CHAPTER 4

ON THE Defiant's bridge, Jake Sisko told himself his fingers did not hurt. The painful sensation was just something left over from the illusion.

But as he forced himself to concentrate on the basic task of resetting the ship's computers, he couldn't help thinking about how limitless the illusion was—had seemed—within the hell in which he had been lost.

One moment, he had been there —twenty-five years in the future, in the transporter room of the U.S.S. Phoenix, the monstrous starship conceived by this era's Admiral Jean-Luc Picard for travelling back twenty-five thousand years, to a time before the founding of the fabled Bajoran city of B'hala. And the next moment, he had been here.

In that nightmare future, the original mission for Picard's ship had been to place ultrastable explosive charges beneath those sections of B'hala that would not be excavated by the year 2400 C.E., guaranteeing that they would not be detected. Those charges were to be set to explode during the final Ascendant ceremonies on the day the universe was scheduled to end. The expected result was the death of Weyoun and most of his followers, as well as the destruction of a sizable portion of Bajor—a small price to be paid for the safety of all existence.

By setting the explosives to go off after the Phoenix's departure, Picard's plan had ensured that the universe's timeline would not be altered and that no paradox would be created.

But unknown to Starfleet, a paradox had already existed. A team of Romulans had discovered the 25,627-year-old wreckage of the Phoenix and its explosive charges on the lifeless moon of one of the Bajoran system's gas giant planets. Thus, before the Phoenix had even set off on its mission, that mission could be proven to be a failure.

So Jake's best friend, Captain Nog, now twenty-five years older and Admiral Picard's assistant and supporter, had devised a new plan.

To maintain the timeline in which Nog and Deep Space 9 and Weyoun and the Orbs of Jalbador existed, Nog intended to travel back to Bajor's past and allow enough sections of the Phoenix to crash on the lifeless moon to account for the wreckage the Romulans would find.

Then just before the Phoenix had entered her temporal slingshot trajectory around Bajor's sun, Nog's programming activated the ship's advanced technology transporters, beaming Jake, Worf, Jadzia, Dr. Bashir, Ryle Simons, and their nine fellow refugees from the past to a starship near the opening Bajoran wormholes, so they could safely slingshot back to their own time.

That moment of transport had been unlike any other beaming experience Jake had ever had, even his most recent, when he had been plucked from his own time onboard the Defiant and taken twenty-five years into the future onboard the Vulcan ship, the Augustus. This time, he had felt a sudden chill, and at once the unfinished walls of the Phoenix's transporter room had been instantly replaced by the corridors of the Defiant. He had felt no quantum-dissolution effect, nor any temporary loss of sight of his surroundings as his nervous system had been tunneled from one point to another. All Jake could remember now was that one moment he had been there, and the next he had been here. It had been like being in a dream.

And right now, he was still confused about just when it was that dreamlike experience had become his nightmare.

First had come the elation of being back on the Defiant. He'd quickly determined where he was in the ship and immediately raced for the bridge. The intensity of his excitement had been matched by the bedlam around him. On his run through the ship, he had heard shouting as all the Defiant's alarms—collision and weapons lock and intruder alerts—sounded off at once.

Then the bridge doors had opened before him and he'd rushed in, caught sight of his father, called out to him.

Bajoran robes fluttering, Sisko had wheeled to face him, and he and his father had thrown their arms around each other, their embrace saying more than words ever could.

Then someone had called out, “Ten seconds.”

And even if Jake had been able to explain why he and the others had come back to the Defiant, he'd known from the look of horror on his father's face that there was no time to follow through on the rest of Nog's plan. No time to follow through on their own escape.

They'd run out of time. Everyone had. Literally.

After that, Jake remembered hearing Worf report a supernova shockwave was approaching.

He remembered feeling the Defiant tremble. Hearing his father call out for some—any—explanation. Seeing Ensign Simons at the science station. Hearing the young Centaurian identify the impact as a subspace pressure wave catching the ship.

On the main viewer, he'd seen the two wormholes about to merge, red and blue energy tendrils reaching out like the warring tentacles of two incomprehensible creatures.

He'd seen Weyoun, dressed like a Bajoran kai in bloodred robes, shouting out that the Temple was restored.

He'd heard Weyoun screaming just as Worf said, “Impact,” as he himself . . .

At the Defiant's computer station, Jake shook his head. He rubbed at his face as if he had slept for days. He remembered falling away from his father at that moment of impact. He remembered the lights going out, just for a moment, and then . . . he was in his room on the Saratoga, sitting hunched over his tiny, child-sized desk, inputting into his padd, seeing his words deleted almost as fast as he wrote them, somehow not questioning the sudden transition to a starship that in his frame of reference had been destroyed almost ten years ago.

Jake shivered. There had been nothing at the time that had made him even suspect the nightmare had not been real, not logical. Even now, he still couldn't shake the feeling that he had actually been on the Saratoga, fingers bleeding, absolutely certain that the moment he stopped inputting, the moment the cursor caught up with his words, it would be the moment he ceased to exist.

How long his nightmare had lasted, Jake didn't know. He couldn't even remember what he had been inputting. Anslem, he suspected. For all his detours had taken him into crime novels and thrillers and even Quark's attempts to talk him into a lurid collaboration about the Red Orbs, Anslem was the book he always came back to, always regretting ever having put it aside. Which is why, he decided now, it most likely was the book he had been frantically inputting in his personal version of hell.

But for however many years or hours or centuries he had existed within that room, his nightmare had ended the moment Jadzia's hand had slipped past his shoulder and her finger had lightly touched the POWER control on his padd.

At once, the all-devouring cursor had stopped moving, his words had been stored, and the padd's screen had winked out.

The next thing Jake could remember was staring at that blank screen until he'd finally become aware that Jadzia had stepped in front of him. He'd looked up to see that she had on the deep red sweater he remembered his mother wearing on the Saratoga that final day. He'd loved that sweater. It was the last real memory he had of his mother.

Dressed like that, her spots almost invisible against the dark hue of her skin, now the same color Jennifer Sisko's had been, Jadzia had held out her hand to Jake. “This is just a dream,” she'd told him, “and your father's waiting for you to wake up.”

An instant later, Jake had found himself in the Defiant's sickbay.

And now he was here, on the bridge, desperately trying to dredge from his memory all the basic procedures Chief O'Brien had taught him in those years when everyone had expected Sisko's son to follow in his father's footsteps and attend the Academy.

A series of status lights turned green before him.

Jake sighed. Maybe his whole life was an illusion. Maybe the whole universe he lived in no longer existed. So what did the color green mean anymore, without suns to shine on plants that grew on worlds to be explored? What did anything mean anymore?

“Computer,” a familiar voice suddenly said behind him, startling him.

Jake felt a hand pat his shoulder and looked up to see Major Kira. He didn't know what the major's hell had been, but her eyes were still deeply shadowed, and he hadn't seen her smile since he had come to the bridge. Although he had heard her use a rather raw Bajoran expletive as she had ripped the sleeves off her Bajoran robes.

“Working,” the computer replied, indicating that its most basic operating system had been reloaded.

“Good work, Jake. I'll get it up to speed now.” From the way Kira looked down at him, it was obvious that she wanted him to get out of the duty chair.

“Right, sorry,” he said. He moved out of the way as Kira took over.

For the moment, Jake realized, he had nothing to do but watch the others on the bridge take action while he stayed out of their way. Commander Arla was on her back under the combined flight and operations console, an access panel on the deck beside her. She was adjusting something inside the console's base with a pulsewrench.

“How's that power supply coming?” Arla called out, her voice echoing within the depths of the machinery she worked on.

The bridge lights suddenly brightened to full intensity.

“We're on-line,” Kira announced. “Let's try internal comm. Bridge to engineering.”

Jake heard Ensign Simons's high-pitched voice over the bridge speakers. “Simons here.”

“Good work, Ensign,” Kira told him. “Now . . . is it going to last?”

“It should,” Simons answered. “We have plenty of antimatter, and we'll have the second power converter operational in twenty minutes. That'll give us full backup power, too.”

“What about propulsion?” Kira asked.

“Um, you should probably talk to Captain Sisko about that. He's on his way up.”

Jake's spirits lifted. He knew it probably wasn't the most mature reaction, but in a situation like this, he felt more secure when his father was nearby. Then the bridge doors opened and his father and Worf stepped onto the bridge.

Sisko nodded at him once, and Jake understood from that terse acknowledgment that his father was deep in his “Starfleet” mode. He wasn't anyone's father right now. Nor was he anyone's friend. Not even to Dax if she were here. For now, he was a starship captain whose only concern was his crew and his ship.

Sisko stopped by Kira's station. “What's our status, Major?”

“No significant damage. Jake reset the computer. Ensign Simons has restored power. And between me up here and Dr. Bashir in the replicator bay, full life support has been reestablished. All we need are exterior sensors and propulsion.”

Worf was at his tactical station. “And weapons,” he said.

“Sensors first,” Sisko said. He went over to Arla. “Commander, how close are we to having the main viewer operational?”

Arla's head was still deep within the console and her voice was muffled. “Two more circuits to replace . . . one more . . .” There was a sudden spark of light from within the console. “Got it.” The tall Bajoran commander pulled herself out of the console and sat up, shaking one hand as if she'd received a jolt of transtator current. “Major, give it a try now.”

Jake watched as Kira left the engineering station and went to science to call up the ship's sensor operations system. The viewer instantly filled with a rippling pattern of blue light, bringing a cold glare to the bridge.

“Can you adjust focus?” Sisko asked.

“All the adjustment subroutines are functioning,” Kira said as she studied her controls. “What we're seeing is what's out there. Or at least an optical extrapolation of the local energy environment. Seems to be mostly tachyon-based.” She glanced up at the screen and said what Jake was thinking. “It looks like the inside of the Celestial Temple.”

But Sisko didn't agree. “Not exactly. I don't see any verteron nodes. No energy strings.” He scratched at his beard. “Commander Arla, go to sickbay and take over from Dax.”

Arla was on her feet at once, no outward sign visible of the emotional aftereffects of her own Pah-wraith-induced hell. Jake didn't know what type of subjective experience Arla had been trapped in, but, unlike the others, she appeared fully recovered.

“Take over how, sir?” With Starfleet efficiency, Arla asked the question as she headed for the doors, already on her way.

“Just standing by Weyoun.”

At that, Arla stopped. “Sir?”

“We've left him in his . . . Pah-wraith experience. Just monitor his lifesigns, let me know if he shows any change or any sign of coming to. And tell Dax to get up here right away. The turbolifts are working.”

Jake knew that his father had just ordered Arla to place herself in the same room as the man who had destroyed her people's world. But all Arla replied was, “Yes, sir.” And then, without any other reaction that would betray her true feelings to Jake or anyone else on the bridge, she went through the open doorway in a run. Jake found her self-control astounding.

Then Jake saw his father's stern expression soften as he put a hand on Kira's shoulder. “How are you, Major?”

“Truthfully? I've been a lot better.”

Sisko nodded, an understanding friend for one brief moment, before his Starfleet mission took control once more. “Run a full sensor sweep, maximum power and range. I want to find out if there's anyone else in here with us.”

“You mean Dukat.”

Jake saw the shudder that ran through Kira, just once, as she said that name.

Sisko confirmed the major's conclusion. “He was heading for the wormholes, too.”

Kira's face hardened, but she began calling up the required controls to run the sweep.

Then his father's gaze finally fell on him, and Jake knew that Sisko was his father again. Saying nothing, Sisko walked over and hugged him again before making a point of tugging on the collar of Jake's twenty-fifth-century Starfleet uniform. “So this is what it took to get you to finally join up,” he said, a half smile on his lips.

“Hey, this is a civilian specialist uniform,” Jake said. Unlike the black uniforms given to Worf and the others, Jake's was gray. And where the other uniforms had single shoulders set off in a specialty color, Jake's shoulder was black. When he had first put it on, it had reminded him of a cadet's uniform.

“What kind of specialist?” Sisko asked.

Jake did his best to fill in his father about everything that had happened to him since he had been beamed off the Defiant right after the ship's arrival in the future. He recounted the story of Admiral Picard, Captain Nog, and Vash, and their mission to the past. And how Nog had hoped that he'd be able to send his friends back to their own time by beaming them to a starship near the opening wormholes.

“I'm surprised by that,” Sisko said, frowning slightly. “There's no way any of us would have been able to return to our own time except by reversing the slingshot trajectory that brought us here. And that would have been possible only by being on the Defiant and looping around the red wormhole as it opened.”

“Nog knew that,” Jake said quickly. “We all did. But . . . because of everything else that happened, there was no way to save the timeline the way Admiral Picard had planned. So the best we could do was to create alternates. Wherever we ended up after our first slingshot around the blue wormhole, Dax was going to work out the trajectory that would bring us back to Bajor the day after DS9 was destroyed. That would've at least preserved our subjective timeline, and we could've stopped Weyoun's expedition into the red wormhole and given Starfleet enough time to figure out a way to destroy the Red Orbs.”

Sisko's frown deepened. “Nog should have worked out a way to take the Phoenix back twenty-five years instead. Not risk trying to reach Bajor at the last moment.”

“Dad, he had to make sure the wreckage of the Phoenix reached that moon twenty-five thousand years ago. Otherwise . . . well, I don't understand it all, but Dax confirmed the theory. Something about the paradox causing this timeline to collapse like a black hole, so that there'd be no one who could stop Weyoun in the past.”

“In theory,” Sisko said. “Does Nog have any way of coming back?”

Jake shook his head. “Vash said maybe . . . maybe Q would come looking for them.”

Sisko's skeptical expression let Jake know how likely he thought that possibility would be.

Jake hadn't believed Vash, either. “I think she meant it as a joke.”

“What did Nog think he and Admiral Picard and Vash of all people

could accomplish that far in the past? Other than crash part of their ship?”

“I . . . don't know. We didn't have a lot of time to talk about it. Nog was mostly interested in what he missed on DS9 the day . . . the day it was destroyed. Dax might know what he was thinking.”

“Well,” Sisko said, “whatever Nog thought he could do, it obviously didn't work. Not in this timeline.”

Jake felt confused. “Uh, does this even still count as a timeline?”

Sisko's pain was obvious. Jake had always known his father would never lie to him, and he wasn't lying now. “I don't know, Jake. I—”

“Captain!”

Sisko and Jake instantly turned to Kira.

“There is someone else in here!”

“Onscreen, Major. Is it the Boreth?”

Jake saw Kira working frantically on her controls. “No, no. The mass is at least ten times greater. Whatever it is, it's huge, it's . . .”

She muttered something under her breath. To Jake, it almost sounded like she was praying. And then she simply turned her head to stare past Jake and Sisko at the viewer.

Jake turned to see what she saw. Felt the hair bristle on his arms, on the back of his neck.

For at the end of the universe, in the last pocket of existence that remained, Deep Space 9 was waiting.