“You’re still in your uniform,” she said. “I take it that’s not a good sign for the rest of our evening.”
“Unfortunately not,” Sisko said. “I’ve got to go up to the bridge.”
“Is everything all right?” Kasidy asked. She set her padd down beside her wineglass and dropped her feet to the floor. “You don’t look pleased.”
“I’m not,” Sisko admitted. “I have to make an announcement to the crew.”
“We’re not going on our mission,” Kasidy said. She did not sound surprised.
“No,” Sisko said. “Instead, we’re going to the Helaspont Sector to patrol the border and make a show of force to the Tzenkethi.”
“Oh.” Kasidy stood up, crossed the room, and put her arms around her husband’s waist. “I know you must be disappointed.”
“I am,” Sisko said, feeling his frustrations rising. “But I’m not only disappointed. I’m also angry.”
“At who? The Tzenkethi?”
“Maybe, if they did this,” Sisko said. “But it’s not just that. It’s the entire situation.” He backed out of his wife’s embrace and paced across their quarters. “I didn’t rejoin Starfleet so that I could run patrols and go into battle.”
“Actually, Ben, you did.”
Sisko whirled back toward his wife. “What?”
“You went back to Starfleet during the Borg crisis,” Kasidy reminded him. “You felt you needed to help protect the Federation.”
Sisko remembered well his decision to resume starship duty more than five years after he’d previously worn the uniform, and more than four after his return from the Celestial Temple. “Yes, you’re right, but I wasn’t talking about that,” he said. “I meant after the Borg Invasion, when I decided to stay in Starfleet.”
“Well, you might not have stayed so that you could go into battle,” Kasidy said, “but you didn’t do it in order to explore the galaxy either. You were trying to save me and Rebecca from the dangers predicted by Bajoran prophecy.”
The calmness with which Kasidy spoke of their ordeal reminded him of how far the two of them had come. Sisko had left her—and Rebecca—in the belief that he would have endangered their lives by staying. Since then, they had traveled a long and difficult road to restore their relationship, a journey for which Kasidy deserved a great deal of the credit. “Yes, you’re right about that, too,” Sisko said. “But then I took the Robinson on that six-month journey into the Gamma Quadrant.” He walked back over to his wife and reached up with one hand to her bare upper arm. “That experience changed me,” he said. “At least, it changed what I wanted out of my time in Starfleet. Before that, I never had an extended opportunity to blaze new territory, to make first contacts, to discover the unknown. It reinvigorated me.” He could hear the passion with which he spoke.
“I know how much it meant to you,” Kasidy said, putting her arms on his shoulders.
“It wasn’t just what kept me wanting to stay in Starfleet,” he told her, “but what allowed me to really envision bringing you and Rebecca along with me.”
“How you felt about that experience also helped me to see the three of us living aboard a starship,” Kasidy said.
Sisko leaned in and kissed his wife. She had endured so much—largely because of him—and yet she had proven herself strong and resilient and so loving. He considered himself a very fortunate man.
But now all of that’s going to be put at risk. For the second time, Sisko stepped away from Kasidy. “That exploratory mission lasted only six months, more than two years ago,” he said. “Since then, the Robinson has been relegated to patrol duty at Bajor. We’ve been waiting for this mission for so long—the entire crew has—and now it’s gone.”
“Maybe not gone, Ben. Maybe just postponed.” She followed him across the room and put a hand on his back. “But really, your time in Starfleet has been good for us. Yes, you were confined to patrolling the Bajoran system for two years, but that allowed you and Rebecca and me the time we needed to learn to live as a family again, and then to transition to taking up residence on the Robinson.”
Sisko nodded his agreement, but said nothing. Kasidy took him by the arms and gently turned him to face her. “Ben, I understand that the loss of the exploratory mission is only a small part of what’s bothering you,” she said quietly. “You’re going to order this ship toward Tzenkethi space, and so you’re worried about Rebecca and me.”
“I know we talked about the dangers of living aboard a starship, but . . . it somehow never felt this real.”
Kasidy actually smiled. “It’s felt this real for me,” she said. “Watching you travel through the wormhole and into the Gamma Quadrant . . . taking Defiant into battle again and again during the Dominion War . . . watching you return to Starfleet so that you could take on the Borg. Believe me, it felt very real.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
“Because, right here, right now, none of that matters,” Kasidy said. “What matters is that you and Rebecca and I are together. Look, I have no desire for our family to be in harm’s way, but these are the choices we’ve made, and I don’t regret them. We’ll see this through together.”
Sisko swept Kasidy into his arms and hugged her tightly to him. He loved her so much—so much that he wouldn’t remind her that, twenty years prior, he had lived aboard a starship with his first wife and their son, and that, during the battle with the Borg at Wolf 359, he and Jake had lost Jennifer. He couldn’t tell her that, and he shouldn’t think about it himself.
Instead, he simply said, “I love you, Kasidy.”
“I love you, Ben.”
They kissed again, softly and slowly, and when they parted, the feel of Kasidy’s lips lingered on his. Sisko gazed deeply into her eyes and saw everything he’d ever wanted contained there. He resolved never to waist a moment with his wife.
“Uh, pardon me, Captain, but . . . don’t you have a ship to command?” Kasidy said.
“Yes, I guess I do, Admiral Yates.” Sisko kissed her once more. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Sisko started toward the door. He would go to the bridge, oversee the ship’s departure from Deep Space 9, then set it on course for the crew’s new assignment. He hoped for the best in the Helaspont Sector, but having had firsthand experience with the Tzenkethi in the past, he feared the worst.
6
Raiq lay back in the narrow main cabin of her blade-like vessel, her arms extended over her head, pushed into the regulator slots. She often dozed while taking her nourishment from the automated system, its pads lightly vibrating against the soft inner elbow joints of her exoskeleton as it delivered nutrients to her body, but she did not sleep that night. Anticipation like none she had ever known kept her awake, and so she made the canopy of her vessel transparent and watched as other ships arrived.
Thus had it been, for days upon days, the Ascendants assembling on the desolate world, and thus would it be, for days yet to come. It had begun with a call to action, a collective plea to the Grand Archquester, Votiq, who had disseminated the request for the leaders of the Orders to gather and deliberate about the signs so many had reported encountering in recent cycles. It had continued when such a congregation had come to pass, and had brought about the unexpected and hallowed appearance of the Fire. It would conclude with a new beginning—with the last beginning. Once all of the knights had convened—Questers with Archquesters—the Fire would lead them on the Path to the Final Ascension.
As two more vessels soared past overhead, Raiq sought to maintain her equilibrium. For nearly a century and a quarter, she had spent her life pursuing the goal of every Ascendant, but for each advance she had made on her voyage, for each heretic she had eradicated, the Unnameable had remained out of reach, the Fortress of the True unfound. Such constituted the burden of generation upon generation of Ascendants.<
br />
Still, Raiq had never lost faith in her purpose. Cycle upon cycle, she persevered in believing that, while she would die on the Quest, just as she had been born on it, her striving would ultimately assist those who would come after her in reaching the sacrosanct destination. She would be lying to herself if she denied that she sometimes imagined numbering among those who would reach the Fortress and burn beneath the judgment of the True, but she always treated such thoughts as the natural musings of a votary. Impossible though it seemed, the arrival of the Fire, prophesied in the holy texts, promised to make her dreams into a reality.
Another ship appeared above Raiq’s, descending toward the surface of the barren world that now hosted more than half of the extant Ascendants. She had never seen a vessel of its design before—a sleek collection of triangular structures that looked menacing—but through the ages, as their population had diminished, her people had come to rely on technology rather than numbers to eliminate those who would blaspheme the True with their false worship. Over the decades, Raiq had augmented her own ship with upgrades to its propulsion, weapons, and other systems.
An auditory pulse tolled in the cabin, signaling the completion of the regulator’s operation. Raiq withdrew her arms from the slots. She again considered attempting to sleep, but feeling the way she did, she doubted that rest would come easily.
Raiq inclined her chair and shifted it toward one of the forward consoles. She activated her ship’s sensors and scanned the surrounding region. Scores more vessels had landed since the last time she’d checked, and with them, hundreds more Ascendants. Most Questers typically traveled alone, but some had clearly aggregated aboard larger ships, at least for their journey to reach the Fire.
While it would yet take days for the remainder of her people to arrive, the goal for which Raiq had worked her entire life seemed impossibly close at hand. She could not stop thinking about setting out on the Path behind the Fire. The prospect filled her with expectation and eagerness and—
Dread, she realized. While she coveted the opportunity to enter the Fortress of the True, to be looked upon and judged by her gods, and finally to join with them, some part of Raiq feared the end of her lifelong journey. The emotion surprised her, but it also made sense. Did not the replacement of something known for something unknown often cause anxiety?
Except that the unknown did not distress Raiq. She faced it continually on the Quest, and met each new circumstance directly and with fervor. She relished breaching every unfamiliar corner of the galaxy, cataloguing every foreign civilization, cleansing the universe of every strange life-form who would dare to worship the True.
No, Raiq did not fear the unknown. She feared disappointment. Hidden deep beneath the shell of utter confidence and absolute certainty she wore, the prospect that the True could pronounce her unworthy sometimes troubled her. In difficult times, in moments of weakness, the specter of being cast out from the Fortress fell like a shadow upon her soul.
The possibility existed, Raiq knew, though she could not envision living her life any differently than she had. Devout, she read the ancient texts regularly, and rigorously followed their pronouncements. If the facts of her existence displeased the True, she did not know what actions she could have changed.
Opaka Sulan.
The name rose in Raiq’s mind like a rebuke. She had met the shaman not that long ago, when Raiq had taken ill, the victim of a minor injury she had suffered through her own misstep. Ignoring the wound when it happened, she visited an alien colony in order to evaluate it. The settlement, a quarter of a million strong, proved wholly secular and in no need of extermination, but a pestilence swept through the populace during Raiq’s time there. Too late, after she’d departed, she discovered that their contagion had infected her through her wound. Raiq crashed on another planet, where Opaka Sulan and her wards nursed her back to health.
I should have cut them all down where they stood. But Raiq spared them, allowing the lifedebt she owed Opaka Sulan to mitigate that she venerated false gods she called the Prophets. Because of the circumstances, and because the alien leader and her followers claimed not to worship the True, canon permitted Raiq to let them live.
She had not been as kind to the residents of the colony whose plague had nearly cost Raiq her life. She returned to smite them, only to discover that the disease had already done most of the work for her. Raiq eliminated the few survivors, her vengeance more like a gift to a populace that had already lost almost everything.
But Opaka Sulan . . .
Word had recently gone out among the Archquesters that a new breed of heretics had appeared in the galaxy who openly worshipped the True. In retrospect, Raiq believed that Opaka Sulan had lied to her, that she had concealed her sacrilege, that she actually belonged to that new band of heretics. If so, then Raiq had failed in her responsibilities to the True, and thus could be judged unworthy . . .
After her lifetime of service to the Unnameable, it should not have been possible that she could disappoint her gods. No matter whatever mistakes she had made, Raiq had dedicated her existence to locating the Fortress and extinguishing those who would blaspheme by falsely revering the True. She deserved to burn beneath their gaze and be found worthy.
But then a terrible possibility, unthinkable until that moment, occurred to Raiq: what if her gods disappointed her?
Raiq slammed one hand down on the console before her and thrust her other into the hatch release. She clutched the mechanism, pulled and twisted it, until the canopy rotated upward. The air within her vessel rushed out to mix with the thinner atmosphere surrounding the planet.
Raiq threw herself from her ship, landing hard on the ground beneath. She dropped down to steady herself with one hand and managed to keep her balance. She stood up, slapped the flat of her hand onto the control panel on the hull of her vessel, then watched as the canopy spun closed.
All around, Ascendant ships dotted the flat landscape. Many resembled Raiq’s own, with its long, narrow hull and tall cross section, the single-passenger design in use by the knights for generations. Other, newer classes of Ascendant vessels also proliferated, along with some notably older. She also saw a number of alien craft, ships obviously appropriated by various knights for their use on the Quest.
Raiq began to walk, her stride long and steady, though she had no particular destination. She desired only to outdistance her own heterodox thoughts. She weaved through the massed ships, changing direction whenever she saw another Ascendant directly ahead. She wanted neither conversation nor thought, only mindless activity.
Raiq walked for some time, her focus on the path ahead and the sound of her feet marching in the dirt. From time to time, she heard the melodious sound of Ascendant voices, their tones partially sapped by the reedy air. Another vessel passed overhead on its way to land, and then two more. Raiq paid them no attention, but when a fourth appeared in the sky above, the noise of its flight louder than the others, she glanced upward. What she saw banished the troublesome echoes from the corners of her mind.
Like Raiq’s own vessel, the ship possessed a knife-edged profile, but it belonged to an older class. It towed another structure behind it, off into the distance. On the ground, Raiq followed. She could not mistake the nature of the haul, and she wished to see it up close.
As the ship started to descend, Raiq broke into a run. She arrived moments after it alit beside the distinctive crimson vessel of the Grand Archquester. Votiq stood alongside the Fire as both studied the new offering for the True.
Behind the ship, the massive torpedo hovered above the ground, borne aloft by antigravs. Twice as long as the vessel towing it, the once-sleek missile had plainly been augmented. Matching the projectile in neither color nor design, two tubular rings circled its cylindrical body, one near the nose cone and one amidships. Between the rings stretched three long conduits. However powerful the original weapon might have been, the modificati
ons to it—the work, Raiq had no doubt, of Ascendant hands—lent it a more fearsome air.
While a young Quester leaped down from the ship, Raiq stepped up beside Votiq and the Fire. The Grand Archquester greeted her, but the woman who would lead them to the Fortress of the True said nothing. That the Ascendants’ guide along the Path to the Final Ascension had appeared in the form of an alien did not trouble Raiq. She did not pretend that she could know the minds of the Unnameable—at least not yet. For now, their ways remained mysterious to her.
The Fire, Raiq saw, had been supplied with an Ascendant environmental suit. The glossy black armor, malleable prior to activation, had been fitted to her slender form and wide, reptilian neck. She wore no helmet. When Raiq peered into her eyes, she saw what seemed an infinite depth, and she had to look away.
The young Quester strode directly up to Votiq, who welcomed her by name. “Aniq,” the Grand Archquester said, “you bring tribute.”
“Tribute,” Aniq said, facing the Fire and bowing her head, “and a tool.”
“Tell me,” said the Fire, her voice strong and commanding.
“I have acquired a powerful explosive device,” Aniq said, “which I have modified with transformative fuel.”
“For use in annihilating whatever heretics we encounter as we near the Fortress,” Votiq said, his tone approving. “A final paean to the Unnameable before we stand beneath their judgment. Well done.”
“Thank you, Grand Archquester,” Aniq said, “but I see another possible use for this metaweapon: to initiate the Final Conflagration.”
Raiq smiled approvingly. It felt to her as if all the pieces spread throughout the holy writ had come together to form a new page—a last page—recording the details of what would come next. It had long been a source of debate as to whether the True would commence the Final Conflagration—the prophesied burning of space and time in which worthy Ascendants would join with their gods—or the Ascendants themselves would have to do it. It pleased Raiq to know that, if required, the knights could unleash the flames that would send them on their way to purification.
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