STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change

by Marco Palmieri, Editor

  The Codex.

  “I think,” she heard herself saying, “I think I know ...”

  She did know, not all of it—no one could know that—but enough.

  The universe was winding down. It had begun with a single colossal outburst of energy but eventually all that energy would equalize. Time would stop; Life would stop; matter, energy, hot, cold, all of it would stop, replaced at the end by eternal, infinite gray.

  The Proteans had created the Codex to fix all that, to reignite the fires that had fueled the universe, and give it a second chance.

  The Codex, the asteroid belt, even the dying Ibarri star were all parts of the reignition mechanism. The Codex was the information source, the Why and Where. What it lacked was a driver, the When and How.

  It had mistaken the minds of Jadzia’s team for that driver, forcing upon them all its collected data in one terrible instant.

  No wonder it had overwhelmed them all.

  Even Ezri, even with the luxury of distance, was struggling to process the memory of all those images and feelings. Something brushed past her, toppling her into the dirt. It was Krinn. He was carrying—what was that? It was so familiar, like something gone so long that it could only be defined by its own absence.

  Like a sleepwalker Krinn dragged the thing toward the Codex. Wild energies danced and spun around him, bathing him in ethereal light.

  He raised the thing with effort over his head.

  “No!”

  It was Medoxa’s voice and it was followed immediately by a phaser blast. The beam of energy caught Krinn just as he was to bring the thing in his hands down into the writhing coil of light that was the Codex. He faltered. A second beam cut across the room, striking him again. He fell.

  Suddenly Medoxa’s slender but powerful arm scooped Ezri up, hauling the disoriented Trill onto her shoulders.

  “Y’Lira!” said Ezri, struggling. “No! What are you doing?”

  “Saving your life,” said Medoxa, still sprinting away from the Codex chamber.

  “Wait,” said Ezri, trying to regain focus. “What about the hostages?”

  “We got them, Dax.” said Medoxa. “All fine. You bought us the time we needed.”

  Medoxa had carried her nearly to the exit of the massive subterranean tunnel. Just as she was crossing the threshold, Ezri grabbed hold of a nearby outcropping and pulled herself free. The sudden wrenching motion caused Medoxa to stumble and fall. Both women hit the ground hard. Medoxa was up first, still moving toward the tunnel exit. She looked back and saw Ezri heading slowly the other way.

  “Dax, no!” she said. “What are you doing?!”

  “... going back,” said Ezri. “... have to help them finish.”

  “Dax, listen to me.” Medoxa was desperate, torn between escape and completing her rescue of Ezri. “The Protean objects—as soon as the gate came down, they started reacting with each other. Resonating. The energy spikes are off the scale.”

  “Spikes ... ?” said Ezri, her faculties returning.

  “Edmunds says the entire asteroid belt is lighting up with the same energy. We have to get back to the Anansi and get out of here.”

  Ezri, fully lucid now, turned and said, “Captain, if those things are doing what I think they’re doing, there won’t be an out of here to get to.”

  Then, without waiting for a response, Ezri bolted back toward the Codex chamber.

  Krinn lay where he’d fallen, the second Protean artifact centimeters from his fingers. Ezri took a breath and picked the thing up. Liquid tongues of unknown energy licked up her arms. The noise and wind in the chamber were fierce enough that she had to fight to keep her footing.

  She moved toward the center of the chamber and, for the first time, looked directly at the Codex.

  To her eyes it seemed like a coil of some kind, wrapping endlessly around itself. Bits of it kept disappearing, as if it were moving in and out of shadow. It couldn’t have been, she realized, not with all that energy crackling around.

  Something, some forgotten something at the bottom of her memory, resounded with the thing’s vibrations, and Ezri found herself a little afraid.

  “Dammit!” she yelled and slammed the two things together.

  She was ...

  Elsewhere.

  At first she thought it might be another holographic trick. She’d been through enough of them lately. This wasn’t that though. Whatever the strange shapes and colors were, Ezri knew they were real.

  Something’s wrong, she thought. There’s still some kind of—distance—between [us.]

  She knew the problem in an instant. The Codex was afraid. After all that time alone in the dark, waiting to be joined with this Other, now that the moment had come it was—unsure?

  Ezri knew that feeling. She’d felt it before she’d first joined with Dax, the sense that she was losing something, becoming Less. No wonder Jadzia had been so traumatized by contact with the thing. She had never experienced that fear. She’d never had to feel herself pulled in a thousand directions at once and none of them her own. But Ezri had. She’d had to navigate all those fears and gravities without help, on the fly. Just as the Codex would have to.

  That’s not how it will be, she felt at the Codex and the Other. You will be more. Much more. And you’ll be together.

  Two separate Somethings looked into her then and found the truth of her [thoughts]. Ezri was Dax. Dax was Ezri. Complete. Joined. It was enough. It was more than enough.

  The two [intelligences] withdrew and completed their bonding.

  [I/we are the Catalyst,] the new entity felt at her. [Are you the Maker?]

  She was not. She was just a tiny thing that wanted to keep living for a little while longer.

  [I/we are for Beginnings once the End has come. I/we are the Catalyst,] it felt.

  Ezri’s mind was flooded with gray, an endless formless uncold gray that she knew was the end of the Universe—entropy increased to maximum. It was the most frightening thing she had ever experienced.

  It’s not time, she felt at it. You’re too early. You have to stop.

  [There is no stopping once begun,] it felt back. [I/we are the Catalyst.]

  But you’ll kill everything, she felt frantically.

  [No,] it felt back. [There can be modification. See.]

  All at once she did see.

  She saw that the Catalyst was not a being or an object at all, but rather it was a conscious symphony of boiling energies, which, once ignited, must expand. That expansion, meant to rekindle life in a moldering universe, could not be stopped, not even by the Catalyst itself. It could be checked, however. It could be bound to this place like lightning confined in a thin strand of copper.

  It wanted her to go, she suddenly felt. She and the others were still close enough to be consumed by the Catalyst’s energies, however restrained.

  [Go,] it felt at her. [Go now.] It released her then, back into the familiar world of Form. Krinn was stirring. They had only a little time.

  “Skipper,” said Edmunds. “We’re getting a hail from Pandora. It’s Lieutenant Dax. She’s got Krinn with her.”

  “Well, get them out of there, Ensign,” said Medoxa. “What are you waiting for?”

  It was a beautiful sight, the dying crimson star now surrounded by a stunning ring of light. It was unique. Hard to believe the ring had, just yesterday, been nothing more than one more belt of floating rocks.

  “Good thing we got out of there,” said Medoxa. “The shock wave when the asteroids ignited would have cut through us like butter.”

  “Good thing,” agreed Ezri. “Do we have confirmation of what happened?”

  Medoxa snorted. “I don’t know if we ever will, but if your conclusions about that thing are right, and if our survival is any indication, the Catalyst has successfully bonded to space-time. Which means that, when the universe finally does run down, it’ll be able to renew itself.”

  “So much grief,” Ezri said. “So much lost, for something that won’t
happen for billions of years.”

  Medoxa shrugged. “Depends on your point of view. After all, whatever sentients are born in that next universe will owe their existence to what happened here today ... even though they’ll never know it.”

  Ezri found her thoughts unable to go there just yet. Maybe later. Maybe never. Some truths, she was beginning to believe, were simply too big for a mind to hold. For now, she’d stay focused on the here and now. “Axael is all right?”

  “We think he will be,” Medoxa said. “The artifact’s influence is gone. He’s back to being the old Krinn, but he remembers most of what happened, and it’s weighing heavily on him.”

  “I understand the feeling,” Ezri said. “I’ll see if I can help him. during the trip back to Deep Space 9.”

  “Thank you,” said Medoxa.

  They stood there for a little while, basking in the strange and wonderful brilliance.

  “Jadzia loved you, you know,” Ezri said softly. “All of you.”

  “Jadzia was good at that,” said Medoxa.

  “She just wanted to get out of someone’s shadow,” said Ezri. The admission was difficult even now—even after everything had come out right—but it was the least she owed Jadzia’s friend. “Can you understand that?”

  “I always understood it, Lieutenant,” said Medoxa. “I wish Jadzia had been able to confide in me.”

  “She couldn’t,” said Ezri. “It was—it’s a Trill thing. Too many ghosts. Too many shadows.”

  “Still.”

  “What would you have told her?” said Ezri, genuinely interested.

  “That the shadows are part of the price,” said Medoxa.

  “The price?” said Ezri.

  “For the chance to see this light.”

  Face Value

  Una McCormack

  Historian’s note: This story is set primarily during the seventh-season episode “The Dogs of War,” the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

  Una McCormack

  Una McCormack discovered Star Trek: Deep Space Nine very late in its run, but loved it immediately for its politics, its wit, its ambiguity, and its tailor. She enjoys classic British television and going to the cinema, and she collects capital cities. She lives with her partner Matthew in Cambridge, England, where she reads, writes, and teaches. “Face Value” is her first professional piece of fiction writing.

  Prologue

  Each minute brought it closer and closer ...

  A long time ago, right after one of Kira’s first missions, Trelar had a few quiet words with her. They were hiding out in the mountains—it was bare and cold, and he was struggling to get afire to light in the steady winter rain. “That was brutal, what you did today,” he had said to her, softly, and his eyes were dark and sharp as he looked up from his work. “There’s no glory in it. Just kill them and be done with it.”

  Garak stepped up alongside her. “We’ll be coming into orbit soon,” he said, and she caught the tremor in his voice—excitement, anticipation ...

  Kira had been a pale and hungry child, running on rage and not much else. Earlier that day she had pulled back the head of an enemy and made him look at her before finishing him off with her knife. She was still exhilarated from the victory, still had the adrenaline rushing through her, and Trelar’s words brought her back to miserable reality. He was a good man, a man she admired. She hated to think she had disappointed him, and she masked her shame with anger. “What the Cardassians do is brutal,” she shot back. “I want them to know who it is that killed them. I want the last thing they see before they die to be the face of a Bajoran.”

  Damar paced back and forth, back and forth, every inch the soldier, every inch the Cardassian ...

  “Leave the kid alone, Trelar.” Furel had come up behind them. He ran his big hand affectionately through Kira’s damp hair. “We can’t all be philosophers, you know. She got the job done just fine.” She had flushed in pride at this rough praise and he had grinned down at her.

  Trelar had not answered, just turned back to his slow task, trying to coax a flame from his spoiled tinder. Kira watched the rain slide off his dark hair and down his thin cheeks. He was a quiet man who killed with precision. In another life, on another world, he would have been a teacher, or a scholar, or a priest.

  “Sometimes I fear for our future,” he murmured at last; and then the fire finally caught, and soon they were warmer and dryer and eating something hot, and glad of each other’s company, glad they were all still alive. But Trelar did not speak again that evening. As the others traded their old stories and told their bad jokes, she felt his eye fall on her. The gaze was questioning, challenging—but she would not meet it. The next morning, as they trekked on eastward, he had given her half his breakfast—an apology typical of him. None of them ever left a disagreement standing for too long. You never knew if the chance to make your peace would suddenly be gone for good.

  It was not long before Kira lost the taste for killing, but she did not lose her passion for justice. And she had promised the child she had been that she would never forget her, would never forget how she had made herself fierce so that she could face her fear.

  Remember that, Nerys. Remember. You have never been afraid to look your enemies in the eye.

  Still, right at this moment, she found herself offering up a silent prayer of thanks to the Prophets that these Jem’Hadar ships did not come equipped with viewscreens. For whatever she told herself to give herself courage, the truth was that the knowledge of their destination was quite enough, and that she had no real desire to find herself face to face with ...

  “Cardassia,” murmured Garak, his voice low and reverential, as if saying his own prayer of thanks. “It’s as beautiful as I remember.” Behind the headset, his eyes had lit up, as if he were looking once more upon the face of a long-lost friend.

  Damar started speaking then—or perhaps declaiming would be a better way to describe it. Something about how the planet would not be beautiful to him until it was free. She tuned him out. Cardassians, she thought. They really can’t do anything without making a speech about it first.

  But even though she had not listened, Kira was irritated by Damar’s display of self-importance, and she found herself snapping back at him, reminding him of the risk they were all taking on his behalf, coming to Cardassia to meet Gul Revok. No matter how many men Revok had promised to bring to the fight against the Dominion, Damar was still a wanted man, and his face was well known. Fighting a guerrilla war depended on secrecy, and having Damar around was as good as firing off a flare.

  Then, to her own disgust, she found herself saying to Damar that perhaps it would be better if she stayed on the ship. What could a Bajoran do amongst Cardassians other than arouse hostility? Damar’s answer was short and contemptuous, and Kira was honest enough with herself to know that she deserved it. She was not there as a Bajoran, after all—she was there to represent the Federation. But she doubted that there was a Cardassian on the planet who would look past the ridges on her face and see instead the Starfleet uniform she wore. Cardassians and Bajorans. They had long been enemies, they were still enemies, they would always be enemies. It was as simple as that. Some things would never—could never—change.

  And you’ve always looked your enemies in the eye, Nerys ...

  They were cleared for orbit now, and the transporter room was ready to beam them to the rendezvous with Revok. Kira left the bridge with Garak and Damar, and prepared to’ face Cardassia.

  One

  Night fell quickly on Cardassia Prime. The daylight was stark and harsh, and all the ways of the city were laid bare beneath it. Then, suddenly—almost as if a switch had been hit—it would be gone. There was a moment of total darkness, and then the street lights came on, bright and searching, and once again all the wide boulevards and the narrow alleys were exposed. It was indeed a city for the watchful. But it was not a city in which you could easily hide.

  Kira flexed a stiff arm car
efully, trying to keep her movements to a minimum, and sighed very softly as she looked out toward the river. Only a week had passed since they had become stranded on Cardassia Prime—a week since Revok had betrayed them. From an organization equipped with ships and soldiers spread out across the empire, the Cardassian resistance was now down to three people hiding in a cellar. The future of Cardassia, Kira thought bitterly. A drunk, a tailor, and a Bajoran. Someone, somewhere, is having a long, hard laugh at me.

  She leaned her head back against the wall, resisting the temptation to put a hand to her forehead to wipe at the sweat. Nightfall brought little real change in temperature, and the air was hot and dusty. Now and again a dry breath of breeze would rub across her face and fill her eyes with grit. Even the view she had, out across the river, brought no relief. The water was brown and sluggish, and even the barges seemed listless, drifting with the tide. Memories of Bajor, of cool green valleys and ice-cold streams, of the scent of moba blossom, flooded into her mind. ...

  Come on, Nerys! Focus! This is hardly the time or place to be daydreaming!

  She looked out again, trying to stay alert. A dirty, disheveled part of the city, down by the docks. A thread of lamps set along the embankment traced the curve of the river, heading down toward the distant glow of the port, and casting a cold white light on the bridge that was the focus of this vigil. Tomorrow she and Garak would be there meeting a man who could sell them weapons, a friend of hers from the old days. She knew he’d been here on Cardassia Prime before the Dominion arrived, but had not really believed he would be here still. She’d made the contact expecting nothing to come of it—and found herself listening to a friendly voice for the first time in what seemed like an age. She smiled to herself, remembering how relaxed he had sounded over the communicator, as if they were making a date for dinner. He’d always been so easygoing. Anything you need, Nerys. No problem, Nerys. You just come along and we’ll fix it, Nerys.