CHAPTER 3

SOMETIMES, Julian Bashir remembered what it was like to be normal.

But such bittersweet memories were suspect, because they were invariably mixed in with disjointed recollections of his early childhood, from his first faint glimmerings of self-awareness to age six. For the rest of his childhood—that is, everything beyond age 6 years plus 142 days—there were, of course, no disjointed recollections, only perfect recall. Because on the one hundred forty-third day of his seventh year of existence he had awakened in the suffocating gel of an amino-diffusion bath, with an illegally altered genetic structure. On that day everything had changed—not just within the boy he had been, but within the universe that had previously surrounded him.

In fact, sometimes it seemed to Bashir that the innocent male child who had been born to his parents thirty-four years ago had perished in that back-alley gene mill on Adigeon Prime, and that he—the altered creature who now called himself Julian Bashir—was in fact a changeling of old Earth legends.

Little Julian—the terrified boy who had been immersed in the diffusion bath with no idea what he had done wrong to make his parents punish him in such a way—had been undeniably slow to learn throughout his entire brief life. His environment had been a constant marvel to him, because so much of it was simply beyond his natural capacity to comprehend. His beloved stuffed bear, Kukalaka, had been no less alive to him than his mother's cruelly nipping and yipping Martian terriers. To little Julian, it had been obvious that the various computer interfaces in his home contained little people who could speak to him. And he had only been able to watch in wonder as the other children at his school somehow answered questions or accomplished tasks with abilities indistinguishable to him from magic.

One recollection that most often resurfaced when least wanted from those blurry, half-remembered days of dull normalcy, was of standing in his school's playroom listening to Naomi Pedersen chant the times table. To little Julian there had been absolutely no connection between the numerals that floated above the holoboard and the words that his classmate sang out. The disconnect had been so profound that Bashir clearly remembered his early, untransformed self not even attempting to understand what was going on: Naomi was simply uttering random noises, and the squiggles above the holoboard were only unrelated doodles.

From his present vantage point, Bashir regarded those days of simple incomprehension as the peace of innocence. They marked a time when he was unaware that life was a continuing struggle, a never-ending series of problems to be overcome by those equipped to recognize and solve them.

Now he recognized that same peace of incomprehension in most of the fourteen others with whom he had just been transported from the Defiant, and he envied them their unknowing normalcy.

But, incapable of giving in to what he suspected was their hopeless situation, Bashir still studied his surroundings. He and the others were standing together in what appeared to be a familiar setting: the hangar deck of a Starfleet vessel, complete with the usual bold yellow sign warning about variable gravity fields, and the stacks of modular shipping crates marked with the Starfleet delta and standard identification labels. Other than the fact that the lighting was about half intensity, and the air unusually cool, Bashir could almost believe he was on a standard Starfleet cargo ship in his own time. Only the Starfleet emblem on the crates confirmed that he and the others from the Defiant were still in the future.

Interestingly enough, that emblem, though understandably different from the one used in his time, was also different from the emblem Captain Riker had worn on his uniform, and that had been emblazoned on the Klingon cruiser. That identifying mark, Bashir recalled, had placed a gold Starfleet arrowhead against an upside-down triangle of blue. But here on this ship, the arrowhead was set within a vertically elongated oval, its width matching the oval's. The arrowhead itself was colored the red of human blood, the lower half of the oval teal and the upper half gold—as if the colors of the k'Roth ch'Kor, the ancient Klingon trident that was the symbol of the Empire, had been merged with the more recent symbol of Starfleet.

But rather than give himself a headache trying to fathom the political permutations that might have led to the two different versions of the Starfleet emblem in this future, Bashir set that particular problem aside. Instead, he directed his attention to the conversations going on around him—five now—and his mind was such that he could effortlessly keep up with each at the same time. In all except one of those conversations, Bashir heard relief expressed, primarily because of the familiar surroundings.

The single conversation that was more guarded was that between Jadzia and Worf. Klingon pessimism and the Trill's seven lifetimes of experience were obviously enabling the two officers to come to the same conclusion Bashir's enhanced intellect had reached: They were in more danger now than when the Defiant had come under attack.

Bashir wasted little time contemplating what might happen in the next few minutes. His primary responsibility was to his crewmates, and to the few civilians who had been evacuated from Deep Space 9 to the Defiant and then beamed here.

He rapidly assessed the fourteen others for obvious signs of injury or distress. Nine of them were either Defiant or DS9 crew members, six in Starfleet uniforms, three in the uniforms of the Bajoran militia. The other five, including—Bashir was surprised to see—the unorthodox archaeologist Vash, were civilians; three of these human, the other two Bajorans.

He also noted, without undue concern, that the medical patch on the side of Jadzia's forehead was stained with blood and needed to be replaced. Without a protoplaser he had been unable to close the small wound; the dense capillary network beneath a Trill's spots made them prone to copious and unsightly—though not life-threatening—bleeding as a result of any minor cut or scrape in the general area.

Close by Jadzia's side, Worf was uninjured and unbowed. His uniform was soiled by smoke, and one side of his broad face was streaked with soot. His scowl was evidence not of any wound to his body, but rather to his sense of pride and honor—outrage being his people's traditional response to captivity.

Bashir also observed that Jake Sisko, who was currently engaged in listening carefully to Worf and Jadzia's conversation without taking part, also seemed unharmed. The tall, lanky young man had been helping out in the Defiant's sickbay when the group transport to this ship had taken place. It was a blessing, Bashir thought, that at least none of the Defiant's surviving crew or passengers had required critical medical attention before their doctor had been kidnapped.

Then again, the last he himself could recall from his own final moments on the Defiant's bridge was that there were still some antimatter contact mines attached to her hull, so there was no way of knowing if the ship or any of the crew and passengers not transported here still survived.

Then a hoarse female voice interrupted his thoughts. “This isn't good, is it?”

It was Vash, and automatically Bashir reviewed her condition. The last place he had seen her had been in Quark's bar, when the three Red Orbs of Jalbador had moved themselves into alignment and somehow triggered the opening of a second wormhole in Bajoran space.

Vash, an admittedly alluring adventurer and archaeologist of questionable ethics, was still in the same outfit she had worn in the bar—no more than an hour ago in relative time—as if she were prepared to trek across the Bajoran deserts in search of lost cities. She no longer toted her well-worn oversized shoulder bag, though. Bashir guessed it must be either back on the Defiant or left behind in the mad rush from Quark's and the subsequent mass beam-out to the evacuation flotilla.

Vash waved an imperious hand in front of his face. “You keep staring at me like that, I'm going to think one of us has a problem. And it's not me.”

“Sorry,” Bashir said, flushing. “I didn't see you on the Defiant. There were some injuries from the evacuation, and . . .” He shrugged. It was pointless to say anything more. It was quite likely Vash was used to people staring at her, for all the obvious reasons.

“I was hustled into the Defiant's mess hall right after I was beamed aboard.” Vash frowned. “What the hell happened?”

Bashir told her as succinctly as he could. The old, apocryphal legends of the Red Orbs of Jalbador had turned out to be correct, at least in part. A second Temple—or wormhole—had opened, though since they were now twenty-five years or so into the future the part of the legend about the opening of the second Temple causing the end of the universe was clearly and thankfully not correct. Bashir was about to describe the attacking ships and what Captain Thomas Riker had said about the War of the Prophets, but Vash interrupted.

“Twenty-five years? Into the future?”

Bashir nodded. “It happens.”

“Not to me.”

“Think of it as archaeology in reverse.”

Vash's eyes flashed. “This isn't funny, Doc. The longer we stay here the more likely it is we'll learn about the future, and the less likely we are to have someone let us go back.” She looked over at the crates. “Especially if some bureaucrat at Starfleet has anything to say about it.”

“That's true,” Bashir agreed. He glanced at the main personnel doors leading into the interior of whatever vessel they were aboard—one of the two surviving attack ships, he had concluded. “But on the plus side, no one from this ship has attempted to communicate with us. That could suggest they're also following Starfleet regulations, and want to keep us isolated for our return.”

“You don't really believe that.”

“And why not?”

“If they wanted to keep us isolated, why beam us off the Defiant?”

“We were under attack. The Defiant might have been destroyed.”

“Attacked by who?” Vash asked, and Bashir told her the other half of the story, about Thomas Riker in the Opaka and the three attacking Starfleet vessels.

“That makes no sense,” Vash said when Bashir had finished.

“Things change. Twenty-five years is a long time.”

“How things have changed has nothing to do with our current situation,” Vash told him. “If this is a Starfleet vessel, how long do you think it would take some technician to run a search of the service record of the Defiant?”

“Your point?”

“C'mon, Doc. Did that strange transporter scramble your synapses? If the historical record shows the Defiant disappeared with all hands when DS9 was destroyed, then we're not going back. It's that simple.”

Bashir bit his lip. Vash had reached the same conclusion he had. There were a few unresolved issues, however. “This ship we're on was probably one of the ones involved in the attack. If it's been damaged, the Defiant's service record may not be available. The delay in any attempted communication could be a result of having to wait to hear back from Starfleet Command.”

Vash looked skeptical. “I never took you for much of a dreamer.”

Before Bashir could reply, Jadzia, Worf, and Jake had joined them.

“Julian,” Jadzia said teasingly, “a dreamer? Like no other, complete with stars in his eyes.”

Bashir did not respond to Jadzia's banter. She had been trying to act as if nothing had changed between them since she had married Worf. But it had. Though until these last few weeks, when Jadzia and Worf had sought his counsel on the likelihood of a Klingon and a Trill procreating, Bashir had almost convinced himself that Worf was only a temporary inconvenience, not an insurmountable barrier. In time, he had reasoned, Jadzia would tire of her plainspoken Klingon mate and begin to seek more sophisticated company. But knowing her as he did, even he could not fantasize a time when Jadzia would tire of her child-to-be, or deny that child a chance to know its father.

So there it was. His heart was broken, and his success at hiding his misery from Jadzia was one of the few advantages of having an enhanced intellect: Only his ability to master advanced Vulcan meditation techniques was sparing him public and personal humiliation.

“Vash is concerned that the longer we wait here,” Bashir explained, “the less likely it is we'll be allowed to go back to our own time.”

“Allowed?” Jake asked in alarm.

Jadzia put her hand on the young man's shoulder. “To go back, Jake, we're going to need access to advanced technology.”

Jake looked confused. “What about temporal slingshot?”

Jadzia shook her head. “We didn't get here by slingshot, so we don't have a Feynman curve to follow back to our starting point. Any attempt we make to move into the past will result in a complete temporal decoupling.”

Jake stared at her, not a gram of understanding in him.

Worf took over. “It would be like entering a planet's atmosphere at too shallow an angle. Our craft would skip out, away from the planet, never to return.”

“Though in our case,” Jadzia continued, “we would skip out of our normal space-time and . . . well, then it becomes a question of philosophy, not physics. But if you think about it, if anyone with a warp drive could go back in time wherever and whenever she wanted, half the stars in the galaxy wouldn't exist. I mean, a century ago Klingons would have gone back in time a million years and dropped asteroids on Earth and Vulcan to eliminate the Empire's competitors before they had ever evolved.”

Jake glanced at Worf. “Really?”

Worf shifted uncomfortably. “It was a different time. But yes, I have heard rumors of the Empire dispatching temporal assault teams to destroy . . . enemy worlds before the enemy could arise.”

“What happened to them?” Jake asked.

“We do not know.”

But as Bashir anticipated, Jadzia found so simple an answer unacceptable. “As far as we can tell,” she said, “the physics of it is pretty straightforward. Any given time traveler moving from one time to another at a rate greater than the local entropic norm, or on a reverse entropic vector, has to move outside normal space-time along a pathway called a Feynman curve. Now, if the past the traveler goes to is not disrupted, the Feynman curve retains its integrity and, provided the traveler can find it again, the way is clear to return to the starting point. However, if the timeline is significantly disrupted, the Feynman curve collapses, because its end point—that is, the traveler's starting point—no longer exists. It's like cutting the end of a rope bridge.”

Bashir was curious to see how Jake's imaginative mind would tackle Jadzia's elegantly defined problems of temporal mechanics. Though strict causality did not exist at the most fundamental levels of the universe, it was the defining characteristic of macroscopic existence. Indeed, that was one of the chief reasons why the warp drive and time travel took so long to be discovered by emerging cultures. Even though both concepts were rather simple, requiring little more than a basic atomic-age engineering capability to demonstrate, the ideas of faster-than-light travel and time-like curves independent of space could not easily be grasped by minds narrowly conditioned by primitive Einsteinian physics—any more than Newton could have conceived of relativistic time dilation.

Jake's young face wrinkled in concentration. “Hold it . . . it sounds as if you're saying that the Klingons could have traveled back in time and destroyed the Earth.”

“There's no reason why they couldn't,” Jadzia agreed. “In fact, several of the temporal assault missions Worf mentioned could have succeeded. It's just that if they did destroy the Earth in the past, the present they came from—in which the Earth had not been destroyed—no longer existed, so they could never return to it.”

“But . . . ,” Jake said uncertainly, “. . . the Earth does exist.”

“In this timeline,” Jadzia agreed. She smiled indulgently at Jake. “What you're struggling with is what they used to call on Earth the grandfather paradox. It was a long time ago, before anyone thought time travel possible. Yet early theorists imagined a situation in which a time traveler could go back in time and kill his grandfather before his father was conceived. No father meant no son. No son meant no time traveler. But no time traveler meant that the grandfather hadn't been killed, so the father was born, the son became the time traveler, and . . .” Jadzia smiled as Jake finished the paradox.

“. . . and the grandfather was killed.” Jake's expression was thoughtful. “But . . . you're saying that can happen?”

“There's nothing to prevent it. The difference between what the Einsteinian-era physicists thought and what we know today, from actual experimental demonstrations, is that no paradox results.”

“How's that possible?”

“Two solutions are suggested, but neither is testable—so both have equal validity. One solution is that if you, say, went back in time and killed your grandfather, a temporal feedback loop would be established that would collapse into a hyperdimensional black hole, cutting the loop off from any interaction with the rest of the universe. The end result would be as if the events leading to the feedback loop never happened. The second solution states that the instant you killed your grandfather, you'd create a branching timeline. That is, two universes would now exist—one in which your grandfather lived, and one in which he died.”

“But if he died, then how could I go back and kill him?”

“You can't, Jake. Not from the new timeline. But since you came from the old one, there's no paradox. However, because the Feynman curve you followed no longer exists, you are trapped in the new timeline you created, with no way to get back. In effect, you're a large virtual particle that has tunneled out of the quantum foam.”

Jadzia put her hand on Worf's shoulder, a gesture of familiarity that caused an unexpected tightness in Bashir's throat. “A few years ago,” she said, “when Worf was on the Enterprise, he encountered a series of parallel universes that were extremely similar to our own. Some researchers suggest that those parallel dimensions have actually been created by the manipulation of past events by time travelers.”

Vash put her hands on her hips and sighed noisily. “Do the rest of us have to know this for the test? Or does any of this hypothetical moonshine have anything to do with our situation, right here and now?”

Bashir sensed Jadzia's dislike of Vash in the Trill's quick reply, though her words were polite. “It has everything to do with our situation, Vash. From our perspective, we've traveled into our future. But from the perspective of the people who live here, we're intruders from the past who—if we return—could prevent this future from ever existing.”

“It wouldn't just be a split-off, parallel dimension?” Jake asked.

“It might be,” Jadzia allowed. “But then again, this present might just wink out of existence, along with everyone in it. Remember what happened on Gaia, to the people who were our descendants? If this was your present, would you be willing to risk nonexistence for the sake of a handful of refugees from the past?”

As Jake thought that over, Worf added, “Several years ago, the Enterprise encountered the Bozeman —a Starfleet vessel that had been caught in a temporal causality loop for almost a century. Once we broke the loop, the crew of the ship was in the same situation we face now.”

“What happened to them?” Jake asked.

Worf frowned. “Historical records stated that the Bozeman had disappeared without a trace. Since it had never returned home in our timeline, Starfleet could not risk sending it back. Under Starfleet regulations, her captain and her crew were . . . resettled in their new time.”

“And that's what's going to happen to us?” Jake said, dismayed.

“That appears to be the most likely outcome,” Bashir said, when no one else offered an answer to Jake's question.

“Not for me,” Vash said. “I'm not Starfleet. I'm going home.”

“Really? How?” Jadzia asked. Bashir could tell she intended her challenge to reduce Vash to inarticulate silence.

But Vash merely issued her own challenge. “I thought you were the big expert on the Bajoran Orbs. You've never heard of the Orb of Time?”

“She's right!” Jake said.

Vash smiled dazzlingly at Jake. “Okay. I've got one partner. Anyone else?”

Bashir shook his head, refusing to play Vash's game.

“Too dangerous,” Jadzia said. “We didn't get here through the Orb of Time, so there's no Orb-related Feynman curve connecting back to our own time.”

Vash rolled her eyes. “C'mon! You're a scientist—think outside the warp bubble. Let's say you hadn't reached this time period on the Defiant. You could have lived through the past twenty-five years, easy. Are you telling me that under those conditions you couldn't use the Orb of Time to slip back twenty-five years?”

“Of course I could,” Jadzia said, and Bashir could hear the growing-annoyance in her tone. “Because the subatomic chronometric particles bound within my molecular structure would be in perfect synch with the current universe's background chronitronic radiation environment. I would belong in this time. But all of us are out of phase, Vash. We can't establish a second Feynman curve in this time because we're already connected to the first curve, stretching from our own time. Either we go back the way we came—by traveling through the boundary region of the wormhole that brought us here—or we don't go home at all.”

Vash groaned in frustration, her expression becoming almost that of a wild creature held against its will.

Bashir leaned forward, lightly touching Vash's arm. “We're still simply speculating,” he said in his most reassuring tone. “Starfleet might send us back at any moment.”

“And if they don't?” Vash retorted.

Bashir took a deep breath and said what he knew someone had to say. “Then considering all the possible timelike curves we might have followed, perhaps twenty-five years isn't all that bad.”

“What?!” Vash exclaimed.

“You said it yourself. This time period is within our natural lifetimes. People we know will still be alive. The places we know won't have changed all that much. It will be easier for us to adapt than it was for the crew of the Bozeman.”

This time Vash grabbed his arm, and her tone was not at all reassuring. “Is it that easy to make a quitter out of you?”

Bashir peeled her hand off his arm. There were larger issues at stake. “Are you that willing to risk the lives of the billions of beings alive in this time who might be wiped from existence by a single act of selfishness on your part?”

Vash's cheeks reddened as her voice rose in anger. “I didn't ask to be beamed to the Defiant. I didn't ask to . . . oh, I hate you Starfleet types. The good of the many . . . it makes me sick!” Then she whirled around and marched off toward the main personnel door leading from the hangar deck.

Bashir resisted following, but he called out to her, “Vash! If you go out that door, you only increase the odds they won't send you back!”

Vash's pace did not lessen.

“Don't worry,” Jadzia said. “The door will be sealed.” Just then the status of the door ceased to be important, because Vash suddenly collided with—nothing.

Bashir saw her come to a sudden stop, as if she had run into a slab of transparent aluminum, undetectable in the dim light of the hangar deck. Vash stepped back and rubbed at her face, then reached out and slapped her hand against something that was solid, yet absolutely invisible.

“She's hit a forcefield,” Jadzia said.

“Unusual,” Worf commented. “Most forcefields emit Pauli exclusion sparks when anything physical makes contact.”

“Whatever it is, I don't think it's anything to worry about,” Bashir said. He watched Vash turn and begin to walk across the deck, sliding her hand as she moved along the forcefield's invisible boundary. “I mean, even if it's a forcefield, it's not delivering a warning shock. I think it's further evidence that they want to keep us from interacting with . . .”

He stopped as a throbbing vibration began to sound through the deck, and he heard the rest of the Defiant's crew begin talking excitedly as—

—the main hangar door slid open to reveal stars streaming past to a vanishing point.

Bashir reflexively held his breath. The ship was traveling at warp, and only the hangar deck's atmospheric forcefield was preventing the fifteen of them from being explosively decompressed into the ship's warp field.

“I think someone's trying to get our attention . . . ,” Jadzia said lightly.

Bashir turned as he heard the quick hiss of an opening door.

Three Vulcans stood in the corridor beyond, two females and a male, their impassive faces offering no clue as to their intentions.

One after the other, the three Vulcans stepped onto the hangar deck, and Bashir took some solace from the fact that the uniforms they were wearing reflected Starfleet traditions. Their trousers and jackets were made of a vertically ribbed black material, with the entire left shoulder of each jacket constructed of a block of contrasting fabric in a traditional Fleet specialty color, in this case red on two of them and blue on the third. In the center of each colorful shoulder was what could only be a communicator badge, identical to the modified emblem on the crates and complete with the colors of the Klingon k'Roth ch'Kor. Only one element was completely new to Bashir: Two of the Vulcans—those with the red shoulders—were wearing large clear visors over their eyes, like some kind of protective shield.

As the three figures halted at the boundary of the forcefield, Bashir took the chance to study their uniforms more closely for rank markings. He found them on small vertical panels, a centimeter wide by perhaps four centimeters long, centered on their jackets just below their collars. Instead of the round pips that Bashir wore, these uniforms used square tabs, though he felt it was likely the number of tabs would carry the same meaning.

“The woman on the right, with the blue shoulder,” Bashir said quietly to Jadzia and Worf. “The captain?”

The Vulcan in question had four square tabs in her rank badge, and seemed older than her two companions. Her skin was a warm brown, almost the same shade as Jake's, and a few strands of gray ran as highlights through her severely cut black hair. Since the specialty color on her shoulder was blue, Bashir guessed that either blue was the current color signifying command or this was a science vessel with a scientist for a captain. She was also the only one of the three not wearing a visor.

Bashir looked at Worf. “Commander, we should probably follow the temporal displacement policy to the letter, and you are the ranking command officer.”

Worf gave Bashir a curt nod, then stepped toward the silent Vulcans.

“I am Lieutenant Commander Worf of the Starship Defiant. I have reason to believe these people and I have been inadvertently transferred approximately twenty-five years into our future. Under the terms of Starfleet's temporal displacement policy, I request immediate assistance for our return to our own time.”

The Vulcan captain put her hands behind her back as she began to speak. “Commander Worf, I am Captain T'len, commander of this destroyer, the Augustus. You and your people have been positively identified by your DNA signatures, obtained from transporter records. As you have surmised, you have traveled in time almost twenty-five years from what was your present. The current stardate is 76958.2.”

She paused, and Bashir concluded it was to let her confirmation of their fate sink in. “As I suspect you have also already surmised,” she then continued, “the historical record shows that the ship on which you made this temporal transfer was lost with all hands on stardate 51889.4, concurrent with the destruction of the space station Deep Space 9. Under these circumstances, Starfleet regulations are clear. Do you agree?”

Worf's voice deepened. “I would like to examine the historical record myself.”

Captain T'len raised an eyebrow. “That would be a waste of time and resources. If you do not believe me, logic suggests you will not be able to believe any historical transcript I provide.”

Bashir was slightly surprised that T'len wasn't aware that Klingons preferred physical proof to logical inference. “Then I wish to be put in contact with officials from the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations.”

T'len's deep sigh—a most atypical expression of emotion, unless Vulcans in this future were somehow different—strongly suggested to Bashir that the Vulcan was under some undisclosed yet incredible strain.

“Commander,” she said almost wearily, “your personnel records indicate you are a reasonable being. Indeed, the records available for most of the other non-Bajorans with you indicate a high degree of probability you can still be of use to Starfleet in this time period. All you need to know now is that the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations no longer exists. Twelve years ago its responsibilities were assumed by Starfleet's Temporal Warfare Division. I assure you that under current conditions the personnel of the TWD are most unlikely to expend any effort in trying to convince you that this present is everything I say it is. You must either accept my word, or not.”

Worf's grim expression betrayed his struggle to maintain composure in the face of what he obviously considered a threat, though it was as yet of an unspecified nature.

“What are the current conditions?” Worf asked, immensely pleasing Bashir. That was exactly the question he would have asked first, to be quickly followed by inquiries about the exact nature of the ominously named Temporal Warfare Division and what the Vulcan captain meant by her cryptic reference to the Bajorans among them not being useful.

“The Federation is at war with the Bajoran Ascendancy. And my crew and I have no more time to waste with you than does the TWD. Therefore, I put it to you and your people as straightforwardly as I can. The non-Bajorans among you may now take this opportunity to reaffirm your loyalty to the Federation and to Starfleet, and to join us in our war. Those who comply will be allowed to leave the hangar deck and will be assigned to suitable positions within the fleet. Those who do not comply will remain on the hangar deck with the Bajorans until the atmospheric forcefield is dropped, in . . .” T'len tapped her communicator badge twice. “. . . three minutes.”

Immediately, yellow warning lights spun across the deck and bulkheads as the familiar Starfleet computer voice announced, “Warning. The hangar deck will decompress in three minutes. Please vacate the area.”

All around Bashir, the other captives began to talk in groups again, their mutterings and exclamations full of anger and shock. But Worf, interestingly, seemed only to become calmer, as if now that he understood the challenge he faced, he could focus all his energy on overcoming it.

“Am I to believe,” the Klingon growled, “that in only twenty-five years Starfleet has degenerated into a gang of murderers?”

“Believe what you will,” T'len replied crisply. “We are fighting for more than you can imagine. Logic demands that we waste no time or resources on anything—or anyone—that does not help us in our struggle. Commander Worf, your choice is simple: Join us in our war against the Ascendancy, or die with the Bajorans among you.”

“Warning, the hangar deck will decompress in two minutes, thirty seconds. Please vacate the area.”

Worf turned to face the fourteen others who looked to him for leadership. He was about to speak when it suddenly came to Bashir what the Vulcan was actually doing. He held up his hand to stop Worf from saying anything more.

“She's bluffing, Worf.”

Worf's heavy brow wrinkled as he considered Bashir's emphatic statement, but T'len spoke before he could.

“Dr. Bashir, Vulcans do not bluff.”

Bashir's response was immediate and to the point. “And Starfleet doesn't kill its prisoners—war or no war.”

The captain held his gaze for long moments, then without a sign, suddenly wheeled and walked back toward the personnel door. “You know what you have to do to survive,” she said without looking back. “The prisoner containment field is now deactivated. This door will remain open until five seconds before decompression.” Then she and her two companions stepped through that door and were gone.

“Warning, the hangar deck will decompress in two minutes. Please vacate the area.”

Vash started for the unseen edge of the forcefield. “Hey! You didn't ask me! I'll join up!”

But Bashir moved forward and pulled her back. “Get back here!”

Vash twisted out of his grip, slapped his hand away. “Look, all due respect to your Bajoran friends, but I don't plan on getting sucked out into hard vacuum!”

“We are in no danger,” Bashir said forcefully. He looked around at the others. “Captain T'len will not decompress the hangar deck!”

“How can you be sure?” Worf asked.

“Because she is a Vulcan, and there is no logic to . . . to killing Bajorans, even if somehow they are enemies of Starfleet in this time. And there is absolutely no logic in killing us. We're completely contained on this hangar deck. We're no threat to anyone. And you heard what she said about confirming our identities through DNA scans—she knows that none of us is involved in . . . current conditions.”

“Then why is she threatening us?” Jake asked.

“Warning, the hangar deck will decompress in one minute, thirty seconds.”

Bashir registered Jadzia's and Worf's matching expressions of less-than-full confidence in his argument, as well as the outright look of fear on the five Bajorans, now standing apart from the others. “She's testing us.”

“Where's the logic in that?” Jadzia asked.

Bashir knew he lacked a definitive answer. “Maybe what she said about DNA scans wasn't the truth. If they really don't have a way of confirming our identities, they don't really know who we are.”

“And why would that be important?” Vash snapped.

But then Jake snapped his fingers. “Founders can fool a DNA scan, right?”

Bashir nodded, equally impressed by and grateful for the young man's quickness. “That could be it. If this . . . Bajoran Ascendancy is a result of the Dominion establishing a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant, Starfleet could still be at war with the Founders. For all Captain T'len knows, we might all be shapeshifters who've impersonated the lost crewmembers of the Defiant.”

Jadzia narrowed her eyes. “Then why didn't they just strap us down and cut us to see what happened to our blood?”

Bashir winced. She was right. Though the Founders could mimic almost any living being down to the level of its DNA, once a single drop of blood escaped from that duplicated form, it immediately reverted to the Founders' normal gelatinous state. As his Trill colleague had just pointed out, there were easier, more direct methods of being certain Worf and the others weren't changelings.

“Warning, the hangar deck will decompress in sixty seconds. Please vacate the area.”

“T'len!” Vash shouted. “I'm on your side! Beam me out!”

“If this is a test,” Bashir said sharply, “you are most certainly failing.”

“Me?” Vash hissed. “I'm the only one acting like a human being. I want to live!”

“Forty-five seconds to explosive decompression,” the computer warned.

“Commander Worf!” Everyone turned to the Bajoran who had called out. He was an ensign no older than twenty, face pale with fear, the looped chain of his silver earring trembling. “You can't all die because of us.” Bashir saw the other four Bajorans beside the young ensign nod nervously. Apparently they had discussed this act of sacrifice and he spoke for them all. “Do what the captain wants. Save yourselves. We . . . we'll trust in the Prophets.”

“Thirty seconds to explosive decompression.”

“Y'see?” Vash urged. “Even they don't want any false heroics!”

“It is not false!” Worf barked at her. Then he faced the Bajorans and stood at attention. His words were calm and deliberate. “Ensign, your courage brings honor to us all. But as a Starfleet officer and a Klingon warrior, I cannot abandon you to an unjust fate.” Worf placed his arm through the ensign's, taking his stand beside the Bajorans. Jadzia promptly followed his example. Then Bashir, Jake, and all the others, except for one, stood together on the hangar deck, their fates as inextricably linked as their arms.

Only Vash stood alone.

“Fifteen seconds. . . .”

“Captain T'len!” Worf's voice rang out across the cold, dark hangar deck. “If Starfleet has forgotten the ideals for which it once stood, then let our deaths remind you of what you have lost.”

Bashir watched Vash rub a hand over her face, almost as if she was more embarrassed than afraid to be so obviously on her own.

“Oh, for . . . ,” she muttered, then hastily crossed the few meters to link her arm through Bashir's.

“Ten seconds . . . ,” the computer announced.

“Happy now?” Vash asked Bashir.

“We're in no danger,” Bashir answered. “I don't know why, but I'm still convinced this is a test.”

“I'm convinced you're insane.”

With a loud bang, the personnel door guillotined shut.

“Five seconds.”

Bashir detected an instant increase in his heart's pumping action at the same time as beside him he heard Vash say, “Oh, what the hell,” and he felt her hands on his face as she pulled him around and kissed him as deeply as he had ever been kissed, just as the computer announced, “The hangar deck will now—”

Then the rest of the warning was swept away in the sudden roar of rushing wind and the hammering of his heartbeat—and for all his enhanced intellect, Bashir couldn't tell if he was reacting to the threat of sudden death, or to Vash's thrillingly expert kiss.