CHAPTER 9

WITH SEVEN LIFETIMES of experience to draw on, Jadzia Dax recognized a dying starship when she saw one, and the Augustus was dying.

It obviously had been launched before completion—its environmental controls were malfunctioning. The nature of the vessel's exposed wires, pipes, and conduits also told her that redundancy and self-repair capabilities were nonexistent. And there were appallingly few signs of any attempt to make the ship a secure home for her crew. Even the earliest starships had used paint and colored lights to vary the visual environment and prevent boredom from setting in on long voyages or tours of duty. Yet even those simple grace notes were missing from this ship.

And just as the yellowing of a single leaf can indicate the failing health of a tree, Jadzia was further convinced that the decline of the Augustus was not an isolated event. It was a symptom of a greater disease, one that must infect all of Starfleet.

None of these conclusions had she shared with Worf, however. Even as she had walked with him through the narrow, unfinished corridors of the ship escorted by Vulcan security guards, each wearing phaser-visors, Jadzia had remained silent, as had he. Now, with little more than a look exchanged since she and her husband had been escorted to the cramped cabin that was to be their prison cell, Jadzia knew that Worf had reached the same conclusion she had.

They were under surveillance.

The fact that the Vulcan captain of this vessel could subject them to the barbaric test of their humanity on the hangar deck was proof enough that this Starfleet had deviated from the ideals that had drawn Jadzia to serve in it. The computer briefing she and Worf had watched on the holographic screen had been further evidence of whatever disease was responsible for the decay around them.

Whether the briefing had been a complete lie or not Jadzia couldn't be certain. But she was convinced that it had not been the complete truth.

She had seen that same realization in Worf's eyes as well.

Because no matter how limited Starfleet's ship construction and maintenance capacities had become, no matter how brutal and arbitrary its commanders, Jadzia could not for an instant believe that in a mere twenty-five years Starfleet and the Federation had degenerated to the point that they would take part in a religious war. It was unthinkable.

Yet according to the computer briefing, that's exactly what was under way—the War of the Prophets.

Somehow, since the destruction of Deep Space 9 a new religious movement on Bajor, centered on the beings discovered to live in the second wormhole, had become a rallying point for a new interstellar political entity—the Bajoran Ascendancy. If the briefing was to be believed, the Ascendancy had early on launched a series of unprovoked attacks against Federation territory that had resulted in years of tense negotiations and border skirmishes, each side accusing the other of ongoing acts of terrorism.

Had that been the end of the story, Jadzia might have understood how a state of war could come to exist, with the Ascendancy attempting to take over new systems and the Federation attempting to maintain its borders.

But according to the briefing that was not the point of the undeclared war.

The goal of the Ascendancy was not to acquire new territory. It was simply to prohibit the passage of non-Ascendancy ships through the Bajoran Sector, including the homeworld system and the four closest colony worlds. In Jadzia's time—in fact, throughout the existence of the Federation—Starfleet had always respected the sovereignty of independent systems. The Prime Directive permitted it to do nothing less.

But according to that same briefing, which Jadzia had found to be a particularly deplorable piece of propaganda, long on emotion and short on facts, the goal of Starfleet in this war was not to defend Federation territory, not to contain Ascendancy forces within their own boundaries, but actually to invade the Bajoran home system and destroy the second wormhole, ending the new Bajoran religion.

Even seven lifetimes had not prepared her for the utter revulsion she felt for the Starfleet of this time. What had happened to the Prime Directive? What had happened to the Fundamental Declarations? For a moment the Trill had even found herself wondering if, in addition to traveling through time, the Defiant had somehow crossed over into a parallel universe, one closer to the horrors of the Mirror Universe than to the one she had lived in.

Their Vulcan captors had told them that the briefing would answer all their questions. But so many new ones had been raised in Jadzia that she had come to feel liberated. When she had entered the Academy, she had pledged herself to uphold the ideals of Starfleet and the Federation. When she had graduated, she had taken her oath as an officer to do the same. As a result, she felt no conflict in her present resolve to behave according to that pledge and that oath—both made to the Starfleet of the past and not to this hollow, dying version that did not deserve its name.

All she needed now was an opportunity to take action, and that opportunity came the moment she and Worf set foot on their third metal staircase. The ship's decks, doors, and intersections were labeled only by alphanumeric code, but Jadzia knew they were now on a deck higher than the hangar deck, which suggested they were moving closer to the bridge.

Worf and she—the tactical officer and the science officer—had been “invited” to a meeting there. And that strongly suggested that Captain T'len and her own science officer were now on the bridge, waiting for their “guests” to arrive.

Which means, Jadzia thought, they won't be expecting—

Two steps from the top of the staircase and the waiting Vulcan escort, she drove her fist upward into the man's stomach, and as he doubled over she smashed her other hand up against the visor he wore, seeking to damage it as much as its wearer.

Reflexively, the Vulcan guard reached out for her shoulder, seeking

the nerves that would bring instant unconsciousness. But he was still off-balance, and Jadzia swept his outstretched hand aside and slammed his head against the metal handrail.

That was the telling blow, and with a groan the guard fell to the metal deck.

Only then did Jadzia turn back to see how Worf had fared, confident that he would have been looking for the same opportunity she had, and that he would have made his move in the same instant.

Sure enough, Worf was crouched at the bottom of the stairway, removing the phaser-visor from the guard who lay sprawled there. A thin thread of green blood trickled from the Vulcan's nose, which looked considerably flatter than it had a few moments earlier.

Jadzia leaped up the last few steps and pulled the phaser-visor from the guard she had felled. A thin black wire ran from the device into the collar of the guard's uniform. She pushed him onto his side and traced the wire down his back until it reached his waist. She pulled up on his jacket and discovered that the wire disappeared into a belt that was studded with various components, and which she concluded was the power supply and control mechanism for the weapon.

The belt had a twist lock that opened easily, and by the time Jadzia had donned it over her own uniform and was adjusting the visor to her head, Worf had run up the stairs with surprisingly little noise and had stopped beside her, his own phaser-visor already in place.

“Looks good,” Jadzia told him. But looking through her own visor was like looking through transparent aluminum. She saw no holographic displays or any other indication of how the visor should be operated.

“Mine does not work, either,” Worf said.

Jadzia tried pulling her loose belt tighter. “Maybe they're keyed to each individual user.”

“Or they could require low-level Vulcan telepathy.”

Jadzia realized there could be a dozen safeguards built into the visors, and even if she and Worf could get past them, they'd still not know how to aim and fire. “Okay, for now they're just fashion accessories.”

Worf frowned. “This is not a time to joke.”

Jadzia couldn't resist smiling at her mate. She knew that as far as Worf was concerned there never was a good time for a joke. “Good work taking out your guard. I knew you'd be thinking the same thing I was.”

Something flashed through Worf's eyes that suddenly made Jadzia doubt he had been thinking the same as she had.

“Weren't you?” she asked.

“There were two earlier opportunities to attack. When you missed them both, I decided that you had not reached the same conclusion I had.”

“So I took my time,” she said. She most definitely intended to learn what the missed opportunities had been, but this wasn't the time for a debriefing. “But we're thinking the same thing now, right?”

“I hope so,” Worf said seriously. “You are planning on locating the second hangar deck where they undoubtedly keep the shuttlecraft that were missing from the hangar deck we were beamed to.”

“You want to hijack a shuttlecraft?” Jadzia asked incredulously.

“It is the best way to escape and find a source of information about this time that we can trust.”

“I agree with the second part, but there's a much better way to escape than by taking over a shuttle.”

Worf gave Jadzia a look she knew all too well—the one that said he was the warrior in the family and she was the scientist. “What better way?” he asked, and his tone suggested that he knew whatever she was about to say was wrong.

“We take over the ship.”

“The two of us?”

Jadzia grinned. “If you'd like to go back to our quarters and rest, I can take care of it.”

Worf grunted. “How?”

“First, we don't linger near the scene of the crime.” She looked up and down the corridor, then started to run forward. Unlike all other Starfleet vessels she had been on, the Augustus had no maps or display boards in the corridors. And since the identification labels did not progress in any logical sequence, she decided to assume that the ship had been deliberately designed to make it difficult for any hostile boarding party to know where they were and where they should go.

But from what she recalled of the elongated shape of the vessel as she had seen it on the Defiant's viewscreen, the odds were good that the bridge was ahead and no more than one or two decks higher.

Within two or three running strides, Worf had caught up to her, and together they ran to the next intersection.

Jadzia stopped in the middle of it, glancing port and starboard.

“How can you be sure we will not run into other guards?” Worf asked.

“Look at the ship's condition. It's filthy, poorly maintained. I bet they're running with less than half the crew they're supposed to have. That means double shifts, so everyone's either at their station or sleeping.”

Worf adjusted the visor he wore—his prominent brow kept it from fitting securely across his face. “It is still dangerous to run without—”

Jadzia cut him off by pointing to a nearby door. “That one!” She ran to it, and as she looked for a control panel the door obligingly slid open before her.

“An unlocked compartment is not likely to contain critical components,” Worf complained. But he dutifully followed her inside.

As the door slipped shut behind them, three small lighting fixtures flickered to life. Another sign that the Augustus wasn't operating at peak efficiency. The energy used to light the interior of a starship was usually negligible compared to what was required to run the warp engines or the replicators. But this ship was obviously set up to conserve even that insignificant amount of power.

“Why are we here?” Worf asked as he surveyed the room. It was almost the same size as the cabin they'd been given, but there was no furniture, and its walls were lined with conduits and cables.

“There!” Jadzia pointed to her quarry—a computer screen and control surface. “That won't have restricted access.”

She went to the screen, and in only seconds she had called up a schematic of the ship. It was Tiberius-class, and seemed to have evolved from the Defiant. Almost three-quarters of its volume was devoted to warp engines and weapons systems. Only the central core of the ship contained significant life-support areas.

“This is good,” Jadzia said as she made calculations based on the size of the habitable volume of the ship. “I'd say the regular crew complement wouldn't be more than fifty. So we're probably facing no more than thirty. That's just about two to one, and you're good for at least ten, so . . .” She looked back at Worf, but he wasn't paying attention to her. He was looking down at the deck. “Am I boring you?”

Worf was looking at the far bulkhead, and a sudden shaft of silver energy lanced from his visor to crackle against a bare spot between two conduits. “I have found the ‘on’ switch,” Worf announced as he reached over to show her where her visor's activation controls were located, on the upper edge of her belt. Suddenly a rainbow collection of virtual squares appeared before her eyes, each about a centimeter across, and appearing to hover in mid-air a meter in front of her.

Then Worf touched another control on her belt and the squares seemed to float closer, until she could read their labels. Some corresponded to phaser controls. Others to tricorder functions.

“A combination phaser and tricorder?” she asked.

“Extremely efficient,” Worf confirmed with approval. “It leaves both hands free to use a bat'leth.”

Jadzia looked past the holographic controls to give Worf a wry smile. “Exactly what I was thinking.” She refocused on the controls, noticing that whichever one she looked at brightened. “How do you actually get it to fire?” she asked.

Worf quickly briefed her on the visor operating system, explaining

that it appeared to be similar to the helmets worn by Starfleet warp-fighter pilots in their own time. After enabling the phaser functions, firing, it seemed, was as simple as looking at a target and blinking the right eye.

“This is better than I had hoped,” Jadzia said.

Worf sighed. “Do you really think we have a chance at taking over their bridge? Even armed with these?”

Jadzia patted Worf's expansive chest. “We're not going to take over the bridge. Chances are it has defenses we can't even imagine. I had something different in mind.”

This time Worf's sigh was even louder. “It is obvious we do not think alike, because I have no idea what you mean.”

Jadzia was about to wink at Worf, then thought better of it, considering her visor's capabilities. Instead, she pointed to a spot on the ship's schematic that indicated a large cabin just down the corridor from the bridge. “What's more important than the bridge of a starship? Or should I say, who is more important?”

At last Worf smiled. Trill and Klingon, bound by love and duty, they were finally both sharing the same thought.

They waited in darkness—and they did not have to wait long. The door to the captain's stateroom slid open only minutes after Jadzia and Worf had easily bypassed the lock. For all the advanced firepower the Augustus carried, her designers had left out a considerable number of security amenities, including a weapons-suppression system, computer control of all interior locks, and a personnel-locator network. The only reason for the omissions Jadzia could imagine was that their absence made the ship simpler and faster to build. But what did the concepts of simpler and faster have to do with a construction project undertaken by robotic assemblers? All the mysteries in this time period were making her uncomfortable.

With the door opening and the lights coming on, Jadzia trusted that several of those mysteries might soon end.

As planned, the instant the door had slid shut again, Worf leaned out from his position sprawled behind the bunk and stunned Captain T'len with a blast from his triphaser.

The stun intensity was at the lowest setting, and T'len's hand fluttered toward her communicator as she slumped on the deck, semiconscious. But before the captain could report, Jadzia was at her side and removed her communicator badge. Then Worf tied the captain's hands and feet with lengths of fabric he ripped from the sheets on the bunk and carried her to the room's lone chair.

As T'len slowly regained awareness of what had happened to her, Jadzia studied the stateroom to see if she could build up a picture of what sort of person the captain was. But almost everything in it was Starfleet issue, not a hint of individuality anywhere. No paintings or framed holos. No books. Not even a Vulcan IDIC placed as a meditation aid.

Jadzia's examination ended with T'len's blunt statement. “You will not survive this attempt to take control of my ship.”

“We've survived this long,” Jadzia said easily. “We'll make it through a few more minutes.”

Worf stood so that he was midway between the closed door and the captain, and he kept his gaze firmly on the door to challenge anyone who might come through it. “Captain T'len, what is our estimated arrival time at Starbase 53?”

“Eighteen hours, fourteen minutes.”

“What will happen to us when we arrive?”

“To you? Nothing. Because you will be dead. To your fellow refugees, I cannot say. It was anticipated that they would be given a chance to demonstrate their suitability for continuing their service with Starfleet. However, if your actions are typical of what we can expect from them, they will be imprisoned.”

“You knew we were coming, didn't you?” Jadzia said. It was the only explanation for how quickly the briefing program had been made available. It had been created for the crew of the Defiant, the Bolian admiral had said.

T'len nodded. “Several years after your disappearance, Starfleet researchers went back to the sensor logs recorded at the time of your disappearance and discovered clues suggesting the Defiant might have been pulled along the equivalent of a temporal-slingshot trajectory around the mouth of the second wormhole. The trajectory was calculated and the time of your reemergence into the timeline plotted.”

“Why did we reemerge in interstellar space?” Worf asked.

Jadzia expanded the question. “Shouldn't we have reappeared around the wormhole?”

“You did not travel into the wormhole. You traveled through a region of space-time that was significantly distorted by the wormhole. The Bajoran system has moved on in the past twenty-five years, through a combination of its own relative motion and the rotation of the galaxy. Since the space-time distortion caused by the wormhole is not constant—as would be the case with the gravity well of a star—the absolute region of space you passed through was unbound, and moved at a different rate.”

Jadzia felt vindicated. “Given your knowledge of the second wormhole, I'd say Starfleet has done considerable research into it.”

“These are desperate times,” T'len said, looking down at the torn sheets that bound her hands and feet together.

“A Vulcan admitting to desperation?” Jadzia asked.

“You saw the briefing that was prepared for you,” the captain replied. “Logic is in short supply at this time.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Jadzia agreed. “Now tell me—what wasn't on the briefing?”

“That question is too broad.”

“I don't believe the Federation would enter into a war against any system just to wipe out a religion.”

“Perhaps not in your time.”

“Are you serious?” Jadzia asked, hating the implications of T'len's answer. “This War of the Prophets is what the briefing described?”

T'len looked up at the ceiling, an odd gesture for a Vulcan to make. “Starfleet's objective in this war, undeclared or not, is to gain entry into the Bajoran system and destroy the red wormhole and any and all artifacts of importance to the subset of Bajoran faith known as Ascendant.”

Jadzia could see that even Worf looked shocked by T'len's words. “What about the Prime Directive?”

“It is no longer operative.”

Jadzia stared at T'len. “I can't believe I heard a Starfleet officer say that.”

“Commander Dax, this is a war of survival. Either we destroy the Ascendants, or they will destroy us.”

“Because of their religious beliefs?”

“Precisely.”

Worf shared Jadzia's incomprehension. “You will have to explain to us how a belief based in personal faith can pose a danger to the Federation.”

“Not just the Federation,” T'len said grimly.

“Captain,” Jadzia asked in sudden apprehension, “what exactly do the Ascendants believe?”

The captain's explanation did nothing to make Jadzia more comfortable.