Sisko saw Kira abruptly rub her eyes, and he felt confident he had broken the
spell of the moment. He glanced next at Aria, expecting to see a less emotional
reaction, since Bajor had never been her home. But to Sisko's surprise, tears
streaked the young woman's face.
"I never knew," she said.
Weyoun nodded. "Of course, you didn't. Keep watching."
In the middle of the main viewer, a new source of light slid into view and
recaptured Sisko's attention. He squinted at the screen. It was as if a hole had
been cut in some vast curtain to let an enormous searchlight bring day to the
middle of night.
"Where's that light coming from?" Kira asked before he could.
"Orbital mirrors," Weyoun said smugly. "Bajor-synchronous, tens of kilometers
wide, constantly refo-cused so that the sun will never set on ..."
"B'hala," Aria breathed.
Weyoun shot a triumphant look at Sisko. "The jewel of Bajor Ascendant," he said.
"Home of our culture, the revelation site of the first Orb to be given to the
Ba-joran people. Lost for millennia, then rediscovered exactly as prophesied,
by the Sisko. I hope you appreciate the importance of what you have given the
Bajoran people, and the universe, Benjamin. Everything that has happened these
past twenty-five years, everything that will happen in the days ahead, is all
because of you."
The Vorta inclined his head in Sisko's direction as if worshipping him.
Sisko's hands were balled into fists within the folds of his robes. "I refuse to
accept responsibility for your perversion of the Bajoran faith."
Weyoun tried and failed to restrain a sudden fit of amused laughter. "Even your
obstinacy in the face of truth was prophesied by the great mystics of Jalbador—
Shabren, Eilin, and Naradim. Your life, your deeds, your great
accomplishments—an open book, Benjamin.
As if the mystics had stood at your side through all of it Your protest is quite
futile, I assure you."
And then B'hala, bathed in perpetual sunlight, slipped from the viewer, and only
a handful of small oases appeared, tiny clusters of lights strung out across
the vast stretch of the mountains forming the Ir'Abehr Shield.
'Torse," Weyoun said in a brisk, businesslike voice of command, "that's enough
of the surface. Change visual sensors and show our guests our destination."
Sisko looked back over his shoulder to see the Romulan with the golden padd,
Torse presumably, obediently turn to a sensor station and make rapid
adjustments to the controls. Then Sisko heard both Kira and Arla gasp, and he
turned back to face the viewer.
To see Deep Space 9 again.
Ablaze with lights. Surrounded by a cometary halo of spacecraft of all classes.
Each docking port filled. Each pylon connected to a different starship. He even
recognized one of those ships as Captain Tom Riker's Opaka.
Sisko stumbled to voice his swirling thoughts. "The logs... on the sensor
logs... DS9... I saw it destroyed. .. "
Weyoun stood up and with a flourish freed his arms from his robes. "Never doubt
the power of the Ascendancy, Benjamin." His face creased in warning. "Never."
Staring at the home he had shared with his son and with Kasidy, and which he had
never expected to see again, Sisko felt Weyoun's light touch on his arm. "As it
was written so long ago: Welcome home, Benjamin. We've been waiting for you."
CHAPTER 13
julian bashir felt as if he were caught in a dream. The sense of unreality that
had begun to envelop him as he had watched the briefing tape on the Augustus had
become more than a minor sense of unease at the back of his mind. Now that he
was on Mars, his apprehension was like a cloak that covered him completely,
weighting each breath he took, obscuring his vision, masking his powers of
analysis.
Even worse, at times he only felt human.
Of the fifteen temporal refugees who had heard Captain Nog's proposal at
Starbase 53, nine had volunteered to join Project Phoenix and lose themselves
even more thoroughly in time.
Of the six who had declined, five had been the Bajorans among them—three
members of the militia and two civilians. In all good conscience, they had
honestly explained that they could not take action against B'hala
and their own people, though they understood why Starfleet felt it must They
requested instead that they be allowed to spend the next few weeks in prayer, so
that they might put all their trust in the Prophets.
To Bashir's relief, the Bajorans' request had caused no consternation among Nog
and his staff. Arrangements would be made, the Bajorans were told. Despite the
War of the Prophets, their refusal had been accepted as simply as that. Some
sense of Starfleet's original decency, it seemed, still existed in this time.
The last holdout to refuse the mission was—to no one's surprise—Vash. And also
to no one's surprise, the volatile archaeologist was not allowed to go anywhere
or do anything except accompany the others to Utopia Planitia. Nog informed her
that she would not be forced to join the crew of the Phoenix, but neither would
she be released from custody until the end of "hostilities."
Bashir recalled cringing at that euphemism, though he realized that the Ferengi
captain had also felt uncomfortable using it. Under current conditions, such a
term could refer to the approaching end of the universe as much as to the end of
the great undeclared war against the Ascendancy.
Nog had subsequently left Starbase 53 on the same day he had first met with the
temporal refugees, after an oddly tense dinner he shared with them. The
spirited, private conversation Jake Sisko had with his aged childhood friend
before they were all seated in the officer's mess did not go unobserved by
Bashir. Clearly there was some conflict between those two.
By itself, Bashir did not find such discord remarkable. No doubt there would be
abandonment issues on both sides of the friendship: Why was it that Nog was
left behind on the day that DS9 was destroyed? Why was it that Jake had
apparently died, yet now lived again, full of the energy of youth, which Nog as
a middle-aged Ferengi no doubt missed?
Yet something more had passed between the two friends and Bashir, for all his
intellectual powers, had to admit his frustration that he had no way of
determining just what that something more was.
Three days later, everyone had arrived at the Utopia Planitia shipyards aboard
Captain T'len's Augustus. Like all cadets, Bashir himself had toured the
facility in his second year; from Mars orbit, both the constellation of orbital
spacedocks and the vast construction fields on the planet's surface were larger
than he remembered them being. In the support domes, though, it seemed to Bashir
that the corridors and rooms at least were almost identical to his memories of
them. Except, of course, for the pervasive and somewhat depressing lack of
maintenance and repair.
Upon their arrival at Starbase 53, he and the others were told that fifteen
different Starfleet outposts throughout what was left of the Federation had been
subjected to terrorist attack on the same day the Defiant had reappeared.
Reportedly, Utopia Planitia had been one of the hardest hit, with more man 200
personnel injured and 35 dead. When the pressure shield of his habitat dome had
been breached, Nog apparently had managed to save both himself and Admiral
Picard by taking shelter in a waste-reclamation pumping room that had its own
atmospheric forcefield.
Recalling the account they had been given, Bashir couldn't help but feel a bit
of pride at how Nog had turned out. Everyone on DS9 had taken a hand in helping
mold
the youth from the petty juvenile thief he had been at die beginning to the fine
officer he had so clearly become.
But to Bashir, a terrorist attack still didn't explain Utopia's torn
wallcoverings, out-of-service lifts, cracked and damaged furniture, and a
thousand other deviations from the ordered, precise Starfleet way of doing
things in which he, like all those in Starfleet, had been trained. Though the
operational areas of the shipyards still seemed outwardly as functional and as
fully maintained as before, he couldn't help but see how attention to detail
was sliding. And that unspoken sense of desperation in this beleaguered version
of Starfleet was contributing mightily to the overwhelming unreality of this
experience for him.
Which is why, he supposed, on this his second day in the shipyards he wasn't at
all shocked when, while going from his quarters to the mess hall, he recognized
a familiar figure, unchanged by time, walking toward bun.
"Doctor Zimmerman?"
The bald man, whose quick, intelligent eyes were defined by distinct, dark
eyebrows, halted a few meters from him. At once, Bashir felt himself subjected
to an intense visual inspection. It was as if he were being compared to the
contents of some sort of computer library file that only the bald man could see.
Suddenly he snapped his fingers and exclaimed, "Julian Bashir! Of the Defiant!"
Bashir was puzzled by the way in which Zimmerman chose to identify bun. He and
the doctor had met on DS9 after all, when the doctor had been developing a
long-term medical hologram. Zimmerman, however, didn't appear to have aged at
all in the past twenty-five years.
"That's right," Bashir said, and he closed the dis-
tance between them to shake Dr. Zimmerman's hand. He checked the Starfleet rank
insignia in the middle of the man's chest and smiled politely. "Admiral
Zimmerman. Very good, sir. And very deserved, I'm sure."
The man before him returned his smile, but it was a rueful one. "Actually,
Doctor Bashir, Lewis Zimmerman passed away several years ago."
In his shock, Bashir kept both his hands locked around the bald man's hand. "I
beg your pardon?"
"Your confusion is understandable." Still smiling but without real conviction,
the admiral who wasn't Dr. Zimmerman pulled his hand free from Bashir's grip.
"In appearance, I was modeled after nun."
Bashir still felt the heat of the man's hand in his. But if he had heard
correctly, there was only one possible explanation for what he was seeing. He
looked up to the left and the right of the corridor, where the stained walls met
the ceiling.
"There are no holoemitters," the admiral said.
"But... are you..."
"I was," the admiral said in a tone of resignation. "An EMH. Emergency Medical
Hologram."
Bashir took a step back. He had known there would be technological advances in
the past twenty-five years, but this?
"You are a... a..."
"Hologram," the admiral said perfunctorily. "Yes. Though obviously a type with
which you are not familiar."
"I... I am astounded that such an incredible breakthrough has been made in only
two and a half decades."
The hologram sighed. "It actually took more like four hundred years, but what's
a few centuries among
Mends? Now, a pleasure to meet you, but I really must be—"
Bashir interrupted him, suddenly intrigued by a construct that was even more
than an apparently self-aware, self-generating hologram. The artificial being's
comment about "four hundred years" instantly raised a subject of great medical
interest. "Excuse me," he said, "but if you meant it took four centuries to
develop the technology that's freed you from holoemitters, are you referring to
alien technology, or rather to something obtained through time travel?"
The hologram's eyes crinkled not unpleasantly. "My specifications are on-line
and, if I might say, make for fascinating bedtime reading. But right now, I am—"
Another voice broke in, completing the hologram's statement. "Doctor, you are
late."
"That's what I was just telling this young man."
Bashir turned, looking for whoever it was the hologram was addressing, and his
eyes widened as he saw a tall and striking woman, no older than forty, striding
purposefully toward him. She had an intense, almost belligerent expression; her
pale blonde hair was drawn back severely, and she wore a Starfleet uniform with
a blue shoulder and—like the holographic doctor—the rank of admiral.
She also had an unusual biomechanical implant around her left eye, an implant
that Bashir was startled to think he recognized.
"They are waiting for us in briefing room 5," the woman said to the hologram.
Bashir couldn't keep his eyes off the ocular implant. He offered his hand. "I'm
Julian Bashir of the Defiant. Admiral... ?"
The woman looked at Bashir's extended hand as if she were Klingon and he was
offering her a bowl of dead gagh. She made no attempt to offer her own hand in
return.
"Seven," she said flatly. "You are one of the temporal refugees."
"And you cannot stop staring at my implant," the admiral said.
"I'm... I'm sorry," Bashir stammered. "But... well, I know I'm twenty-five years
out of date, but... it looks like Borg technology."
"It does because it is," Admiral Seven said.
Bashir felt as if he were falling down a rabbit hole. "You are..."
The admiral placed her hands behind her back and stared at Bashir with
impatience. "I am Borg. My designation is Seven of Nine. My function is Speaker
to the Collective. You must now allow us to continue with our duties. Admiral
Janeway does not like to be kept waiting."
Bashir started at the mention of that name. "Admiral Jane—do you mean, Kathryn
Janeway?"
"Yes," the hologram said as he stood beside the Borg, "and believe me, it
doesn't pay to make her angry. So—"
"Voyager made it back?" Bashir said.
The Borg frowned at him. "Obviously."
"But... how?"
The hologram and the Borg exchanged a look of shared commiseration. Then the
hologram said to Bashir, "It's a long story. We really do have to go."
Before Bashir could utter another word, the holo-
gram and the Borg marched off together. And just before they turned the corner
into the corridor leading to the briefing rooms, Bashir was stunned to see the
Borg reach out to hold the hologram's hand as she leaned over to whispe
r in his
ear as both of them broke out laughing like any young couple in love.
"Oh, brave new world that has such things in it," Bashir said to no one in
particular.
Twenty minutes later in the mess hall, Bashir was still mulling over the
significance of the beings he had met, and using a padd to review the stunning
ten-year-old alliance between the Federation and the Borg Collective as
engineered by Admiral Seven of Nine and a Borg whose designation was given only
as "Hugh."
Though a great many details of the Treaty of Wolf 359 appeared to be classified,
it was becoming apparent to him that technology exchanges were at its core. The
Federation had and was providing expertise in nanite-mediated molecular surgery
techniques to the Borg, while the Borg were providing transwarp technology
which, Bashir concluded from reading between the lines, was the basis of Admiral
Picard's Phoenix.
"Incredible," Bashir muttered to himself.
"What is?"
Startled, Bashir looked up to see Jake Sisko. How had he missed his approach?
Even his enhanced senses seemed to be subject to his bewildering state of
confusion these days. "The Borg," he said. "The Borg appear to be our allies
now."
Bashir nodded as Jake gestured with the tray of food he held, to ask permission
to sit down with him.
"I heard that, too," Jake told him, taking the seat op-
posite Bashir. The tall youngster leaned forward across the small mess table and
dropped his voice. "But I can't get anyone to tell me what happened to the
Klingon Empire. Are they part of the Federation now? On the side of the
Ascendancy? People either ignore the question or they tell me the information's
classified."
Bashir looked around the mess hall. At full capacity, it might hold 300
personnel. But right now, perhaps because it was between shifts, there were
only 23 others eating meals or nursing mugs of something hot Twenty of these
other diners were Andorians, the other three Tellarite.
"Have you seen another human here?" Bashir asked Jake.
Now Jake looked around the mess hall. "Well... wasn't the lieutenant who showed
us our quarters human?"
Bashir shook his head. "Vulcan."
Jake frowned. "At Starbase 53 there were humans. The medical staff."
Bashir held up two fingers. "Two technicians. On a staff of fifteen."