CHAPTER 19

“IS THIS EVERYONE?” Odo asked.

Rom looked around the crowded storage room with Ferengi exactness, then rattled off the count. “Uh, not yet. There are still five unaccounted for on the Defiant. Chief O'Brien's on the Boreth. And . . . five people on the station back at the time of the Withdrawal: Captain Sisko, Major Kira, Lieutenant Commander Dax, Dr. Bashir, and . . . Garak.” Rom gave the constable a quick, nervous smile. “That means we have eighteen out of twenty-nine possible retrievals, or sixty-two percent . . . rounded.”

Odo was not pleased with the news about the Defiant. When the first of that ship's rescued crew and passengers had started arriving on the station from the Boreth, he had thought it would only be a matter of minutes before everyone was finally reunited after their harrowing trip through time. Everyone, that is, except Vash and the three Bajorans killed by Dukat on the bridge of the Boreth. Those four absences were responsible for the reduction in the number of temporal refugees from thirty-three to twenty-nine. Still, the changeling decided, the combination of Jadzia's scientific skills and O'Brien's engineering expertise had worked better than he, for one, had dared hope.

“Any idea what's happened to the Defiant?” he asked.

Rom shook his head. “Not really. The wormhole conditions are changing so rapidly now, the ship might have experienced a phenomenon we've never even seen before. Or else . . . well, the Chief thought it might even be cloaked.”

Odo looked sharply at Rom for an explanation. “Why?”

But the Ferengi could only shrug. “Equipment failure, probably.”

“Constable Odo?” Ryle Simons broke into their discussion. “You asked for a one-minute warning.” The redheaded Starfleet ensign held up his tricorder.

Odo nodded, then turned to face the seventeen others who were sheltered in the storage room which now existed in a timeframe just over a day after the station's destruction by the red wormhole. It was the same storage room into which he and Dukat had first timeshifted. “Everyone, your attention! We're going to transfer again.”

Most of the rescued crew and civilians had already been through enough time transfers to know what to do, and within the space of ten seconds, each held the hands of those to the right and left, until all eighteen people were linked in a circle. No more than thirty seconds later, a flash of red light engulfed them, and they found themselves still in the same storage room, but now before the station had been destroyed.

At the moment of their materialization, a murmur swept through the group as everyone stumbled, losing their footing, shuffling a step or two forward in the direction of the far end of the room, which was now decidedly downhill.

Odo knew at once that in this timeframe, DS9's gravity generators were still unbalanced, a direct result of their infection by the Bynar computer virus. The virus had been introduced into the station's computers by Satr and Leen, the two Andorian sisters who had accompanied Dal Nortron.

At a nod from Odo, Simons switched on the handheld Klingon communicator O'Brien had beamed from the Boreth, which the chief had modified so it could eavesdrop on Deep Space 9's internal communications network. The first words Odo heard this time were especially welcome. They came from Kira, though it was the Kira of this timeframe.

“—from the Rio Grande. They found the captain!”

Bashir's voice answered. “What's his condition?”

“Exhausted,” Kira replied. “But he's uninjured. And he found the Orb!”

Those events were very clear in Odo's memory, and they told the changeling that he and his group were now approximately twentysix hours away from the red wormhole's opening.

Odo glanced around the storage room. “Everyone still here?” he asked.

When he received no reports of anyone's missing the transfer, Odo concluded that once again the mere act of remaining in physical contact had been enough to keep everyone—with all their initial individual time differences—in joint phase.

“We should stay here about nine minutes, ten seconds,” Simons advised.

“Thank you, Ensign,” Odo said. “Give us a one-minute warning as before.”

“But what do we do for . . . eight minutes?” Rom asked hesitantly.

“How about saying hello to your brother?” Quark said indignantly, pushing Simons aside.

Rom turned and smiled happily at Quark. “Hello, Brother.”

Quark snorted. “Good to see you, too. Well, so much for family reunions. Now, here's my plan—in eight minutes, we can get to a runabout and get off the station.”

Odo sighed as he shook his head. “Quark, we've been through this. All the runabouts were employed in the evacuation when the red wormhole opened. If we take one now, the people who originally used it to evacuate won't get off the station, and that will change their timeline. And when we jump through time again, we'll have no guarantee that the runabout will still be around us when we reappear.”

“Odo, really,” Quark snapped. “The station and this room are always around us!”

“Because this station and this room are linked to the red wormhole. And O'Brien doesn't know how far that linkage extends.”

“He's right, Brother,” Rom added quickly. “If we try to fly away from the station, why . . . there's a chance we might be snapped back to the wormhole, or to the Boreth, or to . . . nothing.”

“Which is what's going to happen to us in—” Scowling, Quark turned to Simons. “You, how much ‘relative’ time do we have now?”

“Altogether? Maybe ninety minutes,” the ensign said.

The red blotches mottling the young ensign's pale face were the result of simple exhaustion, Odo knew, but continued exposure to Quark might make them permanent.

Odo frowned as Quark pointed at the communicator. “Odo, c'mon. One lousy message to Major Kira, telling her not to take the Orbs into my bar. That's all it would take.”

“You heard what Ensign Simons told us about O'Brien's and Dax's conclusions, Quark. That's all it would take to shut down our timeline and snap us back to the Boreth, too.”

“So we just wait here till we die, is that it?” Quark asked incredulously.

“No,” Odo said for at least the thousandth time, it seemed. Surely no amount of timeshifting could be as bad as the endless repetitions Quark required. “We wait here until the red wormhole begins to open, and then we leave with all the rest of the evacuees. Then, once the station is swallowed by the red wormhole and the wormhole closes, the Chief and Dax both agree that we'll be stable in this timeframe, and we can do whatever we want to change the future we saw. And that's exactly what we're going to do, Quark—when the time comes and not before.”

Quark's barrel chest began to swell, and his enormous earlobes darkened dangerously. “Frinx time travel!” he sputtered.

Rom nodded brightly. “That's pretty much what Chief O'Brien thinks, too.”

And as if he had heard his name spoken, O'Brien's voice was the next to come over the communicator. “O'Brien to Odo.”

Odo's first thought was that O'Brien's modification to the Klingon device had made it very sensitive. The Chief had taken part in the search for Sisko on Jeraddo, while Odo had remained on the station. Thus, whatever they were hearing now had been a longrange transmission. Though Odo couldn't recall having spoken to the Chief until he had returned with the search parties.

But then his confusion cleared as O'Brien said, “This is O'Brien on the Boreth to Odo in the storage room. This channel is encrypted, so reply using the communicator I gave Simons if you can.”

Simons instantly thrust the communicator at Odo, and the changeling touched the transmit control. “Odo to O'Brien, we can hear you!”

Everyone else in the storage room ceased talking. Until now, all communication had been from the station to either the Boreth or the Defiant, but neither ship had been able to transmit messages back.

“Wonderful,” O'Brien's voice said. “I'm picking up a bit of timeshift distortion, but we're almost in phase now, so the channel will get clearer. What's your status?”

“Eighteen safe and sound,” Odo reported. “Any word from the Defiant?”

“Nothing yet,” O'Brien said. “But in about five more minutes, the phase difference between the Boreth and the past version of the station should reach the point where Dax can contact me directly, so I'll put her to work on it, too.”

“What about you, Chief?” Odo asked.

“Not much I can do except stand by here till you get closer to the opening of the wormhole. I'll . . . transport in at the last minute so . . . I can join you.”

But Odo had registered the hesitation in O'Brien's voice and understood with sadness that the engineer intended to stay at his station until it was too late to save himself. Just for the chance of making contact with those still on the Defiant.

“Whatever you think is best, Chief.”

“Well, I'm going back to sensor sweeps,” O'Brien said. “Every time you transfer into a timeframe before the wormhole opens, contact me so we can keep everything synchronized. The next time we talk, I should have a report from Dax.”

“Thanks, Chief,” Odo said. “We'll stand by. Odo out.”

“And cheerfully wait to die,” Quark muttered, “like good Starfleet soldiers.”

Odo looked past Quark to Simons. “Time, Ensign?”

“Three minutes and counting.”

Then hammer blows of pounding shook the storage room's main door—the one connecting it to the corridor.

All heads turned toward the closed door. Odo immediately gestured for everyone to remain silent, and everyone had the good sense to comply, even Quark.

Rom caught Odo's eye. “Is that you,” he whispered, “making a security check?”

Odo shook his head. He had last inspected this room for contraband the day before he had placed Quark in protective custody. Someone else was pounding on the door.

The changeling held out his hand, palm up, to Simons, and the ensign promptly passed him the tricorder. Odo switched it over to detect life-forms and aimed it at the door.

Nothing.

The pounding stopped, then started again.

Altering the soles of his boots to air-filled pockets of soft, spongy flesh, Odo soundlessly made his way to the door, then used the tricorder again.

But even as another sequence of heavy blows rattled the door, the device detected no lifesigns. In frustration, Odo set the tricorder to register any energy phenomenon, and the small display screen suddenly turned bright red as all intensity bars filled their scales.

Two more blows hit the door, this time deforming it.

Odo backed up, just in time to avoid being struck by the door as a final, immensely powerful blow burst it from its tracks, and it spun forward, clanging as it skidded across the bare metal deck.

But Odo's attention had already shifted from the door to the creature who had dislodged it.

Dukat.

The madman whose white hair twisted away from his gray scalp as if charged with electricity, whose wild eyes pulsed with red energy. Who rushed into the storage room as if his bare scaled feet no longer were in contact with the deck and whose scarlet robes floated around him like the trailing fronds of water plants caught in a boiling ocean's currents.

“I want QUARK!” Dukat roared. And as he raised his hands encased in red fire, all Odo could hear was the high-pitched squeal of a Ferengi.

“Emissary,” Weyoun said amicably in the hold of the old cargo hauler. “It's been such a long time.” He smiled at the chroniton emitter that Sisko grasped in one hand. “And I see you've been busy.”

Sisko's other hand dropped his tool case, and he quickly reached inside the emitter to close the circuit that would set it off, knowing full well that because the device wasn't yet complete, the resulting explosion would probably kill him. But with any luck, it would also kill whatever entity possessed Weyoun, ending this here and now.

But the Vorta merely flicked his hand as if waving off an airborne pest and the emitter flew from Sisko's grip, sailed over the heads of Kira and Bashir, and shattered against the bulkhead.

“But I'm afraid it was a waste of time,” Weyoun said. “Especially when there is so little of it left.”

“What do you want?” Sisko asked through gritted teeth.

Weyoun folded his hands back inside his bloodred robes and smiled. “I'm sure you can guess.”

The Vorta paused, expectant, a solicitous expression on his face, but Sisko did not intend to play his game.

“Or perhaps not.” Seemingly untroubled by Sisko's refusal, Weyoun looked down at his two captives—Kira and Bashir, on their knees before him, wrists and ankles bound with red cloth. Mouths gagged with narrow strips of the same fabric.

It took Sisko a moment, but then he recognized the strips. They were the same as the arm-and head bands worn by adherents of the Pah-wraith cults.

“That's right,” Weyoun said, apparently noticing Sisko's gaze. “I am not without supporters here.” He raised his hand. “Allow me.” Red sparks haloed one upraised finger, and the gags dropped from Kira and Bashir at the same time.

“Obanak!” Kira gasped.

“He was waiting for us,” Bashir added. “After Withdrawal! He took us to an airlock, and when we jumped back, Weyoun was waiting for us.”

“Obanak thinks Weyoun is the Emissary,” Sisko told them.

“Because I am,” Weyoun said serenely. “True Emissary to the True Prophets, as Obanak and his people believe. As they have always believed. As has always been true, I might add, Benjamin.”

Sisko took a step toward the Vorta, hands becoming fists.

But Weyoun stood his ground, smiling. “Do you really think you can accomplish anything like that?”

“Afraid I'll break your nose again?” Sisko taunted him. He had struck Weyoun when they had been together on the bridge of the Defiant—before the universe had ended. He had savored Weyoun's look of shock and pain as the Vorta had gingerly touched his flattened nose.

But this time, Weyoun merely placed two fingers alongside his own nose, no longer damaged, and laughed. “A human actually hurt the Emissary? Never.”

Whatever the reason behind Weyoun's denial of their last encounter, Sisko understood from the eerie glow of red energy now animating the Vorta's dead eyes that attempting another physical attack on him was impossible. In any case, in a little more than eight minutes, Sisko knew he'd be shifted again into the future and would be able to escape the ore hauler. Beyond that, he wasn't sure what to do. But he was ready to do anything—anything —before he'd let Weyoun win. And right now, that meant keeping the Vorta talking. For at least another eight minutes.

Weyoun studied Sisko like a disapproving parent. “You're being unusually quiet, Benjamin. I have come to expect a more spirited response from you.”

“You won't win,” Sisko said.

“But you forget, I already have. You were there, remember? The year 2400. The joining of the Temples. The battle between the True Prophets and the Pretenders at last under way.” Weyoun shook his head as if overcome by the wonder of it all.

“I don't mind admitting to you, especially, Benjamin, that I do regret not being present for the culmination of eons of effort. Those ‘pressure equalization waves’ you're experiencing? What they really are is the waves of battle. True Prophets surging forward for the attack. Pretenders desperately struggling to push back the assault. The True Prophets regrouping and charging forth again. That's what your ship was caught in. A war beyond your comprehension. A war that can have only one conclusion. Victory. The end to all conflict. Forever.”

“I don't believe you.”

Weyoun pursed his lips. “I never took you for the masochistic type. Do you enjoy suffering? Do you know how many billions of inhabited worlds were in your universe? Do you know how many more billions of intelligent species arose, looked at the stars, felt the pain of that enormity they would never conquer, faced the bleak, meaningless prospect of not only their own individual deaths but the deaths of their cultures and their worlds?

“Is that kind of torture humane by your standards, Benjamin? Would you truly prefer to allow the universe to continue without end, condone another trillion races to such pathetic despair, all for the sake of your personal continued existence for, at best for a human, another few decades? How petty of you. How selfish. In fact, how perfectly evil of you.”

Sisko did not reply. Another four minutes, he thought. Keep talking

. . .

Weyoun nodded as if Sisko's failure to respond was not unexpected. “I can see I'm making some headway. The old headstrong Captain Sisko would have engaged me in a scintillating argument by now, forcefully renouncing my statements, trying his best but in vain to establish that he speaks for all living beings on behalf of the stalwart Starfleet and the venerable United Federation of Planets. But your silence tells me you're finally beginning to understand. Aren't you?”

“Whatever you say,” Sisko said curtly.

Weyoun shook a finger at him. “Now, now. When I hear that tone from you, I know you're thinking about something else. But believe me, Benjamin, there is nothing else to think about. You can do nothing to stop me now, because this moment has already come and gone in your history.

“That's what I want, you see. Nothing. I want the Cardassians to withdraw from the station, Leej Terrell to shut down her secret lab within it, the Red Orb to find its way to its safe hiding place in that Ferengi's bar, exactly as it happened before.”

Sisko tried but couldn't completely contain his surprise at what Weyoun had just said. For whatever reason, it seemed the Vorta had not experienced any oscillations into the future just beyond the Day of Withdrawal. He didn't realize that Kira and Sisko had discovered that the Red Orb was not in its hiding place where it had been found in the hour before the station's destruction.

The Vorta's voice continued on, in response to Sisko's sudden spark of interest. “Ah, I see I've intrigued you at last. What did you think? Surely not that I came back to this time in order to change the past? To find the Orbs ahead of schedule? To try to bring on the joining of the Temple earlier than 2400? Oh, Benjamin,” Weyoun chuckled, wiping a false tear from his red eye, “I will miss you, you know.”

Sisko had only half listened to the Vorta, caught up in thought about his one advantage over Weyoun. Between this moment and a time two weeks after Withdrawal, the Orb upon which all of Weyoun's mad dreams depended had been stolen—and without Weyoun's knowledge. History had already been changed. But by whom?

“Weyoun, if the end of the universe is such a good thing,” Sisko began, trying his utmost to keep his growing excitement hidden from the Vorta, “why not end it early? Think of all the suffering that would never take place.”

“Ah, but that would add variables to the equation, don't you think?” From Weyoun's relaxed manner now, it appeared that the Vorta was in no hurry to do anything. And Sisko wondered why. Surely, Weyoun had to know about the swings through time, despite all that talk about the equalization waves being only the waves of battle. The Vorta had been waiting in the ore hauler for Sisko to appear, after all.

“I don't know what you mean,” Sisko said, guessing he had fewer than three minutes left in this timeframe.

Weyoun snickered as if he had thought of a private joke. “Why change perfection?” he asked airily. “If things proceed as they did, unchanged, then we know what happens for a certainty: The universe ends. All sentient beings are freed from the suffering of their existence. But if I were to take the Orb from Leej Terrell now, try to locate the one hidden on Jeraddo, somehow locate the Orb that Vash secured before she originally obtained it . . . well, who knows what might happen? Perhaps the Bajoran Ascendancy would arise more quickly and the Temple would be restored a few years earlier. But perhaps not. At best, we would gain six years. At worst, we would lose everything. So why risk it?”

“Six years times trillions of beings is a lot of suffering,” Sisko said, keeping up his mental count of the time remaining in this timeframe. Less than two minutes now.

Weyoun walked over to a dented, unpainted bulkhead, leaned against it nonchalantly. “Benjamin, I can see your interest waning. Perhaps it's time we changed the topic of our conversation.”

Sisko shot a glance at Kira and Bashir, made eye contact with both. But there was no information they could communicate to him in a glance. Just their frustration.

“A good choice,” Weyoun said approvingly. “Let's talk about Dr. Bashir and Major Kira. Temporal refugees, I believe was the term they used. Like you, Benjamin. Caught in time, thrown backward and forward in the wake of the Prophets and the False Prophets. Tell me . . . as you sit there now and plot your escape, did you take a moment to ask yourself how it is these two came to be my prisoners for longer than the few minutes they might otherwise stay in this timeframe?”

The effect of Weyoun's question was as strong as if Weyoun had struck Sisko. Since Kira and Bashir had been here before Sisko had appeared, of course they should have vanished to another timeframe by now. But they hadn't. Why?

“Oh, Benjamin, really,” Weyoun hooted. “Stop it. You'll make me die of amusement. You're so transparent. You honestly thought that you would simply vanish like a character in a child's morality tale?”

Sisko tried to think of some reason he wouldn't. Rapidly, he scanned the cargo hold. Had Weyoun installed some kind of forcefield?

“Here. Let me explain,” the Vorta said, and suddenly he was at Sisko's side, one hand gripping Sisko's arm, the other Sisko's neck.

Sisko fought against Weyoun's grip, struggling to strike back, but in the starburst of red energy that lanced forth from Weyoun's eyes, his body went rigid, unmoving.

“It's all about being in phase,” Weyoun crooned, his face only centimeters from Sisko's. “About being in harmony. Remember how, at first, you didn't belong in this time at all? How no one could even see you? And how, later you could stay a few minutes now, a few minutes then, as you searched to find the one time in which you would finally belong?

“Trust me, Benjamin. You've found your time. You belong here, and you belong now. With me. No more oscillations. No more chances for escape. You will stay in here with me, and with your friends, for a few more hours. And then, when Leej Terrell runs her final experiment and the barest glimmer of the one True Temple opens on this station in her lab, all times will become one, and you will return to your ship in the restored Temple, and there even you will melt into oneness with the final oblivion.”

Weyoun suddenly released Sisko from his grip and paralysis. Sisko staggered but stayed on his feet, swaying from the draining residual effects of Weyoun's red energy.

He could only watch as Weyoun began walking away from him, returning to the bulkhead. The Vorta's smug voice floated back to Sisko. “It's over, Benjamin, and it was over before you were even born. In the realm of nonlinear time, the end of the universe was always there, always waiting for you. You saw it happen once. And you will see it happen again.”

There was no logic to the fury that erupted in Sisko then, freeing him from his stupor, and finally propelled him into action. Without a sound, Sisko rushed not at the departing Weyoun but at the hatch leading to the hauler's command cabin.

Sisko leaped up the short ladder and had rolled into the small cabin before Weyoun had even turned around.

The cabin hatch cover had been removed long ago, and Sisko jumped through its opening, dropping two meters to the deck of the ore-processing bay. All his concentration and all his energy were focused on crossing the ten meters to the main corridor exit before Weyoun could scale the ladder behind him and get within striking range.

Sisko ran across the deck as if he were possessed himself, not looking back, seeing only the exit.

He had to find Cardassians or Bajorans or anyone to whom he could shout out his story. Thirty seconds would be all he would need to alert someone—anyone—to the traitors, the saboteurs, the spies, whatever, hiding in the ore hauler. All he had to do was to cause enough chaos to bring on what Weyoun did not want at any cost—a change in the way things had been in the past.

Sisko reached the exit and its half-open disk door. Breathing hard, he twisted sideways and lunged through it, not quite fitting, ripping his jacket and badly scraping his chest and back in his haste.

He stumbled forward into an airlock, tripped, slapped the deck to break his fall. He kicked his legs free of the disk door behind him, then began rolling back to his feet.

The next disk door opened onto the corridor. Sisko had time only to give the airlock status panel one fast look. But that was enough—it was not locked. He threw himself at the controls, slapped his hand against it.

The door began to roll open.

In the agonizing seconds the door's movement took, Sisko risked a half second to look behind him, which is when he learned that he had lost.

Weyoun was nowhere in sight.

Sisko's heart sank.

The only reason Weyoun would not pursue him was that no pursuit was necessary.

The disk door was open enough that Sisko could run through it.

But it was also open enough for Obanak and Lorem to enter, weapons charged and aimed.

“We serve the Emissary,” Obanak said.

And then he fired his phaser.