The War of the Prophets Page 22

  Jadzia felt a wave of thankful relief for her mate's generous nature. In its

  way, the Klingon religion was also humane, in that there were many chances for

  per­sonal redemption, even after death.

  She gripped Worf's hand tightly in both of hers, and with perfect warrior's

  inflection she said in Klingon, "Then know this, my husband. That if you should

  die outside of battle, I will dedicate each battle I fight for the rest of my

  life to your honor and to your place among the honored dead."

  Worf trailed his fingers through her long dark hair. "You are the most romantic

  female I have ever known," he whispered gruffly.

  Jadzia took that hand as well, and lightly bit his fin­gers. "And will you fight

  for me if I fall outside of bat­tle?"

  Worf kissed her forehead. "That is not your destiny. You will die an old woman

  with long white hair, secure in your bed, surrounded by your grandchildren, and

  it will be our sons who will win glorious victories for us both, that we might

  sit at the table of Sto-Vo-Kor."

  Jadzia felt tears well up in her eyes as her love for Worf grew even stronger.

  She smiled at him, knowing that the time for words, no matter how beautiful, was

  coming to an end.

  "Our sons?" she asked teasingly.

  "At least ten," Worf murmured as he crushed her in his arms.

  'Ten?" Jadzia laughed. "Then we'd better get to work...."

  They didn't speak past that, and afterward, content in the arms of her warrior,

  Jadzia drifted off to sleep, dreaming of sons—and daughters—and scores of

  grandchildren, and the perfect love she knew would last for decades to come.

  Which meant, she dreamily realized, that the uni­verse would not end as everyone

  feared.

  She slept soundly, knowing that the future was se­cure, and that it would be

  many years before she came to the gates of Sto-Vo-Kor.

  CHAPTER 16

  "Do you BELIEVE?" Gul Dukat shouted, and his voice echoed in the darkness of the

  enamel house that was Deep Space 9.

  Sisko fought to breathe as the Cardassian's deadly chokehold tightened on his

  throat. He struggled to get a grip on his attacker's arm, but it was as if

  Dukat's hand were forged from neutronium, and Sisko began to de­spair of

  surviving this possessed creature, who was something other than an ordinary

  life-form.

  "DO YOU?" Dukat spat into Sisko's face, his foul bream so much stronger than the

  malodorous air sur­rounding them that it seemed to Sisko the Cardassian himself

  could be the source of the terrible stench. "Be­fore you are thrown into the

  Fire Pits to burn for your sins, will you not confess your unworthiness?"

  Sisko flailed uselessly, at last pointing to his gasping

  mouth, trying to form the words, "Can't speak," before he lost consciousness.

  Dukat's glittering eyes flickered. He angled his head. His hand began to reduce

  its pressure on Sisko's swollen throat. Sisko's heartbeat no longer thundered in

  his ears.

  And then something dark streaked through the air above Sisko's head, and he

  heard a thick thud of impact as Dukat's hand released him, and the Cardassian

  fell back into darkness.

  In the same moment, Sisko collapsed to his knees, gulping air, gagging,

  massaging his bruised throat In his relief to finally get a breath into his

  strained lungs, the air no longer seemed as dreadful as it had earlier.

  Breathing almost normally, he looked up to see Arla at his side, the arm of one

  of the pod's acceleration chairs balanced in her hand like a club—the weapon she

  had used against Dukat. She was peering into the dark shad­ows of the station,

  the only light on her the backglow from the pale yellow light in the airlock

  behind them, and beyond that the distant light from their travel pod.

  She looked down at Sisko. "Are you all right, Captain?'

  Sisko nodded and forced himself to his feet, half-stumbling on the ill-fitting

  robes he wore.

  "Was that Gul Dukat?" Arla asked.

  His throat still burning, Sisko shook his head in agreement.

  And then a shriek came from the darkness. "... Un­believer. ..."

  "Dukat!" Sisko croaked. "We don't want to fight you!"

  "Then that makes it much easier for me!" Dukat screamed back, and from nowhere a

  solid fist struck Sisko hi the side of the head, knocking him away from Arla,

  toward the open airlock.

  Before Sisko could recover his balance, a shaft of blood-red light sprang from

  the open palm of Dukat's hand and reached out to engulf Arla, five meters away,

  in a scarlet corona of energy.

  The tall Bajoran cried out as sparks flew from her earring and she was lifted

  into the air, her body writhing, arms swinging, legs kicking furiously.

  "Leave her alone!" Sisko jumped to his feet again, commanding Dukat to obey him.

  The Cardassian turned and stared at him, head still cocked, its outline framed

  hi a wild frothing spray of white hair in the radiant-red backscatter of energy

  puls­ing from his outstretched hand.

  "Emissary," Dukat intoned ominously, "you know I can't do that. She's Bajoran."

  "She's no threat to you!"

  Dukat drew his hand back and its red halo of energy cut off as if a switch had

  been thrown. Arla's body fell at once, striking the deck heavily. She moaned,

  then lay still.

  Sisko moved quickly to her side, checked for a pulse, felt it flutter in her

  neck.

  Then he became aware of Dukat towering over him. Sisko looked up, for the first

  time noticing the red arm­band the Cardassian wore, and understood what it

  meant.

  "Follow me," Dukat ordered. For now his hollow eyes were shadowed, dark.

  "Why?" Sisko said, cradling Arla in his arms.

  The white-haired figure shrugged. "Because, Emis­sary, you have already come

  back from the dead, just as I have. What more can I do to you that the Prophets

  have not already done? Yet think what you might learn...."

  Then, with a flourish of the dark robes he wore, the

  Cardassian whirled around and walked into the shad­ows. The movement caused a

  rush of evil-smelling air to wash over Sisko, and he swayed back beneath its

  force. Recovering, he glanced at the open airlock, though he knew the damaged

  travelpod could not be used again.

  He had no choice now.

  He lifted up Arla's unconscious form and followed after Dukat, the path taking

  him deeper into the un­known darkness of a Deep Space 9 he did not know.

  Sisko emerged onto what once had been the Prom­enade, though there was little

  now that was familiar to him.

  In the half-light of a handful of flickering yellow fu­sion tubes, Sisko could

  see no sign of any stores or kiosks, only a circular sweep of bare metal deck

  pud­dled here and there with dark liquid and framed by empty, open storerooms.

  And there were the corpses too, of course. The reason why the air was so awful

  here and throughout the station.

  From what was before him, Sisko guessed at least a hundred had died, more if the

  scattered, haphazard piles of robed figures were the same in the other sec­tions

  of the Promenade that he couldn't see.

  And the slaughter must have gone on for some time. A few of the bodies were

&
nbsp; little more than skeletal re­mains. Some were still covered with flesh, though

  mat was black and shriveled. And others were only a few days old, fresh like

  those to be found on battlefields, al­ready swelling with the potent gases of

  decay.

  The only thing they shared, other than the silence of the dead, was a thin band

  of red cloth, tied around each arm—-just like Dukat's.

  "My congregation," Dukat proclaimed proudly.

  He stood on a platform, a pulpit that was little more than a hull plate balanced

  on top of a battered metal bench and half-covered by a filthy white cloth.

  "Can you hear the applause?" Dukat cried as he closed his eyes briefly in bliss.

  "The cheers and the joy?"

  Sisko shifted his dead-weight burden, trying to change Arla's position within

  his tiring arms, to ease his aching back. The Bajoran was half a head taller

  than he was, and well muscled. And heavy. She stirred and gave a faint cry, but

  he didn't want to put her down here. There was no clear space that had not been

  fouled by the dead.

  He called out to Dukat. "Do you follow Weyoun? Or does Wey—"

  "SILENCE!" Dukat thundered, and a ruby bolt of fire shot from his hand to scorch

  the deck at Sisko's feet In an instant, the dark metal there turned dull red

  with heat and a nearby puddle of unidentifiable liquid became steam, filling the

  air with a choking, noxious cloud of what smelled like sewer gas.

  "Weyoun." Dukat spat the name out contemptuously. "The Pretender. The Puppet. A

  mindless plaything of those unfit to dwell within the Temple."

  Sisko looked around, confused. Whatever Dukat had been up to here, it had been

  going on for months at least, if not years. So why had Weyoun brought Sisko and

  the other survivors from the Defiant here? Unless...

  "Dukat—where are we?"

  Dukat gestured grandly to each side of his makeshift pulpit "In my domain: as it

  was, as it always shall be, Terok Nor without end. Amojan. Can I hear an

  Amojan?" He peered down at Sisko, his eyes aflame once more, his terrible gaze

  stopping on Arla. "Ah, I see you've brought

  a sacrifice. An innocent. To die like all the others you condemned so long ago,

  to bless this station."

  "No," Sisko said quickly. He nodded at the bodies that surrounded them. "Is that

  who these people are? What they became? Sacrifices?"

  Dukat held out his arms, hands cupped, as if seeking and receiving the adulation

  of a crowd. "Can you not hear them, Emissary? They have such courage to resist

  the beguiling promises of the False Prophets. As you well know."

  "Which Prophets are those?" Sisko grunted, as he had to let Arla's body slip

  down, resting it full length against his to support her upright though still

  unconscious form. "Weyoun's Prophets from the red wormhole? Or those from

  twenty-five years ago, in the blue wormhole?"

  Dukat reeled back, as if startled by the question. Then he leaped down from his

  platform, advancing on Sisko, his scaly, bare feet splashing through the murky

  pools of liquid on the metal decking of the Promenade.

  "You still don't know, do you?" Dukat crowed in amazement.

  "Know what?"

  Dukat's gap-toothed smile was almost a leer. This close to his old adversary,

  Sisko now saw how cruelly the years had treated him, not only turning his hair

  white but deeply furrowing his skin, whose loose folds now hung from his chin

  and jowls, emphasizing his gray reptilian knobs and plates.

  "I've missed you," Dukat sneered. "Oh, the times we had, the places we've been."

  "You were going to tell me something."

  Dukat nodded gravely. "I was going to kill you. Back then. Before the war was

  over. I had traveled so far,

  learned so many things, and then I returned. Did they tell you that? I returned

  to Damar and Weyoun, deter­mined to obtain from them a simple carving... a

  tri­fling piece of wood, really. But it had the power to drive the False

  Prophets from their Temple. To restore Kosst Amojan and the Pah-wraiths to their

  realm of glory. And to destroy you so utterly...." Dukat's grin was terrify­ing.

  "So imagine my surprise when Damar told me you were already dead, swallowed by a

  wormhole. End of story. End of revenge. End of everything.

  "Do you understand the irony of that moment?" Dukat snickered, and spittle flew

  from his open mouth. Sisko turned his face away to avoid breathing the same air.

  "I came back with plans for my ultimate triumph, but you had already taken it

  from me, defeating me be­fore you even knew the battle had begun. And then, just

  to prove that the False Prophets have a sense of humor like no other, since

  Damar had no other use for me, he had me arrested. For treason."

  "But not killed," Sisko said, drawing Arla closer to him. "How merciful."

  Dukat reached out to pat Sisko's shoulder and trail a horn-like fingernail along

  Arla's insensate cheek. "Oh, I've died a thousand times since then, Captain. I'm

  dead now. In a way, I suppose, I always have been." He frowned at Arla. "Isn't

  she thing you? I could take her if you'd like."

  "I can manage. Why was Weyoun bringing me to see you?'

  Dukat exploded with laughter. This time there was no way to avoid the spray.

  Sisko closed his eyes just hi time. "He was doing no such thing, Emissary! He

  needs you to end the universe. But I saved you! Brought you

  here, out of his reach. And as long as you stay here, the universe cannot end.

  It's such a simple plan, don't you think? And all you have to do ..." And here,

  Dukat's voice dropped deeper, became louder."... is remain here forever, like

  all my congregation."

  Sisko edged back, keeping Arla close to him, as the red light in Dukat's eyes

  began to grow in intensity.

  "Do not be afraid," Dukat commanded, raising his hands so that Sisko could see

  the sparks of crimson that were beginning to crackle across his fingers and

  palms like milling insects of light. "I have eaten the heart of Kosst Amojan. I

  have crushed the foul Pah-wraiths who dwelled in the Fire Caves. I am on your

  side now, Emissary! We serve the same lost Prophets!"

  Then double rays of red light slammed into Sisko and Arla, driving her inert

  body into his so the two of them fell backward and into a slushy mound of soft

  bodies.

  In the explosion of decomposed tissue and fluids that erupted around them, Arla

  slipped from Sisko's grasp. But the pungent smell finally awoke her, and she

  flailed about in the ghastly detritus as, half-conscious and con­fused, she

  tried and failed to get to her feet

  Dukat ignored her and held out his fiery hand to Sisko. "Join me," he roared in

  his demonic voice, "and the universe shall be saved for all time!"

  And despite the absolute horror of Dukat's temple and the nightmare world that

  Deep Space 9 had be­come, Sisko at last heard something in the ghastly

  Car­dassian's entreaty. Something offering hope.

  Sisko took a deep breath. Why couldn't he join Dukat? Why couldn't he reach out

  to the Cardassian's hand and thereby change the fate of the universe?

  After all, Sisko thought, / already know I'm lost.

  Everyone who had come forward in time with him on board the Defiant was lost.

  And i
f things continued as Weyoun and even Starfleet seemed to believe they

  would, then all of existence was lost as well.

  It would be so simple. So easy. So... worthwhile.

  Sisko got to his feet, took a step forward.

  "HERETIC!"

  The cry had come from Arla. Sisko had forgotten she was even present. "What are

  you saying?"

  Stained and disheveled but standing once again, the Bajoran pointed a shaking

  finger at Dukat "Look at him, Captain," she shouted accusingly. "He's wearing

  the robes and armband of a Pah-wraith cult"

  Sisko stared incredulously at Arla. He knew about the Pah-wraith cults because

  of what had happened to his son when the Reckoning had played out on Deep Space

  9. But how did Arla, a nonbeliever, know about such things?

  "She's a lost child," Dukat crooned. "You don't have to pay any attention to

  her. Take my hand, Emissary. Take my hand and save existence."

  The Reckoning, Sisko thought wildly. So many ques­tions swirled through his

  mind. Why couldn't he voice at least one of them?

  "You'll be able to hear them cheering," Dukat said silkily as he gazed at the

  bodies around them. "You'll be able to feel their love...." His eyes flashed

  scarlet, went dark, flashed again.

  Love, Sisko thought hazily. He had lost Kasidy. He had lost... "My son—what

  about Jake?"

  "He's a lovely boy," Dukat said. "And he's waiting for you. Take my hand....

  You'll see him for yourself."

  "You can't believe him, Captain," Arla warned.

  "Whose side are you on?" Sisko demanded of her. He looked at Dukat. "Whose side

  are you on?"

  "The side of truth," they both answered together.

  Then they both looked at each other and hurled the same word at the same time,

  "Liar!"

  Sisko stepped back again, clarity suddenly freeing him. "I know where we are!"

  he exclaimed. "The worm­hole!" He looked from Dukat to Arla. "This is some sort

  of Orb experience! You're... you're both Prophets!"

  Dukat howled with scornful laughter. "Really, Emis­sary. How naive. Can Prophets

  die?"

  And then, as if brushing dust from his robes, Dukat lifted his hand and a blast

  of energy felled Arla. She crumpled with a terrible finality to the floor. A

  thin trickle of blood trailed from the corner of her mouth.

  "No one's had an Orb experience since Weyoun re­turned from the second Temple,"