CHAPTER 1

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO of space station Deep Space 9 fell backward as the flight deck of the United Space Ship Defiant burst into unholy flames around him.

Then, huddled, panting, gasping, he saw bank after bank of calculating tubes and visi-screens detonate in response to the spectacular heat, saw Jean-Luc Picard rear up on mightily thewed reptilian legs, completing his incredible transformation into a six-limbed Venusian Firebeast!

Because what had at first appeared to be the legendary captain of Starfleet was in reality that hideous energy life-form known in the whispered legends of a hundred fantastic alien worlds as an Antigod of the Spacewarp Passage.

Ben Sisko willed himself to his feet, his proud African features glistening in the hellish light of the awful surrounding flames of destruction. As a child growing up in New New Orleans on Venus, he had once been chased by a Firebeast and almost devoured alive—a singular experience which to this day brought him pulse-pounding nightmares.

I must assume the Antigod is able to read my mind through some advanced telepathic technique, Ben Sisko thought urgently. That might explain how it has been able to reach into my subconscious mind and extract a frightening memory from my childhood. It wants to disorient me––make me incapable of fighting back.

“You will never withstand me in this timeless void without dimension!” the Firebeast thundered, its cavernous voice still eerily echoing that of the genteel starship captain whose form it had assumed. “The Moibius Effect has destroyed the universe. Now you must do battle with me for all eternity!”

“If that is my fate, then I shall face it like the Starfleet officer I am!” Ben Sisko exclaimed proudly as he raised the only weapons he had against the loathsome creature that towered above him—his two bare fists!

“Bravely said, Earthman,” the Firebeast hissed, each breath a sibilant sussuration of reptilian evil. Then, in a motion too quick to describe, it launched itself and flew swiftly by means of telekinetic atomic projection to land on Ben Sisko, and with hind claws the size of a strong man's forearm, rip open his chest and—

“Damn,” Benny Russell muttered.

He stared at the typewriter on his rickety desk. The typing paper curled up in it stared back, the incomplete sentence describing Captain Sisko's fate taunting him. Through his open window rumbled the sounds of midnight traffic in Harlem, in the summer of 1953. An almost nonexistent breeze merely teased his open curtains, making his cramped apartment as hot as he imagined the flight deck of the Defiant to be.

“Okay,” Benny sighed. “Firebeast is too powerful. Unless . . . Sisko's dagger collection!”

He snapped the crisp white paper from the typewriter, making the platen whirr. Along with it came a nearly exhausted sheet of carbon paper and a crinkly, semitransparent sheet of onion skin. Benny slipped the carbon out from between the other two sheets, then balled them up and—

Sisko screamed as all the dimensions of space collapsed upon him at once, twisting the bulkheads and deck and ceiling of the Defiant's bridge, crushing the bodies of his fallen crew, leaving him compressed and forcing him into an inescapable, dimensionless point, a singularity in which his only thought and knowledge was that his life had been from its beginning an illusion, mere letters on a page, now discarded.

He screamed in despair and frustration and outrage until there was no more room to move or to fight or even to breathe.

He was nothing now. A figment of a dead man's imagination. A fleeting dream. Meaningless.

And then Starfleet met the Borg at Wolf 359 and the whole senseless story began again . . .

Bashir calmed himself. After the lights of the Defiant's bridge had flickered into darkness, he had experienced a momentary flash of panic. As a Starfleet officer, he had had to contemplate the possibility of his own death on numerous occasions. In the abstract, he felt confident he could face the actual moment with composure.

But to experience the destruction of the universe? The obliteration of everything? Bashir was not sure that was something he was prepared to face with a stiff upper lip and the determination to do his duty.

Yet even now, after the light had fled, he was aware of sensation. The Defiant's artificial gravity generators were still working. He could hear the compact vessel creak softly around him—the normal sounds of the ship as far as he could tell.

And then the emergency lights switched on, dim but steady.

“It didn't happen!” Bashir said to the empty corridor. He grinned. Rom's and O'Brien's calculations had been wrong. Existence continued. Everything was going to be—

“Julian!”

The urgency of that shout struck him like the crack of a whip in his ear, and Bashir wheeled to see Jadzia Dax motioning him into the Defiant's engineering section. As he was, she was dressed in the standard-issue Starfleet uniform of the year 2400—ribbed blackfabric trousers and jacket, the shoulder of which was blue to designate Jadzia's science specialty, with her lieutenant commander pips vertically centered just below the jacket's collar.

Bashir raced down the corridor, through the open doors, and skidded to a halt as he saw who was waiting for him with Jadzia and Captain Sisko.

His parents.

They were holding on to each other, obviously upset, both wearing

Federation penal uniforms. Bashir was startled to see that his father's once-black mustache was almost all white now.

“Mother? Father? How—”

Sisko didn't let him finish. “There's no time, Doctor. Show him, Dax.”

At once, Jadzia pulled him over to what seemed to be a large power converter in the center of the deck, which Bashir couldn't remember having noticed before.

“But how did they get here?” Bashir glanced over his shoulder at his parents. Sisko had an arm around Richard and was holding Amsha's hand. All three looked extremely worried.

“Converging realities,” Jadzia said crisply, annoyed. “Twisted timelines. I don't know. We can work it out later. But right now, the only thing that's keeping the universe from ending the way Starfleet feared is this singularity-containment generator.” She pointed at what Bashir had taken to be a power converter. “The Defiant's been pulled into the red wormhole and the presence of the black hole fueling our warp engines is preventing the final collapse of normal space-time.”

“But . . . singularity containment is a Romulan technology . . . and this is a Cardassian control interface.”

“Exactly,” Jadzia said. “Just like in the Infirmary on Deep Space 9. You know how to operate Cardassian controls in your sleep, Julian. All you have to do is adjust this interface to stabilize the singularity-containment field, and the universe will be saved.”

She swung him around to face her, catching him off guard as she pulled him tight and kissed him. “I know you can do it,” she whispered, her breath warm in his ear. “We all know you can do it.” Intensely blue, her eyes captured his. “And then we'll have the time we need to be together, the way we're supposed to be.”

Jadzia stepped back then, leaving him shaken and stirred and at the controls.

“Save us, son,” his mother cried out behind him.

“We're counting on you,” Sisko added.

“Yes, yes,” Bashir muttered as he studied the controls. Jadzia was right. They were simple, grouped in the same standard Cardassian logic patterns as the medical equipment in his Infirmary. All he had to do was to—

The deck pitched and the Defiant groaned.

“Hurry, Julian!” Jadzia urged him. “The field will hold for only fifty-two seconds!”

Bashir put his fingers over the master-sequencing control surfaces. He saw exactly what he had to do to stabilize the field—the equations were identical to those he used with medical isolation forcefields. He tapped the surface that would tell the power converter to stand by to receive a new command string.

But sirens wailed first.

“What did you do?!” Sisko shouted.

Bashir stared down at the controls in disbelief. They were different

from what he had thought. Everything was shifted. He had hit the wrong control and—

“You dropped the field!” Jadzia said.

“Julian!” his father pleaded. “Save us!”

Jadzia yanked Bashir away from the controls. “You idiot! You've killed us all! The whole universe, Julian!” She slapped him hard across his face as tears streaked her own. “How stupid can you be?!”

“No! Jadzia! I know what I did wrong! I can fix it!” Bashir turned back to the controls.

But shafts of unbound energy were already beginning to puncture the control surfaces as the Defiant's singularity began to unravel into useless cosmic string.

“No!” Bashir said.

“It's your fault!” Jadzia railed at him. “It's all your fault because you're so stupid!”

“Stupid!” his mother and father cried.

“Stupid!” Sisko echoed.

Now all the controls were melting, becoming unusable as the bulkheads of the engineering section began to fade into nonexistence. And in those last moments of awareness as all light vanished, Julian Bashir realized that the one thing worse than being present at the end of the universe was being present at the end and knowing it was all his fault . . .

Then, after darkness enveloped him, all around the compact vessel

creaked softly—the normal sounds of the ship as far as he could tell. A moment later, the emergency lights switched on, dim but steady.

“It didn't happen!” he said to the empty corridor. He grinned again. Everything was going to be—

Then Jadzia called to him from engineering. And everything began again . . .

Elim Garak sneezed, and when he opened his eyes, his customer was laughing at him.

“Can't take the heat, hmm?”

“I'm sorry?” Garak said politely. He looked down at his body. The last thing he remembered was being clothed in the stultifyingly unfashionable robes of the Bajoran Ascendancy, monitoring the computers of the bridge of the Boreth, trying to understand exactly what was happening. Gul Dukat—at least, the crazed maniac who claimed to be the Dukat of the year 2400—had not been particularly forthcoming.

“Are you all right?” the customer asked. “I know we prefer the temperature to be higher than you do.”

Garak looked up, nodded. “Quite fine, actually. I was merely—”

“Then get on with it.”

Garak looked down at his body again, trying to recall what was wrong with what he saw. Instead of the loose-fitting robes, he was now garbed in a rather dull gray tunic. And he was kneeling on the floor of . . . he glanced around, then relaxed. He was in his tailor shop on DS9. Home ground. Safe.

But then he caught sight of the small piece of tailor's chalk he was holding in one hand and the measurement sensor in his other. He frowned, puzzled, as he tried to remember exactly how he had come to be here. Then a vicious backhand blow hit his temple and he rocked back with a gasp.

“Oww,” Garak said as he placed his hand to the smooth side of his head. He looked up at the customer and—“Father?!”

He fell to the floor as Enabran Tain, chief of the Obsidian Order, Garak's father, and dead two years in Garak's own time, kicked his son in the shoulder.

“You insolent filth!” Tain exclaimed. “You think being a trustee is a gift that cannot be taken back?”

Garak pushed himself upright, overwhelmed by confusion. “Trustee?”

“Typical,” Tain grunted. He tugged off the pinned-together, halfmade jacket he'd been wearing, crumpled it into a ball, threw it to the floor. “Dukat finally finds one of you with a steady hand and an eye for detail, and you've got ore poisoning.”

Garak leaned back against the purchasing counter for support. For an instant, he looked past his father to the Promenade. But it was wrong, somehow. Dark, its few lights too blue, the air clouded with the aromatics as the Cardassians preferred.

“Pay attention to me!” Tain commanded.

I've traveled through time again, Garak guessed, to the time of the Occupation of Bajor. Just as the Defiant had been thrown forward when the station had been destroyed, something must have happened when the Boreth reached the wormhole. But now, he decided quickly, instead of going forward in time, he'd gone back—far enough to warn everyone about the Red Orbs of Jalbador and the second wormhole in the Bajoran system. Far enough back to prevent the destruction of Cardassia Prime by the Ascendancy, and save the universe.

“Father,” Garak said, “I apologize for my seeming confusion, but I have just had a most remarkable experience which—”

“You're mistaken,” Tain said. He reached behind his back to get something from his belt. “What you mean to say is that you're about to have a remarkable experience.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Too late for that,” Tain said as he aimed a small disruptor at his son.

Garak held up his hands. “No!” Then at once he realized what had seemed so wrong. His skin was pale pink, his nails clear.

He ran those alien hands over his neck, felt something distressingly scrawny, no sign whatever of a strong, doubled spinal cord. He touched his face—no eye ridges, no forehead umbilicus, that proud circle of flesh worn by every Cardassian since the creators had raised Ailam and Neeron from the swamps of Cardassia. Since a spark of divine lightning had imbued them with souls, leaving the sign of their elevation on their foreheads for all to see.

Instead, in the midst of unbearably smooth flesh, the only texture Garak could feel was on the bridge of his nose, and that was a small series of . . .

Garak wheeled to face a fitting mirror, then stared in horror as he saw himself. “I'm. . . a Bajoran.”

“And a bad tailor to boot,” Tain said in disgust. “Dukat must have chosen you to insult me on purpose.”

Garak whirled to face his father. “No! Father, wait! I can explain!”

But all Tain did was to press the firing stud on his disruptor and Garak saw everything in his shop, in the station, and in the universe shrink back from him at warp speed as he fell into darkness.

Only to be prodded painfully awake by an overseer in the oreprocessing chamber. “You can sleep when you're dead, Bajoran!”

Mind numb, body aching, Garak loaded ore all that shift, until Gul Dukat himself had him pulled aside to ask if he had ever considered being a tailor . . .

Miles O'Brien opened his eyes and for a moment thought he was back in the half-excavated city of B'hala. The sand he lay upon was searing hot. The air dry. The sun blinding.

But as he stood up, trying to recall what had happened in those last moments of consciousness on the Boreth, he realized there were no ancient stone-block buildings nearby. Nor any randomly scattered rocks, nor mountains in the distance.

Only an endless plain of flat sand stretching out boundless and bare in all directions.

“That doesn't make sense,” O'Brien said. His voice sounded odd to him. The air was far too still, not even a hint of a breeze to stir the sand.

His engineer's mind sought the pattern and made the connection at once.

“No wind,” he said. “That's why there're no sand dunes.” He peered around again, trying to see how far the horizon was. But it melted into the soft distortion of rippling heat, unseen and unmeasurable.

“That's not right,” O'Brien said. All that heat radiating from the sand should warm the air, form convection currents, drive winds. “What kind of planet is this, anyway?”

He squinted up at the pitiless sun, trying to judge its color. Too white for Earth or Bajor-B'hava'el. He held up his hand to cast a shadow over his eyes, tried to find evidence of clouds or any other type of atmospheric disturbance.

Then, despite the omnipresent heat he shivered. Because what he was able to see was so unexpected, so impossible, yet so obvious.

There was a structure in the sky.

He could just make out the vast geodesic pattern of its framework, some beams gleaming in the sunlight, the thickness and colors of others subtly changing as they neared the horizon and the angles of their shadows changed.

“No . . .” O'Brien said as his eyes, attuned to the structure, now traced it all through the sky, reaching down to every point on the surrounding horizon and stretching up to the sun—

—and behind it.

He was in a Dyson Sphere.

An artificial structure built around a star.

And if this was anything like the Dyson Sphere the Enterprise had discovered near the Norpin Colony, it had to be the greatest feat of engineering that could ever be attempted in . . .

“The universe,” O'Brien whispered. He shook his head in confusion, felt sweat break out on his scalp. The universe was supposed to end, he thought. We were heading into the wormhole . . .

He looked around again in growing panic. There were too many unanswered questions.

How had he come to be here? Who had built the sphere? How was such a structure even possible?

He needed to make notes, to plan, to organize the thoughts cascading in his mind. Automatically, he patted the robes he wore, trying to find something, anything to write with.

But his flowing garments held nothing, no matter how many times he searched their folds.

O'Brien stared out for a long time at the unchanging vista, and when he ceased, there was nothing else he could do but begin again.

Because there was nothing to come to an end here. No action to take and then to repeat. He was alone and useless, an engineer without tools, trapped in a structure not even Miles O'Brien could comprehend, not even if he took forever . . .

Jake Sisko input faster, causing the words of his novel to appear on the padd at superhuman speed.

But the delete cursor was gaining on him, only eleven lines behind, devouring the words he wrote almost as fast as he could input them.

Jake's fingers ached, his eyes blurred, his mind swam with words as he struggled to lay down his thoughts and emotions in some intelligent order.

But the cursor was only seven lines away now, erasing all his thoughts and emotions before they were a minute old. Soon, he knew, each word would vanish as he wrote it.

Jake felt a cramp building in his wrists. Blood from his fingernails smeared the input controls, making his fingers slip, slowing him down.

He had almost run out of thoughts, out of words, of life . . .

He input faster yet.

But with a certainty that horrified him in its inevitability, he knew he could never input fast enough . . .

For his part, Quark was almost blinded by the shocking radiance of pure latinum as the doors to the Divine Treasury opened before him. Here at the celestial source of the Great Material River, there was no need for that oh-so-precious metal to be debased by being pressed with gold. The stairs he ascended, the coins he used to bribe his way to the head of the line, even the robes he wore, all were pure latinum, gleaming, somehow liquidly solid, and endlessly beguiling.

A choir of accountants burst into song as Relk, the Chief Auditor, opened both sets of books in which Quark's life was recorded.

Quark waited as he faced his final audit. He told himself he had nothing to fear. That the ledgers of his life would balance and the threat of spending eternity in the Debtor's Dungeon was nothing to be concerned about.

And it wasn't.

Relk shut his books with a double thump as he congratulated Quark, informed him he had shown a most admirable return on investment and would be admitted to the Head Office to take his place at the Counting Board of the Divine Nagus himself.

Quark felt as if he were floating, every care of his past life lifting away from him. Dimly, he now remembered something about being beamed aboard the Boreth with Gul Dukat. Something about the . . . what was it now? Oh, yes, about the universe ending.

But why should he have to be concerned about the universe ending

when he was this close to his final dividend?

The Junior Assistants in their latinum robes hovered around him as he stepped onto the executive floor.

He followed the latinum-paneled corridor until he came to the solid latinum door that awaited him.

Overwhelmed, Quark gazed at the shining door before him. Every childhood fantasy he had had about the Divine Treasury was turning out to be true.

It all worked out, Quark thought as he surrendered to bliss. Life makes sense—or, at least, made sense after all.

He had lived a good life of greed and self-absorption, and now he was to be rewarded for all time.

He lifted his hand and knocked on the Divinely Nagal door.

The booming voice that addressed him by name bade him enter.

If possible, it seemed to Quark that the light inside was even brighter, issuing forth from latinum even purer than he could imagine, surrounding . . . Him. The Divine Nagus. Sitting in his executive chair behind his executive desk, mounds of latinum coins waiting to be counted before him.

It was all too much. Quark dropped to his knees, hung his head in supplication with only one quick glance around to see if anyone before him might have dropped a spare coin or two, or anything else of value. Then he abjectly thanked the Divine Nagus for granting him an eternal position here.

To which the Divine Nagus replied, “Uh . . . sorry, but there appears to have been . . . a mistake, brother.”

Quark's head snapped up at once, and his appalled gaze fell on—

“ROM!?”

And no matter how loudly Quark squealed in that small dark cell that was forever his in Debtor's Dungeon, it was never loud enough to drown out the mocking laughter of his idiot brother—mocking laughter that echoed forever . . .

Arla Rees struggled through mud that stung the raw wounds on her arms and legs and mixed with her blood.

Phaser blasts crisscrossed the air around her, each shot coming closer, making it harder and harder to run.

She fell to her knees in the mud. Looked back.

The Cardassian soldiers were still advancing, implacable, sure of their victory.

Arla tried to stand, but the thick mud held her hands and feet prisoner. Fighting panic, she concentrated on reaching one hand forward to grab a rock and pull herself forward. Instead, the rock broke free of the mud and came away in her hand.

And it wasn't a rock.

It was a head.

Bajoran.

Unseeing eyes wide with terror.

She dropped the grisly object.

“Help me,” Arla cried out, hopeless. “Please . . . in the name of the Prophets . . .”

And before her plea had ended, a shaft of warm protective blue light fell across her, and she looked up from the mud to see Kai Opaka, as she had been when she was but a simple prylar, young and slender, come to New Sydney to raise funds to aid the resistance on Occupied Bajor.

Arla sobbed with relief and happiness as she realized that the light was not shining onto the figure, but was shining out from her. Now she knew exactly what was happening. “You're not Opaka, you're a Prophet!”

Opaka nodded with a beatific smile, and Arla held out her hand to that light and to that comfort.

“Save me,” she whispered, at last sure of the Prophets' love.

The shining figure shook her head. “If only you had believed in us while you were alive, my child. If only you had believed . . .”

And then the light vanished.

And with it, Opaka.

And Arla screamed as Cardassian hands grabbed her from behind and ripped at her clothes and . . .

Days later, when the soldiers were through with her, she was thrown into the mass grave and buried alive with the others from the camp, all the while fighting for breath as the dirt covered her, until she awoke to find herself struggling through the mud of the battlefield, pursued by Cardassians, forsaken by the Prophets, by her own choice, again . . .

Worf, son of Mogh, battled unceasingly upon the flat black rocks beneath the storm-filled sky and felt the thunder of the fire geysers as they shot upward transforming the landscape with flame.

He did not know what had happened to the Defiant or to his captain or to his wife or to his universe.

He was not sure where he was or how long he had been here.

But none of those questions concerned him now because in his hands he held the Sword of Kahless, and whatever had happened to him, that weapon's edge was true and sliced through the flesh and bone of his enemies as if the fire of Kri'stak still burned within it.

On this endless battlefield, Romulan warriors fell like wheat before his scythe, and the rocks were slick with steaming green blood.

Worf could taste the coppery tang of the mist it formed as he roared his battle cry, swinging, slicing, thrusting forward to twist and disembowel, wading through the Romulan invaders as did Kaylon at the battle of the Straker Dome, when the two Empires had ended their first war with the Romulans so deservedly crushed.

Worf savored the power of Kahless in his arms and back and legs as he endlessly pressed his attack. From time to time, he would have a moment's respite as the Romulans regrouped, their numbers never seeming to diminish. In those moments, Worf would wonder if this was Gre'thor, the land where the dishonored were consigned upon their deaths. But then he would lose himself again within the pure and absolute sensations of combat, and he would know that in some way, he had arrived at Sto-Vo-Kor.

All he had to do was to vanquish enough Romulans, and he would arrive at the doors of the Great Hall where Kahless himself would greet him and invite him to join the honored dead and the bloodwine would flow for all eternity.

Yet even if that bloodwine were never to flow again, even if Kahless were an infinity away, Worf suffered no remorse or frustration at his fate.

Endless battle.

What better use for eternity could there be for a Klingon?

He intensified his attack and swung his bat'leth so swiftly the edge of it glowed and sparks flew as it carved through his enemies' armor.

A Centurion flew apart in a spurt of bright green.

Two Proconsuls spun into each other, spilt blood and entrails mixing.

A female with Trill spots raised her hands as if to beg for mercy. But Worf cut her in two as well and charged on.

Now humans came before him, but since they wore the earliest uniforms of Starfleet, Worf knew they were from the time of the atrocities of their first contact with the Empire, and that they deserved death even more than did the Romulans.

Now the alien blood that flew was red, and his bat'leth blurred in frenzied action, its blade beginning to thrum.

Humans fell by the scores, by the hundreds. Another Trill female rose among them, and she also carried a bat'leth. Her mouth opened in a soundless cry, her face turned toward him, as if she wished him to hear her above the constant roar of battle.

But Worf could not be fooled by his enemies' tricks and he brought his weapon down across her shoulder to fling her head from her lifeless body.

Now his boots crushed chittering tribbles with every step. Wild targ nipped at his legs as Romulans and humans and Breen massed before him. Until every enemy of the Empire he fought here and now. Fought and vanquished.

And the Sword of Kahless no longer thrummed—it sang.

Now Worf added his voice to that of his weapon's, chanting the Warrior's Anthem, keeping time with each deadly stroke of his blade.

Now his boots splashed through an ankle-high basin of blood, and the flickering tongues of the fire geysers reached higher and the Trill female blocked his deathblow and made him stumble.

For a timeless instant, Worf knelt, braced for the inevitable impact of a dozen blades as his enemies took advantage of his fall. But death did not come.

Someone was keeping his enemies at bay.

He looked up to see the Trill female fighting in his place.

Worf leaped to his feet, raised his bat'leth, profoundly troubled. He had no doubt that a female could be a warrior bound for Sto-Vo-Kor. He knew the Trill species to be valorous and fully expected to find warriors of other worlds honored at Kahless's table. But though this female was fighting bravely and fiercely, it seemed wrong to him that she fought at all.

Somewhere, deep in the memories of whatever his existence had been before this time, it was as if he knew this one female should not be placed in danger, ever.

He responded instinctually.

With a roar of unbridled passion, Worf swept his bat'leth through a mass of Breen and from the thick mist of their venting coolant he jumped to the Trill's side, then brought his weapon into perfect synchronization with hers.

She took the upstroke, gutting a Romulan centurion, and as she withdrew her blade, Worf covered with a sidesweep that dropped two humans. As he brought his weapon back to strike again, the Trill's blade flashed up to deflect a Breen's cryodagger.

They were in perfect balance, she and he, Trill and Klingon. Aligned, finely tuned, two warriors fighting as one. What higher ideal could there be? What greater eternal reward could be bestowed?

Turning for an instant from the battle, Worf bared his teeth in a fullthroated growl of victory at the blood-drenched face of the female. “I am Worf, son of Mogh, warrior of the House of Martok! Identify yourself!”

The female lifted her weapon high to brush her arm across her face, for a brief instant wiping away the blood of their enemies so that Worf glimpsed her pale skin, her dark spots, her pale blue eyes so familiar.

“I am Jadzia, symbiont of Dax, warrior of the House of Martok!”

The female's words echoed so loudly in Worf's mind he no longer heard the roar of battle. How was it possible that she—an alien—had been admitted to Martok's house?

Then Worf became aware that somehow time had slowed. His enemies still advanced on him, yet they no longer moved closer. Even the fountainhead of fire geysers hung motionless against the dark sky's unmoving storm clouds.

“Jadzia?” Worf repeated.

The Trill female's bat'leth melted from her hands as some bright light shone upon her from a source Worf couldn't see, the glare stunning him so he was no longer aware of the frozen battle around him.

“Worf!” the Trill cried out. “Look at me!”

But Worf shook his head, tried to step away. It had to be a trick, an illusion to break his fighting spirit. The only way a Trill could ever join a Klingon House would be through marriage to—

The female slapped Worf so hard his ears rang.

“Look at me!” she commanded.

The blow was proof enough for Worf. She was no illusion. She was another of his endless, infinite, eternal enemies, no different from the hundreds of other female Trills he had killed in this battle. Female Trills that looked exactly like—

“Jadzia,” he breathed again as he raised his bat'leth to dispatch her.

But then, before his weapon could descend, in that one split second in which she might have escaped, the Trill rushed forward and took his face in her hands and she kissed him so hard that his bottom lip split and he tasted his own blood as he remembered he had on his wedding night when his bride had—

A light of piercing intensity struck Worf as he felt himself lifted, then propelled through a tunnel of darkness until he was someplace else where he fell to his knees and there before him, her face slick with tears, not blood, was . . . Jadzia.

Jadzia of the House of Martok.

His bride.

“You're safe now,” she whispered, reaching out for him.

And with that, Worf remembered.

Everything.

And was the second of them to be free.