CHAPTER 25

SISKO WAS IN HELL. It was the only way to describe what Jeraddo had become.

The ground was nothing more than stone and shifting ribbons of storm-driven dirt. The air was like something alive, one moment so thick that all Sisko could see was his own reflection in the curve of his helmet, then thin enough that the lights mounted on his shoulders stabbed ahead a few meters. He cringed as roiling crimson swirls and eddies of corrosive gas appeared like entrails, twisting all around him.

Sweat poured from Sisko's face and dripped from his beard. He tried to tell himself that the environmental suit had been set for Cardassian temperatures, but the temperature indicator on the narrow status display board at the bottom of his helmet showed an outside temperature of more than 800 degrees, with wild swings of several hundred more degrees every few minutes. He utterly failed to convince himself that the suit's insulation was as robust as the type Starfleet used.

“Stop, Captain!” Terrell's harsh voice crackled at him through his helmet speakers. The same subspace distortions that caused Jeraddo's gravity to intensify and weaken, as if Sisko were on the deck of a madly pitching sailing ship, also interfered with the suit's communicator. In the twenty minutes they had already spent on the surface, Sisko had calculated that the communicators wouldn't work past ten meters, and even then he and the Cardassians had to shout to make themselves heard over the static. He doubted Terrell's tricorder could extend past that range, as well. And the only way they could be beamed back to Terrell's disguised ship was because of the highpower, tight-beam transporter beacons they each wore.

But even if he managed to run off and get out of range before Terrell could fire at him, what good would it do him? Right now, his suit had forty minutes' worth of life in it. If he pulled off his beacon so he couldn't be traced, he still wouldn't be able to beam back to Terrell's ship. In less than an hour he'd become another featureless mound of Jeraddo debris.

Terrell and Dr. Betan stepped up on either side of Sisko, their own shoulder lights blinding as they converged on him.

Terrell pointed to the left. “In that building,” she said.

Dr. Betan held up the Red Orb and swung it slowly toward the ancient stone wall to which Terrell pointed. The pale red light within the Orb intensified slightly, then died down when Dr. Betan moved it away again.

Sisko trudged ahead. By now, he didn't need to be told that he must always lead the way. Terrell had made it clear that she was not willing to turn her back on him. The building, perhaps a craft hall or a farmers' market a millennium ago, was larger than most in the village. The wind-eroded outer wall was made of giant blocks of local stone fitted together only with exceptional skill, not mortar.

The doorway through the wall was still in perfect condition, and Sisko did not have to duck down as he stepped through it, though he half-bent at the waist to aim his shoulder lights on what lay before him.

As he had suspected, the ground was littered with stones and tiles from the collapsed roof. There might have been wooden beams involved in the building's construction, but anything organic had been eaten away by the corrosive atmosphere years ago.

“Watch your step!” he shouted to the two behind him. “The floor is covered with roofing tiles.” Then he stepped aside to let Terrell and Betan enter.

Though billows of red cloud still roiled through the building, the windblown dust and debris seemed lessened by the shelter of the walls. Sisko noticed that his shoulder lights reached a bit farther, and the buffeting of the gale-force winds that had threatened to topple him from time to time was no longer in evidence.

Terrell and Dr. Betan were discussing something. They had a comm-link channel separate from the one Terrell used with Sisko.

The glow of the Red Orb was much stronger now.

Sisko watched as Terrell used a tricorder, aiming it at the ground and showing the results to Dr. Betan.

“There's a chamber under this floor,” she informed Sisko. “Dr. Betan's going to find a way down.” Then Sisko and Terrell stood and waited while Dr. Betan walked carefully back and forth across the rubble-strewn floor, using the Red Orb as if it were some primitive dowsing tool. Sisko appreciated the chance to rest.

He looked over at the tall Cardassian, studying her through the flare of light reflecting from her helmet. Her dark eyes were wide. She was chewing on her bottom lip. But he didn't know if the gesture betrayed anticipation or nervousness. He wasn't at all sure that he could even come close to what was going through her mind, no matter how much she thought that he and she were alike.

“You don't need me down here,” he shouted with some difficulty. His throat was becoming more and more raw. But he wanted to learn if she had any intention of allowing him back to her ship. If she didn't, then that might make it easier to . . . make sure no one else made it back, either.

“I will,” Terrell shouted back. “Dr. Betan will keep Vash's Orb, but I need you to carry the second.”

“Why?”

“Because you've survived contact with Orbs before. You of all people must understand the danger these artifacts represent.”

“The Orbs of the Prophets have never put me in danger,” Sisko shouted. The exertion provoked a brief coughing jag. For a moment, he wondered if his suit might already be leaking.

Terrell peered at Sisko through her helmet. Its transparent surface was already clouded from the corrosive atmosphere. “The Red Orb claimed seven of my researchers. I won't risk touching them.”

“What about Dr. Betan?”

“He handled the first Orb years ago on Terok Nor. After that, he became addicted to neural depressants. By taking them, he can't hear the voices. But it has left him with . . . certain other deficiencies. His temper, among them.”

“Have any of you thought that perhaps these Orbs aren't shaping up to be the best transportation system?” Sisko asked. “Especially if they're driving the people who use them insane or to drugs.”

“There're ways around the Orb's psychic effects,” Terrell said enigmatically. “That's why I had my soldiers save Quark from hanging on the Day of Withdrawal. That Ferengi owes me his life.”

Sisko didn't understand. Terrell gave him the explanation.

“Because he's a Ferengi. They're resistant to most forms of telepathy. Even Betazoids can't get past those four brain lobes. Too complex? Too simple? Who knows? Who cares? But I needed to get my Orb out of my lab before the station self-destructed. So I told Atrig to bring me one of the Ferengi from the Promenade, and he brought me Quark—and Odo.”

Quark and Odo on the Day of Withdrawal, Sisko thought. He saw another pattern forming.

“What about Garak?” he asked.

“Very good, Captain. Garak came on his own. He and I never really got along but Gul Dukat and he were involved in something . . . it's not important.” Terrell frowned, as if remembering something unpleasant. “But he and Odo and Quark did enter my lab that day—along with the two soldiers whose bodies you found fused to the hull. I always wondered what happened to them.” She fell silent, as if lost in thought.

Sisko touched her arm. “What happened to Quark and Odo and Garak?”

Terrell roused herself, checking ahead for Dr. Betan, who was still wandering back and forth with the Orb, then turned again to Sisko. “Twenty-two minutes before the self-destruct went off, the three of them staggered out of my lab. The precursor effect had already faded, and when I looked inside, the Red Orb was gone. At first, I was certain Quark had stolen it and hidden it somewhere. But then, why would he have come back to me? There wasn't any time for an investigation so I stunned them again and left the station. I thought everything would be lost when it autodestructed.”

“But it didn't.”

Even through her clouded helmet, Sisko could see Terrell's terrifying smile as she bared her teeth at him. “And if you knew how much time the Obsidian Order spent investigating why the autodestruct system failed . . . the record number of executions . . . . Even for the Order.”

“Starfleet could never understand why you left the station behind.”

“Well, now you know,” Terrell rasped. “We never intended to.”

Then Terrell turned sharply away from him, and Sisko realized she must have received a transmission from Dr. Betan, who was about fifteen meters ahead of them, pointing down at the ground and—

Sisko blinked as he saw Dr. Betan fire a phaser blast into the ground. Then he heard Terrell again.

“He's found a way down. The Orb's not far.”

Terrell began trudging toward Dr. Betan. Sisko walked beside her. He checked his suit display. Thirty-two minutes of life remaining. If the Cardassian suit design could be trusted.

Halfway to Dr. Betan, Sisko caught sight of the liquid wave of rock that rose up behind the Cardassian, then swept forward, heading directly for him.

Instinctively he cried out, “GRAVITY WAVE!” then spun around to see Terrell beside him, screaming silently in her helmet to warn her associate.

Sisko dropped to his knees and wrapped both arms tight across his helmet. A moment later he felt as if he were falling, as the local gravity gradient dropped by at least ninety percent and then shot up by an almost instant tripling.

He was driven into the rubble so hard he felt stones push up into his flesh through all the insulating layers of his suit. Sisko lay unmoving on his back, instinctively holding his breath as he listened for the telltale hiss of atmosphere that would mean his death. But finally, all he heard was Terrell's harsh voice telling him to get up and hurry.

Apparently, Dr. Betan had also survived the sudden gravitational anomaly, but the hole the Cardassian had blasted into the stone floor of the building was now half-filled with rubble. Under one arm, Dr. Betan still held the Red Orb Vash had brought to the station. It glowed steadily now. The red light within seeming almost to pulsate.

“Down there,” Terrell ordered as she aimed her shoulder lights into the pit Dr. Batan had created.

Sisko moved cautiously to the side of the opening, then peered down, awkward in his stiff suit. There was another stone floor about four meters below. Dr. Betan had already thrown a rope down to assist Sisko's descent. The other end was attached to an anchor loop on his belt, and Terrell stood beside him, coiling the rest of the rope in her gloved hands.

“Dr. Betan says that according to the way the Orb is glowing, the other Orb is no more than five meters in that direction.” She pointed, and Sisko found a reference mark on the floor below. He took the rope in his clumsy Cardassian gloves and slowly edged himself off the side and into the hole.

Sisko dropped the first two meters at an alarmingly rapid rate before Terrell and Dr. Betan steadied him. A few seconds later, he was standing on the floor and looking around at—

Sisko gasped.

Across from him, in the direction in which the second Orb was supposed to be found, was a pristine wall carved with the largest Bajoran mural he had ever seen.

“What's wrong?” Terrell's voice crackled in his helmet.

“Nothing,” Sisko shouted back. “If the Orb's down here, it might be hidden in a wall. I'll check it out.”

Then he walked slowly over to the mural and lightly traced its exquisite details with his gloved fingers. He recognized some of the older word-forms that ran along the top and bottom of the mural and felt an odd combination of relief and disappointment when he could not find any reference to “the Sisko.” But still, whatever events were depicted in the carving, they involved the Bajoran wormhole and the Prophets. Those word-forms and symbols he was able to read easily.

“Twenty-five minutes,” Terrell's voice announced.

Sisko couldn't let this opportunity go to waste. He fumbled with the Cardassian tricorder built into his suit and programmed it for a full spectral scan of the mural. At the same time, he stepped back to see if he could find any place that an Orb might be . . .

There. In the mural. The distinctive Bajoran spiral that signified the opening of the Celestial Temple. Though this spiral curved the opposite way from most others Sisko had seen.

“I think I might have found something,” Sisko called out. “Just a minute.”

He moved closer to the stone block in which the spiral was carved. It didn't fit tightly to the other stones in the wall. He pressed his body against it.

The stone block swung up, little more than a slender slab of rock.

And behind it, in a hollow chamber no larger than an Orb Ark, a second Red Orb glowed brightly, throwing off small flares of red light, almost like the Blue Orbs Sisko had seen in the past.

“I've found it,” Sisko reported to Terrell.

Her only answer was, “Nineteen minutes.”

Carefully, Sisko removed the Orb from its protective shelter. As he did so, he felt no ill effects. Heard no voices. Sensed no sudden disorientation, the way he usually did at the start of an Orb experience. Whatever this thing was, it was not an Orb of the Prophets. At least, there was nothing in its behavior to suggest it was one.

Sisko carried the Orb back to the point at which he was below the opening Dr. Betan had made. He paused, half-expecting to hear Terrell tell him to tie the Orb to the rope for them pull it up, to be left here to spend the rest of his life—all eighteen minutes of it—to contemplate their betrayal.

Instead, Terrell told him to tie the rope to his belt, so they could pull both him and the Orb up.

Sisko did, keeping a tight grip on the Orb.

By the time he had emerged from the hole in the floor, both Orbs were blazing brightly enough that they couldn't be looked at directly. The brilliance of their internal light also made it clear how badly his own helmet had been scarred and etched by Jeraddo's atmosphere.

Terrell's helmet glowed as if lit from within by flames. Sisko couldn't see her face. “Excellent,” he heard her say before she called out for Atrig. “Lock onto our beacons and energize.”

In that split second, as he waited for the transporter effect, Sisko suddenly knew that Terrell couldn't be allowed to control the Red Orbs.

Almost without thought, he swung the Orb he had retrieved directly at Dr. Betan's helmet.

As the Cardassian doctor stumbled backward, horrified, dropping Vash's Orb to press his gloves to the rapidly growing network of cracks that spread across his corroded helmet, Sisko yanked his own transporter beacon off and threw it away.

Terrell was still fumbling for her phaser as she began to dissolve in the transporter beam.

Dr. Betan's helmet suddenly exploded like fine crystal an instant before he was beamed away as well. And then, a moment later, Sisko saw the pale glimmer of his own discarded transporter beacon as it also disappeared.

Sisko didn't stop to ask himself what he thought he had done. Instead, with only fifteen minutes of life remaining, he concentrated only on what he still had to do.

He tucked Vash's Orb under one arm, secured the second Orb under his other arm, then began to run.

He knew he had only fifteen minutes in which to hide the Red Orbs so they could never be found again. Not by Terrell, not by anyone.

Within seconds, Sisko was through a breach in the wall and onto a narrow path between two collapsed buildings. The Orbs, so close together now, were throwing off almost the same amount of light as his shoulder lights. But visibility was still less than a handful of meters. By now, he knew, with the subspace distortion Terrell's ship would never be able to scan for him.

In fact, Sisko realized, if he were Terrell, he wouldn't come chasing after him at once. Instead, he'd wait the fifteen minutes for his target to die and use the time to put on a new environmental suit, knowing that when his target's suit finally succumbed to the atmosphere, the Orbs would not be going anywhere.

Reasoning that he would not be pursued at once, Sisko paused to get his bearings, recalling that there was another large building to his left. One with a single standing wall. If he could place the two Orbs near that wall and somehow topple the wall onto them, with any luck he'd shatter one or both Orbs, or at least make certain they were buried under tonnes of rubble.

Terrell's cruiser couldn't remain in orbit of Jeraddo for too long. All Sisko had to do was introduce a delay.

This last mission would become his life's work. All twelve minutes of it.

Sisko hurried through the ground-level twisting, crimson clouds, the red of the atmosphere swirling around him merging with the red nimbus of the glowing Orbs he carried.

Finally, he located the wall, and made out the shape of a relatively flat paving stone on which he could place the Orbs. All that he needed now was some way to dislodge the wall, get it started falling in the right direction.

He decided to check out the far side. He couldn't afford to waste the time it would take to make his way around it. So he risked tearing his suit as he half-clambered over a pile of rubble at its side and—

—wedged his boot.

Sisko groaned.

He was trapped two meters above ground level, visible from any direction, with no place to hide the Orbs.

To die for a cause was something every member of Starfleet had to prepare for. It was part of their oath.

But to die for nothing?

Sisko trembled with frustration as he tugged at his boot. He picked up another rock and bashed the offending boot with it. But all he managed to do was wedge it in deeper.

“Warning,” his suit's computer suddenly announced. “Loss of atmospheric integrity in three minutes.”

“No!” Sisko roared. “You're wrong. I have ten minutes at least!”

But there was no arguing with his internal displays. The insulation field was within five minutes of failing. His backup air supply was completely exhausted, its tanks probably already dissolved by the acid air.

He wondered how far he could get if he took off his boot and decompressed. Maybe he could last thirty seconds. But would he even be able to move with his exposed foot contacting 800-degree rocks?

“No,” Sisko whispered. And then there was nothing for him to do but to lift up the rock in his hand and smash it against the Red Orbs of Jalbador.

Again and again he brought the rock down.

His suit informed him that only two minutes remained before loss of atmospheric integrity.

Again he smashed the Orbs.

But the simple matter of normal space-time was no match for the solidified energy vortices of a nonlinear realm.

The Orbs withstood his attack. Untouched.

“One minute . . .” his suit announced.

Sisko absolutely refused to give up without achieving his last mission. He lifted one Orb over his head and with all his strength brought it down on the other Orb.

The light they both shed did not change in the least.

Sisko girded himself to try again. Maybe I didn't do it hard enough, he told himself. Maybe it will work the next time.

Again he lifted the Orb above his head, swung it down.

Again, nothing.

“Thirty seconds . . .”

The next time . . . it has to work the next time . . .

Once more he lifted. He swung. He lifted. He swung.

“Five seconds . . .”

With a cry of hope, rage, determination, he lifted that Red Orb as high as he could possibly stretch and—

—he couldn't swing it down.

His arms were locked in position. Something was holding them.

He twisted around in the bulky Cardassian suit to see a white shape glowing in the brilliance of his shoulder lights.

A luminous being.

Sisko gazed up at that form, at that being, and in that moment, without knowing what he saw or how it could be that he saw anything on this hellish world on which he was destined to die within an instant, he knew the Orbs were safe.

The luminous being moved closer to him, leaned down, details of its existence impossible to see through the clouded corroded surface of his helmet.

The luminous being put its arm around Sisko's shoulders, tapped itself once, then all was still.

And an endless eternity later, an endless moment later, a new light played over him as he stood locked in the embrace of the luminous being, in the depths of this inferno.

In the light of a transporter beam, Sisko could finally see through his helmet and the helmet of the angel who had come to save him.

Everything would be all right now.

It was Jake.