The War of the Prophets Page 9

Nog looked up to meet her gaze. Realizing that what he held in his hands was the

  proof that everything he had struggled for in these past five years on Mars,

  everything he had sacrificed, had been for nothing. Nothing.

  He could barely speak the words. "You are asking me to betray Starfleet, the

  Federation—everything I be­lieve in."

  "No, Captain, I am offering you a chance to save those very things. The only

  chance you have. We came here to put this question to Admiral Picard, but his

  time has passed. So I put it to you, Captain Nog. In all the universe, you are

  the only one who can save it now. Will you join us?"

  It took Nog a long time to make his decision.

  And time was the one thing he no longer had.

  CHAPTER 7

  if sisko closed his eyes, he could almost believe he was on Bajor, in the kai's

  Temple, in his own time. The gentle splash of water on stone in the meditation

  pool. The sharp peppermint-cinnamon smell of the b'nai candles. Even the cool

  breeze that brought with it the rich, loamy scent of the contemplation gardens.

  All these sensations brought back to him the world he had hoped someday would

  become his adopted home.

  But even these sense memories faded when he opened his eyes and looked out

  through the curving viewports of the Boreth's observation deck to see the

  Defiant being pulled through the stars at warp speed, ensnared in the purple web

  of a tractor beam and trail­ing half a kilometer behind the angular engineering

  hull of the advanced-technology Klingon battlecruiser.

  At his right, he saw in Kira a reflection of his own distress at the sight of

  their ship—so distant, so power-

  less. At his left the tall, lean form of Arla Rees stood rigid, tense, though

  Sisko knew the defeat of the Defi­ant could not inflict the same emotional toll

  on her. The Bajoran commander had only served on Deep Space 9 for a few weeks,

  and she had not served on the Defiant before the events of the station's last

  day—or of the last twenty-five years.

  "How do you think it happened?"

  Sisko knew what Kira was really asking him. His conclusion—that the Dominion had

  won its war with the Federation—had been shared by all the others on the Defiant

  once they saw or heard of Weyoun's appearance in Vedek's robes. And now, the

  fact that they had been been transported to Weyoun's Klingon ship and had

  dis­covered a Bajoran meditation chamber reconstructed to the last detail in its

  observation lounge was more proof. There could be no doubt that in this future

  the Domin­ion had won the war, and had assimilated the cultures of the Alpha

  Quadrant as omnivorously as had the Borg.

  "Maybe it was Deep Space 9," Sisko ventured. "Once the station was gone,

  Starfleet had no forward base to guard the wormhole."

  Kira sighed. "So we really were accomplishing some­thing. This isn't the way I'd

  like to find out, though."

  Arla turned away from the Defiant. "I thought the wormhole was no longer an

  issue in the war, because the aliens kept Dominion forces from using it."

  Sisko saw Kira stiffen at the Bajoran commander's casual use of the term

  "aliens" to describe the beings in the wormhole.

  "The Prophets," Kira said emphatically, "chose to stop one fleet of Jem'Hadar

  ships from traveling through their Temple. But if the Bajoran people failed

  in their duty to protect the Temple's doorway, then it is entirely possible that

  the Prophets withdrew their bless­ing—just as they did when the Cardassians

  invaded."

  Arla persisted. "Major, if the wormhole aliens are gods, how could they let the

  Cardassians inflict such evil on our world?"

  Kira's smile was brittle. "I won't pretend to under­stand the Prophets, but I

  know everything they do is for a reason."

  Before Arla could further escalate what was for now merely a discussion, Sisko

  intervened to keep it at that level. This argument could have no end between the

  two Bajorans of such dissimilar background and belief.

  Kira had been bom on occupied Bajor. She had grown up in relocation camps, and

  had fought for the Resistance since she was a child. The only thing mat had

  enabled her—and millions of other Bajorans—to survive the horrors of the

  Cardassian Occupation of their world was a deep and unquestioning faith in their

  gods—the Prophets of the Celestial Temple.

  But Arla Rees, only a few years younger than Kira, had been born to prosperous

  Bajoran traders on the neutral world of New Sydney. She had enjoyed a Me of

  privilege in which the Cardassian Occupation, though an evil to rally against,

  had never been experienced firsthand. For Arla, now a Starfleet officer, as for

  many Bajorans of her upbringing, the Prophets were little more than an outmoded

  superstition perversely clung to by her less sophisticated cousins on the old

  world.

  Sisko knew mat as fervently as Kira believed in the Prophets and their Celestial

  Temple, Arla held an equally strong belief that the Bajoran wormhole was

  in­habited by aliens from a different dimensional realm,

  and that their involvement in the history of Bajor had been more disruptive than

  benevolent.

  He himself had been wondering of late if reconciling these two opposing beliefs

  was one of the tasks that he, hi his ill-defined and unsought role as the

  Emissary to Bajor's Prophets, was supposed to be able to accom­plish. If so,

  then he was still unable to see how one could ever be reconciled with the other.

  "That's enough," Sisko said to both Kira and Arla. 'This debate is nothing we're

  going to resolve here and now."

  "Oh, but we are," Weyoun proclaimed from behind them.

  Sisko and the two Bajorans turned as quickly as if shot by disruptors, to see

  that the Vorta had apparently beamed into the observation deck behind them, just

  be­side the meditation pool. Across the deck, the doors to the corridor were

  still closed, and there was no other obvious way in.

  "Captain Sisko," Weyoun purred, "Major Kira, you have no idea how delighted I am

  to meet you again after so many years. And Commander Arla, it is such a pleasure

  to make your acquaintance." The Vorta smiled ingratiatingly at his guests and

  clasped his hands ea­gerly before him. "I trust you've found your quarters to

  your liking."

  Sisko forced himself to control his initial impulse to angrily demand an

  explanation for everything that had happened to them. Weyoun's irritatingly

  obsequious manner had simply—like everything else about him and his species—been

  genetically programmed by the Founders in order to better serve the Dominion as

  ne­gotiators, strategists, scientists, and diplomats.

  In this sense, this latest version of Weyoun had changed not at all over the

  past twenty-five years. The clone's thick black hair, brushed high above his

  fore­head, showed no trace of gray. His smooth, open face, framed by

  dramatically ribbed ears that ran from his chin halfway up the sides of his

  head, showed no sign of age-related lines or wrinkles. Indeed, the only aspect

  of the cloned Vorta that had changed from the time Sisko had last crossed his

  path was that this Weyoun now wore a Bajoran earring, complete with a
gleaming

  silver chain.

  But at the moment none of these details was impor­tant to Sisko. There was only

  one thought that claimed his mind. "What happened to my people who were beamed

  off the Defiant?" He did not add mat his son Jake had been among them.

  "Sadly," Weyoun began mournfully, "we must con­sider them dead. The attackers

  are not known for taking prisoners. And those they do take do not live for

  long."

  Kira's outraged question filled the terrible silence that followed the Vorta's

  pronouncement. "What are you doing hi those robes?"

  Weyoun glanced down at his saffron-and-white Vedek's robes, as if to be sure his

  clothing hadn't changed in the last few seconds. "Why, they were a gift. From

  the congregation of the Dahkur Temple. I believe that's in your home province,

  Major."

  Kira's face tightened in disbelief. "None of the monks I know would ever accept

  a Dominion lackey as a vedek."

  Weyoun gazed at Kira in hurt sadness, as if her words had wounded him cruelly.

  "The Dominion," he said, almost wistfully. "A name I have not heard in many

  years."

  Kira's quick glance at Sisko revealed her lack of

  understanding, but he was unable to offer her any of his own.

  "Why not?" Sisko asked Weyoun. "Did the Founders change its name?"

  "Founders," Weyoun repeated, as if that word hadn't crossed his lips for a long

  time either. 'To be honest, I don't know how the Founders reacted to their

  loss."

  "What loss?" Sisko asked. Now he needed enlighten­ment.

  "Of the war, of course," Weyoun answered. "With the Federation."

  Kira shook her head. "Wait a minute. The Dominion lost the war?"

  Weyoun looked troubled. "In ... a manner of speak­ing."

  "And what manner would that be?" Sisko demanded.

  Weyoun nodded thoughtfully. "I understand your confusion, Captain. Twenty-five

  years is a long time. And I will see to it that you have access to briefing

  tapes that recount the thrilling historic events you've missed. But for now,

  simply to put your minds at rest, I will try to... get you up to speed. Isn't

  that what you say?"

  "Just start at the beginning," Sisko said. "Who won the war?"

  The Vorta's smile was vague. "In a technical sense, no one—but the war is over,"

  he hastened to add, as Sisko took a step toward him. "In fact, it ended almost

  one year to the day after the loss of Deep Space 9 and the beginning of your...

  miraculous voyage."

  Sisko was no longer interested in even pretending to be patient. "How did it

  end?"

  The Vorta pursed his lips. "With the destruction of Cardassia Prime, I'm sorry

  to say. A terrible battle. A

  terrible price to pay for peace. But the Cardassians were a proud people. And

  Damar and the Founder he served refused to surrender. Then, when—"

  Arla interrupted suddenly. "What do you mean, the Cardassians 'were' a proud

  people?"

  Weyoun fixed his remarkably clear gray eyes on hers. "I don't play games with my

  words, Commander. At all times, you can be sure I mean exactly what I say.

  Today, the Cardassians as a species are virtually ex­tinct. Cardassia Prime. The

  Hub Colonies. The Union Territories. All destroyed."

  "Destroyed?" Sisko repeated. "We are talking about planets?"

  Weyoun nodded. "Entire worlds, Captain. Laid waste. Uninhabitable. A death toll

  in the tens of bil­lions. ... A mere handful of Cardassians left now. Traders.

  Pirates." He paused, then added with unex­pected anger, "Madmen."

  Kira sounded as shocked as Sisko felt. "But you— you somehow escaped all that

  destruction?"

  Weyoun's facial expressions disconcertingly flick­ered back and forth between an

  overweening smile of pride and an exaggerated frown of sorrow. "No, Major. In a

  sense, / brought about that destruction."

  Now Sisko, Kira, and Arla all began to speak at the same time. But Weyoun

  ignored their questions and protests alike.

  "No, no, no," he said, tucking his hands within the folds of his robes.

  "Whatever you think of me, you're wrong." He stood with his back to the

  observation win­dows and their backdrop of warp-smeared stars. "Cap­tain Sisko,

  you must believe me. I begged Damar to accept the inevitable. I implored the

  Founder to accept

  that it was time she and her kind accepted their fate to be partners in a new

  cause, not the leaders of a dying one. Yet—"

  Sisko regarded him with disbelief. "Are you saying you turned against the

  Founders?! "

  "But... they were your gods," Kira said.

  Weyoun shook his head. "The only reason the Vorta believed the Founders to be

  gods was because that was programmed into the basic structure of our brains. Our

  belief in the Founders was achieved through the same genetic engineering that

  raised us from the forests of our homeworld."

  "But you've always known about your program­ming," Sisko said.

  'True. And our belief, engineered or not, did sustain the Vorta—sustained

  me—through the most difficult times. But then..." Weyoun withdrew his arms from

  his robes and spread them wide, as if to embrace Sisko and the others. "... The

  day came when those difficult times" ended and... and / met the true Gods of all

  creation—­the Prophets." His transformed face shone with bliss.

  Sisko stared at the triumphant Vorta. "You.... met the Bajoran Prophets?"

  Weyoun nodded, his beatific smile never wavering.

  "Through an Orb experience?" Kira asked doubt­fully. "Or—"

  "Face to face," the Vorta said in a humble voice. "In the True Celestial Temple.

  I traveled through it. A des­perate expedition to see if it led to the Gamma

  Quad­rant." He laughed quietly to himself in remembrance. "The Founder herself

  ordered me to go. Two Cardas­sian warships. A wing of Jem'Hadar attack cruisers.

  Yet... I was the only one to return."

  And then, an icy hand gripping his heart, Sisko made sense of Weyoun's

  astounding story. "You traveled through the second wormhole."

  The Vorta held a finger to his lips. "Oh, Captain, I must caution you. I have a

  very devoted, very religious crew. We don't call them... 'wormholes' anymore."

  "Two Temples, then," Sisko said. "Just like the leg­end of the Red Orbs of

  Jalbador."

  Weyoun stared at Sisko, abandoning all traces of the false veneer of a

  genetically engineered negotiator he had always maintained in their previous

  encounters. "In your time," he said seriously, "the legend of Jalbador ex­isted

  in many different forms, distorted by the inevitable accumulation of error over

  the millennia of its retelling. But in essence, Captain, each variation of that

  legend possessed a fraction of the truth. A truth which you helped bring back to

  a universe that had lost its way."

  "And that truth would be?" Kira asked grimly.

  Weyoun's response was uncharacteristically to the point. "The Prophets are the

  Gods of all creation, and the True Celestial Temple is their home."

  Then, pausing as if to compose himself, the Vorta studied his audience of three

  before focusing his atten­tion on Arla. "Now I know this is not what you

  believe, Commander. I overheard what you were saying before I joined you
. If the

  Prophets are Gods, then how can they let evil exist? That is a valid question.

  And it has a valid answer."

  Weyoun stepped closer to Arla, addressing her as if Sisko and Kira were no

  longer present in this recon­struction of a meditation chamber. "You see,

  Com­mander, the Prophets do not wish their children to be afflicted by evil. But

  uncounted eons ago, when the

  universe was a perfect ideal contained within the Tem­ple, some Prophets

  rebelled. Oh, they believed they had a just cause. They thought that a universe

  within the Temple could only ever be a reflection of perfection, not perfection

  itself. And so they fought to free crea­tion from its timeless realm. And in

  that great and terri­ble battle—beyond the comprehension of any linear being—the

  One Celestial Temple was—" Weyoun clapped his hands together unexpectedly,

  startling his three listeners,"—split asunder!"

  The Vorta smiled apologetically at Arla. "The battle between the two groups of

  Prophets ended men. But the damage had already been done. The stars, the

  galaxies, the planets... everything the Prophets had created in their image of

  timeless perfection spilled out into the void created by the Temple's

  destruction. And in mat void, perfection was unattainable. Evil was loosed upon

  the face of creation. And all because of the pride of one group of Prophets, who

  thought they knew better."

  "The Pah-wraiths," Arla whispered.

  Weyoun brightened at Arla's response. "Ah, so you have had some religious

  instruction, Commander. Yes, of course. But the Pah-wraiths you know from your

  time are those poor beings who spilled from the Temple at the time it was torn

  in two. They could not cany on the fight in the False Temple, neither could they

  join their fellows in the True Temple. Instead, they sought shelter near the

  entrance to both shards of the One Temple, deep in the Fire Caves at die core of

  Bajor, lost and abandoned by both sides."

  "This is all blasphemy!" Kira protested. "There was no battle in the Temple!

  There are no fallen Prophets! There is no second Temple!"

  Undisturbed, Weyoun pointed an accusing finger at the livid major. "Then how do

  you explain your pres­ence here and now, exactly as foretold by Naradim's Third

  Vision as recorded on the tablets of Jalbador?"

  "What do you mean 'our presence' was foretold?" Sisko asked quickly, before Kira