CHAPTER 29

GRIGARI WERE deactivated by the millions, and equal numbers of living beings died in those final minutes, as a thousand battles raged through space in the vast cubic-parsec sphere that surrounded the Bajoran system.

But the Grigari lines held.

The last Starfleet vessel attempting to reach Bajor—to destroy whatever remained of the Ascendancy—was blown apart with less than eight minutes left.

The loss of that ship marked the Federation's end.

And with such a glorious dream lost forever, perhaps the universe no longer deserved to exist.

Inward from the chaos of those battles, at the center of the calm eye of the galactic storm, the Boreth towed the tiny Defiant at warp factor five. Easily outpacing the protomatter-induced supernova of Bajor-B'hava'el, both in real-and subspace.

Total transit time from Bajor to the required coordinates near the Denorios Belt was three minutes, twelve seconds.

The universe had just over five minutes of existence left.

It was then that the Boreth came to relative rest and fired a small impulse probe at the exact coordinates of the Bajoran wormhole, and for the first time in twenty-five years the doorway to the Celestial Temple blossomed in a majestic display of energies unknown to normal space-time.

Soft blue light bathed the pale hull of the Defiant. And in that same radiance, five hundred kilometers distant, a trio of hourglassshaped orbs of a translucent red substance equally alien to this realm orbited together, sparkling from within as they responded to that first verteron bloom, then matched it.

A second opening appeared against the stars and the shifting Denorios plasma ribbons. Radiating red energy as if every wavelength from the first wormhole had just been reversed.

And then, with only two minutes remaining until there would be no time at all, exactly as had been prophesied by the three great mystics of Jalbador, the doors to the Temples opened together.

Both Temples.

One Temple.

The reason why the Prophets wept.

Still immobile, in place, Sisko struggled for breath as he saw both wormholes expanding on the Defiant's main viewer. Weyoun had left the command chair to stand closer to the screen, his weak Vorta eyesight robbing him of the grandeur of the spectacle before him.

“Defiant to Boreth,” the Vorta breathed. “You may release us now.” He turned back to Sisko. “Almost time.” He open his mouth in a soundless laugh. “Almost no time.”

The ship's collision alarms sounded abruptly.

“What is it? What's happening?” the Vorta exclaimed, cringing, his hands over his ears.

“Let . . . me . . . go. . . .” Sisko's words were little more than a rasp.

Weyoun gestured impatiently and whatever cord of energy had kept Sisko bound, he was suddenly released. He ran.

Toward the tactical station, where he saw a reading that he didn't understand.

“It looks like a Borg ship,” he said to Weyoun, his voice stronger, freer by the moment. “Coming in at transwarp velocities.”

“Is it headed for us?” Weyoun gasped in alarm.

Sisko did an instant, rough analysis of the vessel's trajectory. A slingshot. Good, he thought.

“Are we in danger?” Weyoun cried.

“No,” Sisko lied. “It looks like it's out of control.”

Weyoun had turned back to the viewer. The two wormholes remained open as a subspace distortion wave made them ripple. Fine filaments of energy tentatively splashed out toward each other, but still too far away to connect.

“Why aren't we moving?” Weyoun wailed.

“Where to?” Sisko asked. Why should any location matter now?

“We have to get inside the Temple,” Weyoun explained despairingly. “That's the only place to escape what will happen.” He looked up again. “Defiant to Boreth. This is Weyoun. Release the tractor beam.”

And then, finally, a voice replied from the Boreth.

“Never.”

Weyoun's white face betrayed his utter shock.

“Who is that? Identify yourself.”

The viewer switched to a new image, and both Sisko and Weyoun flinched back as Dukat's features overwhelmed them, red eyes glowing, thin-lipped gray mouth twisted in a terrifying grimace of victory.

“You?!” Weyoun cried out in disbelief.

“You lost before, you'll lose again,” Dukat gloated. “The true War of the Prophets is not your fight. It is ours!”

Suddenly, the Defiant's bridge rang with even more collision alarms, weapons-lock sirens, and intruder alerts—all sounding at once as Weyoun twisted back and forth, his hands pressed tightly over his sensitive ears.

And then the bridge pulsed with multiple flashes of light as three brilliant starbursts exploded around Sisko, and from each of them a human figure seemed to unfold.

Sisko shouted out in recognition.

It was Worf and Bashir—and a young ensign who had just arrived at DS9 only a few days before the station's destruction. All three looked disoriented. They gestured at him, urgent, their mouths open in entreaty. But Sisko couldn't hear a word they said over the blaring alarms.

He ran to join Worf, who staggered over to tactical, hampered by thick bandages wound around his torso. As soon as he was by his side, Sisko heard Worf's voice clear and victorious: “They all made it!”

“Jake?” Sisko cried out, his only thought. His only hope.

Worf nodded vigorously. “All of them! All through the ship!”

Then Sisko saw the time readout. Only a minute remained.

“We have to get into the wormhole!” he shouted to Worf.

Worf stared down at his station. “We have no engines!”

But Sisko refused to be beaten. Could no longer be beaten. Not when his son had been returned to him. Not when the Prophets were finally showing he was right to have hope.

“The tractor beam!” he yelled at Worf. “Steal momentum from the Boreth! Use all the station-keeping thrusters at once!”

Then the alarms cut off and Sisko saw Bashir. At the conn. Frantically trying to call up any set of controls that might let him guide the ship.

“Now can you hear oblivion approaching?” Dukat declared, triumphant, from the screen.

“Madman!” Weyoun screeched.

“Loser,” Dukat cackled. “Remember that, pretender . . . remember

that, forever.”

Then, laughing maniacally, Dukat vanished from the viewer, and Sisko looked up to see the two wormholes again, both wavering as space shifted around them.

Then the Boreth appeared, heading toward the blue wormhole.

“Worf!” Sisko commanded. “Everything we've got! Now!”

A shaft of purple light sprang forward and gripped the Klingon ship.

“He is attempting to use shields to disengage us,” Worf said.

“Keep us attached as long as you can,” Sisko urged.

“Nooo!” Weyoun screamed as the view of the wormholes began to shift and the Defiant was pulled forward by the ship it had caught.

“Dr. Bashir!” Sisko ordered. Commanded. Demanded. “Stand by on thrusters. Get us into that wormhole!”

Sisko checked the time readout.

Thirty seconds.

Worf reported. “The Boreth is swinging off course.”

“Are we going with it?”

“Not if we detach . . . NOW!”

On the viewer, the Boreth tumbled toward the red wormhole.

As the blue wormhole grew larger.

“. . . No . . .” Weyoun sobbed. “This wasn't supposed to happen.”

Twenty seconds.

“Full thrusters, Doctor!”

“Hydrazine is exhausted,” Bashir cried. “All we've got now is momentum.”

Dazed, crazed, Sisko checked their rate of approach. Checked the time.

They weren't going to make it.

Fifteen seconds.

“DAD!”

Heart soaring, Sisko wheeled. Saw Jake run for him.

Caught him in a wordless embrace, stricken with horror at what he had brought to his child, felt the same inexpressible feelings in his son.

Jake.

Ten seconds.

Worf reported again. “Supernova shockwave approaching.”

The Defiant trembled.

Sisko looked up. “What was that?”

The young ensign—at the science station. “Subspace pressure wave! It's caught us.”

Sisko heard Worf's voice. “Distance to wormhole is decreasing.”

Five seconds.

On the viewer, long tendrils of red energy. Snaking. Twisting. Engaging blue tendrils.

Sisko heard Worf again. “The wormholes are merging as predicted.”

“The Temple!” Weyoun was raising his red-robed arms to the ceiling. “The Temple is restored!”

Three seconds.

Sisko appealed to everyone. And no one. “Are we going to make it?”

Two seconds.

“Are we—”

Worf said, “Impact.”

Weyoun screamed.

One second.

The bridge went dark, the viewer died.

Gravity shut down.

Sisko felt the Defiant fall away from him. Felt Jake fall away from him.

Felt everything and everyone and nothing and no one in the universe streak away as if he and they and it had plunged from an infinite cliff and were tumbling toward the infinite—nothingness—never to land.

“I did everything I could,” Sisko cried into the silence that engulfed him.

But everything he had ever done was for nothing.

For everything that had ever been was for nothing.

Zero seconds.

It was over.