team to rescue.”
“And no working transporters,” Tenmei reminded him.
Vaughn stared into the screen at the approaching ships. It had been a long time since he had recalled his rather unhappy Starfleet Academy Kobayashi Maru test so vividly. So it’s come to this.
“We don’t have much time,” Tenmei said. “Should I take us out, sir?”
Shar abruptly sat bolt upright in his seat, as though he’d just received a sizable electrical shock.
Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “Lieutenant?”
“We still have one working transporter,” Shar said, frantically entering commands into his console.
Tenmei scowled at the science officer. “Jeannette said the secondary bay was down as well.”
Vaughn suddenly realized what Shar meant: the Sagan.
“Do it. Fast.”
Shar nodded. “Remotely engaging the Sagan’ s transporter system.”
“Tenmei, lower the shields and keep them off our backs for at least a few more seconds. Then get us the hell out of here on Shar’s mark. Maximum warp.”
Tenmei flashed Vaughn her best I-love-a-challenge smirk. “I’ll do my best, Captain.”
As she refocused her attention on her console, Vaughn smiled gently. He expected no less from his only daughter.
Krissten received only a scant moment’s notice from the bridge before the away team members began materializing, one by one, in a great sprawl across the center of the medical bay floor.
The first to appear was Ezri, her skin looking as pale as death through the helmet of her environmental suit. An instant later, the transport pod containing the Dax symbiont shimmered into existence beside her; its liquid interior sloshed audibly, as though the small creature within had become greatly agitated. Ensign Juarez’s quick tricorder scan immediately revealed the reason for Ezri’s frightening pallor: Her body was rapidly shutting down because of the absence of the symbiont, which, luckily enough, appeared healthy. As she carefully laser-scalpeled the EV suit from Ezri’s body, Krissten breathed a silent prayer that host and symbiont could be reunited before the Trill woman expired.
But before either nurse could begin hoisting Ezri’s limp form onto a biobed, a second humanoid figure materialized on the floor: Nog, lying unconscious, his environmental suit’s left leg conspicuously flattened, folded, and empty. Krissten could see no punctures, blood, or other signs of trauma. But the regenerated leg was nonetheless gone, as though it had never been.
Through his helmet, she could see that Nog was smiling.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Juarez said, apparently thinking out loud. “Whatever that weird object out there did to them seems to have just un-happened.”
The ship suddenly rocked, then settled down. Under attack again, no doubt, Krissten thought as she and Juarez concentrated on moving Ezri very carefully onto one of the biobeds. Nog seemed stable enough for the moment. But even a mere medical technician could see that Ezri was dying.
Where’s Dr. Bashir?
Juarez monitored Ezri’s vital signs, shaking his head grimly. “We can’t wait for Julian to return. We’ve got to get the symbiont back into Ezri’s body now.”
“I agree,” Krissten said, swinging open the lid to Dax’s box. “Um, any idea how we go about doing that?” Assisting Bashir in removing the symbiont was one thing. Reversing the procedure without even a real surgeon’s supervision was quite another matter.
Krissten looked to Ezri’s chalk-white face, irrationally hoping to find guidance there. I’m not trained for this procedure, Ezri. Neither of us is. We can only guess at it.
Krissten looked up and studied the biobed readouts. Every indicator on the panel was steadily plunging. Several bio-alarms pertaining to blood pressure, respiration, and major organ functions had begun sounding shrilly. Hot tears of frustration rose in Krissten’s eyes, but she forestalled them with an exercise of pure will. There was far too much at stake right now to allow herself to fall apart. Determined to put forth her best effort, she turned back toward the symbiont’s transport pod—
—and collided with Julian Bashir, who must have just materialized behind her, the noise of his beam-in drowned out by the numerous medical alarms. She hadn’t even heard him remove the helmet from his EV suit. He caught her in his arms, steadying her before releasing her. She stared for a moment into his dark eyes.
He was in there. Restored. She smiled up at him, and this time she didn’t try to fig
ht the tears.
She saw Bashir looking past her, first at Ezri, then at her bio-readings. He blanched when he saw how near death she was, but only for a split second. From then on, he was in full-on trauma-team mode.
“Ensign Juarez,” he said, glancing at the insensate figure sprawled on the floor. “Please see to Lieutenant Nog.” Falling back on her training, Krissten reached for her flame-colored trauma smock and began prepping Ezri for surgery. Meanwhile, Bashir stripped off his environmental suit and donned sterile surgical garb with preternatural speed. Once properly suited up, he reached into the open transport pod and gently lifted out the dripping-wet, russet-colored symbiont.
“Exoscalpel,” he said.
Krissten handed him the instrument. “Sir?” she said.
He paused in his labors for only a moment. “Yes?”
“It’s good to have you back.”
26
Two hundred and fourteen, Joseph Sisko thought, updating his tally as he carefully made his way down the antebellum mansion’s polished hardwood staircase. One-hundred and twenty-three.
Keeping track of the numbers had become a daily ritual, one that Joseph observed every morning as soon as he realized he was awake. He had become religious about it from the beginning; it had given him something to focus on other than the procession of new aches and ailments that each new day brought. No matter that carrying the ever-increasing weight of those days threatened to crush his frail bones. He had to count the days, dragging them with him wherever he went.
Two hundred and fourteen. One hundred and twenty-three. The first figure represented the number of days that had elapsed since his only son, Benjamin Lafayette Sisko, had disappeared into that damned alien hellhole near Bajor.
The second marked the span of days since Benjamin’s only son—Joseph’s beloved grandson, Jake—had gone into the wormhole after his father, only to be swallowed up without a trace as well.
Passing through the broad atrium and into the kitchen, Joseph contemplated the sunlight that streamed in through the French windows, and yet brought him no joy. The August day—was it August already?—was already shaping up to be hot and muggy, but would surely be easier to face after he’d had his morning cup of coffee. He glanced up at the old-fashioned analog clock hanging above the range. Twelve fifty-five.
Afternoon coffee, then. He shrugged, then set about grinding the beans, ignoring the cold, persistent ache in his fingers, his neck, his shoulders. His soul. Morning. Noon. Night. What was the damned difference?
He paused as the water boiled and the coffee brewed, looking around the kitchen. Nothing of any consequence had changed here in years. On the far wall, above the sink, hung a framed photograph of the façade of his restaurant. The building that housed Sisko’s Creole Kitchen for the past quarter-century had been a landmark in New Orleans’ French Quarter for more than two hundred years. For Joseph, working in his kitchen among his loyal staff—serving a daily procession of new and regular customers—had always provided refuge from life’s troubles. During later years, marked by heart trouble and too-frequent entreaties from employees, friends, and customers that he slow down, he found in the charming old building a comforting reminder of easier times, when Judith and Ben were still children. In those days, he’d never heard of shape-shifters or the Dominion, and never had cause to consider the casual damage that Starfleet could inflict on ordinary people who were just trying to make lives for themselves.
I raised you to be a chef, Ben. For all the good it did me.
On the shelf beside the sink lay an upended plastic bottle, its cap askew. The heart medicine. Joseph had been planning on getting the prescription refilled for the better part of a week now, but it hadn’t seemed all that urgent. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he heard Ben’s voice rising in wrath: Damn it, Dad! Ask somebody on your staff to help you. Can’t you cooperate just one time?
The glare from the early-afternoon sun revealed the thickening patina of dust that covered the picture’s glass frame. He reached up to touch Ben’s inscription of one of Joseph’s own favorite aphorisms: “Worry and doubt are the greatest enemies of a great chef.” His finger came away streaked with a paste of old dirt and cooking grease. Searching his memories, he found he couldn’t recall the last time he’d given this place a really good cleaning. Perhaps this, too, simply didn’t matter all that much anymore.
A few minutes later, Joseph stood before the kitchen sink, holding a mug of hot, strong coffee in his hand. The hand trembled sharply, and a copious splash of near-boiling liquid forced him to place the cup on the counter. Cursing, he plunged his scalded hand beneath a stream of cold water—and glimpsed his own reflection in one of the metal pans he’d left on the drying rack.
He shut the water off, staring at the gaunt image he’d been trying so hard to avoid seeing in the bathroom mirror over the past few months. He wondered when exactly he had decided to stop shaving, but couldn’t recall. And when had his hair gone so completely white?
Joseph lifted the pan and stuffed it haphazardly into one of the kitchen’s lower cabinets. The motion seemed to have displaced several other objects located farther back on the shelf; he ignored the sounds of tumbling crockery.
The house stood silent again, except for the thready beat of his own heart and the hum of the wall clock that tirelessly measured out his remaining hours and days.
Was I supposed to do something today? He picked up his coffee, more carefully this time, and considered the coming evening without any real enthusiasm. The dinner crowd would arrive tonight, just as it always had, first in dribs and drabs, and later in waves. It would be just another night, indistinguishable from the years of nights on either side of it.
Enough of this. He set his half-full cup aside and pulled his thin cotton robe tightly around his narrow frame. Opening the blinds above the kitchen sink, he looked out into the vegetable garden. The sight immediately jogged his memory, bringing the day’s agenda to the front of his thoughts. Walking to the back door, he slipped his feet into the work boots he’d left on the mat. Grabbing the gardening gloves from the peg beside the door, he ventured outside.
Jays and yellowhammers sang through the green canopy of longleaf pines and cypresses as Joseph deliberately picked his way down the narrow stone steps, wary of falling. Soon he was approaching the neat, green rows that had called to him from the kitchen window. Looking closely, he could see that all was not well in the garden today. Ropy, hairy strands of grape-scented kudzu vine had wormed their way through the neatly manicured rows of squash, cayenne peppers, and new potatoes, like some implacable Jem’Hadar road-building project. We can send starships to the ends of the galaxy. But we still can’t do a blessed thing about these damned weeds.
There was something oddly reassuring about that.
Donning his gloves, he knelt on aching knees, pausing as his heart began to race disconcertingly. Minutes later, after he was satisfied that the worst of the discomfort had passed, he thrust his gnarled fingers into the black earth and got to work.
Gabrielle Vicente let herself into the house with the emergency key that Judith Sisko had surreptitiously given her during her visit last Easter. That day, Mr. Sisko’s daughter had asked every member of the Creole Kitchen’s staff—out of earshot of her father, of course—to keep a particularly close eye on Joseph. Gabrielle had been among the first to notice the old man’s gradual deterioration since he had learned of his son’s disappearance last Thanksgiving. Then, some four months later, when his grandson Jake had also gone missing, Mr. Sisko’s decline had grown precipitous.
She stepped into the foyer, fearing the worst. “Mr. Sisko?”
There was no reply. Other than the clicking of her flat shoes on the ancient hardwood floor, the house was as silent as a tomb. The thought made her wince, and she banished it.
She continued calling out as she made her way through the large living room and entered the kitchen. A cup of coffee sat on the countertop beside the sink. She touched it, n
oting that it was still warm.
She heaved a sigh of relief.
Then she raised her eyes to the kitchen window and looked out across the vegetable garden.
Joseph Sisko lay sprawled in the dirt, silent and unmoving.
27
Captain’s Log, stardate 53581.0
The Defiant has finally passed the apex of its mission of exploration in the Gamma Quadrant. As we loop past the mysterious alien artifact—whose precise status as either a cathedral or a religious anathema I leave for better minds than mine to determine—our new heading will take us beyond System GQ-12475, bringing the Gamma Quadrant mouth of the wormhole ever nearer. At last we are homeward bound.
But our investigations of this still largely unknown quarter of the galaxy are far from finished; the Defiant’s new trajectory will carry us through dozens of sectors into which no Alpha Quadrant humanoid has ever ventured before. The wonders and terrors of these past weeks haven’t blunted the desire of the crew to see what lies over the next hill, and the one after that. The feeling of anticipation I sense from everyone aboard remains nothing short of exhilarating. Even—or perhaps especially —among those whose lives were most profoundly affected by our encounter with the alien cathedral: the Defiant’s first officer, Lieutenant Ezri Dax; chief medical officer Julian Bashir; and Lieutenant Nog, my chief engineer.
The readings, measurements, and holorecordings the crew has taken of the cathedral ought to keep the Federation’s best physicists and architects—and maybe even the psychiatrists as well—busy for decades, if not longer. I find myself almost wishing it were possible to tow the thing home—until I stop to consider the havoc the artifact wrought among my crew.
Since sovereign jurisdiction over the object has been claimed by both the D’Naali and the Nyazen—two local sentient species who have for millennia used armed spacefleets to enforce their conflicting claims—it is my judgment that any further visitation by Starfleet personnel would be inappropriate. Certainly, neither group wants us around, at least at present. Perhaps one day the D’Naali and the Nyazen will reach an accord and invite us to investigate the object further. But until that time, my official recommendation to Starfleet Command and the Federation Council is to enforce a strict hands-off policy. And gods help any other alien crew that should happen to blunder into it.
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