CHAPTER
2

COMMANDER BENJAMIN SISKO looked at Dax’s results on one of the video monitors behind his desk. Normally the monitors were used for keeping track of routine station data or for communications.

But they had been put to a different use now, as Dax had transferred the contents of her preliminary studies to Sisko’s office.

Dax was seated in the cramped office. Standing just to her right was Major Kira Nerys. Nerys was, in fact, her first name, which was why she was usually addressed as Major Kira, Kira being the family name.

Whereas Dax had an inner peace, Kira seemed to burn with an inner fire. She demanded instant answers before people were ready to give them. As far as she was concerned, if people didn’t have the answers within the period of time that she allotted, then they probably didn’t understand the question.

“Are you sure about this, Dax?” she asked.

She nodded. “At first I allowed for the possibility of instrument failure,” she said. “So I had Chief O’Brien check the systems. He confirms that they are working to within correct specifications.”

Ben Sisko swiveled his chair around to face her. His features, as was so often the case, gave no real hint as to what was going through his mind. His eyes glittered in his dark face. “A steady, high flux of neutrino particles from the wormhole,” he said. “And getting progressively higher.”

“That is correct, Benjamin,” said Dax. “Whenever the wormhole is in use, of course, it emits concentrations of neutrinos.”

“But it’s not in use at the moment,” Kira said thoughtfully. “Dax, could it be that the wormhole is becoming unstable? Even . . . collapsing?” She looked to Sisko. “That would be a damned shame.”

When Sisko replied, it was in that slow, measured tone that people had come to know. “No one is more aware than I am of what a damned shame it would be if the wormhole suddenly disappeared. Having the only gateway to the Gamma Quadrant has certainly not hurt the Bajoran economy . . . not with all these dignitaries and high-muckety-mucks passing through.”

Kira acknowledged the accuracy of his comment with a slight dip of her head. “There’s no harm in being concerned about the state of the Bajoran economy,” she pointed out. “I am, after all, Bajoran.”

“So is the vast majority of this station’s population, Major,” allowed Sisko. He drummed on the table for a moment and then said softly, “Ever since we discovered that wormhole, it’s been both a blessing and a curse. Without it—frankly, and nothing personal intended—things would be pretty damned boring around here. On the other hand, it’s the equivalent of staring down the barrel of a gun. Any time at all, something very large and very heavily armed could pop out of there and turn us to space dust before we could blink an eye. And they wouldn’t give a damn about me, you, or the Bajoran economy.”

“Are you saying that you hope the wormhole does collapse?” said Kira. “We’ve been so certain that it’s stable . . . ”

He fixed her with his piercing gaze. “How do we really know that, Major? The fact is, we don’t. We have only the vaguest understanding of the beings who created that . . . anomaly. Stable? By whose definition? Ours or the wormhole’s creators’ or that of the universe itself? The whole of humanity has been around, in cosmic terms, for less than an eye blink. We believe it’s stable. We hope to hell it’s stable. But we don’t know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is. In fact—again, in cosmic terms—it probably isn’t. Even if its life span is ten million years, sooner or later the clock will run down . . . and who knows precisely when that will be?”

“That’s very eloquent, Benjamin,” said Dax with a small smile.

“Thank you, old man.”

Sisko’s occasional offhand way of addressing Science Officer Dax still threw Kira Nerys, as did Dax’s faintly amused, paternal air when talking to Sisko. Sisko and Dax had a history together, but in that history Dax had been an old man named Curzon Dax—the host body for the wormlike symbiont that was now part of Jadzia Dax. Dax had been something of a mentor to Sisko, hence his affectionate use of “old man” despite the decidedly female form that Dax now inhabited, the old man’s body having worn out.

It was a situation that Sisko continually had to try to adapt to. And that was not easy.

“However,” continued Dax, “your speech was of no real relevance.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Is that a fact?”

“Yes. Because I don’t believe that the wormhole is collapsing. This situation is, in fact, not unnatural.”

He sighed. “Lieutenant,” he said in a more formal tone, “I hope this won’t shock you, but when I was at the Academy, I didn’t realize I was going to have to become Starfleet’s leading authority on wormholes. I learned enough about them to know that I should not go into them. I learned enough to know how to get out of one if I did wander in. I learned enough, in short, for survival. Beyond that”—and he spread his hands wide “I leave it to science officers to educate me.” He turned to Dax. “What’s happening out there?”

“Subspace compression.”

“Ahh,” he said. “Subspace compression.”

“Do you know what that is?”

“Just a guess here,” he said. “Technobabble?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Nature abhors a vacuum, Benjamin. Well, space is a vacuum. And space abhors a wormhole. It’s a rip in the fabric of reality, and reality is constantly trying to stitch itself back together. That’s why most wormholes are unstable. The force that’s keeping this one in place is a function of the alien technology that created it . . . but that doesn’t make it immune to the pressures being exerted upon it to try to eliminate it.

“To a degree, subspace compression is the wormhole equivalent of sunspots. It’s fairly routine, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. What’s essentially happening is that the subspace field is—”

But she didn’t get to finish the sentence. Ultimately, she didn’t have to.

They were about to have fairly graphic evidence of the effects of subspace compression.

“You never took it out of your left hand.”

“Dammit!”

Odo looked mildly surprised at O’Brien’s reaction. “Were you unaware that the coin was still in your left hand?”

“No, but you were supposed to be unaware,” said O’Brien in frustration. “I don’t get this. When Quark did it—”

“Ah,” said Odo, “well, you see, that’s part of it. You’re attempting a simple misdirection trick. Quark is so blasted ugly that people find themselves staring in fascination at his revolting face. They’re paying only the slightest attention to what he’s doing with—”

Abruptly, Lieutenant Chafin, who had stepped in to monitor the science console when Dax went into Sisko’s office, called out, “Drastic neutrino acceleration! Levels are hitting the upper register! Something’s coming through!”

Odo immediately turned and bolted for Sisko’s office. He got there just in time to hear Dax saying something about the subspace field, but she was already halting in mid-sentence. Sisko’s office overlooked Ops, and at the first sign of something happening, he was on his feet. He was halfway around his desk when Odo appeared at the door.

“Something’s coming through the wormhole,” said Odo without preamble. That was hardly unusual for him; Odo was not someone who wasted a lot of words.

“It won’t make it,” said Dax.

Sisko glanced at her. There was sadness in her eyes, but also a firm conviction based on her personal understanding of the wormhole. “It won’t,” Dax said again. “I’m sorry, Benjamin. There’s nothing you can do.”

Sisko pushed past her and down into Ops. He took his position at the operations console and didn’t even have to glance over to know that Kira was right next to him.

The main viewer was already focused on the familiar coordinates of the wormhole. “Extreme magnification!” called out Sisko. There was a subtle shift in the picture, but still nothing visible. Naturally, the wormhole was not detectable until something actually went into or out of it.

Resuming her place at the science station, Dax said calmly, “Readings off the scale.”

Abruptly Sisko became aware that, if the wormhole was indeed starting to go haywire, it might have rather dire consequences for anyone or anything in proximity . . . like, for example, Sisko and his crew.

There was, however, no trace of apprehension in his voice. “Shields up,” he said as calmly as if it were a casual afterthought. “Go to yellow alert.”

The deflector shields flared into existence around Deep Space Nine. And then, moments later, the wormhole itself flared into existence as well.

The second he saw it, Sisko knew that something was wrong.

Usually the wormhole looked like a swirling purple vortex . . . a thing of beauty, really. A cosmic miracle.

Now, though, there was nothing beautiful about it. The outer rim roiled like an ocean during a storm. Energy crackled out in all directions, greedy fingers extending to see what they could grab and hook on to.

“Pulse waves!” Kira shouted.

Sisko hit a comm link that fed his voice throughout the entire station. “All hands! Hold on!”

It was barely enough warning as the station shuddered under the buffeting.

Down at Quark’s, the Ferengi screamed in fury as bottles of his finest vintage tumbled down out of their shelves. They didn’t shatter; they were too sturdy for that. They did, however, ricochet off his skull and body.

Keiko had just gotten Molly back to sleep when the trembling knocked her off her feet. Molly rolled right off her bed and hit the floor, her piteous wailing filling the air. “I hate this place!” Keiko shrieked, forgetting that her life on the Enterprise had hardly been less hectic.

Up in Ops, Sisko raised his voice to make himself heard. “Damage report!”

“Shields holding!” said O’Brien.

They could see, just for a moment, into the maw of the wormhole. Instead of the funnel shape through which ships safely passed, the interior was writhing, as if some invisible force were clamping down on it. The sides met, energy rippling out of the wormhole, filling the main viewer with a display of fireworks that gave them the barest hint of what it would have been like to be present at the Big Bang.

Dax, imperturbable, was running a sensor sweep. “I’m getting a lot of subspace interference because of the heightened neutrinos,” she said, “but I’ve got something coming out of there. At three two two mark five . . . ”

“Get tractors on it,” Sisko snapped. “We can still save—”

But Dax wasn’t finished. “ . . . at three two seven mark five . . . three five seven mark five . . . ”

He turned to her, not understanding at first. But then he did. “Debris,” he said tonelessly.

She nodded.

The wormhole, like a cat coughing up a hair ball, spit out the remains of the unfortunate traveler. And then it simply vanished, folding back in on itself and disappearing as if it hadn’t been there at all.

“ . . . Three nine three mark five,” she was continuing. “A lot of debris, Benjamin. Whatever it was, it was shaken to bits. Any crew members were probably ripped to pieces by the stress.”

There was a long moment of silence.

Kira, standing near Odo, happened to look over at the security officer . . . and saw a sadness in his face that cut right through her. But it was only there for a moment, and then he replaced it with his usual hard-bitten feral mien.

Then Sisko said, “Chief, stand down from yellow alert.” He looked at Dax. “So that’s subspace compression.”

She nodded. But she wasn’t looking at Sisko. Instead she was studying her readouts.

“Anything we’ve encountered before?” he asked.

She didn’t answer Sisko immediately. Instead she ran a quick check. But then she said, “According to analysis of the remains, yes. As a matter of fact, I can even show you a recreation of what it looked like before the wormhole pulverized it.”

“Put it up on the main viewer,” he said.

The image of space remained there for a moment, and then it was replaced by a visual printout from Dax’s science station.

An outline appeared on the screen, with a list of technical specs running next to it. But no one was looking at the specs. Instead they were focused purely on the ship delineated on the screen.

It was elegantly simple in design, and eminently recognizable.

It was a cube.

For a long moment nothing was said. It was Odo who broke the silence.

“It’s a Borg ship, isn’t it?” he said.

Sisko nodded. His voice sounded hollow. “Yes, Constable. That’s exactly right. It was a Borg ship.”

“The operative word being ‘was,’” Kira said. She appeared calm, but inwardly she shivered.

Sisko likewise appeared composed. But his heart was pounding at trip-hammer speed. “Major,” he told Kira, his tone as neutral as he could keep it. “Kindly contact all local systems and Starfleet. Inform them that the Bajoran wormhole is temporarily closed for repairs. We may not be able to control who is entering it from the other end, but we can certainly make sure that we don’t send anyone through.”

“Several groups have already filed passage plans,” said Kira. “They’re undoubtedly on their way.”

“Anyone who intended to pass through the wormhole is cordially invited to be a guest here at DS-Nine until such time as the neutrino emissions indicate that the wormhole has managed to pull itself together. If any of them complain,” he added, allowing the corners of his mouth to turn up slightly, “they can view our records of this latest incident. I suspect that will deter them.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kira.

He stood there a moment more and then said, “Oh . . . and, ladies and gentlemen, to avoid any possible, and ultimately pointless, alarm, let us keep to ourselves the nature of our frustrated visitor, shall we?”

There were nods from all around Ops.