The War of the Prophets Page 2

  mines without an EVA team, and there's just no time."

  lime, Sisko thought. And that was the end of his in­decision. As a Starfleet

  officer, he couldn't risk pollut­ing the timeline. But as a Starship captain...

  his crew had to come first

  "This is the Defiant to Captain Riker, I am—"

  The stars on the viewer suddenly spiraled, and the Defiant's deck lurched to

  starboard, felling everyone not braced in a duty chair, including Sisko.

  "Another ship decloaking!" Worf shouted as three

  bridge stations blew out in cascades of translator sparks. "We are caught in its

  gravimetric wake!"

  "Dax!" Sisko struggled to his feet. "Stabilize the screen!"

  The spiraling stars slowed, then held steady, even though all attitude screens

  showed that the Defiant was still spinning wildly on her central axis.

  Then, with the same dissolving checkerboard pattern of wavering squares of light

  that Sisko had seen en­velop the Opaka, the new ship decloaked.

  Again, Sisko had no doubt he was looking at a ship based on advanced technology.

  But in this case the vessel was not of Starfleet design; it was unmistakably

  Klingon—a battlecruiser at least the size of the Opaka. Yet this warship's deep

  purple exterior hull was studded with thick plates and conduits, with a long

  central spine extending from the sharp-edged half-diamond of the cruiser's

  combined engineering and propulsion hull to end in a wedge-shaped bridge module.

  "Whose side is it on?" Sisko asked sharply, even as Worf reported that he could

  pick up no transmissions of any kind from the vessel. But Jadzia caught sight of

  something on the Klingon's hull and instructed the De­fiant's computer to jump

  the viewer to magnification fifty and restore full resolution.

  At once, Sisko and his crew were looking at a de­tailed segment of the warship's

  purple hull. Angular Klingon script ran beneath the same modified Starfleet

  emblem Tom Riker had worn on his uniform—the clas­sic Starfleet delta in gold

  backed by an upside-down triangle in blue.

  "It has to be with the Opaka," Kira said.

  12

  Worf's next words unnerved Sisko. "And her desig­nation is Boreth."

  The Opaka was named for a Bajoran spiritual leader—the first kai Sisko had met

  on Bajor. And Boreth was the world to which the Klingon messiah, Kahless the

  Unforgettable, had promised to return after his death. The Starfleet of Sisko's

  day did not make a habit of naming its ships after religious figures or places.

  Something had changed in this time. But what?

  "Thirty seconds," Worf said tersely.

  Sisko faced the viewscreen. "This is Captain Sisko to Captain Riker and to the

  commander of the Boreth. My crew stands ready to join you. We require immediate

  evacuation."

  "Course change on the two remaining attackers!" Kira announced. "Coming in on a

  ramming course!"

  Sisko clenched his hands at his sides. He didn't un­derstand the tactics. What

  about the antimatter mines? Their adversaries could destroy the Defiant without

  sacrificing themselves in a suicidal collision.

  Sisko turned abruptly to O'Brien. "Mine status?"

  "Only nine left! Seven ... five... Captain, they're being beamed away!"

  "The Boreth," Sisko said. That had to be the answer. But why?

  He looked at Jadzia. "Any transporter trace?"

  "Still nothing detectable, Benjamin."

  'Ten seconds to impact with attackers!" Kira shouted. "The Opaka is firing more

  of those... torpe­does or whatever they are ... five seconds...."

  Sisko reached for his command chair. "Brace for col­lision!"

  And then, as if a series of fusion sparklers had ig-

  nited one after the other across the bridge, Dax, Bashir, and Worf—

  —vanished.

  One instant Sisko's senior command staff were at their stations. Then, in the

  center of each of their torsos a single pinpoint of light flared, and as if

  suddenly twisted away at a ninety-degree angle from every direc­tion at once,

  the body of each crew member spun and shrank into that small dot of light, which

  faded as sud­denly as it had blossomed.

  "Chief! What happened!"

  O'Brien's voice faltered, betraying his utter bewilder­ment. "I... some kind

  of... transporter, I think. It—it hit all through the ship, sir. We've lost

  fifteen crew...."

  Sisko strode toward Jadzia's science station, but Arla reached the Trill's empty

  chair before he did.

  "The attackers have gone to warp, sir. The Opaka is pursuing. The Boreth is

  holding its position."

  With an arm as heavy as his hopes, Sisko finally al­lowed himself to touch his

  communicator. "Sisko to Jake."

  No answer. Sisko's stomach twisted with fear for his boy.

  Arla looked up at Sisko.

  "My son—he was in sickbay," Sisko said in answer to Arla's questioning glance.

  "Communications are down across the ship," Arla offered.

  And then a far-too-familiar voice whispered from the bridge speakers, with

  pious—and patently false—sur­prise.

  "Captain Sisko, I cannot tell you what a privilege it is to see you once again."

  Sisko forced himself to raise Ms head to look up at the viewer, to see the

  odious, smiling speaker who sat in a Klingon command chair, a figure clad in the

  un­mistakable robes of a Bajoran vedek.

  "Weyoun... ?"

  "Oh Captain, I feel so honored that you remember me after all this time," the

  Vorta simpered. "Though I suppose for you it is only a matter of minutes since

  you were plucked from the timeline and redeposited here."

  Sisko stared at the viewscreen as if he were trapped in a dream and the

  slightest movement on his part would send him into an endless fall.

  No, not a dream, Sisko thought. A nightmare....

  Because Weyoun's presence as a Bajoran religious leader on a Klingon vessel with

  Starfleet markings meant only one thing.

  Sometime in the past twenty-five years, the war had ended.

  And the Dominion had won.

  CHAPTER 2

  the instant the sirens began to wail, Captain Nog was out of his bunk and

  running for the door of his quarters, his Model-I personal phaser in hand. Then,

  barefoot, wearing only Starfleet-issue sleep shorts and no Fer­engi headskirt,

  Nog slammed into that door. It hadn't opened in response to his full-speed

  approach.

  Coming fully awake with the sudden shock of pain, he slapped his hand against

  the door's control panel, to punch in his override code and activate manual

  func­tion. But before he could begin, the lights in his clut­tered quarters

  dimmed, alarm sirens screamed to life and, with a stomach-turning lurch, Nog

  felt the gravity net abruptly shut down, leaving him bouncing in nat­ural

  Martian gravity, still with all his mass but only one-third his weight.

  Reflexively Nog slapped at his bare chest, as if his communicator badge were

  permanently welded to his

  17

  flesh, then swore an instant later in an obscure Ferengi trading dialect. He

  darted back to his closet to get his jacket, only to pitch forward as the first

  shockwave hit Personnel Dome 1.

  His cursing reduced to a moan of frustration, Nog jumped to his feet—and bange
d

  his head on the ceiling because he'd forgotten to compensate for the suddenly

  diminished gravity. Dropping to the floor once more, he yanked open his closet

  door, then ripped his com­municator from the red shoulder of the frayed uniform

  jacket hanging inside.

  He knew exactly what had just happened. The four-second delay between the loss

  of gravity and the arrival of the ground tremor made it obvious. The main power

  generators for the entire Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards had been sabotaged. Again.

  Nog squeezed his communicator badge—a scarlet Starfleet arrowhead against an

  oval of Klingon teal and gold—between thumb and forefinger as he turned back

  toward the door. But all the device did was squeal with subspace

  interference—jamming, pure and simple.

  Nog tossed the useless badge aside, then punched in his override code for the

  door. When the door still didn't open, he abandoned caution and protocol and

  blasted through it with his phaser.

  A moment later his bare feet were propelling him with long, loping strides along

  the dark corridors of the shipyard's largest personnel dome. Multiple sirens

  wailed, all out of phase and echoing from every direc­tion, a sonic affront to

  bis sensitive ears. Flashing yel­low lights spun at each corridor intersection.

  More shockwaves and muffled explosions rumbled through the floor and walls. But

  Nog ignored them all. There

  was only one thought in his mind, one goal as impor­tant as any profit he could

  imagine.

  The Old Man.

  As he reached the main hub of the dome—a large, open atrium—he could see thin

  columns of smoke twist­ing up from the lower levels, as if a fire had broken out

  at the base of the free-standing transparent elevator shafts.

  Nog rushed to the railing, leaned over, and peered down to the bottom level.

  Glowing lances of light from rapidly moving palm torches blazed within the heavy

  smoke that filled the central concourse five floors down. Though he could see

  nothing else within the murk, his sensitive ears identified the rush of

  fire-fight­ing chemicals being sprayed by the dome's emergency crews. He could

  also hear the thunder of running foot­steps, as other personnel bounded up the

  stairways that spiraled around the atrium, fleeing the fire below.

  To the side Nog saw a disaster locker that had auto­matically opened as soon as

  the alarms had sounded. He ran to it and took out two emergency pressure suits,

  each vacuum-compressed to rectangular blocks no larger than a sandwich. As

  swiftly as he could, he tugged the carry loops of the compressed suits over his

  wrist, then charged up the closest stairway himself, pushing coughing ensigns

  and other Fleet workers out of his way while automatically counting each one,

  even as he also kept track of each set of twenty stair risers that ran from

  level to level. He was a Ferengi, thank the Great River, and numbers were as

  integral to his soul as breathing—fourteen times each minute, or approxi­mately

  20,000 times each Martian day.

  Torrents of statistics flooded his mind as he ran, trig­gered by the people he

  passed. In this dome, he knew, most of the personnel were either Andorian (42

  percent precisely) or Tellarite (23.6 percent), supplemented by a few dozen

  Vulcans (48) and Betazoids (42) who had been unable to find rooms in the

  respective domes set to their environmental preferences.

  Of the six main personnel domes in this installa­tion—hurriedly constructed

  after the attack of '88— none were set to Earth-normal conditions. After '88 it

  just hadn't made sense.

  The Old Man's quarters, however, as befitted a VIP suite, had individual gravity

  modifiers and atmospheric controls, enabling flag officers and distinguished

  guests to select any preferred environmental condition, from the Breen

  Asteroidal Swarm frigid wasteland to Vulcan high desert. Those quarters were on

  the ninth level, just one below the topmost ground-level floor, with its

  com­mon-area gymnasium, arboretum, and mess hall.

  By the time he reached that level, Nog's feet were stinging from a dozen small

  cuts inflicted by the rough non-skid surface of the stairs. But mere discomfort

  had no power to slow him. He looked up once just long enough to see that all the

  clear panes of the dome's faceted roof were still intact, then headed away from

  the stairs to charge down the corridor leading to the VIP units.

  Nog swore again as he saw the bodies of two guards sprawled on the floor by the

  shattered security door. Absolute evidence, he feared, that the sabotage of the

  generators was just a diversion, that the real target was alone and defenseless

  at the end of this final corridor.

  Nog launched himself like an old-fashioned Martian astronaut over the

  knife-sharp shards of the shattered door. At the same time, like a

  twenty-fourth-century

  commando, he thumbed his phaser to full power. The pen-size silver tube bore

  little resemblance to the weapons he had trained with when he entered the

  Academy more than twenty-five years ago. But at its maximum setting this new

  model had all the stopping power of an old compression phaser rifle. For ten

  dis­charges, at least.

  Nog finally slowed as he rounded the last corner be­fore the Old Man's quarters.

  The sirens were quieter here, and only one warning light spun, presumably

  be­cause security staff were always on duty here. But none of those alarms was

  necessary, because there was no mistaking the distinctive ozone scent of Romulan

  poly-wave disruptors—and that was warning enough mat a security breach was under

  way.

  He had been right about the true target of this attack, but the knowledge

  brought him no satisfaction. The Old Man was ninety-five years old—in no

  condition to re­sist an attack by Romulan assassins. The best Nog could hope to

  do now was to keep the killers from escaping.

  Two more long strides brought him to the entrance of the Old Man's quarters. As

  he had expected, both doors had been blown out of their tracks, sagging top and

  bottom, half disintegrated, their ragged edges sparkling with the blue crystals

  of solidified quantum polywaves.

  Phaser held ready, Nog advanced through the twisted panels, into a spacious

  sitting room striped with gauzy tendrils of smoke. The only source of light came

  from a large aquarium set into a smooth gray wall. The aquar­ium obviously had

  its own backup power supply, and undulating ripples of blue light now swept the

  room, set in motion by the graceful movement of the fins of the Old Man's prized

  lionfish.

  Nog paused for a moment, intent on hearing the slight­est noise, certain the

  assassins could not have left so soon. The shields that protected the shipyard's

  ground in­stallations were separately powered by underground and orbital

  generating stations, and not even the new Grigari subspace pulse-transporters

  could penetrate the con­stantly modulating deflector screens. However the

  Romu­lans planned to escape, their first step had to be on foot.

  Nog had no intention of letting them take that step— or any others.

  As methodically as a sensor sweep, he turned his head so his
ears could fix on

  any sounds that might be coming from the short hall leading to the bedroom, or

  from the door to the small kitchen, or from the door to the study.

  He concentrated on the hallway. Nothing. Though that didn't rule out the

  possibility that someone might be hiding in the bedroom.

  Next, the kitchen. Nothing.

  Then the study. And there Nog heard slow, shallow breathing.

  He began to move sideways, still holding his phaser before him, aiming it at the

  study door. There was just enough light from the aquarium to avoid bumping the

  bland Starfleet furniture. He flattened himself against the wall beside the

  study door, silently counting down for his own—

  —attack!

  His absolutely perfect textbook move propelled him through the study doorway in

  a fluid low-gravity roll, smoothly bringing him to his feet in a crouch, thumb

  already pushing down on the activation button of his phaser as he targeted the

  first Romulan he saw—the one on the floor by the desk.

  But when the silver phaser beam punched its way through the Romulan, the Romulan

  gave no reaction.

  For an instant, Nog stared at his adversary in puzzle­ment. Then reality caught

  up to him. His shot had been unnecessary.

  The first Romulan was already dead.

  So was the second Romulan, slumped on the couch. The gold shoulder of his

  counterfeit Starfleet uniform was darkened by green blood seeping from the deep,

  wide gash that scored his neck.

  Then a tremulous, raspy voice came from the direc­tion of the room's bookcases.

  The ones filled with real books. "There's a third one in the bedroom."

  Nog slowly straightened up from his crouch. "Admi­ral?"

  The Old Man stepped from the shadows, into the light spilling through the

  doorway behind Nog. He was a hew-mon, slightly stooped. His bald scalp was

  flushed a deep red, and his long fringe of white hair, usually tied back in a

  Klingon-style queue, sprayed across his bare shoulders. Only then did Nog

  realize that the Old Man was naked, his sharp skeleton painfully evident through

  nearly translucent, thin skin. The only object he carried was a bat'leth. It

  dripped with dark and glistening green blood.

  But the Old Man's eyes were sparkling, and the creases around them crinkled in

  amusement as he also took a closer look at his would-be rescuer. "It appears