CHAPTER 27

THEY WERE ALL on the battle bridge now: Captain Nog, Admiral Picard, Vash, Jake, and the thirteen other temporal refugees.

“Computer,” Nog said. “Go to long-range transfactor sensors. Image Bajor-B'hava'el.

Bashir observed the computer navigation graphic vanish from the main viewer, to be replaced by a real-time representation of Bajor's sun. He noted a small solar flare frozen in a graceful arc from its northwestern hemisphere, and a string of small sunspots scattered at its equator. As far as he could tell, it was to all appearances a typical type-G star, securely in the middle of the main sequence.

“What's the time lag with this system?” Jadzia asked.

“With transfactor imaging at this distance? We're seeing the sun as it existed less than half a second ago.” Nog's hand moved through a holographic control panel and a spectrographic display of the sun appeared at the bottom of the viewer. Even Bashir was able to see that there were no anomalies present.

“You're sure about this?” Jadzia asked. “Stars don't get much more stable than that.”

Bashir could tell the Trill was worried, and about more than Nog's planned maneuver. Jadzia's spotting stood out in high contrast to her pale, drawn face, and the reason for her concern was standing beside her: Worf, his shoulders rounded, restricted by the pressure bandages the holographic medical team had applied to his disruptor wounds. The problem was that this ship had no medical equipment set for Klingon physiology, and what would have required a simple fifteen-minute treatment in Bashir's infirmary on DS9 had become a weeklong ordeal of daily bandage-changings and the constant threat of infection. Jadzia was clearly worried that in his weakened condition Worf might not survive what Nog had in mind. And Bashir had been unable to say much to reassure her. As Vash had earlier pointed out, there were just too many things that could go wrong.

But Nog was a study in confidence. “I'm positive,” the Ferengi answered. Then he adjusted more holographic controls, until the image of Bajor's sun shrank to the upper-right-hand corner of the viewer and a new image window opened. Now they were looking at a closeup of the Phoenix's twenty-five-thousand-year-old dedication plate recovered by the Romulans. “Look at the atomic tracings,” he said.

Thin lines of artificial color appeared over the plaque. Most of the lines were dead straight. A very few, Bashir noticed, curved and looped like the trail of subatomic particles in a child's cloud chamber.

“Read the isotope numbers, too,” Nog urged Jadzia. “And the energy matrix.”

This was a more difficult piece of evidence for Bashir to understand. But from what Nog had already told them, it apparently showed incontrovertible evidence that the plaque had been in close proximity to a supernova. In addition, Nog said, to having been subjected to an intense burst of chronometric particles, which suggested it had traveled along a temporal slingshot trajectory.

Furthermore, the Ferengi maintained, the distinctive mix of elements and isotopes that had left their trails through the plaque's metal structure were an exact match for Bajor-B'hava'el—a sun that should not be at risk for even a simple nova reaction for more than a billion years.

Which apparently left room for only one conclusion.

The Ascendancy was going to deliberately trigger the sun's explosion.

And the reason was, again according to Nog, perfectly logical: When the two wormholes opened at their closest approach to each other—something which would happen in just over fifteen minutes, relative time—the portals would be too far away from each other to interact.

The supernova detonation of Bajor's sun, however, provided it was properly timed, would create a high-density, faster-than-light subspace pressure wave. And that pressure wave would be followed minutes later by a near-light-speed physical wall of superheated gas thrown off from the surface of the collapsing sun.

As far as Bashir had been able to understand from Nog's explanation, the combined effect of the two near-simultaneous concussions in real space and subspace—when added to the gravity waves generated by the sudden disappearance of the Bajoran gravity well around which the wormholes orbited—would actually cause the underlying structure of space-time to warp.

Nog told them that the effect would be a natural version of what a Cochrane engine did on an ongoing and far more focused basis in every starship that had ever flown. And then the Ferengi had shown the math to Jadzia that described an incredible event. For approximately four seconds, the space between the two wormhole openings would relativistically decrease from almost five hundred kilometers to less than five hundred meters.

And, Nog insisted, there was nothing in the universe that could keep the two wormholes apart at that distance.

Thus would the Ascendancy end the universe.

“Commander Dax,” the Ferengi captain said with finality. “Like it or not, we're running out of time. We'll be at our first insertion point in . . . seven minutes.”

“Are you certain you don't want to attempt to place the deep-time charges?” Jadzia asked.

“If we had planted them, they would have detonated by now,” Nog said. “There's only one more thing we can do.”

Bashir could see that Jadzia's concern was now shared by everyone else who would be beaming from the Phoenix at . . . at transfactor twelve, whatever that meant in recalibrated warp factors.

And with Nog claiming that modern transporters could handle the task by using something called “micropacket-burst-transmission,” who among the temporal refugees from the past could argue with something so incomprehensible? Certainly he himself couldn't, Bashir thought.

Nog turned from the viewer to address his apprehensive passengers. “Trust in the River,” he said. “It might not take you where you want to go, but have faith that it will always take you where you need to go. Good profits to you all. Now please report to your assigned transporter pads.”

Having faced death many times on this strange journey, Bashir himself felt rather unconcerned about soon facing it again. Besides, if anything went wrong with Nog's plan in the past, he and all the others simply wouldn't exist. So they wouldn't even be dead.

As the others left the battle bridge he approached Nog, who was in the middle of saying his farewell to Jake, at least that's what it seemed to Bashir that the Ferengi was doing. What he overheard of their exchange did not make much sense to him.

“Remember,” Nog warned his friend, “don't tell ‘me.’ ”

Jake's answering smile was rather mournful, Bashir thought. “But I'll make sure you get all the girls,” Jake said. “Fully clothed.”

As Jake stepped back, he bumped into Bashir, awkwardly pinning Vash between the two of them.

“Don't look so glum, boys,” she said, separating them with a playful push. “This is going to work. I know it.” The archaeologist manifested none of the nervousness possessing everyone else.

“How can you be so sure?” Bashir asked her, curious, and rather envious of her upbeat, invigorated mood.

She winked at him. “Let's just say I've seen how the River flowed.”

Bashir frowned at her. What did she mean? Had Vash learned something—about the past? Frustratingly, there was however no time left for questions—no time even to express his regret that he and she had not had the opportunity to follow up on the promise of that kiss they had shared on the Augustus. More than anything else—if only to bring completion to his time with her—Bashir wished he could kiss Vash again.

The woman was a mind reader. But it seemed she had read the wrong mind. She pushed past Bashir to grab Jake's face between her hands and kissed Jake with a passion that could have melted duranium.

When she released him, Jake looked dizzy, and shocked, and pleased—incredibly pleased—all at the same time. And incapable of coherent speech. Horridly jealous, Bashir felt a hundred years old. He remembered feeling that way himself. And hoped he would again.

“You know,” Bashir heard Vash say to Jake, “people are going to tell you that you always remember your first love.”

Jake nodded silently, still dazed.

“But you know what the truth is?” Vash didn't wait for an answer. “The truth is, the one you really never forget is your best love.”

Then she looked past Jake at Bashir, who felt his heart skip a beat. But then he, too, was dismissed by her gaze, which now settled on another: Admiral Picard, sheltered in his command chair.

Vash flicked her finger under Jake's nose. “And what I want you to remember is your twenty-fifth birthday. I'm buying.”

“Okay,” Jake mumbled hoarsely, “I'll be there.”

Then Jake left, and Bashir felt uncomfortable staying in Vash's presence without him. He crossed quickly to Picard's side, unwilling to leave without one last chance to speak to the living legend.

“Dr. Bashir!” Picard said as Bashir approached his chair.

Bashir was startled at Picard's recognition of him. Through most of his time on the Phoenix, the admiral had thought he was someone called Wesley.

“You remember me,” Bashir said, pleased, as he shook the admiral's hand.

“How could I forget? Between you and Admiral McCoy, I lived in constant fear that my wife was going to leave me for either one of her heroes. She was a doctor, too, you know.”

“I didn't know you had married,” Bashir said.

“Damned Grigari took her. Battle of Earth. Good thing we can stop them with this bloody marvelous ship, eh?”

“A very good thing,” Bashir agreed. He looked up to see that he was the last of the passengers in the battle bridge. It was time to go. “A real pleasure to meet you again, Admiral Picard. I hope—”

“Oh, don't call me that, young man. I'm not Admiral Jean-Luc Picard anymore.”

Bashir blinked in confusion. He felt Nog's hands on his back.

“Doctor,” Nog said, with some urgency, “you really have to get to your transporter.”

“We're going undercover!” Picard called after Bashir. “A critical mission!”

“Are you sure his medication is under control?” Bashir asked Vash, as she took over from Nog and pushed him toward the doors.

“Absolutely,” Vash said. “You have to hurry.”

“My new name is Shabren!” Picard shouted proudly.

Bashir stared at Vash in horror. “You can't be serious! You three?”

Vash patted his arm. “Don't know if we have to yet. But who else is gonna know how to spell the Sisko's name twenty-five thousand years ago? Now run!”

The battle bridge doors slid shut before Bashir could say another word. So he ran as instructed. And as he did, he tried not to picture the convoluted timeline that might emerge if the archaeologist actually carried out what it seemed she was planning.

For the truth was, unless Nog could accomplish the first part of his mission in the next three minutes, its second part would mean nothing at all.

Because none of this would ever have happened.

And nothing would ever happen again.

The universe now had ten minutes left.