STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change

by Marco Palmieri, Editor

  “It’s ready, Skipper,” said Gabrielli.

  Medoxa nodded, satisfied, and tapped her own combadge. “Bridge.”

  “Bridge, Oktesh here,” said an unfamiliar voice.

  “Take us as close to Pandora as you can, Mr. Oktesh,” said Medoxa. “Full impulse.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” said the voice.

  “Mr. Edmunds,” said Medoxa. “Put me through to Pandora.”

  “Channel open,” said another voice.

  “Pandora facility, this is Captain Medoxa,” she said to the air. “I have Dax with me, Axael. She can open the gate for you but I want you to let the hostages—”

  Suddenly the room was filled with ear-splitting static. This was followed immediately by that same strangely hollow voice.

  “Send Dax,” it said.

  “The hostages first,” said Medoxa. “Let’s negotiate a—”

  “No negotiations,” said the voice. “Send her now, or people start dying.” There was another burst of static, then silence.

  “We’re being given transporter coordinates,” said Edmunds’s voice.

  “Let me know when we’re in range, bridge,” said Medoxa. “And if Pandora’s defense array even twitches I want to hear about it.”

  Ezri stood on the transporter platform waiting for the minutes to tick down. She had never been so nervous about anything in her life. Strange electric pinpricks attacked the insides of her fingertips. Her mouth was dry.

  A few feet away, manning the transporter controls, was Medoxa. She’d dismissed the technician in order to have one last private moment with Ezri.

  “This will work, Dax,” she said, noting Ezri’s agitation.

  “Only because it has to,” said Ezri.

  “I can’t think of a better reason,” said Medoxa.

  “Two minutes to transport range,” came Edmunds’s disembodied voice over the comm system.

  “Before you go, I want you to know something,” said Medoxa. “I was part of the away team that found the first Protean Relic.”

  “I guessed that, Captain,” said Ezri. “I thought you seemed a little close to all this. And in Krinn’s earlier transmission, he referred to you by name.”

  “Points for you, Lieutenant,” said Medoxa.

  “So, I guess you and Jadzia were the lucky ones,” said Ezri. “I mean, to have come out of it alive. And intact.”

  “I was maimed in the encounter, Lieutenant,” said Medoxa. “Permanently.”

  Ezri, while stunned by this confession, did her best to keep her face neutral.

  “But,” she managed. “I thought Krinn must have—”

  “Krinn suffered extensive nerve damage,” said Medoxa calmly. “But it was treatable. I wasn’t so lucky.”

  By all appearances, Medoxa was one of the more formidable physical specimens Ezri had ever met. There wasn’t a single visible blemish on the perfect golden skin. She had no obvious synthetic limbs.

  “Selenean brains have five lobes,” said Medoxa, perhaps sensing Ezri’s confusion. “Mine has only four. I no longer dream. I can no longer procreate. Among my people I’m considered a ghost. That’s what the Codex did to me.”

  “Twenty-five seconds to transport range,” said Edmunds’s voice.

  “I tell you this, Lieutenant, so that you will understand,” said Medoxa. “I felt that thing scorching a hole in me—in my mind. I know what it means if it gets out. If this doesn’t work, I will do whatever it takes to burn Pandora and everything on it out of the sky.”

  Delay. That’s what Medoxa’s plan boiled down to. Krinn wanted the gate open, so Dax, the only one who could, would do that for him. It would take time though. Time was the only weapon Krinn had left them.

  “Take your time with the gate,” Medoxa had said. “Draw it out as long as you can. Keep Krinn focused on you. You’re buying us time to hack into Pandora’s defense array and retake control.”

  Once that was done, Medoxa would own Pandora. She could beam down thousands of rescue teams if she wished or, if she was lucky, beam one Axael Krinn straight to the Anansi’s brig.

  Easy. Simple. All it had to do was work perfectly the first time through.

  Ezri materialized inside a small dark space, which, to her, seemed like some sort of shallow cave. She was thankful to find the space empty. While, under normal circumstances, she enjoyed using the matter transporter over more conventional means of travel, in this case the idea of being beamed in blind to coordinates provided by someone who was less than sane did not inspire a sense of security.

  As per Medoxa’s plan, Ezri tapped her combadge and began to relay what she could see to the Anansi. They would not respond. In modifying the device to boost its signal, Ensign Gabrielli had sacrificed its two-way capabilities. Ezri was alone.

  “I’m here,” she said softly. “There’s no sign of Krinn.”

  As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she was able to pick out the details of what she had thought to be a natural indentation in the asteroid’s surface. It was not. This space had been made by the hands of sentients. Aside from the part of the wall that had crumbled away, all the visible surfaces were covered in strange raised markings she recognized as glyphs.

  There was a sort of circular pedestal in the center of the space the top of which was the only thing in the room not covered by a fine sheen of dust.

  “There was something here,” she said. “Whatever it was has been moved.”

  He flexed her wrist to feel the modified phaser in her sleeve. Still there.

  “I’m going in,” she said.

  She found herself in an open courtyard with what appeared to be naked sky above her. She knew that there was a massive force field there, holding the breathable gases in, maintaining pressure. She knew there were artificial grav generators scattered around to keep the researchers from just floating away. She knew these things and still had to force herself to keep a normal breathing cycle.

  Pandora was amazing.

  Setting aside the massive red sun rolling slowly across the star-filled sky and the seemingly infinite number of asteroids stretched out in all directions like a blanket of floating stones, there were the Protean ruins themselves. Their mammoth crystalline spires towered above her. Their upper reaches, even broken as they were, seemed to stretch out into space indefinitely.

  There were smaller structures, dwellings at one time perhaps, huddled in semicircular clusters around the base of each of the massive pillars. Though ancient there was still an aura of vitality about the place, as if its makers had only been gone moments and could return at any time.

  The signs of Federation presence—the discarded ground buggies, the field generators, even the communications tower—seemed incongruous to her. They were rough-hewn things, primitive by comparison to these elegant ruins.

  “No sign of the hostages,” she said even as she noticed the odd device that had been welded to the base of the nearest field generator. She moved in for a closer look.

  “Bad news, Captain,” she said. “I think Krinn has attached some kind of incendiary to one of the forcefield projectors. The timer looks simple but the explosive could be thermium.”

  “You aren’t Dax,” said a now-familiar voice behind her.

  On instinct she spun, snapping the phaser into her palm and bringing it up, but it was too late. In a lightning movement, a bit of heavy pipe smashed into her hand, forcing her to drop the weapon.

  “Who are you?” said her attacker, who could only be Axael Krinn.

  He was not what she’d expected. He was gaunt, for one thing, emaciated. His uniform hung off him like a shroud. His eyes were wild, animal things that glittered in the starlight and seemed governed by something other than intelligence. Was this his normal appearance or had this transformation taken place in the last few days?

  “I’m Dax,” she said, clutching her bruised hand. “Ezri Dax.”

  “Jadzia is Dax,” he said.

  “Jadzia was Dax,” she said firmly. “I’m
Dax now.”

  There was some kind of weapon in the hand not holding the pipe. Krinn swiveled it up and pressed it to Ezri’s temple.

  “This is Medoxa trying some trick,” he said. “Only Jadzia can open the gate.”

  “Only Dax,” said Ezri, hoping there was enough lucidity left in him to understand. “But if you kill me, I can’t open it.”

  The hand with the weapon wavered, stiffened, and finally dropped away.

  “All right,” said Krinn after a time. “But if this is a trick ...”

  He led her away from what was obviously the main part of the Pandora excavation and into a little maze of natural rock formations. He never spoke during the short walk though Ezri tried to engage him. He just kept prodding the small of her back with that hand weapon of his. Eventually they came to the opening of a cave.

  A soft light spilled out at them from within and, Ezri noticed, there were sensor brackets imbedded in either side of the opening. Both had been smashed. Obviously Mr. Krinn had anger management problems.

  A nudge from the gun told her to go inside.

  It was a blast door, the kind used to seal off sections of starships which had been compromised by radiation leaks or hull breaches. It was blast-proof, phaser-proof, and apparently Krinn-proof. Ezri could see where some sort of high-intensity energy discharge had blackened small areas of the surface. The damage was entirely cosmetic.

  “Open it,” said Krinn.

  Right, she thought. This is it.

  Not really knowing where to begin, she stepped forward, meaning to touch the thing in hopes of finding some sort of hidden key pad or vox device. She needn’t have bothered.

  “No!” screamed Krinn behind her. Ezri had time to turn his way and see him leaping at her, his arms outstretched. Then Krinn and everything else in the cave was lost in a shimmering cascade of light.

  That was a transporter effect, she thought when the moment of disorientation passed. She’d been scanned, apparently by some automated system, accepted, and whisked away to—where?

  She was on a rocky ledge near the summit of what appeared to be an impossibly tall mountain. All around her, great billows of crimson and black vapor swirled violently.

  Behind her the ledge on which she stood became a sheer cliff descending until it vanished into the maelstrom below.

  Before her, slung across the black maw of a cave, was a gigantic iron gate. An enormous latch held the thing closed but Ezri was sure she could open it if necessary. Below the gate she could see the hint of some sort of staircase extending down and down into the impenetrable dark.

  Above it, carved into the living rock of the mountain, were the words ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER HERE. Ezri had read and understood the words before realizing they were written in a language her conscious mind found unfamiliar.

  I know this, she thought, though she couldn’t yet say from where the knowledge came.

  Suddenly the ground began to shake beneath her feet. Remembering Jadzia’s admonition that this place, however virtual, would still kill her if it could, Ezri dived forward away from the edge of the crumbling precipice.

  Even as she did so, the massive fragment of the mountainside fell away behind her. She had bare seconds to grab hold of the gate’s rusted lower bars and save herself.

  Corroded by time and the elements of this place, the jagged contours of the gate tore viciously at her fingers as she hauled herself up toward the ragged latch.

  This is insane, she thought.

  As she’d predicted, the latch proved easy enough to open. Though doing it one-handed and from below did present a bit of a challenge.

  Her weight, now supported by only one half of the gate, caused that half to swing outward on its suddenly very flimsy-seeming hinges. Not for the first time Ezri thanked her memory of Emony Dax’s gymnastic training. She swung her feet wide, shifting her center of gravity enough to halt the gate’s outward momentum.

  Then, catching the latch between her feet and holding it, she slowly pulled the gate closed. As soon as the edges came together Ezri dropped down into the opening of the cave.

  The steps there extended that same impossible distance down into the inky depths.

  All right, she thought. Let’s get this done.

  She took four steps down before the world around her began to run like a painted watercolor left out in the rain.

  Suddenly she was tumbling down into the dark with no walls or stairs or even a rusty gate to stop her.

  The fall hadn’t killed her, and the stop at the end had not been sudden but a gentle slowing until she felt she was barely moving at all. She realized she’d closed her eyes sometime during her descent and opened them again.

  She was surrounded by sheets of translucent mist. There was nothing under her feet, nothing in the air above. Unlike the chaotic motions of the clouds at the gate, this place seemed serene, almost soothing in its gentle ebb and flow.

  She tried to move but it was like being adrift in space. With nothing to provide thrust or to push against, all she succeeded in doing was waggling her arms and legs.

  After a time she felt she could see something darkening in the mists ahead of her. At first she thought it was just a trick of light, but soon it was clear that a small portion of the clouds in that region was thickening somehow, becoming more solid.

  Soon the point of density became a shape, the shape became a figure and the figure became a woman dressed in a garment of iridescent white.

  As the woman walked—not floated—toward her, Ezri was shocked to see the pattern of elegant markings, spots, framing her face on either side. The woman was a Trill. Moreover she was someone Ezri knew. This was Lela, the first person ever to join with the Dax symbiont.

  “I have a question for you,” said Lela, smiling. It was strange to see her this way, from the outside. Ezri had all her memories but, as it had been with Jadzia, the act of meeting one of the former hosts in any physical way was unnerving.

  “What is the price?” said Lela.

  The price? thought Ezri. The price of what? As riddles went, this one was pretty vague.

  The breeze that had been gently supporting her began to pick up.

  “What is the price?” said Lela again.

  When Ezri failed to answer the second time, the breeze, now actually buffeting her, began to shove her violently from one position to the next. It was like being tossed back and forth by invisible giants.

  “What is the price?” said Lela’s voice over the now-screaming blow.

  “Of what?” Ezri shouted back. “The price of what?”

  The jolts were so powerful now, so abrupt, that Ezri swore she could feel her ribs cracking.

  “The price,” came Lela’s words again, the first half of the question eaten by the gale.

  Ezri almost shouted that she didn’t know when suddenly, she thought she might.

  It wasn’t a riddle, not in the conventional sense. It was part of an aphorism Audrid Dax had created for her daughter, Neema.

  Neema had been a headstrong girl, always wanting to know the whys and hows of things. Though Audrid had encouraged this curiosity she’d always hoped to instill a healthy respect for the consequences that getting the answers to some questions might bring.

  “What is the price of knowledge?” she would say to Neema.

  That was what Lela Dax was asking, Ezri was sure.

  “The price of knowledge,” she shouted over the wind, “is knowing.”

  Suddenly, as quickly as it had come, the cyclone vanished. Ezri was again held aloft by those first gentle zephyrs.

  Lela’s beautiful smile broadened. “That’s true,” she said. “But remember that it is also sometimes pain.”

  With that Lela Dax was gone, vanished again into the mists that had spawned her.

  Then there was a rush of air, a spinning of light and sound, and Ezri was somewhere else.

  She was hot, sweating, and submerged in something she couldn’t quite see—something in perpetu
al motion. It was as if she’d been thrust into a universe composed entirely of writhing snakes.

  She registered a dim glow above her and a thick, oily sort of darkness below.

  Even as she decided to make a try for the light, something smashed into her face and was gone. She had only just realized that the taste of copper in her mouth was her own blood when she felt the fingers—she was sure they were fingers—taking hold of her limbs—tearing at her clothes.

  In a panic of flailing limbs she half scrambled, half swam, upward toward the light and, she hoped, some measure of safety. Her progress was terrifically slow, and, with all that heat and motion undulating around her, she began to fear that she’d never make it up.

  What is this? she thought, still struggling.

  Her hand broke through to a patch of space unoccupied by the seething mass and she did her best to pull herself through. It was difficult. Everything she touched seemed to squirm in her hands. Everything had the disturbing texture of flesh and bone. She was almost sick with the sensory overload.

  Finally her flailing hand landed on something solid and blessedly unmoving—a rock. She forced her other hand up to join the first and pulled herself out.

  Her perch, the rock, was only a lip of stone jutting out from what turned out to be an incredibly high and circular wall. It was the inverse of the mountain Ezri had stood on at the beginning of all this.

  There seemed to be no break in the wall, no means of egress. For all intents and purposes she was sitting on the edge of an enormous stone bowl.

  The whole place seemed designed to contain the turbulent sea of—were those people?

  To her horror she realized they were.

  The strange mass she’d just escaped was really just thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people writhing in apparent torment.

  “Down, sinner!” bellowed a voice from behind.

  Ezri turned in time to witness an enormous humanoid creature in black bearing down on her. Its massive, overmuscled arm flashed out, the three-fingered hand taking her wrist in a viselike grip.