STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change

by Marco Palmieri, Editor

  He slurped down a warm raktajino while he finished getting ready. There was one more thing that he needed to do before he left. “Jake Sisko to Captain Sisko.”

  “Yes Jake?”

  “Dad, I want to give Dukat a copy of Ziyal’s biography.”

  Jake presumed that the silence that answered his statement was his father thinking it over. “Are you sure Jake?” his father replied.

  Would I ask if I wasn’t sure, Dad?

  “Yes.”

  “All right. But I want Odo with you.”

  Jake smiled, albeit weakly, for the first time in over a day. “Thanks.”

  * * *

  Jake had been surprised when he learned Quark had offered to host the memorial. But then, wasn’t this where he had his own funeral?

  The turnout was dismal. Although the tables in Quark’s had been cleared away and the chairs set up to face the dabo stage, most were empty. Jake walked in and saw that most of the senior staff had already arrived, but very few others. Where is everybody?

  He nearly fell into the closest chair, blinking away fatigue. He was fighting a losing battle with consciousness, and had consumed far too much raktajino. His hands shook as he held on to the padds.

  Jake heard people around him talking, but his mind barely registered what was said. His eyes were focused on the framed charcoal rendering where the dabo wheel usually stood: “The Seat of Power.”

  His father stepped up to the dais, speaking words he didn’t hear to the pitifully meager gathering of mourners. Jake watched as speaker after speaker followed: Kira, Garak, even a representative from the university on Bajor. They all rambled on about Ziyal, talking about what they thought she was, what she wanted, what she believed. Jake felt the padds in his hands. He knew all he needed to know about that.

  When it was all over, Jake went off alone and sought out the cargo bay where Ziyal’s sarcophagus awaited transport to Bajor. Dad used his influence as Emissary to find a quiet spot in Kendra Province where Ziyal could be laid to rest.

  Padds in hand, he stepped up to the sarcophagus. Jake had heard it was considered a dishonor for aliens to view Cardassian remains, but no one would ever know. And truth be told, at the moment, he didn’t care. What he needed to do was too important. He took a deep breath, and lifted the lid.

  Even in death, she still looked like a flower floating on the breeze. He lifted Ziyal’s cold hand just enough to slide the padd underneath. Then, reaching into his vest, he pulled out the blue scrap of cloth and unfolded it, exposing her mother’s earring. He had thought to leave it with her, but now found that he couldn’t go back on his promise. Wrapping it back up, he gently placed the earring back inside his vest.

  I’ll keep it safe for you, Ziyal. I promise.

  Dukat was curled up in the corner of his cell, muttering on as if the recording that had begun playing in the corridor were on an endless loop.

  Jake nodded to Odo, and the force field that kept the Cardassian securely contained came down.

  “Ziyal,” Dukat whispered. “Is that you?”

  Jake stepped into the cell, his heart in his throat. “No.” He couldn’t help thinking that Dukat had, in a matter of hours, lost everything. He couldn’t go back to Cardassia. His wife had taken their children away because of Ziyal, and by staying behind, he lost his position in Cardassia’s Dominion-run government. He couldn’t live on the station now that it was back under Federation control. He didn’t even have his old ship, the Groumall, anymore. All he had was Ziyal, and memories of everything she’d been.

  Jake could understand that much. He had the same memories, and they weren’t tainted by the blind devotion of a father toward a daughter—or vice versa. He could remember all of Ziyal’s wonderful idealism, her sincere belief that she could bring Cardassia and Bajor together, her exuberance over her work. It was all part of the natural wonder that was Ziyal.

  He tried to imagine what it might have been like if he had lost his father, and there had been too many missions when Jake thought he would never return. What would he do then?

  For that matter, if it had been the other way around, and Jake had been the one killed, what would Ziyal have done? Jake’s fingers fiddled with the padd. He knew what Ziyal would have done. If she had it in her power, she’d have given Benjamin Sisko back whatever of his son she could manage.

  Jake cued up the first image, “The Seat of Power.”

  “Dukat,” he began, “I know it isn’t much, but I finished the story about her.”

  He held the padd out for Dukat to see, placing it in the Cardassian’s hand when he didn’t reach out for himself.

  “Thank you,” Dukat whispered, clutching the padd as if it were a lifeline. “I’m so sorry. Things will be fine. We’ll go home, Ziyal—”

  Jake winced as he saw how the mere mention of Dukat’s daughter’s name sent him into another fit of convulsive sobs, curling his body even further into the corner of the cell. The hum of the force field that served as the cell’s door provided a strange harmonic with the Cardassian’s whimpers. Dukat’s entire demeanor softened as he looked at the padd’s screen.

  “My sweet Ziyal.”

  The Devil You Know

  Heather Jarman

  Historian’s note: This story is set after the events of the sixth-season episode “In the Pale Moonlight,” in the days leading up to “Time’s Orphan.”

  Heather Jarman

  Heather Jarman grew up fantasizing about being a writer the way many little girls fantasize about being ballerinas and princesses; she had all the lyrics to the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” memorized by age six. But in her wildest suburban childhood dreams, she had no idea how Saturday afternoons spent lazing in her beanbag chair watching Star Trek would dramatically affect her lifelong aspiration.

  Indeed, the Star Trek universe played host to her professional fiction debut, This Gray Spirit, the second novel in the critically acclaimed Mission: Gamma series of Deep Space Nine books set after the TV series. Her follow-up, Balance of Nature, is part of the Star Trek S.C.E. series. In 2004, her second anthology contribution (a short story coauthored with Jeffrey Lang) will be published in Tales of the Dominion War. She’s also currently writing an original young adult novel.

  She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and four daughters. She rarely finds time to lounge about in beanbag chairs these days, much to her deep regret.

  Jadzia asked to be transported directly to her quarters. Walking through the corridors of Deep Space 9 during the busiest part of the station’s day would be a bad idea under the circumstances. Worf would have left for his shift more than an hour ago, sparing her from having to explain why she’d been gone all night, never mind the blood spatters on her uniform.

  As the familiar walls materialized, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d been dreaming. Everything looked as it always had—the holos from her wedding, the couch whose upholstery she’d always hated but had been too lazy to replace, the gleaming bat’leth mounted on the wall—all of it looked the same, so why did it feel so alien? Her brain and body, addled by fatigue and hours of standing on her feet, offered no answers. Pushing a stray lock away from her face, she felt gummy residue crusted on her hair. She combed it out with her fingers, examined her hand, smudged with coagulated blood and bone-white grit, then wiped it off on her uniform.

  Tossing the datachip she’d been clutching onto the coffee table, she removed her pips and her combadge, stripped off her uniform, and threw it into the recycler. How did I come to be in this place? she wondered, not for the first time. She hadn’t had an answer yesterday, or the day before, or the week before that, and she saw no reason to expect one today.

  The thought would keep—long enough to take a shower, at any rate. Naked, she padded off toward the bathroom.

  A nap might be good. Assuming she could sleep. Sleep hadn’t been much of a refuge lately. Heading straight to her duty shift might be a better idea. The list of tasks awaiting her attention would help
her avoid Benjamin’s questions until she’d figured out plausible answers for him. By staying busy, blending into the ops routine, she could effectively vanish from notice into the sea of bodies and computers and desperately important duties that all good Starfleet soldiers were about these days. She almost laughed aloud at that last thought. A good Starfleet soldier. Looking in the mirror, she traced her reflection.

  “Who are you?” Jadzia muttered as she crouched down beside the stasis chamber. She activated her tricorder and took a reading off the transmitter embedded inside. Comparing the name and the numerical code on her tricorder with the list on her padd yielded a match: ‘Shavnah Hakim, human, age 72’ lay within the chamber. She dropped to her knees where she could access the next one. One down, a hundred fifty to go. “So Quark was okay with converting his wine cellar into a morgue?” she asked her companion, still incredulous at the Ferengi’s generosity. When she’d heard how quickly Quark complied with Benjamin’s request, she wondered how much arm-twisting and bribery had been required.

  Looking up from his own padd, Julian peered at her through the space between two stacked stasis chambers in the adjacent row. “Apparently, wartime brings out latent nobility—even in Quark—”

  Jadzia arched an eyebrow.

  “—and the captain might have smoothed the way with a sufficient sum of latinum,” Julian confessed. “But you have to admit that moving his collection of rare libations and artful erotica holoprograms to accommodate several hundred corpses—”

  “—is still impressive,” she said, pursing her lips. On every side the rounded chambers silently rippled row upon row, rising and falling dark matte waves, glints of blue light reflecting on their smooth faces. The ventilation fan’s soft chu-chu-chu stirred the air like a ship churning through deep water. Only the shuffle of their feet against the gratings and the occasional irregular breath hinted that any living creature worked in this chilly, dimly lit place. Ironically, the cargo bay reminded her a little of the underground caverns where the symbiont pools were located on Trill. How life-changing illumination, in the form of symbionts, could emerge from such dark, murky beginnings never ceased to astonish her. Besides herself and the other station personnel who had occasion to work down here, nothing living would emerge from this place.

  Jadzia sighed deeply and scanned the next chamber. “I didn’t even know we had this many stasis units.” Immediately, she regretted her shallow-sounding words. As if a tragedy like this could be measured in supply statistics. She mentally corrected: this many dead.

  “We don’t. The Bajoran Health Ministry made them available after the Moon Zephyr was attacked. We hoped we’d need them to stabilize survivors requiring medical treatment. Instead ...” Julian’s voice trailed off. He sighed.

  Jadzia checked “Tihana Elkhur, Bajoran, age 36” off her padd. At least he won’t have far to travel to go home. “Death is the currency of war.”

  “I’d rather it be dealt less freely,” Julian said. “Thanks, by the way—volunteering your off-duty time to help out.”

  “It’s not a big deal. When Kira told me that she’d helped Dr. Girani identify the bodies—” Jadzia shuddered, imagining what a gruesome task that must have been. “Helping you compile the database was a small thing.”

  “Anyone with friends or family aboard Zephyr who hasn’t already heard the news probably expects the worst, but allowing them to claim the remains can offer them closure, even comfort. Hardly a small thing.”

  I’ve died seven times, Jadzia thought as she moved to the next row of chambers. Preferring instead to focus on the business of living, she seldom contemplated Dax’s previous host deaths. Random, rapidly cycling scenes—from Lela’s peaceful good-byes to her children to the madness consuming Joran at his end—occasionally broke into her consciousness during combat or other high-intensity experiences. She grew accustomed to the sometimes disquieting images the same way she learned to cope with sensations evoked by a whiff of fragrance worn by one of Emony’s lovers or a phrase of music loved by Tobin: She embraced them as part of the rich tapestry that was Dax. But lately, almost without her being conscious of it, her perspective had changed. Her aversion to probing death memories had given way to a grim, albeit pragmatic, curiosity.

  She first noticed her thoughts wandering when Worf was away with Martok. The usual Klingon posturing would filter into their good-byes—about it being a good day to die and how they’d meet at Sto-Vo-Kor’s gates should this be Worf’s last battle. Their parting words were offered in teasing tones and with half-smiles between kisses. Then he would leave, and slowly, the totality of their separation would creep up on her, forcing her to consider the worst possibilities. Truth: She could lose him. He could lose her. She didn’t want to imagine a life without Worf, but hundreds of years of experience didn’t leave her a lot of room for denial. Recalling the process of death and dying might help her prepare to accept whatever fate handed her.

  She would lie alone in the dark, unearthing long-buried memories. ... The timid, frightened squeezes of a child’s hand slowly giving way to numbness ... agonizing brilliance of light in an exploding shuttle ... senses drowning in cascading ecstasy ... the blurry haze as the passageway connecting two minds misted ...

  Inevitably a comm chirp would stir her from her contemplations and, in a shadow of the knot in her chest, she imagined Dax twisting painfully inside her. This is it. This is the moment. And she would steel herself in anticipation of the blows inflicted by Benjamin’s words telling her that part of her had died far away.

  Of course the dreaded message had never come.

  But Jadzia learned anew with each false alarm that no memory could possibly prepare her; each host, like every individual in the universe, had to fumble their own way through death. One aspect of my life I share in common with everyone in this cargo bay, she thought.

  Moving on to the next stasis chamber, she resumed the cataloging routine, beginning with scanning the ID transmitter affixed to the body. She stopped abruptly, pulse thudding in her ears, her thoughts stammering. What—wait, I—this has to be—read it again. Read. It—Her eyes bore into the display.

  The tricorder slipped out of her hands, clattering onto the floor. Her knees gave way. Spine against the shelving, she slid to the floor, her knees tucked against her body, her hands falling limply to her sides.

  “Jadzia!”

  Julian sounded worried. She should reassure him. Never mind me, she wanted to say, I’m fine. She sensed him crouching down next her, touching her shoulder, but she didn’t see him, the black waves swimming before her eyes blinding her to all but the dark.

  “Are you ill?” He started to wave a medical scanner over her head.

  She blinked a few times, breathed deeply and turned her gaze on her friend. “I just—I didn’t—” She took another breath. “—I didn’t know he was on the Zephyr. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he might have—” Trying to slow down her racing thoughts, she took a deep breath and swallowed hard.

  Julian picked up the fallen tricorder, studying the readout.

  “ ‘Setheleyis th’Rasdeth, Andorian, 58.’ You knew him.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone back without him,” Jadzia whispered. Off Julian’s questioning look, she explained, “To the initiate program. When I washed out the first time, Starfleet sent me to a counselor. My commander believed, correctly, that I was pretty depressed about it. She didn’t want it interfering with my job performance ...” Jadzia leaned forward, resting her chin on her knees, smiling as she remembered. “Dr. th’Rasdeth tended to take an unconventional approach. The occasional transport to Rio for a ‘pick-me-up’ trip. Wonderful seven-course meals. Music. The hours he spent—I’ve rarely seen a counselor so committed to his work.” Smiling at the memory, she looked at Julian and presented him with her best imitation of th’Rasdeth’s serious face, his whispering voice: “ ‘If you don’t go back to the initiate program, you’ll destine yourself to a lifetime of doubt and wondering “if.”
<
br />   Dropping down on the floor next to her, Julian picked up the padd, ostensibly searching for information on th’Rasdeth. His eyes lit up in recognition. “He taught at the academy, didn’t he? I believe I took a course from him on the benefits of positive visualization in psychotherapy.”

  Jadzia nodded. “He wanted nothing to do with the war, and left the academy last year. He didn’t dispute that the Federation’s military response was justified, but he considered himself a pacifist and had come to believe that he’d compromised those principles by working for Starfleet. So he resumed his civilian practice in the colonies closest to the Cardassian border, helping the populations cope with the traumas of wartime.” She ran her fingers over the chamber’s face, imagining the feel of his warm hand resting atop her cool one. “In our last subspace exchange, we’d decided he’d come for a visit next month. I wanted him to meet Worf.”

  “I’m sorry, Jadzia. Really.” Julian squeezed her hand.

  She studied his face, saw the sincerity there. What a dear he is, she thought, feeling a flush of gratitude for their years of friendship. He meant well, Jadzia knew, but at this place and time, this loss wasn’t about her. Gently, she disentangled her hand. “I should have been sorry before I learned Dr. th’Rasdeth died.” She picked up the padd, scrolled through the list and clenched her teeth. “All of it, Julian,” with her hand she indicated the hundreds of occupied stasis chambers—now coffins—in the cargo bay. “All of it is so senseless and I’ve been processing their bodies like I’m shuffling padds with status reports off to Benjamin’s desk.”

  “Don’t personalize it, Jadzia. Professional detachment is one of the first things they teach you in medical school,” Julian said sagely. “Feel the loss of your friend and let it represent all the others. Trying to make sense of it all will drive you mad.”

  “A little madness might be a good thing. For all of us. Because it might push us a little harder to win this damn war—”