CHAPTER 27

“OH, NO,” QUARK SAID. “Not so fast! I don't want any of that in here!”

But he was too late, because Captain Sisko walked straight up to the bar counter and put both Red Orbs side by side on it.

“Captain, please, those things are more trouble than they could ever be worth. Things are—” Quark gave a strangled cry as he saw one of the most terrifying sights he had ever seen in his life!

Morn was running out of his establishment of business!

“Morn! Wait! Come . . . oh, for . . . now look what you did!” Quark threw his dish towel down on the bar in disgust. “My holosuites are broken. My replicators are off-line. This stupid gravity imbalance is making people dizzy without the need to consume any drinks, no one wants to play dabo because the wheel won't spin straight, and now you chase off my best customer. If you've got a phaser on you, you might as well just shoot me now.”

“Glad to see you, too, Quark,” Kira said.

Sisko pointed to the Orbs. Quark had a hard time even looking at them because they were flashing like emergency strobe lights on Port Authority inspection shuttles. And that just unleashed too many bad memories.

“We have reason to believe the third missing Orb is in your bar and we want to take a look,” Sisko said.

“I don't think so,” Quark told him. “Unless we'd like to discuss compensation for what Odo did to my holosuite.”

“Maybe we'd like to discuss an increase in rent instead?” Sisko suggested.

“For what?!”

“For what your inviting so many smugglers onboard is going to cost us.” Sisko looked up at the ceiling. “Let's see now, we could begin with the bill for Odo's investigation. Then there's the replacement of the damaged hull plates.”

“Oh, no—you can't blame that one on me.”

“Oh, yes he can,” Kira said.

“Oh, yes I will,” Sisko added.

“This is blackmail!” Quark protested.

“Then we're in complete agreement,” Sisko said. “You give us what we want—a few minutes to search the bar. And we'll give you what you want—peace and quiet.”

“And no rent increase.”

Sisko picked up the flashing Orbs again. “May I?”

“Oh, go ahead,” Quark said. “And I hope if you find it, a Prophet jumps out and bites you.”

Then Quark did the only thing he could do in the circumstances. He put an elbow on the bar, rested his head in his hand, and watched his customers leave in droves.

At any other time in his life, Quark might have found what Sisko and Kira were doing amusing. The hew-mon and the Bajoran were walking back and forth through the bar as if Odo had asked them to walk a white line.

But what wasn't amusing was that even Quark could see that every time Sisko passed through the center of the main level, the Orbs flashed faster and faster.

In less than ten minutes, all of his regular customers were gone. Instead, the bar was packed with Starfleet types. Dull, boring, root-beer-swilling slugs who wouldn't know a good time if M'Pella invited them up to her room for a nightcap. And they were all on duty, too.

Then, just to make matters worse—and lately, someone or something was always making matters worse—his idiot brother Rom chose this moment to walk in. With a construction team.

“Is it too much to ask what's going on?” Quark called out to anyone who might care to pay any attention to him.

Sisko came back to Quark. He pointed to the backlit glass mural on the wall facing the bar counter. “How long has that been there?”

“You mean the . . . uh, Admiral?” Quark asked, looking at the colorful artwork that was the centerpiece of his bar.

“Admiral?”

“Gul Dukat put it up. He said it was Admiral Alkene of the Tholian Assembly. Go figure.”

Sisko studied the admittedly abstract portrait with a frown. “So it was here on the Day of Withdrawal?”

“You're not going to do something stupid, are you?” Quark asked nervously.

“I hope not,” Sisko said.

Quark was getting the definite impression that the captain was deliberately tormenting him. Well, it took two to play that kind of game and, he wasn't one of them.

He closed the till, locked the order padds, then left the bar to join the Starfleet types at the base of the mural. The Orbs were now on the deck in front of it, flashing madly. Chief O'Brien and Rom were kneeling to either side, waving tricorders around like they knew what they were doing. Jadzia stood behind them, looking exceptionally lovely as always, Quark thought.

“Is there a problem?” he asked plaintively.

“I don't know,” Sisko said. “According to the way these two Orbs are reacting, the third Orb is behind that mural. But according to the tricorders, it's just glass, plasma lights, and a cheap metal frame.”

“It wasn't cheap, believe you me.”

O'Brien got to his feet and joined Sisko and Quark. “If I didn't know better, I'd say there was a miniature sensor mask in there, just like the one Satr and Leen used in the water plant.”

That was too much for Quark. “Why would anyone put a sensor mask inside a mural of a Tholian. . . .” He couldn't finish the statement. All he could think of was how much he hated the mural. How he had sworn he would tear it down the moment Gul Dukat left the station. And how, six years later, he still hadn't brought himself to do anything about it.

Almost as if he couldn't do anything about it.

“Something wrong, Quark?” Jadzia asked.

Quark shook his head. Wasn't there something Terrell had told him . . . not recently, but before . . .?

“I'm so confused,” Quark said. “I think I need to sit—”

A near-ultrasonic Ferengi scream pierced the bar.

Quark recognized it, and shoved aside Sisko and O'Brien to peer around the back of the mural to see—

Rom, on his knees, staring into a small open access panel at the back of the mural, his face bathed in a rapidly flashing red light.

“I . . . found it!” Rom squealed. “I . . . found the third Orb!” Suddenly, Odo was behind Quark, arms folded, his attitude letting Quark know he was ready to make an arrest.

“Anything you'd like to tell me, Quark?”

“Odo, I didn't know it was there. I swear I didn't know!”

“According to Dr. Bashir, next you're going to try to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.”

But then Sisko was at Quark's side. “That's all right, Constable. I don't think he did know the Orb was there.”

Odo snorted, disbelieving. “How could he not?”

“For the same reason,” Sisko said, “you and Garak don't remember-what happened to you on the Day of Withdrawal. Both your memories were tampered with. And so were Quark's. And before you ask why, I'll tell you right now I can't give you an answer. All I know is that it has something to do with Terrell and these Orbs.”

“Hmphh,” Odo said.

Quark stood closer to his new best friend, the great Captain Sisko.

“Well?” Kira asked, puzzling Quark but apparently not Sisko.

“Put the three orbs together?” Sisko suggested.

“Maybe that's not a good idea,” Kira said.

“You think they might actually cause the end of the world?”

“What?!” Quark exploded.

“Calm down, Quark,” Sisko chided him. “It's part of the legend of Jalbador that when the three Orbs are brought together, the Temple doors open and the world ends.”

“I don't want the world to end in my bar,” Quark said. “Talk about being bad for business.”

“Probably not a good idea to get them too close together,” O'Brien said. Quark could see the chief's attention was fixed on his tricorder. “I'm picking up a lot of neutrino flux. Almost as if some type of feedback loop is starting. That might explain the source of the light those things are producing. I don't think the world's going to come to an end, but we could get a blast of radiation that might do some harm.”

“All right,” Sisko said, holding up a hand that silenced Quark. “You call it, Chief. Five meters apart? Two meters?”

O'Brien made an adjustment on his tricorder, then showed it to Jadzia. “What would you say, Commander? Four meters should be safe?”

“Sure,” Jadzia said. “And if you're going to send these back with the Kai, I'd recommend sending at least one on a separate shuttle. Just so an accident doesn't force them together.”

Sisko smiled at Kira. “The Kai,” he said. “Major, why don't you go back to the Temple and invite Kai Winn to visit Quark's.”

Kira grinned fiercely. “With pleasure.” Then she marched out into the Promenade.

“The Kai,” Quark muttered. “In my bar. Might as well close early.”

He watched anxiously as Sisko lifted the newly discovered Red Orb and carried it to the bar, keeping it well away from the other two still on the deck in front of the mural.

While everyone else packed away their tools and prepared to leave, Quark walked around behind the mural again. He looked inside the access panel.

“Uh . . . I never knew about that tunnel, brother.”

Rom's sudden, without-warning appearance was enough to make Quark bang his head against the top of the opening.

“Neither did I,” Quark said under his breath.

“But, it's a . . . good one to know about now,” Rom said happily.

“Why not?” Quark said. “Everyone else knows about it now, too.”

“Oh . . . yeah. I forgot.”

Quark walked back to the front of the mural. He couldn't believe there was another maintenance tunnel coming into his bar that he didn't know about. Especially one that would have been so convenient for . . . he shook his head. For a moment, he thought he did remember the tunnel after all. But if he did, then why hadn't he been using it? And why hadn't he discovered the third Orb?

He was standing behind the bar when Sisko brought the second Orb up to the counter.

In a gesture of good will he knew would come back to haunt him, Quark started pouring mugs of root beer and passing them out to everyone for free. For Jadzia, he even hand-mixed a raktajino.

Then all three Orbs were on the bar, one at each end and one dead center, all of them flashing so rapidly that they almost appeared to glow with steady lights.

“I . . . think they're pretty,” Rom said, beside him.

“I think I'd like them out of my bar.”

“You know, brother, you . . . really should learn to take time to appreciate the wonders all around us every day.”

“That's easy for you to say. You're married to Leeta.”

“I'm serious.” Rom pointed to the Orb in the middle of the countertop. “Just look at how . . . gloriously the light comes alive in that.”

“Are you feeling all right?” Quark asked. Whenever Rom's babbling began to veer toward poetry, Quark worried about his sibling.

“You're not paying attention, brother. Look more closely.” Rom started to push Quark forward, toward the Orb.

“Careful there, Rom,” O'Brien warned. “Don't want to knock one of those things over.”

Quark pushed himself away from his brother. “See the trouble you almost caused. These aren't playthings.” Quark turned to the Red Orb directly in front of him. “They're . . .” He stopped as he tried to see what was inside the Orb.

There definitely was something inside. He knew because there had been the last time he had . . . “Oh, this is feeling too strange,” he whispered.

“Brother?” Rom said.

Quark peered deep within the Orb. Yes. He could see it now. The city in the swamp. The glowing light approaching through the trees. The . . .

Quark popped open his eyes in Ferengi alarm.

“You're not moogie!”

He struck at the hideous monster before him, only at the last moment dimly realizing it was a reflection within a reflection within the sparkling red facets of the Orb.

“QUARK, NO!”

It could have been Captain Sisko who shouted. Or Jadzia or Chief O'Brien.

It might even have been Terrell or Odo or Garak, because they had all been there that day, in one way or another.

But by then it was too late, and Quark held the Orb in his hand and felt himself swung around through the air, as if he were dangling from a length of ODN cable stretching down from an antigrav high above the Promenade and then, when he let go and fell to the deck and looked up . . .

He had no idea what he was seeing.

Besides the Orbs, of course.

The three of them were floating in midair, just a meter or so above the deck, spinning and glowing, each just like an Orb of the Prophets, except their lights were crimson red, flame red, blood red.

The Orbs seemed to have moved themselves to the points of an equilateral triangle, and now twisting tendrils of light snaked out from each Orb to link up with the others. Defining the triangle's edges. Creating a . . . glow. A darkness. A distortion of some strange type. Exactly in the middle of their formation.

Quark felt Rom drag him to his feet.

He saw O'Brien try to touch one of the Orbs and be flung back in a flash of red lightning.

He saw Jadzia standing close to the floating Orbs, aiming a tricorder at them, a sudden strong breeze tugging at tendrils of her hair, which fluttered past her face as if flying right into the center of the Orbs.

“Do you feel that, brother?” Rom asked.

Quark braced himself against the deck. Somehow, it felt as if the deck were sinking in the center of his bar, drawing everything toward it.

The breeze was getting stronger. Now the flow of air blew into the bar, swirling napkins and debris into the center of the Orbs' pattern.

And that debris wasn't being blown back out.

“We've got intensive neutrino flux!” Jadzia called out over the intensifying wind. “A definite wormhole precursor!”

“Here?!” Sisko shouted.

Quark saw someone in a Starfleet uniform fire a phaser at one of the Orbs, but the beam suddenly doubled in width and flashed back at the shooter, disintegrating him.

And then Kai Winn and Major Kira were at the doorway of the bar, the Kai's saffron robes billowed around her.

“Emissary!” she cried. “What have you done?!”

And then Quark heard the deck creak as it seemed to distort even more and the station's pressure-failure sirens began to sound.

Quark could see Sisko tapping his communicator, giving orders, looking wild.

His brother Rom pulled on his arm, dragging him around the bar, giving the floating Orbs the widest possible berth.

Then the lights went out, as if the entire power grid had blown.

For a moment, the torrential wind died down and the red glow of the Orbs diminished. Quark and Rom stumbled and ran to join the last Starfleet stragglers fleeing his bar.

Outside in the Promenade, in the dim red glow that came from the three floating Orbs in the bar—the only source of light in the station, it seemed—Quark could see he was near to Captain Sisko. Without the roar of the wind, Quark discovered he could hear again, as well. O'Brien, at Sisko's side, was saying that the Red Orbs were drawing power from the station's fusion reactors. With the power failure, they, too, had lost power. If they could just shut down the reactors, the Orbs would be powerless.

“It's worth a try,” Sisko said.

And then a dark shadow passed between Quark and Sisko, and Quark saw Sisko go down, struck by a sudden blow to the head by some crazed assailant.

“Abandon station!” Sisko suddenly shouted. “Chief! Jadzia! Pass the order on to abandon station!”

“What about the reactors?” O'Brien's voice was urgent.

“Now, Chief!”

Then the pressure alarms were replaced by a siren that Quark had only heard during drills. And never thought he'd live to hear.

Two long bursts. Two short ones.

The order to abandon the station had been relayed to Ops. In the dim light and shadows, Quark saw Sisko push himself to his feet, rubbing at his jaw. The captain looked around in confusion, then tapped at his chest as he shouted more orders.

Suddenly new sources of light appeared on the Promenade.

Golden columns of quantum mist.

Emergency beam-outs.

“Uh . . . hold on to me, brother.”

Quark felt Rom's fingernails dig into his arms. The wind began to rise again. The whole station seemed to creak and flex. The glow from the bar became brighter.

“Rom!” O'Brien shouted.

“You're with me!” Quark saw O'Brien lunge for Rom and grab his brother's arm just as Rom held on to Quark's.

“Chief!” Quark shouted. “What's happening?”

“There's a wormhole opening in the station!”

Quark felt his heart stop. A wormhole was opening in the station? A wormhole was opening in his bar!

Quark looked past Rom and O'Brien as it seemed his bar was lit by the literal flames of hell. Gul Dukat's pride and joy, the ridiculous mural of Tholian or Tellarite design, suddenly exploded into a spray of splintered glass, each glittering shard spinning madly as it was sucked down into the center of the triangle formed by the floating, glowing Orbs.

It was the last thing Quark saw before the station flickered out of existence before him in the swirl of the transporter.

But then, since he had lost everything, it was the last thing he ever wanted to see.

As far as he was concerned, the legends of the Red Orbs of Jalbador were true.

His world had come to an end.