This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 
Based on the Teleplay by Michael Piller. 
Story by Rick Berman & Michael Piller. 

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CHAPTER
1
HIS FIRST ENCOUNTER with Jean-Luc Picard shattered Ben Sisko’s life forever. 
On stardate 44002.3, a fleet of forty Federation starships received orders to proceed to Wolf 359 to intercept a Borg vessel on its way to Earth. The Saratoga was the first to arrive. 
Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Sisko served as the Saratoga’s first officer. Like the rest of the crew, Sisko had never seen a Borg and knew little of the race save that Starfleet Command deemed them a grave threat. He knew they were considered even more treacherous, more dangerous, than the Romulans; he knew that most others who had engaged them perished. Sisko was not afraid. He had absolute faith in himself, his captain, his ship, the Fleet. 
But he had not been prepared for the size of the thing. 
On Saratoga’s main bridge viewscreen, the Borg ship hung gray and motionless against a backdrop of stars, dwarfing the Federation vessel with its vastness. To Sisko’s eyes it wasn’t even a proper ship, but a huge ungainly cube of spaceborne metal layered with thousands upon thousands of randomly placed conduits, piping and tiny
compartments. There was no sleekness to it, no grace, no suggestion its builders had taken any care or pride or pleasure in its design. It looked as if some mindless force, some instinct, had driven them to add on each scrap of metal, each honeycomb, bit by bit. Like a bird building a nest, Sisko thought. 
Or a hive. Insects building a gigantic metal hive. 
At the sight, Captain Storil leaned forward in his chair and frowned, a faint crease appearing between his dark upswept brows. 
Sisko took note of the gesture. For the captain, it was the equivalent of a gasp, a muttered curse, a reaction of resounding surprise. Storil was a Vulcan, dedicated to the repression of feeling in the pursuit of pure reason. Like most of his race, he possessed an astonishing intelligence and a degree of mastery over his emotions that made him, by human standards, seem cold and calculating. Sisko had at first worried that the Vulcan’s decisions would not take into account the morale of his mostly human command; that was before he learned that Storil’s devotion to logic was nothing compared to his devotion and loyalty to his crew. 
“Ensign Delaney.” Storil tilted his head in her direction. “Attempt to establish—” 
The screen flickered and went dark. In place of the Borg ship, a face appeared. A human face, Sisko thought, in the first millisecond before the image coalesced, but even before the features formed completely he knew something was terribly wrong. 
“Picard,” Storil whispered beside him. 
Sisko returned his gaze to the screen. It was indeed Jean-Luc Picard who stood on the bridge of the Borg vessel. Sisko had seen a Fleet missive when Picard assumed command of the Enterprise several years before—Picard was one of the best-known captains and Enterprise one of the best-known ships in the Fleet. The impression
Sisko’d gotten was of a dignified, confident man, but there had been warmth beneath the dignity. This was indeed the famous captain of the Enterprise. 
And yet . . . it was not. Not human, not machine, but a monstrous marriage of metal and flesh. One of Picard’s arms had been extended with an intricate mechanical prosthesis, his eyes augmented with a sensor-scope protruding from one temple; his pale face was utterly, frighteningly blank. The dignity and the warmth were gone. Behind him, Borg stood motionless, thoughtless, in their individual honeycomb compartments. Sisko got a fleeting mental image of mindless hive insects excreting skeins of metal, wrapping Picard in a cocoon of machinery. 
If any part of Jean-Luc Picard remained, the man-machine hybrid gave no sign. The sensor-scope flashed red, whirred softly, and angled forward, studying the humans with an intelligence as empty, as infinite, as cold, as space. 
If that was what the Borg intended for the Saratoga’s crew, Sisko intended to go down fighting. 
“I am Locutus,” it said. The voice was Picard’s, but lifeless, grating, devoid of intonation. “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.” 
Sisko’s lips parted, half in astonishment, half in outrage at the forthright arrogance of this proclamation; his gaze caught the captain’s. Storil’s face remained impassive, composed, but Sisko had served with him enough years to recognize the faint glimmer of defiance in the captain’s dark slanting eyes. 
Assimilate? Sisko’s look said. Like hell we will. 
The Vulcan’s gaze serenely affirmed the sentiment. 
“You will disarm all weapons and escort us to sector zero-zero
one,” Locutus continued. “If you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you.” 
Zero-zero-one: Earth. Hranok, the Bolian tactical officer, moved pale blue hands over his console, then lifted his chin and made a small sound of indignation. 
Sisko stared down at his viewer and saw a schematic display of three starships gliding silently into formation around the Saratoga; now four Davids challenged Goliath. “Sir, Admiral Hanson has deployed the Gage, the Kyushu, and the Melbourne.” Captain Storil’s attention did not waver from the screen. “Move us to position alpha, Ensign.” 
“Aye, sir,” Ensign Tamamota replied, eyes wide as she forced her attention away from Picard on viewscreen. Tamamota was young, a bit green, but her hands were steady on the controls; the Vulcan’s stolid, quiet presence had a calming effect. 
“Load all torpedo bays,” Storil ordered in the same tone he might have used to order a routine tactical check, but Sisko fancied he detected a faint heaviness there; the captain deplored the use of weaponry, relied on it only as a last resort. “Ready phasers.” 
Picard’s mutated image disappeared abruptly, indicating he had understood Captain Storil’s reply, and was replaced once more by that of the Borg ship. 
Hranok’s muscular torso leaned over his console. “The Borg ship is attempting to lock on to the Melbourne with its tractor beam.” 
“Target the origin point of that beam, Lieutenant,” Storil said smoothly. “Fire when ready.” 
Sisko watched the screen as Saratoga’s phasers and torpedoes streaked through the void, flared briefly against the surface of the Borg vessel, then dimmed.
Simultaneously the Borg ship fired a bright, searing beam, striking the Melbourne. 
That’s it, Sisko thought before he could stop himself. And we’re next. 
For an instant the Melbourne trembled, illuminated against the blackness by a deadly corona of light. Sisko squinted against the painful brightness on the screen, forced himself not to look away as the Melbourne’s hull exploded into scorched, hurtling fragments, forced himself not to think of those dead and dying on a bridge very like this one. 
Sisko prided himself on being unshakable and efficient during emergencies. In his first year at the Academy he had failed an unannounced emergency drill miserably because of an attack of nerves. Since then he had trained himself so that, even now in the face of certain attack, he felt the overlay of calm descend, felt his brain shut off the capacity for emotion until he became as impassive and detached as his captain. A part of his mind screamed that they were all certainly about to die, that he should leave his post, find his wife and son, spend his last few seconds with them—but the rational part knew that Jennifer and Jake’s best chance lay in his ability to perform his duty efficiently now. 
Time slowed. Sisko became hyperaware of his breathing, of the beating of his heart. He faced his captain, calmly waiting, not thinking at all as the Borg ship turned, ominous and implacable, to face the Saratoga. 
The deck lurched; Sisko staggered, regained his footing as Lieutenant Hranok called: “The Borg are attempting to lock on to us.” 
“Evasive maneuvers,” Storil said evenly, clutching the arms of his chair for balance. “Delta pattern.” 
At the navigation console, Tamamota’s fingers swiftly manipulated
manipulated the controls. “Delta pattern initiated.” She glanced down at her readout, recoiled slightly from what she saw, swiveled her head toward the captain. “We’re not moving.” 
From Ops, Delaney confirmed what Sisko already knew: “They’ve locked on.” 
Sisko watched the screen as the Gage and Kyushu opened fire on the Borg vessel, trying in vain to save the Saratoga, just as Saratoga had done for the Melbourne. 
And the outcome would be the same, Sisko realized, with terrible, cold certainty, yet he permitted himself to feel nothing, only to concentrate on the task at hand as Delaney tersely reported, “Our shields are being drained. Sixty-four percent . . . forty-two—” 
“Recalibrate shield nutation,” Storil ordered patiently, as if they were not seconds away from death. 
Feverishly, Hranok worked his console. “Modulation is having no effect.” 
“Shields are going,” Delaney called, and this time there was a clear, strident note of panic in her voice. “We’re going—” 
Darkness. With a roar, the bridge erupted in flame. Sisko was slammed to the deck. When Saratoga righted herself, he drew in a lungful of smoke, coughed, and pushed himself to his knees. The billowing smoke clutched at his throat, stung his eyes; he wiped away the sweat trickling down his forehead, refusing to be alarmed when his sleeve came away soaked dark red. 
No time to be frightened, no time to think. Time to act. 
The bridge lay dark and smoldering, illumined only by the sparks raining from damaged consoles. Sisko strained to hear his captain’s calm voice. Being a Vulcan and stronger than most of his crew, Storil would be the first to recover—if he was alive. 
Silence.
“Damage report,” Sisko shouted hoarsely, and coughed again. 
No answer. The emergency lights flickered once, then came on. 
“Damage report,” Sisko insisted, as if by sheer determination he could will other survivors. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. 
Movement nearby in the dim light. Hranok, wounded, bleeding, pulled himself up on his console while Sisko moved quickly from body to warm body, feeling for pulses, finding none: first Garcia, then Delaney. Dead. Dead. Tamamota, dead. 
Don’t feel, act. Don’t think, just act. 
Captain Storil, the hardest of all, unseeing eyes open and staring serenely, matter-of-factly through the haze at him. 
Don’t feel. Just act. 
Sisko drew his hand away from the Vulcan and rose slowly to face Lieutenant Hranok, who hunched over his console in obvious pain, though Sisko could not see his wounds. 
“Direct hit,” Hranok croaked. “Decks one through four.” 
Decks one through four. Jennifer and Jake. Don’t feel. Don’t think. Just act. 
Sisko touched his comm insignia and said, “Engineering, your status.” 
Silence. Sisko and Hranok exchanged grim looks. 
“Warning,” the computer said, in a loud, overriding voice that echoed on the silent, haze-filled bridge. “Damage to warp core. Containment failure in four minutes.” 
Don’t think. 
Sisko hit his insignia again. “All hands, prepare to abandon ship.” He moved toward the lift, turned as he realized Hranok was still huddled over the console, trying to work the controls. “Let’s get the civilians”— 
(Jennifer and Jake)
Don’t feel— 
“to the escape pods, Lieutenant,” he said firmly, not allowing himself to hear his perfect imitation of Storil’s calm, reassuring intonation. 
Don’t think— 
Just act. 
Hranok nodded and followed. 

The turbolift doors opened onto a surrealistic vision of hell. The air was filled with smoke and a cacophony of despair: the wails of children, the cries of the wounded, muffled weeping. 
Don’t think. Don’t feel. . . . 
In the dim emergency light, shadowy forms emerged from the ghostly haze, dark silhouettes against a glowing red background of flame. Sisko smelled seared flesh, felt heat on his face. He and Hranok stepped onto the deck and staggered to the left. The deck was tilting; stabilizers were failing. Life support would be next—if they had time. Sisko’s mind steadily ticked off the seconds, calmly reasoned that he would be able to make it to his quarters, see if Jennifer— 
Don’t think. Don’t feel. . . . 
Fire leapt at them from a side corridor, singeing the shoulder of Sisko’s uniform; he grabbed Hranok’s arm, and together they fought their way past the flames toward a group of frantic civilians struggling with armloads of personal possessions. One woman, her hair singed, her face severely burned, stopped in her flight to retrieve a holo she’d dropped on the deck and began to weep in panic as other items tumbled from her trembling arms. 
“Leave everything,” Sisko shouted over the roar of flames, with such confidence, such authority, that the woman immediately
straightened, leaving the holo where it had fallen. “Go to your assigned evacuation area now.” 
The woman let her treasured possessions clatter to the deck; those with her followed suit, began moving swiftly, purposefully. 
Sisko moved forward, passing other civilians, searching despite himself for two faces, fighting against panic when he failed to find them. 
The computer’s unfeeling voice blotted out all other sounds: “Warning. Damage to warp core. Containment failure in three minutes.” 
Three minutes. Enough time. There might still be enough time. They were nearing Sisko’s quarters. . . . 
A slumped, unsteady form emerged from the haze; Sisko started in recognition, then swallowed disappointment that this familiar face was not the one he sought. “Doran!” 
Jennifer’s closest friend. Doran’s family occupied the quarters next to theirs. 
He caught her as she staggered, exhausted, into his arms. 
Hranok had already forgotten his wounds; he scooped her up in his muscular arms easily. “I’ll take care of her. Go on.” 
Sisko shot him a grateful look, paused to ask Doran: “Have you seen Jennifer?” 
Doran turned her smoke-smudged face toward him, looked at him with mournful eyes, opened her mouth to speak, and began to weep instead. 
Sisko felt a purely physical pain in the center of his chest. He turned and broke into a half run, no longer seeing those who passed, no longer seeing the flames, not seeing anything at all until he arrived at his quarters. 
The door was jammed open. Thick, dark smoke billowed out.
Sisko stepped into it without hesitation, not even noticing its effect on his lungs, his throat, his eyes. 
An explosion had ripped a large hole in the deck, allowing fire to leap up from the level below. Sisko’s quarters and a lifetime of accumulated possessions had been destroyed. 
He did not care. He pushed his way through scorched debris and shouted, “Jennifer!” 
Silence. 
“Computer,” Sisko ordered. “Locate Jennifer Sisko.” 
Silence. He pushed aside smoldering fragments of furniture and twisted metal bulkhead, searching. 
At the edge of the largest pile of collapsed bulkhead and wreckage he uncovered her hand, limp and smudged with soot from the smoke. 
He set to work with a strength and intensity that bordered on insanity. The edge of the bulkhead was jagged, sharp; his hands became bloody and blistered by the heated metal. Sisko did not notice. 
Don’t think. Don’t feel. Just act. . . .
Within seconds he had uncovered Jennifer’s twisted upper torso and discovered Jake’s small, dark body beside her, she had shielded the child with her body and taken the brunt of the blow. He could see no blood, but in the darkness and the smoke, it was difficult to be sure. And he could not see her breathing, but his mind refused to acknowledge the fact. 
No blood. Then she’ll be all right. Just knocked unconscious by the fall, that’s all. . . .
“It’s going to be okay,” Sisko told his family in the same calm, confident tone—Captain Storil’s tone—he had used to soothe the civilians in the corridor, not for a moment allowing himself to think
that his words went unheard. “I’ll get you out of there. You’re going to be okay.” 
He strained, letting the sharp, hot metal cut into his palms, letting it sear his flesh, but he could not lift the wreckage that crushed his wife’s lower body. He strained again. And again. And again. 
Don’t panic. Don’t feel. 
In desperation, he circled, cleared away more debris, found a way to reach underneath the wreckage and pull Jake free. The boy was unconscious and badly bruised but breathing; without a scanner, Sisko could only guess at his internal injuries. When the boy moved slightly in his grasp, Sisko felt a surge of relief so intense it verged on tears. 
Don’t feel. . . .
“Okay, Jake,” he said, in the same cheerful voice he used to comfort the boy after a nightmare, “we’ll just get your mom now and get outta here.” 
But Jennifer was pinned too tightly. Sisko was struggling to lift the wreckage again when Hranok’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. 
“Commander . . . ” It was a plea, an urgent summons. 
Sisko turned to him. “Help me.” 
Hranok took a tentative step into the smoke-filled quarters, reached for his tricorder and scanned Jennifer. Sisko did not look at him, only pushed harder against the bulkhead as Hranok replaced the tricorder without a word. 
“Sir.” Hranok’s tone was unusually gentle. “We have to get to the—” 
At his abrupt silence, Sisko stopped pushing and met the Bolian’s startled gaze, followed it to where it rested: on the commander’s charred, bloodied hands.
Sisko stared down at them numbly, not understanding the significance. His hands were unimportant now; the only thing that mattered was Jennifer. He felt a surge of irritation at Hranok’s hesitancy. 
“Just help me get her free.” 
Hranok reached down and scooped Jake up in his strong arms, then lingered awkwardly beside his commander. “Sir . . . ” 
Furious, Sisko grasped the jagged edge of the bulkhead, not even flinching as the heated metal sliced deep into his flesh, and pushed with all his strength. “That’s an order!” he shouted at Hranok, then turned to see the Bolian staring in mute horror, Jake in his arms. 
For a moment Hranok and he gazed at each other in silence, and then the Bolian said simply, “She’s gone. There’s nothing we can do.” 
Sisko stared at Hranok and did not understand. Did not let himself understand; he could not let her go so easily. “Transporters?” 
“None of them are functional, sir.” Hranok swung himself and Jake toward the exit. “We have to go.” 
“Warning,” the computer said. “Damage to warp core. Containment failure in two minutes.” 
Sisko shook his head. He knelt beside Jennifer and took her cool, limp hand in his bloody one. He could not leave her to die alone. In his mind there was no other possible choice; death with his wife seemed a far better fate than life without her. “You go ahead, Lieutenant. Take the boy.” 
His voice was deceptively rational, reassuring; another might have left him behind. But when a security officer appeared in the doorway, Hranok handed the boy to him, then grasped Sisko’s arm and yanked him to his feet. 
“Now, sir.” 
With a calm tinged with madness,
(Don’t feel. Don’t feel . . . )
Sisko said, “No. I can’t leave without her.” 
Hranok pulled with all his might. Powerless against the Bolian’s greater strength, Sisko was propelled toward the door, he struggled to turn his head, to keep his gaze on Jennifer as long as possible, unable to feel, unable to grasp the reality of what was happening. 
“Dammit,” he told Hranok, with the same strange, numbed calm, “we can’t leave her here.” 
Hranok replied by pushing Sisko out the door. Sisko held up his wounded hands—hands that had failed him, had failed Jennifer—and stared dully at them. 
He did not remember running through the burning corridors, did not remember joining the dozen others in the cramped escape pod. Sisko remembered only two things: the sight of Jake, still unconscious in the security officer’s arms, and the sight of the dying Saratoga as other tiny pods sailed free. 
Sisko made his way to the porthole and stared at the receding wreckage, its scorched and twisted bull gleaming with the reflected glow of the continuing battle, the area of space lit up like a summer sky with heat fightning. The Kyushu was gone now, and the Gage would be next, and so it would continue until all of them were gone. 
To Sisko it was meaningless. Irrelevant, just as Picard had said. The Borg were right: resistance was futile. All was destroyed. 
Feelings were the most irrelevant of all; Sisko was beyond emotion. In his mind he lay dead beside Jennifer, their bodies consumed by flame. 
He watched as Saratoga exploded like a small sun, and let himself be blinded by the light.
CHAPTER
2
THREE YEARS AFTER the incident at Wolf 359, Commander Benjamin Sisko stood in the soft grass, fondly watching his twelve-year-old son. In the shade of a large old oak Jake sat fishing on a large rock, trousers rolled up to his knees, bare feet dangling in the water. Sisko smiled at the bucolic sight. Lately Jake had become enamored of Twain and his tales of the lazy, simple life of a boy on the Mississippi.
“Hey there, Huckleberry.”
Jake turned at the sound of his father’s voice, lips stretched in a reluctant grin; a shaft of sunlight pierced the branches and gleamed in his dark, curly hair. The smile so increased his resemblance to Jennifer that Sisko drew in a silent, painful breath as he crossed over and perched beside his son on the rock. With each passing day Jake grew to look more like his mother and less like his father; at least to Sisko’s mind. Time had not dulled the memories of his wife. Sisko returned to the horrors of the Saratoga each night in his dreams; each waking day his mind wandered undistracted. At least Jake was there each day to remind him of the small things, the good things
that he might otherwise have forgotten: Jennifer’s same shy, crooked grin, Jennifer’s gestures, Jennifer’s good nature and complete inability to stay angry about anything for more than a full minute.
Jake was angry now. And like his mother, doing a miserable job of hiding it.
“How’re they biting?” Sisko asked.
Jake shrugged and returned his attention to the placid blue water, its smooth surface broken by the red and white bobbing cork. “Small fries. Threw ‘em back. You want to go for a swim?”
“Don’t have time,” Sisko replied gently. “We’ve got to get ready.”
A sullen look came over the boy’s face. Sisko experienced a pang of guilt.
“It won’t be so bad, Jake. I’ve heard Bajor is a beautiful world.” Or rather it had been beautiful before the Cardassian conquerors departed, leaving massive devastation in their wake.
Jake stared down at the water, at the reflection of the young barefoot boy frowning back at him. “So why can’t we live on the planet instead of in some old space station?”
Sisko couldn’t blame him. Since the death of his mother, Jake had associated living in space with danger, had dreamed of a safe, quiet life on Earth, the planet of his mother’s birth. For the past three years Sisko had tried without success to land an Earthside assignment; the closest he’d come was shore duty on Mars, helping to reconstruct the fleet at the Utopia Planitia yards. Jake had settled into life there, had felt comfortable there. But few Starfleet families stayed long at Planitia. The duty was considered dull, a temporary stop between more exciting, career-furthering opportunities. Jake would make a friend his own age, become close, then be crushed when the child’s parents were transferred out after a few months. The third time it happened, Jake simply gave up trying to make
close friends, for fear of being hurt; the boy’s loneliness tugged at his father’s heart.
When Sisko heard he had been assigned to the space station, he protested—to no avail. Starfleet obviously felt his career had stalled at Utopia Planitia and so presented him with a challenge: Deep Space Nine.
Sisko did not want a challenge; he no longer gave a damn whether his career stagnated or not. The promotion to full commander had seemed meaningless. Before Jennifer’s death, he had been unrelentingly ambitious, his career second in importance only to his family, but now nothing mattered except Jake. Sisko was seriously considering leaving the Fleet, not because he wanted to but for the boy’s sake. He’d even been looking into some civilian job possibilities on Earth. Thus far none had panned out. Much to Sisko’s surprise, he felt a secret guilty relief at the fact.
“Well, it’s what Starfleet decided,” he told Jake.
“You promised we’d stay on shore duty.” The boy’s tone grew dangerously close to a whine.
Sisko tensed a bit, fought to keep the defensiveness from his words, his posture. “The station is in orbit of Bajor, Jake. It’ll be just like shore duty.”
“Will there be kids there?”
“Absolutely,” Sisko assured him, hoping like hell he was telling the truth. “Lots of kids.”
A feminine voice filtered through the comm insignia on the breast of his uniform. “Bridge to Sisko.”
Sisko straightened, touched the insignia. “Yes, Captain?”
“We’re approaching Deep Space Nine, Commander. We’ll be docking in seven minutes.”
“Acknowledged.” Sisko pressed his communicator again, then put
an arm around his son’s stiff shoulders. “C’mon, Huckleberry. We’ll take the pond with us.”
Unsmiling, unresponsive, Jake rose and began reeling in the line.
“Computer, end program,” Sisko ordered as he pushed himself to his feet. The yellow grid of the holodeck walls replaced the grass, water, trees. Jake slung the pole over his shoulder as they exited. He kept his sullen expression and avoided Sisko’s eyes as they strode down the corridor, but at an observation window he paused, wide-eyed with curiosity, his anger abruptly and utterly forgotten. “Is that it?”
Sisko followed his son’s gaze. On the viewscreen the space station hung amid the stars, the planet Bajor hovering nearby. A handful of ships were docked at the station, including one Sisko recognized as the Enterprise. He nodded in reply as he stared at Deep Space Nine’s gothically ornate alien beauty. The Cardassians were master architects, but their sweeping, angular style was dark and brooding.
And there was something else about the station’s design that vaguely disturbed Sisko; it was the almost organic look to the metal, the way the outer docking ring had long, arching projections, like ribs sticking out from a circular spine. For no reason he could fathom, the observation made him think of the Borg and Locutus, and from there he was in his quarters aboard the Saratoga again, struggling vainly to free Jennifer’s trapped, lifeless body. . . .
The scene aboard the Saratoga was obliterated by the sudden flash of an image: a strange middle-aged woman extending long, gentle fingers toward his face.
And light. Not the painful blinding light of the ship’s explosion but a radiant, beautiful light, so brilliant that in his dream Sisko had closed his eyes and still seen it clearly.
Welcome . . . 
And seen the woman’s eyes, dark, unfathomably wise, beautiful eyes, full of peace and knowing and pain—a pain Sisko understood all too well. The woman’s face metamorphosed, grew younger, became Jennifer’s face.
Breathe, Jennifer said.
A forgotten dream from the night before. Sisko tried to remember more, but could retrieve only the image of the woman and the light and a strangely emotional sense of deep mystery, of coming home.
Welcome . . . 
The dream image faded, sank into elusive forgetfulness. The horrors of the Saratoga faded, and the sense of paternal guilt eased, replaced for a fleeting instant by an inexplicable surge of hope.
Jake looked questioningly at his father with a slight, curious Jennifer-frown.
Sisko pulled himself out of the strange reverie and patted the boy on the shoulder. “C’mon, Jake. Let’s go.”

The door slid slowly open with a distinct unreassuring groan. With Jake beside him, Sisko stepped inside the airlock and drew in a lungful of stale, unpleasantly warm air. Nearby, a uniformed Starfleet ensign lay on his back beside an open console panel, reaching up inside the panel to manually work the controls. Ruddy-faced, sweating, he glanced over at Sisko and Jake to make sure they were clear of the door.
“Sorry about that, Commander,” he apologized, with a faint trace of Irish brogue. His face was broad, pleasant, open; damp golden brown curls clung to his forehead. Sisko liked him immediately, though he couldn’t say the same for the surroundings. A glance at the primitive gears and levers inside the open panel confirmed that
this was far from Starfleet technology. “All the interlock servos in this airlock were stripped by the Cardassians.”
“We would have transported aboard if we’d known you were having problems,” Sisko replied.
The ensign grimaced as he struggled once more with the lever; the door began to close. “That wouldn’t have been possible either, sir. We’ve got some stray nucleonic emissions that have to be tracked down before we can safely reinstate transporter operations. It’s a junkyard the bloody Cardies left us with, if you ask me.”
Sisko grunted his understanding as he surveyed the damage. Although the Federation and the Cardassians had ceased hostilities and Sisko was not a man given to prejudice, he was less than kindly disposed toward the culture, which embraced treachery, vindictiveness, and racism, looking on the more spiritual Bajorans as inferior chattels. Sisko realized he was bigoted against bigots, but it was one bias he did not strive to transcend.
The door clanked shut. The ensign wriggled out from under the console and got to his feet. “Miles O’Brien, your chief operations officer.”
With an honest smile he extended his hand to Sisko, then drew it back in dismay when he realized it was covered with black grease.
Sisko grinned. “Ben Sisko.” He caught Jake’s eye and saw the boy was smiling, too; Miles O’Brien was impossible to dislike. “My son, Jake.”
“Hi,” Jake said shyly.
O’Brien gave him a smile, then turned back to Sisko. “Can I show you to your quarters, Commander?”
Sisko nodded, hoping the quarters were in better shape than the airlock. He and Jake followed O’Brien into an overheated corridor. Sisko drew the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead. “Is it
my imagination or is this station unusually warm?”
O’Brien glanced over his shoulder with an apologetic expression. “The environmental controls are all stuck at thirty-two C. We’re working on it.”
Sisko was not reassured. Apparently, neither was Jake; he stared glumly down the gloomy, deserted corridor. “Are there any kids here?”
“Kids?” O’Brien reacted with surprise, then studied Sisko and seemed to pick up on the parental guilt triggered by Jake’s innocent question. “Well . . . sure, some. I have a two-year-old”—and at Jake’s disappointed expression, he quickly added—”but she’s a little young for you. I think I’ve seen a Ferengi boy about your age. If he hasn’t left with the others.”
“A Ferengi,” Jake repeated, clearly intrigued by the notion.
A set of doors opened, and O’Brien ushered them forward. Sisko took a step and stopped.
“The Promenade,” O’Brien said. “Or at least what remains of it. During their occupation, the Cardies sold commercial concessions to the highest bidder. Kept the mining crews entertained.”
Sisko swiveled his head to more fully take in the extraordinary sight. The place had obviously served as a combination free port and flea market. It was crammed full of kiosks, restaurants, bars with secluded upstairs areas that Sisko suspected housed sexual holosuites, conventional ship’s stores, gambling casinos, even a Bajoran temple. The combination of simple, mystical Bajoran design and ethereal, ornate Cardassian style produced a striking and exotic effect. The place had no doubt been bustling during the Cardassian occupation, but now it appeared almost deserted and looked as if it had been ravaged by vandals. Storefronts had been broken out, walls scorched from phaser blasts. Sisko picked his way over the wreckage
littering the thoroughfare and felt his jaw muscles tense. Beside him, Jake had fallen utterly silent.
Sisko had known something about the destruction inflicted on Bajor’s surface. After a century of occupation the Cardassians’ extensive mining operations had exhausted the planet’s resources, and the conquerors had wearied of the decades-long struggle against Bajoran terrorists. They had departed—but not without first poisoning the wells and scorching the ground, leaving behind a wasteland whose inhabitants were forced to turn to the Federation for help.
It had not occurred to Sisko that the Cardassians would also have destroyed their own space station out of spite, to prevent locals from getting any use out of it.
O’Brien’s expression was grim; Sisko suspected that this man, like him, harbored no great love for the invaders. “I’m told the Cardassians decided to have some fun the day they left,” the ensign said quietly as they moved through the devastation. A Bajoran woman sifting through the debris of a ruined storefront glanced up as they passed. “Four Bajorans were killed trying to protect their shops.”
They passed by a bar-casino where three Ferengi were packing up equipment.
“Why hasn’t anybody cleaned this up?” Sisko asked tightly. He thought of Jake, alone and forlorn, playing amid the rubble, and felt a surge of anger toward Starfleet. If Command had informed him of the damage to Deep Space Nine, he would never have accepted the assignment, would never have brought his son here. . . .
“We’ve got all available personnel assigned to repairing primary systems, sir.” O’Brien stepped carefully over a broken piece of toppled Bajoran religious statuary. “The Cardassians took every component of value. We have virtually no defenses. Major Kira, the Bajoran attaché, and I decided—”
Sisko cut him off. “Understood. But what about the civilians who operated these shops?”
“A lot of them lost everything. A few are trying to rebuild, but most are packing up to leave.”
They walked in silence for a few moments, Sisko growing guiltier and more apprehensive about what he had brought Jake to with each step. The boy’s eyes were somber and wide, his mouth a small, tight line.
Ahead of them, a Bajoran temple, simple and elegant compared to the surrounding Cardassian structures, caught Sisko’s eye. As they approached it, someone stirred in the arched, shadowed entryway: an elderly Bajoran monk dressed in traditional robes, his eyes large and compelling beneath thick white brows. His odd hypnotic gaze met Sisko’s.
“Welcome, Commander.”
Sisko hesitated
(Welcome)
remembering the dream from the night before, the dream of the wise woman with the all-knowing eyes. For the first time, he realized she was an alien, a Bajoran.
(Breathe, Jennifer said.)
Sisko shifted uncomfortably. He wanted to ask O’Brien how the locals had learned of his coming, whether they had seen his holo, but he could not bring himself to look away from the Bajoran’s omniscient gaze—could not, at the moment, bring himself to speak.
The monk wore a faint beatific smile. “Please enter. The prophets await you.”
(Breathe, Jennifer said again.)
Sisko flashed suddenly on a memory: the Saratoga’s darkened bridge, the smell of smoke, the greater than human warmth of Captain
Captain Storil’s pulseless flesh against his hand. Then he remembered struggling in vain to raise the flaming bulkhead, the sight of Jennifer’s motionless torso, trapped . . . a frustration beyond sanity, beyond grief. . . .
He shook the memory off, blinked, managed to find his voice. “Another time, perhaps.”
The Bajoran did not reply, merely watched placidly as the three continued past. They were a meter away, barely within earshot, when Sisko heard the monk say softly, knowingly, “Another time.”

Sisko was not the only one who had been devastated by his first sight of the ruined Promenade. Miles O’Brien had stared at it several times in the past few days and was still convinced he would never get used to the sight of it. He had made the foolish mistake of assuming he was completely over his anger at the Cardassians, but each viewing of the Promenade brought the memories of Setlik back full force.
As he led the new commander and his son to their quarters, O’Brien knew precisely what Commander Sisko was thinking: that he had made a terrible mistake in accepting the assignment, in bringing his son here. O’Brien knew because he had thought the very same thing. He had been sorry to leave the Enterprise, but he was a trained officer and an optimist by nature, and he had made his choice. Besides, the promotion from noncom to an ensign had been too great an opportunity to turn down. He would do his duty, and for Keiko and Molly’s sake, he would put the very best face on things. If he had to, he would reassemble the entire bloody station with his own two hands and turn it into something to be proud of.
Now he felt a surge of empathy for the commander and his young son: hard enough to come into such a strange new environment
environment, but he’d heard Sisko was a widower. O’Brien tried to imagine what it would be like bringing Molly into this place after losing Keiko—and stopped quickly when the thought became too painful. He watched as father and son took a few tentative steps inside their new quarters. The room was typically Cardassian—all in shades of gray and black, forbidding-looking, with a huge, outrageously ornate bed in its center. The whole station had the same depressing color scheme, and O’Brien wondered if he would ever become used to it.
The boy’s expression grew noticeably glum, and Sisko seemed to fare no better. O’Brien began to suspect that the commander had been less than enthusiastic about the assignment even before the disheartening tour.
O’Brien forced a smile and said cheerfully, “When my wife, Keiko, saw our quarters, she started talking about visiting her mother in Kumomoto. . . . The Cardassians aren’t much for bright colors. Perhaps Starfleet would see clear to letting us do a bit of redecorating.”
Sisko did not reply, simply walked to the bed and examined it as the boy wandered off into the adjacent bedroom.
O’Brien took advantage of his absence to sidle alongside the commander and speak quietly. “Sir, I wouldn’t allow the boy to go roaming. We’re still having some security problems—”
“Dad!” O’Brien and Sisko both looked up as an indignant shout came from the next room.
Jake appeared in the doorway, thin dark brows knitted together in disapproval. “There’s nothing to sleep on in here except a cushion on the floor!”
“We can get you a real bunk off the Enterprise,” O’Brien soothed quickly, then turned to the commander. “Oh, and I almost forgot,
Captain Picard wants to see you as soon as possible.”
Sisko averted his eyes. A shadow seemed to pass over his face at the mention of Picard. Just coincidence, O’Brien decided—Sisko was still probably distracted by the condition of the space station.
Oddly, the commander changed the subject, as if he hadn’t registered O’Brien’s statement. “Any word on our science and medical officers?”
“They’re expected tomorrow,” O’Brien answered.
Sisko turned toward the disconsolate boy. “Jake, I want you to stay here until I come back.”
“Where’s the food replicator?” the boy asked instantly.
O’Brien repressed a grin. Jake looked to be twelve or thirteen, right at the age, Keiko said, when they begin to eat you out of house and home. “I’m afraid they’re all off-line,” he answered, and added, at Jake’s expression of utter dismay, “There’s plenty of emergency rations. I could send some down.”
“Dad,” Jake wailed, in a tone that clearly said, I hate this place!
Sisko’s expression of forced optimism matched O’Brien’s. The commander’s tone was gentle but brooked no argument. “We’re just going to have to rough it until we get things up and running, Jake. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jake said feebly, in a manner that indicated it was definitely not.
“Okay,” Sisko affirmed, and smiled.

O’Brien and the new commander took the turbolift to Ops. “The heart of the station,” he said with first stirring of pride, as Sisko tilted his head back to take in the multi-tiered facility where a handful of Bajorans and Starfleet personnel were already busily at work.
High above them were almond-shaped observation windows, some revealing a view of Bajor, some of docking bays, others of stars. O’Brien thought they resembled Cardassian eyes staring out into space. Ops bore the same grim, muted color scheme as the rest of the station. Despite the disarray—open panels from which conduits hung, gaps where the Cardassians had torn out machinery before their flight—O’Brien could see the potential.
“Operations houses computer and life support, tactical controls, master communications, and the transporter pad,” he explained, absently wiping beads of perspiration from his forehead. “Obviously we’ve got a bit of work to do, but once we’re up and running . . . ”
Commander Sisko nodded, still gazing up appreciatively at the different levels. “Impressive design.” His tone was pleasant but detached. O’Brien got the impression that this was a man who did not want to be here and had already made up his mind he would not remain long. A shame; he already liked Benjamin Sisko. A more casual command style than Captain Picard, perhaps, but O’Brien saw a capable officer who would no doubt command loyalty.
O’Brien folded his arms and tilted back his head to take in the view. “I’d like to ask the designer what he was thinking about when they built this place. I still haven’t been able to find an ODN access.” He pointed at the metal-grid mezzanine and the steps that led to the small balcony just off the commander’s office. “That’s the prefect’s office up there.”
Sisko shook his head and said, with irony, “So all others have to look up with respect. Cardassian architecture.”
“Yes, sir.” O’Brien paused awkwardly. “Major, Kira has been using it.”
Sisko glanced around, searching, then said with faint dismay, “The only office in Ops?”
O’Brien gave an apologetic nod.
Sisko exchanged an amused glance with him and said lightly, “I guess it’s time to meet Major Kira.”
O’Brien hesitated. He believed in going by the book, and although he figured he could find a way to get along with the major well enough, he was more than a little concerned about her attitude toward authority. “Sir . . . have you ever served with any Bajoran women?”
Sisko’s gaze was blankly innocent. “No. Why?”
O’Brien barely succeeded in repressing a grin. No point in talking about it; the commander would find out for himself soon enough. “Just wondering, sir.”

Sisko made it up the rattling metal stairs in two swift steps. The tour of the Promenade and his gloomy quarters had brought him close to a decision to apply immediately for a transfer—he hated to think of Jake alone and friendless in those dark Cardassian rooms—but the sight of Ops had been encouraging, and O’Brien certainly seemed capable.
And then there was the strange dream about the wise Bajoran woman, and the oddly troubling encounter with the monk. . . .
Welcome, Commander.
The Bajora themselves were an intriguing people, deeply religious, and Sisko looked forward to learning more about them, despite O’Brien’s whimsical expression when he mentioned Major Kira; Sisko had no clue as to what that was supposed to mean.
“Just wondering, sir,” O’Brien had said, but Sisko had clearly heard the subtext: Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
He got a clue to O’Brien’s unspoken warning when he arrived at the top of the staircase and approached the office entrance. A feminine
feminine voice came booming through the wall. Judging by a glance over his shoulder at O’Brien’s bemused grin, Sisko was sure it could be clearly heard in Ops.
“You’re throwing it away! All of you!”
A second voice, male, spoke through a comm link; Sisko had to strain to hear this one: “You’re being a fool.”
“Then don’t ask for my opinion next time!”
Sisko winced faintly at the sound of a forceful palm being slammed against a comm terminal, then carefully removed any trace of amusement from his expression as he pressed the buzzer by the door.
It slid open almost immediately. A Bajoran woman, her short auburn hair swinging forward against her cheeks, leaned aggressively forward in the doorway.
Not leaned, Sisko decided. Blazed. Rained sparks.
“Yes?” The woman demanded, narrowing her large eyes at him. As she straightened, her hair swung back, revealing several silver ornaments in one ear. Decidedly nonregulation. She caught Sisko’s disapproving gaze and returned his look with one that was a clear challenge.
Better to mention the earrings another time.
“I’m Benjamin Sisko,” he stated firmly.
“I suppose you want the office.” She stepped back to allow him passage; folded her arms, and scrutinized him coldly.
He fought to repress an incredulous smile at her attitude as he entered. “Well, actually I thought I’d say hello first and then take the office . . . but we could do it in any order you’d like.”
She swept her arm back in welcome and said with exaggerated warmth, “Hello.”
Sisko’s amusement faded. He was confident enough in his own
ability to command not to mind a little informality, even a little testing of the boundaries, but he’d be damned if he’d tolerate any unearned hostility.
Relax, he told himself. You’re not staying, remember?
He folded his arms and looked directly, unflinchingly, into her eyes. “Is something bothering you, Major?”
She scowled. “You don’t want to ask me that, Commander.”
“Why not?” Sisko asked evenly.
“Because I have a bad habit of telling the truth, even when people don’t want to hear it.”
Sisko kept his tone pleasant. “Perhaps I want to hear it.”
She considered this for a moment; the anger eased briefly, then returned. “I don’t believe the Federation has any business being here.”
Sisko nodded thoughtfully, reminding himself once again that he would leave soon, so none of this mattered. “The provisional government disagrees with you.”
She turned away, moved toward the desk, then leaned against it, facing him with eyes full of mistrust. “The provisional government and I don’t agree on a lot of things . . . which is probably why they sent me to this godforsaken place.” She sighed; her tone grew calmer. “Commander, I have been fighting for Bajoran independence since I was old enough to pick up a phaser. Finally we drove out the Cardassians, and what do our new leaders do? Call up the Federation and invite them in. What sort of independence is that?”
Sisko lifted his chin. “How can you make a comparison between the two? The Cardassians were invaders who ravaged your planet and your people. The Federation is only here to—”
“Help you,” Kira chorused with him. “Yes, I know. The Cardassians said the same thing sixty years ago.”
“Major,” he said, struggling to keep his tone civil, “when I was ordered here, I requested a Bajoran national as my first officer, because unlike the Cardassians, I believe the Bajora should have the right to rule their own planet. I believe my request made sense. It still does. At least to me. Now, you and I are going to have to—”
He broke off as an alarm sounded on a nearby comm panel.
Kira whirled toward it, pressed a control, then squinted at the schematic of the station that appeared on the monitor. A location on the map flashed red—a warning. The major hit another control, and the map metamorphosed into the image of a humanoid who was not Bajoran.
A middle-aged man, Sisko thought at first, but there was something wrong with the monitor: the man’s features seemed slightly blurred, unfinished, almost two-dimensional.
Palms flat on the console, Kira leaned toward the image. “Odo, are you reading something at A-fourteen?”
The man shook his head. With a start, Sisko realized that Kira’s monitor was in perfect working order; it was Odo’s features that were blurred.
“My security array has been down for two hours,” Odo replied crisply. “I’ll meet you there.”
His image disappeared; the monitor resumed its standard feeds. Kira pushed herself up and strode toward the door, all business, any resentment abruptly forgotten. “We’ve been having a lot of break-ins lately. No need to come along, Commander.”
Sisko ignored her and followed.
CHAPTER
3
ON A-FOURTEEN, Nog peered around the doorway and squinted, his tiny golden eyes trying to penetrate the dimness. He saw nothing, but that gave him little reassurance. By human standards, he was exceedingly myopic, but his oversized pinna caught sound quite well; for now the hallway remained silent.
Nog was Ferengi, very young and, at the moment, very nervous. He was ashamed of his nervousness, ashamed to be afraid—not that the Ferengi race approved of courage. Uncle Quark always said that courage and honor and altruism were the worst sort of stupidity, and there was nothing worse by Ferengi standards than stupidity. It was fine to be afraid, so long as your fear didn’t cause you to get caught or lose profit.
Nog was terribly afraid of getting caught, of being stupid and disappointing Uncle Quark once again, of being a failure as a Ferengi.
Behind him, huddled over a safe, Jas-qal used the shield damper to neutralize the forcefield surrounding the safe. It surrendered with a slight crackle.
Nog turned at the sound, in time to see Jas-qal’s huge paws scoop a handful of valuable mineral samples out of the open safe. Jas-qal was a B’kaazi, twice Nog’s size, huge and ponderous and hideous by any standards, Ferengi or human. Nog resented and disliked the B’kaazi, but there was nothing to be done: Jas-qal could easily have crushed Nog into pulp and had indicated that he would most certainly do so if the adolescent Ferengi did not watch his sharp little tongue.
“Hurry up,” Nog hissed. There were no sibilants in the phrase, but it was impossible for Nog to speak without emitting a slight hiss of air with each syllable, due to the gaps between his stubby, pointed teeth. He fidgeted, wiping perspiration from his tiny clawed hands onto the thighs of his pants; he did not want to get caught this time. He wanted to prove to his father and uncle that he was as capable as they of committing a successful crime. He had hoped they would trust him to perform the act alone and had been indignant at their insistence that Jas-qal perform the actual deed.
With agonizing deliberateness, Jas-qal dropped the mineral samples into the pouch, then at last turned and joined Nog at the door. As they hurried out into the Promenade, Nog’s Ferengi heart beat with wild exhilaration. They were going to make it! Uncle Quark would be pleased, and perhaps next time trust his nephew enough to let Nog perform such challenging missions alone. . . .
Jas-qal stopped abruptly in his flight; Nog paused beside him and squinted as he followed the B’kaazi’s gaze. A humanoid was coming toward them across the Promenade at top speed, the strange one called Odo, who wasn’t really humanoid at all, and in fact wasn’t anything that anyone had ever heard of.
“All right,” Odo called in his intimidating voice. “Just stand where you are.”
Nog began to tremble as he and Jas-qal wheeled around and stumbled clumsily in the opposite direction. Of all the Starfleet people, Odo frightened Nog the most, but perhaps if he ran quickly . . . 
Two other Starfleet officers—a Bajoran and a human Nog had never seen before—appeared in front of the two fleeing criminals.
Nog stopped in his tracks. Jas-qal was not so cooperative; he pulled a dagger from his waistband and faced Odo menacingly. Nog sighed; he could have told Jas-qal it would do no good. One could try to outrun the strange security officer, but there was no point in trying to fight.
The B’kaazi hurled the dagger; the weapon whipped through the air.
In the millisecond it took for the knife to approach, Odo’s torso became fluid, twisted, reshaped itself to move aside, out of danger’s way . . . then sprang back. With a resounding thunk the dagger embedded itself in the wall behind the security officer.
Jas-qal recovered, tried to charge past Odo before he had a chance to re-form, but too late: Odo grappled with him, trying to contain him. The B’kaazi’s bulk was formidable; a long struggle was sure to ensue. Nog braced himself for an escape attempt—
Until a phaser blast scorched the wall over the fighters’ heads.
“That’s enough,” the unfamiliar human male said, keeping the phaser leveled at the B’kaazi’s chest.
Odo slowly released his hold on Jas-qal and turned his unfinished, flattened features toward the new Starfleet officer with contempt. “Who the hell are you?”
“This is our new Starfleet commander, Odo,” the Bajoran woman said.
Odo studied the new human, completely unimpressed by this
revelation. “I don’t allow weapons on the Promenade. That includes phasers.”
The human drew back at this, apparently on the verge of replying when an all too familiar voice interrupted: “Nog? What’s going on?”
The young Ferengi repressed a bleat of despair.

As he hurried toward the Starfleet officers surrounding his young nephew, the Ferengi named Quark was in anything but a charitable mood. “Surly” was the best word for it. After all, he had suffered enormous business losses, first from the rampaging Cardassians, then from the loss of customers, and he had been furious to learn that the Federation intended to occupy Bajor—the crowning blow that led to Quark’s decision to evacuate.
Quark did not mind Bajorans. They were an odd people who filled their minds with mystical mumbo jumbo, but at least they left him alone to do his business. And he rather liked the Cardassians. True, they were violent, but Quark understood violence, and they were treacherous and deceitful, traits Quark greatly admired. He knew how to deal with the Cardassians and their straightforward cruelty, but the Federation—especially the humans—puzzled and irritated him no end. They utterly lacked any sort of common sense, as illustrated by their bizarre, silly notions of ethics and honesty, which to Quark proved their stupidity.
Then there was the overeager Nog, who had fouled up yet another assignment; Quark’s patience with his nephew was wearing thin. He had sent Jas-qal along as insurance, since the boy could not be trusted to complete even the simplest task that called for stealth and deviousness. He had expected to have the mineral samples in hand and be gone hours before Starfleet detected their absence. Now even Jas-qal had failed him, and Quark’s bad mood increased
tenfold. The valuable mineral samples would have more than compensated for the business loss and the cost of moving his operation.
Yet despite his evil humor, he approached the Starfleet officers with an innocent, simpering demeanor; at least he would not miss the opportunity to teach Nog something about dealing with a human, like this commander. Perhaps there might still be a chance of getting his hands on those samples. . . .
The three officers looked askance at Quark as he approached.
“The boy’s in a lot of trouble,” Odo said. Quark kept his expression polite and repressed the urge to curl his lip at the shapeshifter; Odo had an especially obnoxious concept of justice and a perverse notion of what constituted wrongdoing.
Quark turned his attention to the commander, a tall—but then, most entities were taller than he—dark-skinned human. “Commander, my name is Quark. I used to run the local gambling establishment.” He shot a disapproving glance at Nog, who reacted with an appropriately shamefaced expression; perhaps there was hope for the boy yet. “This is my brother’s boy. Surely you can see that he has only a peripheral involvement in this. We’re scheduled to depart tomorrow.” He shot a sidelong glance at Nog that was intended to seem stern to the human but that said to Nog, You see? Watch how easily this stupid human can be deceived by a swift tongue. “If we could be permitted to take him, I promise you he will be severely—”
“That won’t be possible,” the human interrupted, his dark features as unreadable as stone. He turned to Odo with a nod at the young Ferengi and Jas-qal. “Take them to the brig.”
Odo acknowledged the order with an expression of pleasure and led Nog and the hulking B’kaazi away as Quark stared bitterly at the human for a few seconds.
This was going to be far more difficult than he had expected. This human seemed to follow human rules, but he was as crafty as any Ferengi.
He released a sigh of disappointment and hurried on stumpy little legs to follow the prisoners.

Kira watched them go and shook her head. “Quark probably sent the two of them here to steal the ore samples in the first place.”
She turned to study the new commander, who wore a thoughtful expression. She still did not trust Starfleet, or Sisko for that matter, but she had been impressed by his willingness to listen and by his refusal to be angered by her bluntness, and she approved of his swift, stern handling of Nog and Quark. Clearly he was more creative than she had anticipated; he was obviously plotting something.
The memory of her dream attempted to resurface, but Kira pushed it firmly away; last night the dream had seemed important, relevant—but that had only been wishful thinking. She would not allow her hopes to intrude on reality. The reality was that Sisko was better than she had expected—but he was only a Starfleet officer, nothing more.
“Major,” Sisko replied slowly, “there’s a Ferengi legal tradition. It’s called plea bargaining. I might let the boy go, but I want something in exchange from Mr. Quark. Something very important.”
Kira had just opened her mouth to ask exactly what that something was when Sisko’s communicator signaled.
“O’Brien to Commander Sisko.”
Sisko pressed his comm badge with an air of resignation, as if he knew precisely what the ensign was going to say. “Go ahead.”
“Sir,” O’Brien’s voice said, “the Enterprise hailed us again. Captain Picard is waiting to see you.”
“Acknowledged,” Sisko said with a frown. He terminated the comm link and glanced at Kira. “This won’t take long.”
Kira tilted her head, intrigued, and watched as Sisko headed toward the airlock. This Starfleet commander was a far more complicated person than she had expected; she had noticed the very subtle change in the commander’s expression at the mention of Picard’s name and had read the emotion hidden there. It was one Kira had learned as a child from the Cardassians, one with which she was all too familiar: hatred.
She stood watching for a few seconds after the door closed over him.

Ben Sisko stood for a time at an observation window in the airlock and stared at the Enterprise. Impossible to admire from a distance her beauty, her grace, her sleekness, without thinking of the Saratoga.
Impossible to step through the airlock into her corridors, and not see Hranok beside him as they stepped from the turbolift onto the civilians’ deck. Impossible not to smell smoke, hear wailing, see the dark, shadowed outlines of the wounded staggering toward him through the haze. . . .
As he made his way to the Enterprise’s main observation lounge, Sisko reminded himself that he had no right to harbor any hatred toward Picard. The human was not responsible for the crimes of the Borg. Not responsible. No right.
And yet by the time he arrived at his destination, by the time he pressed the chime and heard the voice, the strictly human voice, that bade him enter, Sisko was blinded by rage.
He had no right to hate. Yet he was as helpless to resist his own fury as Picard had been to resist the Borg group mind.
The door opened. Sisko entered.
Captain Picard sat at the end of the table, reviewing information on a padd. At the sight of his visitor, he smiled and rose, extending a hand. His appearance should not have been at all striking: he was a physically unimposing man, bald, with a white fringe of hair at the back of his head. Even so, he emanated a strength, a grace, a presence that were impressive.
“Commander,” he said with sincere warmth. “Come in. Welcome to Bajor.”
(You will be assimilated)
Sisko took the proffered hand, could not quite bring himself to match the firmness of its grip. He did not know what he had intended to say to Picard at their first real meeting; he did not intend to say what he did.
“It’s been a long time, Captain.”
Picard tilted his lean, sculpted face and studied Sisko with two very puzzled, very hazel eyes. Very human eyes, but Sisko saw only flashing red, heard the whirr of an optical sensor-scope.
Picard sat. Sisko sat. Picard asked curiously, “Have we met before?”
Sisko told himself that he did not hate Jean-Luc Picard, that he had nothing against the man. But he was consumed with hatred for the Borg; he answered not Picard but Locutus.
“Yes, sir. We met in battle. I was on the Saratoga at Wolf 359.”
(Resistance is futile)
Picard’s face went slack; the warmth fled his eyes—entirely human eyes now—and in its place Sisko saw the flaming wreckage of the Saratoga. The Kyushu. The Gage.
(Jennifer’s lifeless hand)
And then Picard banished the specters with a blink and composed
composed himself. When he spoke again, his tone was cool, infinitely remote. “I assume you’ve been briefed on the political situation on Bajor.”
Sisko tried to keep the chill and the anger from his own eyes and failed, “I know the Cardassians ravaged the planet before they left.”
(Hranok dragging him to the escape pod. Hurtling past the scorched, smoldering hulls of starship after starship, watching as the Saratoga—as Jennifer—dissolved into blinding supernova white . . . )
Ben Sisko blinked to clear away the afterimage of the past, forced himself to pay attention to the captain’s words.
“ . . . retribution for the years of Bajoran terrorism,” Picard was saying. “The relief efforts we’ve been coordinating are barely adequate.” He rose and moved over to the observation window, deliberately putting distance between himself and Sisko, clasping his hands behind him as he stared out at the planet. “I’ve come to know the Bajora. I’m one of the strongest proponents for their entry into the Federation.”
“Is it going to happen?” Sisko asked.
The captain turned a distant chiseled profile toward him. “Not easily. The ruling parties are at each other’s throats. Factions that were united against the Cardassians have resumed old conflicts.”
“Sounds like they’re not ready.” Sisko heard Kira’s angry, impatient tone in his own voice.
Picard wheeled around to glance at him sharply. “Your job is to do everything short of violating the Prime Directive to make sure they are ready.”
Sisko gave a short defensive nod. The comment rankled, renewed his anger; he did not need to have his job explained to him. Despite his reluctance to accept the assignment, he was a Starfleet officer.
He would do his duty to the utmost of his ability regardless of the personal cost.
(She’s gone, Hranok said)
Captain Picard took a step toward him; his tone became candid, inviting confession. “Starfleet has made me aware of your objections to this assignment, Commander. I would think that after three years at the Utopia Planitia yards you’d be ready for a change.”
Sisko stiffened, thought of Jake by himself in the dark, dismal Cardassian quarters. “I have a son that I’m raising alone, Captain. This is hardly the ideal environment. As I said, I knew of the devastation on Bajor, but no one mentioned that the station itself—”
Picard cut him off. “Unfortunately, as Starfleet officers we do not always have the luxury of serving in an ideal environment.”
Sisko did not back down from the polite rebuke. “I realize that, sir. And I’m investigating the possibility of returning to Earth for civilian service.” It was almost the truth. He had investigated the possibility and had found nothing as yet; he resolved to renew the search immediately.
Picard drew back from him with disapproval. “Perhaps Starfleet Command should begin to consider a replacement for you.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Sisko said flatly.
Seconds passed as the two regarded each other with veiled hostility. And then Picard replied slowly, “I’ll look into it. In the meantime . . . ” The coldness faded from his eyes and voice, replaced by muted pain. Sisko knew that the captain was struggling to find the right words to broach the subject of Wolf 359.
Sisko rose abruptly. When he entered the room, he had wanted nothing more than to tell the captain how he had suffered at Locutus’s hands. Now he wanted nothing more than to leave, to let each man confront his own ghosts alone, in peace. “In the meantime,” he
said quietly, “I’ll do the job I’ve been ordered to do to the best of my ability, sir. Thank you for the briefing.”
He locked eyes with Picard and waited to be dismissed.
Picard studied him for a long time, clearly not wishing to end the conversation. The captain’s expression was taut, controlled, but Ben Sisko detected a faint, fleeting glimmer of anguish in his eyes and knew Picard saw the same in Sisko’s own.
“Dismissed,” Picard said at last.

As the doors closed behind Ben Sisko, Jean-Luc Picard sank back into his seat and stared distractedly at his padd for a few seconds, then lifted his gaze to the planet Bajor.
Nearly two years had passed since his last nightmare—more recollection, really, than creative dream—about the experience with the Borg. He did not allow such memories often. In fact, he had repressed them so successfully that, as he had studied Ben Sisko’s service record before their meeting, he had ignored the slight subconscious unease he felt at the mention of the Saratoga.
How could he have forgotten, failed to make the connection? He had been at Wolf 359 in full consciousness as Locutus. And as Picard, trapped and helpless while his knowledge was stripped from him and used to annihilate his fellow officers, a reality far worse than any terror met in dreams.
He closed his eyes and heard the voice of the Borg, a thousand thundering voices that spoke as one:
Captain Jean-Luc Picard, you lead the strongest ship of the Federation fleet. You speak for your people . . . 
And his own reply, confident and utterly naive: I have nothing to say to you! And I will resist you with my last ounce of strength!
Strength is irrelevant, the Borg had replied. Resistance is futile. We
wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.
He had been human then, prideful and strong, or so he had thought, and he had been outraged by his abduction and by the Borg’s mindless arrogance. Impossible! he had cried. My culture is based on freedom and self-determination!
Freedom is irrelevant, the Borg had answered implacably. Self-determination is irrelevant. You must comply.
We would rather die, Picard had said. He had been foolish enough to think that death was the worst fate the Borg could inflict upon him, upon all of humankind, but the chilling answer had come:
Death is irrelevant. Your archaic cultures are authority-driven. To facilitate our introduction into your societies, it has been decided that a human voice will speak for us in all communications. You have been chosen to be that voice . . . 
And so he had been Changed, his brain and body mechanically and surgically altered so that his consciousness was embraced and absorbed by the Borg group mind. And in their infinite disregard for suffering, the Borg did not do him the kindness of blotting out the consciousness that was Picard; he had been forced to experience it all, to hear himself speak as Locotus at the Borg’s prompting, unable to control his body, his voice, unable to hide his knowledge of Starfleet strategy and weapons from them. Picard had been there and had watched in horror as first the Melbourne was destroyed, and then the Saratoga and the Kyushu and the Tolstoi and the Gage and thirty-five other starships. . . .
How could he have forgotten the Saratoga?
Picard’s memory moved to a time, weeks later, when he had returned to Earth to recuperate from the trauma. He shuddered at
the recollection of his confession to his brother, Robert: They used me to kill and destroy. And I could not stop them. I tried so hard . . . but I just wasn’t strong enough. Not good enough . . . 
They had been sitting in the dirt in the family vineyard, both of them covered with mud after an all-out fistfight; it was the first time in years that Picard had wept openly, tears streaming down his cheeks, the taste of salt mingling with that of earth.
Robert had regarded him in solemn silence for a moment and then said: So. My brother is a human being after all. This is going to be with you a long time, Jean-Luc, a long time . . . 
A long time, three years. He had been fortunate to pass them without being forced to confront a survivor of Wolf 359; but then, there had been so few.
So few . . . 
With a sudden chill he recalled Sisko’s mention of raising a son alone. Picard opened his eyes.
“Computer,” he ordered hoarsely, focusing his gaze on Bajor. “Personal file on Benjamin Sisko, commander. The name of his deceased wife and the cause of her death.”
A pause, and then the uninflected response: “Jennifer Sisko, lieutenant. Expired Stardate 44002.3 aboard the Saratoga—”
“That will be sufficient,” Picard whispered, staring at the space station hub through the window. He drew a hand across his forehead.
Jennifer Sisko, lieutenant. Wife of Benjamin, mother of Jacob. And how many others?
Remember: The Borg, not you, committed the crimes. You wanted to stop them. You tried . . . 
Yes. I tried. And I failed. And it was my knowledge they used to help them kill so quickly, so efficiently.
The helplessness—that had been the most horrifying part of it all. He had always possessed a strong, confident personality, always been in control of himself, had known since boyhood that he wanted to command a starship and had never let anything stop him from achieving his goal. But he had been forced to watch with mute rage and pain as the Borg used his body, his voice, to threaten and his mind to kill. The helplessness had been the worst of all.
Yet, as Counselor Troi had reminded him gently three years ago, he was not helpless now. He could not change the facts of his mental violation by the Borg, could not bring Jennifer Sisko and all the others back from the dead.
But he could find a way to help Benjamin Sisko and his motherless son.
Picard stood. His experience with the Borg had been different from Sisko’s, but he understood something of what the man was going through. He had wrestled with some of the same demons, had come very close to resigning his commission in an effort to retreat from past horrors.
He hoped that Sisko managed to overcome those demons; otherwise, Starfleet would lose a fine officer.
Yet whether Sisko decided to leave or stay, he would find his way smoothed by an anonymous benefactor; and as long as Picard lived, young Jacob Sisko would be given every possible assistance in his chosen career. He would help them both however he could.
Picard gazed at the exotic Cardassian design of the space station for a full minute, then turned his back on it and left.
CHAPTER
4
IN THE SECURITY OFFICE at the space station, Odo settled himself at his desk and gave his attention to the work on his data pad, actively ignoring the little Ferengi, Quark, who sat fidgeting nearby. 
Odo disliked Quark. Odo disliked Ferengis in general. They approved of dishonesty and thievery, and Quark was especially obnoxious because of his simpering demeanor when Odo knew very well that the Ferengi would slip a dagger into his back, given the opportunity. Odo believed very strongly in justice and honesty; it was a part of his being, like breathing or eating or shifting shape. He knew the Ferengi mocked such beliefs, another good reason to dislike them. 
But then, Odo disliked everyone. 
Except Major Kira. He got along well with her because, like him, she believed in total, blunt honesty and refused to waste time with empty, polite words and protocol. One always knew where one stood with Kira. 
He was not sure what to make of this Sisko. He had seen how the Starfleet commander looked at him after the brief demonstration
demonstration of his shape-shifting ability, knew that Sisko had wondered about his unfinished face, but hadn’t asked. Odo hadn’t decided whether to be insulted or grateful at the human’s polite silence, but he knew Sisko wondered what sort of a being his new security officer was. 
Odo wondered himself; he had no memory whatsoever of his origin or of his people. Fifty years ago he had been discovered alone in an alien spacecraft near the Denorios Asteroid Belt. The Bajora had taken him in and treated him like one of their own. 
His true form, to which he returned each night, was that of a shapeless gelatinous mass, but to assimilate, he had been obliged to take on the form of a Bajoran. He had never been able to get the humanoid appearance quite right; his features seemed flattened, two-dimensional. Something about the cheekbones and the nose—especially the Bajoran scrollwork on the bridge, between the brows—always eluded him. Or perhaps his deep resentment at constantly living in a humanoid form made the change more difficult. 
He knew only one thing about his people: justice was such a significant part of them that it existed in his racial memory. Odo could not conceive of doing any work other than security; he had been the Bajoran law enforcement officer for Deep Space Nine under the Cardassians. Starfleet had allowed him to continue in that role, since no one else was so familiar with the station, especially the Promenade and those who frequented it. He had been grateful to keep his job, but he had been more than a little disgruntled at the thought of a Starfleet officer coming here to tell him what to do; even the Cardassians had been intelligent enough to allow him free rein. 
Odo had little regard for regulations. After all, laws came and went, were adapted and then discarded, but the spirit of justice was eternal. Major Kira had warned him about the regulation-crazy Starfleet
Starfleet types, and Odo had assumed that Commander Sisko would fit into this mold. He had been prepared to thoroughly dislike him. 
But Sisko had surprised him. The commander apparently had a brain and a sense of justice and knew how to use both. Odo knew he was planning something creative for the Ferengi, and approved. 
He glanced up as Sisko entered the room. 
“You wanted to see me?” the commander asked. His manner was curt, tense, as if he had just gone through a very difficult experience and was trying to mentally shake himself free from it, but then he caught sight of the Ferengi and the mood lifted. A glint of humor came into his eyes as he casually folded his arms and leaned against the bulkhead. 
Quark was on his feet, facing Sisko plaintively. “Commander, about my nephew—” 
“Well, well,” Sisko interrupted. “Mr. Quark. It’s good to see you’re still here.” He gestured broadly with exaggerated politeness. 
Odo repressed a smile as he pretended to return his attention to his datapad; Sisko was giving Quark some of his own smarmy medicine. 
“Have a seat, please,” the commander said. 
Quark swiveled his large rectangular head to glance at the chair behind him, then crawled back into it reluctantly. “Of course I’m still here, Commander. We’re not leaving until tomorrow, which is why it’s vital that we—” 
“I don’t think so,” Sisko said cheerfully. 
Quark’s wide mouth dropped open, revealing a row of wideset pointed teeth. “Wh-what?” 
“It’s really quite simple, Quark. You’re not going to leave.” 
Odo gave up all pretense of working and stared up at Sisko with surprised amusement.
The Ferengi emitted a hiss. “Not going to leave . . . ? But we’re all packed and ready to—” 
“Unpack.” Sisko’s tone brooked no argument. 
Quark leaned forward, mouth still gaping in disbelief. “Why would you want me to stay?” 
Odo could resist no longer. “I’m curious myself,” he admitted to the human. “The man is a gambler and a thief.” 
“I am not a thief,” Quark said in a comical attempt at wounded dignity. 
Odo gazed steadily at him. “You are a thief.” 
“If I am,” Quark said, “you haven’t been able to prove it in four years.” He smiled a sharp-toothed little smile that made Odo think of a hungry Bajoran sand dragon and of the holo he’d once seen of a Terran crocodile. 
Sisko did not return the smile; his voice became earnest. “My officers, the Bajoran engineers, and all their families depend on the shops and services of this Promenade. But if people like you abandon it, this is going to become a ghost town. We need someone to step forward and say, ‘I’m staying, I’m rebuilding.’ We need a community leader. And it’s going to be you, Quark.” 
“Me?” Quark marveled. “A community leader?” He glanced helplessly at Odo as if seeking reassurance that the commander was entirely mad. 
Odo settled back in his chair and grinned. Shrewd, this Benjamin Sisko, and not afraid to bend the rules creatively. To the Ferengi, he said, playing along, “You seem to have all the character references of a politician.” 
Quark failed to appreciate the humor; he spread his clawed hands and shook his head at Sisko. “How could I possibly operate my establishment under Starfleet rules of conduct?”
Good question; Odo turned to Sisko for the answer. 
Sisko gave a little shrug. “This is still a Bajoran station. We’re not here to administrate. You run honest games, you won’t have any problems from me.” 
“Honest games?” Quark growled with a disdain that offended Odo. “Hmph.” He folded his stubby arms in unconscious imitation of Sisko and fell silent. 
Sisko and Odo waited. 
At last the Ferengi shook his head. “Commander, I’ve made a career out of knowing when to leave. This Bajoran provisional government is far too provisional for my taste. And when governments fall, people like me are lined up and shot.” 
Sisko nodded with a bit too much sympathy and understanding, Odo thought; the commander turned to leave, stopped, paused thoughtfully in the doorway. “That poor kid,” he said softly, “is about to spend the best years of his life in a Bajoran prison. I’m a father myself. I know what your brother must be going through. The boy should be with his family, not in a cold jail cell.” He eyed the speechless Ferengi for an instant, then added, “Think about it.” 
And he turned and exited. Quark sat in his chair, stunned and gaping as the door closed behind Sisko’s retreating back. 
Odo smiled and turned conversationally toward the Ferengi. “You know, at first I didn’t think I was gonna like him.” 

Inside the Promenade, Kira shoveled rubble from the walkway into a nearby receptacle and stopped struggling to repress the memory of the dream. Physical labor always freed her mind to roam, but now it returned, as it had been fighting to all day, to the previous night’s dream. The more she worked, the more she began to recall. 
The rational part of her mind was convinced that none of them
belonged here on the Cardassian space station . . . yet when she thought with her pagh—or rather, when she simply didn’t think-she knew otherwise. 
Just as she had known in the dream last night, the same one she had been having for the past several nights. The dream about Sisko. 
Or perhaps she was only trying to convince herself it had been about Sisko. It had been about a man, a brown-skinned human with dark eyes and hair, a man who would become very important to her people. The Bajora needed help so desperately that many were claiming to have received knowledge that one would come to help, to bring hope: the stranger whose appearance had been predicted by the prophets. 
But Kira was by nature a cynic, and now she feared her people’s desperation and her own were clouding her judgment, making her believe in things that did not exist but were much desired. Where are the prophets now that we need them? she thought bitterly, thrusting the shovel into the ruins. 
And yet . . . when she thought with her pagh, not her mind, she could sense such amazing things in Sisko’s pagh that she almost believed, almost dared to hope . . . 
Sometimes she felt that her mind housed two different personas—the mystic and the skeptic—that were always at odds. No wonder her planet was in such a mess. 
If only Opaka would agree to see her; there were many things Kira wished to speak to her about. The dream was one of them. There had been another face in the dream, a Bajoran one, ancient and wise, haloed in silver-white. 
“Major?” 
The sound of her commander’s voice startled her. She turned at the questioning tone, realized he was curious about the shovel,
probably wondering whether such a task was appropriate for an officer. She shrugged, and the dream and the pagh were once again reduced to irrelevance; Sisko was no longer the prophesied stranger but a regulation-worshiping Starfleet type who irritated her. 
“Everyone else is busy repairing the primary systems,” Kira said, straightening to empty the shovel into the receptacle. She allowed her tone to become challenging. “I suppose Starfleet officers aren’t used to getting their hands dirty.” 
Sisko raised an eyebrow, then located a shovel, picked it up, and set to work. 
Kira turned her face away from him and pretended to be unimpressed, but she found herself trusting him enough to mention her past, a compliment she had thus far reserved for Odo. “In the refugee camps,” she said, “we learned to do whatever had to be done. It didn’t matter who you were.” 
They worked silently for a time; then Sisko spoke. “I was just talking to our good neighbor, Quark. He’s laying odds the provisional government’s going to fall.” 
Kira acknowledged the comment with a nod. “Quark knows a sure bet when he sees it.” Sisko turned his head sharply to stare at her. She shrugged. “This government will be gone in a week. And so will you.” So her common sense said; but hadn’t the dream said otherwise? 
Sisko hurled a shovelful of trash into the receptacle. “What happens to Bajor then?” 
“Civil war,” Kira said, trying to ignore the emotions, the horror, evoked by those two words. The thought filled her with bitterness; now that the Cardassians had gone, after ransacking the planet, her own people would start fighting in the ruins, destroying what little
was left. “The politicians are too busy drawing their maps to see what has to be done.” 
“And what’s that?” 
“Nothing Starfleet can help us with.” She hesitated, wondering how much information she should impart to this stranger, dream or no dream. At his sincerely interested gaze, she said at last, “The only one who can prevent a civil war is Opaka.” 
“Opaka?” 
“Our spiritual leader. She’s known as the Kai. Our religion is the only thing that holds my people together. If she would call for unity, they would listen.” She set down the shovel and bent over to pick up some small fragments from the walkway; Sisko knelt beside her to help. 
“Leaders of all the factions have been trying to get to her,” Kira said softly, “but she lives in seclusion and rarely sees anyone.” 
Sisko considered this, tilting his angular face. “Perhaps she would be more receptive if someone from the Federation asked to meet with her.” 
Kira looked up at him. “You?” She made a soft sound of disbelief. “Believe me, she has no more use for the Federation than I do.” 
A shadow fell over both of them; Kira glanced up, startled, into a face haloed by silver—the wise, ancient face from her dream. 

Ben Sisko stared up, thinking he had fallen back into the dream in which the omniscient Bajoran woman extended her long, gentle fingers toward his cheek. 
(Breathe, Jennifer said) 
But the face that hovered above him and Kira was male, older, familiar—that of the white-haired monk who had welcomed him to the Bajoran temple.
“Commander.” The aged Bajoran’s countenance was placid, his voice full of the knowledge that Sisko had been aware for some time of the inevitability of this encounter, and of what would follow. “It is time.” He turned his robed back, trusting the human to follow, and began to stride through the wreckage. 
Sisko’s heart beat faster. He stood up, mesmerized, and for a second, no more, stared after the old monk. Odd emotions tugged at him, emotions he had thought were long buried, emotions that had surfaced during the dream. 
(Breathe) 
He glanced down to see Kira staring up at him in frank amazement; her face flickered, became Jennifer’s. Sisko blinked and the apparition vanished. 
He would talk to the Kai in order to help the Bajorans, he told himself. In order to do his duty as a Starfleet officer, and nothing more. These were rational reasons: then why did the monk’s appearance and Kira’s mention of Kai Opaka tug so at his heart? 
Sisko drew a breath, set down his shovel, and followed. 

They transported planetside, where a bright midday sun shone on the ruins: scorched earth, dead and dying foliage, the burned-out shells of buildings. 
As Sisko walked along the rubble-strewn streets, the sights made him flash on a memory: himself in the Saratoga’s escape pod, staring out at the burned-out hulls of dead starships. But this was devastation on an even greater scale; Sisko had never personally witnessed such destruction. He felt a pang of guilt at his outrage over the comparatively minor damage to the station. 
A few buildings had been spared—all of them rounded, spherical, soft, and graceful, more harmonious with the natural surroundings
than the harsher, outrageous angles of the Cardassian structures. The monk led Sisko to one of them, a temple or monastery, Sisko guessed, from the elaborate stone carvings at the entryway. 
The massive stone structure’s interior was dim, shadowed, illuminated only by the sunlight that streamed through cracks and holes in the walls. Sisko was shocked by the damage, the desecration of what was clearly one of the holiest places to the Bajora: windows had been smashed, interior walls knocked out, religious statues beheaded. 
Yet the Cardassians had not succeeded in destroying the aura of serene contemplation, of sanctuary, that permeated the site. His guide led him past one monk who chanted mournfully amid the ruins and another who, hobbled by injuries, painstakingly patched an exterior wall. 
“Commander Sisko.” 
A feminine voice. He turned toward the sound, toward the shadowed form of a woman. Sunlight filtered between them, glittering with airborne dust. Sisko held his breath as the woman from his dream stepped forward, emerging from the darkness like the ghostly figures of the Saratoga’s wounded. 
She was Bajoran, middle-aged, dressed in a bright sheath, and she was injured. She limped, supporting herself on a cane as she moved toward her visitor, and her face was badly bruised; Sisko saw the pain of the entire Bajoran race carried there. Yet this woman’s face shone with an interior radiance, an inner peace that no enemy could violate. 
Sisko understood the sadness and envied the calm. 
Kai Opaka smiled faintly, gesturing at the ruins surrounding them. “I apologize for the conditions in which we greet you.” 
“The Cardassians?” Sisko asked. It was not really a question.
Kai Opaka answered with a knowing gaze as she moved haltingly across the stone floor. Sisko repressed an urge to offer a hand in support—the Kai’s dignity discouraged it—and followed her deeper into the monastery. 
“Desecrating the center of our spiritual life was a way to strike at the heart of the Bajoran people,” Opaka said. 
She led him to a contemplation area, where carved wooden benches formed a semicircle around a reflecting pool. Above it, windows looked out onto a distant range of mountains, serene and inviolate, their images shimmering across the still surface of the pool. 
Opaka settled herself carefully onto one of the benches; Sisko sat beside her. She turned to him with a small smile. “Your arrival has been greatly anticipated.” 
Sisko forced himself to recover from the strange surge of emotion caused by the memory of the dream, forced himself to react strictly as a representative of the Federation. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said, all Startleet business. “If Bajor can join the Federation it will bring stability—” 
“I do not speak of the Federation,” the Kai interrupted firmly. “I speak of your arrival.” 
“Mine?” Sisko felt a ripple of fear; he suddenly wanted to flee this mysterious woman. 
Opaka reached out with long, gentle fingers and cupped one side of Sisko’s face, studying him as an old woman might admire the face of a beloved grandchild. “Have you ever explored your pagh, Commander?” 
“Pagh?” Sisko wanted to pull back, flee from her touch; he wanted to draw closer, to trust. 
Her hand moved delicately, firmly, to Sisko’s ear, one finger
slowly traced the outer rim. “Bajorans draw courage from their spiritual life. Our life-force, our pagh, is replenished by the prophets.” 
The radiance in her eyes grew as her finger moved. She stared in frank wonder at Sisko, as if she had just witnessed the most amazing of miracles. With a sudden move, she squeezed Sisko’s earlobe. He jerked his head, startled at the intense pain. 
“Breathe,” Opaka said. 
(Jennifer) 
Sisko drew back, suddenly uncomfortable, frightened because of the emotion evoked by that simple touch: grief. 
(Jennifer) 
(She’s gone, Hranok said) 
He wanted the Kai to learn no more of him, Ben Sisko the man; he tried to return the conversations to political matters. “Kai Opaka, if we could discuss your role in the post-Cardassian transition . . . ” 
“Breathe,” Opaka insisted. 
Sisko gasped in a lungful air and realized he had been holding his breath. 
Opaka ran her fingers back up the outer rim of Sisko’s ear. “Ironic,” she said thoughtfully, more to herself than to Sisko. “One who does not wish to be among us is to be the emissary.” 
Sisko stiffened. Was his lack of interest, his desire to leave Deep Space Nine, so obvious? 
The Kai leaned closer, studying each millimeter of his face. After a full minute of silence, she drew back. “There is much to be learned from your pagh, Commander.” She leaned on her cane and pushed herself to a standing position. “Please come with me.” 
Sisko rose as Opaka removed a tiny control from the folds of her robe and touched it. 
The reflecting pool disappeared—a hologram—revealing a carved
stone stairwell leading downward. Sisko followed her down into a secret cavern, untouched by the Cardassians, primitively illumined by rows of flickering candles nestled in hollowed-out stone shelves. 
The cavern evoked a sense of déjà vu in Sisko; he tried to remember whether he had been here before, in the dream. 
At the base of the stairs, Opaka turned to him, balancing her weight on the cane. “You are correct that Bajor is in grave jeopardy . . . as grave as any crisis in our history. But the threat to our spiritual life far outweighs any other.” 
“Perhaps,” Sisko responded, “but I’m powerless unless I have a unified—” 
Opaka cut him off. “I cannot give you what you deny yourself.” 
Sisko frowned, mystified. “I’m sorry . . . ?” 
“Look for solutions from within, Commander.” At Sisko’s puzzled expression, the Kai limped across the stone floor to a carved box that reminded him strongly of holos he’d seen of the Hebrew Ark of the Covenant. With a skillful touch she removed the lid and stepped back so that Sisko could see. 
He moved closer, feeling the strange pull of the contents of the ark. Suspended inside a forcefield, a shimmering double orb of pure radiant energy floated; Opaka’s face glowed green with reflected light as she stared down reverently at it. It looked like a revolving hourglass, Sisko thought, or the mathematical symbol for infinity. Forever. 
“What is it?” Sisko asked softly, swiveling his head to see that Opaka had retreated even farther from him; she stood now with her hand on a wall panel. 
“The tear of the prophet,” Opaka said. She pressed the panel, and a passageway opened in the stone. She stepped inside; the passageway
passageway disappeared. Alone in the cavern now, Sisko turned, startled, ready to cry out her name. . . .
The cavern dimmed, then brightened with a strange greenish light. 
Sisko returned his gaze to the ark. The forcefield surrounding the glowing infinity orb had vanished. The orb itself had brightened, increased in size, started to spin. As Sisko stared in amazement, it began to spin faster, all the while growing larger, larger, until the ark could no longer contain it and it spun out into the room, enveloping him with a force more fearsomely powerful than that of a cyclone. The light brightened to blinding intensity, blotting out the sight of the ark, the cavern, everything except itself. Sisko cried out and closed his eyes, but still the light increased to a level beyond physical pain. . . .
And then it faded. He opened his eyes tentatively, expecting to see the shadows of blindness or, at the very least, a green afterimage imposed on the walls of the cavern. 
No shadows. No afterimage. No cavern. Sisko blinked, stared out at a vast expanse of white sand framing blue water and blue sky, drew in a lungful of air and tasted brine. He stared down at himself and saw not a Starfleet uniform but his own body, younger, leaner, clad in a bathing suit he had long ago forgotten owning. 
He nearly dropped the tray of drinks in his hand—three glasses of lemonade. 
“What the hell . . . Opaka?” 
Two bathing suit-clad passersby shot him an odd look. Sisko fell silent, meditating on the strange sense of familiarity, of déjà vu, that he was experiencing now, the same feeling he’d had upon meeting Opaka. 
His meditation was interrupted by the swift, certain conviction
that his feet were being scalded by hot sand. Hologram or not, the sensation was real. 
“Ahh . . . aaaahhhh!” Sisko pranced on tiptoe, eyeing the area around him. The water was too distant, but he spied a nearby beach blanket. Sisko leapt for it, inadvertently kicking sand on the supine sunbather who lay there. 
“Hey!” The woman rolled over onto her side, clutching an unfastened bathing suit top to her breasts, dark brows knit tightly above her sunglasses. 
“I’m sorry,” Sisko said, feeling completely confused and ridiculous. “It’s just that the sand was burning my—” 
At the sight of her face, he broke off and sank slowly, slowly to his knees, pierced to the heart. He had forgotten how utterly beautiful she had been. 
“Jen . . . Jennifer?” he whispered. He stretched out his free hand toward her. The woman recoiled, uncertain, as Sisko gently removed the sunglasses. Jennifer’s gold-flecked brown eyes squinted at him in the harsh light without a glimmer of recognition. 
“Yes? I’m sorry . . . Did we meet last night at George’s party?” 
“George?” Sisko repeated dully, too numbed to make sense of her words. “Jennifer . . . wait a minute. This is impossible.” He struggled to his feet, sloshing lemonade onto the tray. 
Jennifer’s mistrust had turned to concern. “Are you okay?” 
Sisko swiveled his head, looking in nightmarish confusion for Opaka, the cavern, the glowing green orb. . . . “What are you doing here? What am I doing here?” 
Jennifer sat up, still clutching the bathing suit top. “You really should wear a cap when you’re out in the sun.” 
“I know this place,” Sisko told himself in amazement. “This is Gilgo Beach, where we met.”
Now it was Jennifer’s turn to grow confused. “We’ve met here . . . before?” 
“I was carrying”—Sisko looked down at the tray—“three glasses of lemonade. . . .” 
Her forehead puckered; she maneuvered the suit top into place and fastened it. 
“My feet were burning,” Sisko continued, growing excited as everything came rushing back in memory. “I stopped here. Do you understand how incredible this is? No, of course you don’t. Jennifer.” 
He stared at her, overwhelmed by her nearness, wanting to touch her, to explain everything to her, to tell her how tall Jake had grown in the last three years, how much like his mother the boy had become. . . . 
But she would not understand. In fact, she would think him insane. Sisko contented himself with staring at her face, her beautiful face, and struggled not to be swept away by a tide of emotion. After a time the silence grew awkward; she shifted, clearly uncomfortable. If he did not reassure her, she would ask him to leave. Sisko cast about for something, anything, to say. The best he could come up with was “Have a lemonade.” He shoved the tray at her. 
She drew back, mistrustful, but the undercurrent of amusement in her tone gave him hope. “Sorry. I don’t accept drinks from strange men on the beach.” She pushed herself up onto graceful legs and strode out to the water’s edge. Sisko set the tray on the blanket and followed. 
She ignored him at first, but did not protest as he walked beside her. The cool water foamed as tiny waves broke over their feet. The beach stretched out before them, a white are of sand disappearing into an infinite horizon of sea.
Jennifer spoke at last. “Tell me the truth. Did we really meet before?” 
Sisko studied her. How could he tell her the truth—that she was some sort of hallucination or holographic projection? How could he tell her about their marriage, their son, her death aboard the Saratoga? 
He told the truth as it had been, that first meeting on Gilgo Beach. “No.” 
She shook her head and flashed him a big shy Jennifer-smile. “So how did you know my name?” 
“I . . . ” Sisko foundered, then made up a lie, then remembered with amazement that the lie had actually been the truth in the past. “George told me.” 
“Then you were at the party last night.” 
“Late . . . ” He paused, remembering. “I got there late . . . and you were just leaving . . . ” 
The Jennifer-smile widened. “Are you going to tell me your name?” 
“Oh.” He returned the grin, allowed himself to slip into that long-ago conversation, into the rhythm of the past, allowed himself to enjoy Jennifer as she had been, young and strong and beautiful. Did it really matter that she was not real? She was here. “Ben Sisko. I . . . I just graduated from Starfleet Academy. I’m waiting for my first posting.” 
“A junior officer?” Jennifer’s eyes narrowed; her tone grew teasing. “My mother warned me to watch out for junior officers.” 
“Your mother’s going to adore me,” Sisko said without thinking. 
She threw her head back, grinning at his impudence. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.” 
“It’s not every day you meet the girl you’re going to marry.”
She stopped in her tracks, surf breaking around her ankles, and laughed out loud; overhead, a seabird cried. “Do you use this routine with a lot of women?” 
“No,” Sisko answered truthfully. “Never before. And never again.” 
“Sure,” Jennifer said, her tone still teasing; she glanced away, but he caught the glimmer of a deeper emotion in her eyes and knew that he had touched her, that she believed him. 
“How about letting me cook dinner for you tonight?” Sisko asked impulsively, yet knowing with hidden astonishment that he was speaking the very same words he had uttered fifteen years before. “My father was a gourmet chef. I’ll make his famous aubergine stew.” 
A flicker of uncertainty, of mistrust, crossed her features as she stared out at the horizon. “I don’t know . . . ” 
“You’re supposed to say yes,” Sisko prompted, smiling; the thought of reliving that first dinner with Jennifer filled him with lightness. If he could only remain here forever, in the past . . . 
Behind them, above Jennifer’s head, the air shimmered, filled with greenish light: the orb. Sisko’s hope became tainted with grief. This was not real. This was illusion, a hologram, a trick of Opaka’s; Jennifer was dead and he was speaking with a shadow, a ghost of memory. He would be forced to return to the empty present. 
He wanted to clutch her, to take her with him and never let her go, but he could not bring himself to touch her for fear of grasping only nothingness and salt-scented air. . . .
Jennifer’s voice drew him back to unreality. “I’ll probably be sorry.” She shook her head and grinned. 
The orb began to spin, bathing the beach in light. 
“Jennifer—” Sisko began urgently, struggling to reach out for her, but the glowing force surrounded him. “No . . . wait!”
Jennifer, the sand, the water, disappeared in a blaze of green that was brighter and more painful to Sisko’s eyes than the explosion that had torn the Saratoga apart. He felt himself enveloped by the orb’s mysterious energy, swept back into the present. 
He opened his eyes and found himself once again in the dim candlelit cavern, Opaka beside him. They stared down at the infinity-orb, nestled safely inside the ark. 
“Is it some sort of holographic device?” he asked unevenly. His legs trembled, threatened to give out beneath him. 
“No,” Opaka said, her eyes shining with reflected light. “What you experienced barely begins to reveal its powers.” She closed the lid of the ark, blotting out the glow, and turned to him in the dimness. “This orb appeared in the skies over a thousand years ago. Eight others have been discovered since. They have been studied and documented for a millennium. Tradition says they were sent from the Celestial Temple. What they have taught us has shaped our theology.” 
She lifted the ark and gently handed it to Sisko, then said in a voice laced with meaning and emotion, “I entrust this to you.” 
Sisko stiffened. “Why?” 
“It will lead you to the Temple.” 
“Excuse me?” He felt suddenly foolish; he had been hypnotized, that was all, and Opaka was taking advantage of his deepest emotions in order to persuade him to fulfill some ridiculous Bajoran prophecy. 
She must have sensed his fear. She straightened, her wounded leg forgotten, and repeated firmly, “It must lead you to the Celestial Temple so that you can warn the prophets.” 
Sisko eyed her skeptically. “Warn them about what?” 
“The Cardassians took the other eight orbs. They will stop at
nothing to decipher their powers, even if it means discovering where they came from. If they do, they might destroy the Celestial Temple itself . . . which could mean the spiritual disintegration of Bajor.” 
He shook his head, took a step backward. “To expect me to go off on some sort of . . . of quest?” 
Opaka leaned toward him, her tone and posture emphatic. “I cannot unite my people until I know that the prophets have been forewarned.” 
Her gaze was unyielding; Sisko heard the message loud and clear: Do this or I will not help you. And then a small sympathetic smile softened her features. 
“You will seek the prophets,” she said knowingly. “In the end, not for Bajor and not for the Federation . . . but for yourself. For your own pagh. It is, Commander, the journey you have always been destined to take.”
CHAPTER
5
MILES O’ BRIEN walked into his quarters aboard the Enterprise for the last time. The outer room had been stripped of all of his and Keiko’s belongings; out of habit, O’Brien stared down at his feet, to avoid tripping over any of Molly’s toys, but the deck was clean, and echoed uncomfortably beneath his heels.
“Keiko?”
No reply. O’Brien passed through the empty living room into the bedroom, where Keiko sat on the bed in the dark, Molly asleep in her arms. She did not look up as he approached; as he neared, the light from the living room glistened off the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“What’s this?” O’Brien asked softly, with a pang of guilt. “Aw, honey, don’t.” He sat down beside her on the bed; she did not react. “We talked about this.”
Keiko stared down at her sleeping child. O’Brien heard the guilt, the fear of being selfish, in her hushed reply. “I’m still wondering what a botanist is going to do on a Bajoran space station.”
He tried to cheer her up with humor. “From the looks of the
place, the Cardassians must think sterility is an art form. You could turn it into a garden.” The thought had occurred to him earlier, when he had stood inside the grim quarters assigned them; Keiko would find a way to make the place warm and livable—a formidable challenge.
His attempt at humor didn’t work. She gazed up at him in the darkness, all seriousness. “I don’t need busywork, Miles. I have a career on the Enterprise. I’m happy here. We met each other here. . . .” Her voice trailed off.
O’Brien sighed, unable to think of anything else to say to comfort her. It was Keiko who had insisted that he take the promotion and the transfer to Deep Space Nine, and Miles who had worried that Keiko would be unhappy there. Now that the deed was done, their positions were reversed: O’Brien was looking forward to the challenge of bringing the station back to working order, and Keiko was having second thoughts—but nothing could be done to change the situation now.
“I love you,” O’Brien said simply.
It was the right thing to say. Keiko smiled sadly and placed a hand on his, carefully so as not to disturb the child. “I’ll be fine once we get settled.”
O’Brien nodded sympathetically. “Are you all packed?”
“Everything’s been sent over.”
“Why don’t you take the baby?” O’Brien said. “I’ll be along in a couple of minutes. There are a few things I still need to do.”

The bridge was still on the night-watch shift. O’Brien stepped out of the turbolift and walked along the aft station, feeling awkward, thinking he had made a mistake to come there. But he could not bring himself to leave without saying good-bye to the Enterprise.
The lieutenant in charge, Suarez, noticed and seemed to understand. “The captain’s in the ready room, Chief. Should I tell him you’re here?”
O’Brien hesitated. He felt he should say good-bye to the captain, but the meeting would be painful; better he should simply slip out unnoticed. He shook his head. “That’s okay. Thanks.”
He took one last look around the bridge, then retreated to the turbolift and took it down to Transporter Room Three.
“Transport me to the Ops pad, Maggie,” he said, with false cheerfulness, to the new transporter chief.
“Yes, sir.” Maggie smiled her farewell as O’Brien moved toward the pad.
A voice spoke behind him. “Mr. O’Brien.”
O’Brien turned to face Captain Picard.
“I believe I just missed you on the bridge,” Picard said.
“Yes, sir,” O’Brien admitted guiltily. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Picard motioned for the transporter chief to leave; once the doors had closed behind Maggie, his demeanor became more relaxed. “Your favorite transporter room, isn’t it?” he asked softly.
O’Brien nodded, glad to see the captain once more, but anxious for the uncomfortable encounter to be over. “Number three, yes, sir;”
Picard did not quite smile. “You know, yesterday I called down here and asked for you without thinking. It won’t be quite the same.”
O’Brien shrugged. “It’s just a transporter room, sir.”
Picard finally smiled at that, and O’Brien had to grin, too, at his pathetic attempt to avoid admitting how he felt about leaving his old station, about leaving the Enterprise.
An awkward pause followed, and then O’Brien asked, “Permission to disembark, Captain?”
Picard straightened. “Permission granted.”
O’Brien stepped onto the pad; Picard moved to the console. They exchanged a look.
“Energize,” O’Brien said, when he could bear it no more. Picard pressed the control.
O’Brien watched his past dissolve in a shimmer of light.

After securing the Bajoran ark and its mysterious contents in the science lab, Sisko stepped inside his quarters, dark save for starlight filtering through the portholes.
His experience with Opaka and the orb had left him with a sense of wonder that was still undimmed. The relived memory of that first encounter with Jennifer on Gilgo Beach had been as wonderful as it was painful; he could not shake the feeling that it had been more than a memory, that he had really been there, with Jennifer, in the past.
And he could not shake the feeling that the experience and the Kai’s prophecy were somehow related, somehow deeply meaningful.
You will seek the prophets . . . not for Bajor and not for the Federation, but for yourself. It is the journey you have always been destined to take.
It was foolish, he knew, to give any credence to such religious ravings, to attach anything other than purely scientific significance to the orb and to the strange experience it was capable of evoking; but for the first time since his arrival, he felt a sense of purpose, a sense of being where he was supposed to be. . . .
Correction. Make that for the first time since Jennifer’s death.
Sisko groped his way in the darkness through the vast outer quarters
quarters toward the smaller inner room, taking care to make no sound; Jake was a notoriously light sleeper, waking at the slightest sound. He stole into the inner room, where his son lay, fully clothed, on his stomach, sound asleep on the floor cushion—head to one side, dark brows furrowed, full lips parted.
Sisko knelt beside him, smiling at the soft, regular sighing sound, not quite a snore. The recent sight of Jennifer, fifteen years younger, brought home the resemblance between the two resoundingly; the realization brought more wistful fondness than pain. And it brought guilt as well. Had Opaka’s insistence that he was Bajor’s long-awaited savior appealed to his ego? Was that the real reason he was suddenly considering staying? Ego or not, he had to put Jake’s interests first.
Sisko gently untangled the blanket from around the boy’s feet and pulled it up to Jake’s shoulders.
True to form, Jake opened big, sleepy eyes and frowned up at his father, not really awake. “What?”
“I was just thinking,” Sisko said softly, smiling down at his son, “how much you look like your mom.”
The frown melted into a shy Jennifer-smile, then faded altogether as Jake’s eyelids closed. Sisko rose and headed for the outer room.
In the archway his comm badge signaled. “Kira to Sisko.”
He closed the door softly behind him before responding. “Go ahead, Major.”
Her voice held a clear note of amusement. “Sorry to disturb you, Commander. But there’s something on the Promenade you might want to see.”

The lift opened to the strains of raucous alien music. Sisko took
one step forward, stopped . . . and let a grin spread slowly over his features.
On the darkened Promenade, one kiosk shone like a beacon: Quark’s casino. Sisko ambled down the freshly swept walkway watching the handful of pedestrians—a few Bajora, a few other shopkeepers, a few spacefarers from docked vessels—hurry toward their bright destination.
Inside, the casino showed few signs of Cardassian devastation. A huge spinning vertical wheel—the Ferengi version of roulette, Sisko guessed—whirled under the guidance of Quark’s Ferengi pit boss.
“Fortune’s fates are with you today, friends,” the pit boss announced in an amusingly unctuous nasal voice. “Prompt wagers, please.” He leaned forward to hear the whispered question of a Bajoran officer, then straightened up. “I’m sorry, madam, Quark’s casino does not accept travelers’ vouchers. Gold or hard currency, please. Final wagers . . . ”
Sisko shook his head, still grinning, and elbowed his way through the smoke-filled room, past crowded gaming tables. As he passed one table, a voice cried, “Dabo!” followed by a chorus of groans. Sisko craned his neck, searching for Quark and simply taking in the sights. On a central podium, a musician played a triple keyboard; nearby, a giggling couple was being escorted up the stairs to a sexual holosuite. Sisko made his way to the bar and started slightly when Quark appeared on the other side.
The Ferengi offered up a snaggle-toothed smile. “What’ll you have, Commander?”
Sisko placed a hand on the polished bar and glanced approvingly over his shoulder at the crowd, then back at Quark. “How’s the local synthale?”
Quark added new wrinkles to his already generously creased nose.
“You won’t like it.” The Ferengi reached for a glass and began drawing a drink from beneath the bar. At Sisko’s mildly quizzical reaction, he lowered his voice conspiratorially and added, “I love the Bajorans. Such a deeply spiritual culture. But they make a dreadful ale. Don’t ever trust an ale from a God-fearing people.” He slammed the glass on the bar in front of Sisko. “Or a Starfleet commander who has one of your relatives in jail.”
Quark leaned forward over the bar and wrinkled his brow ridge as he examined Sisko’s face closely. “Are you sure you have no Ferengi blood?”
“None I’ll admit to.” Sisko permitted himself a slight smile. “All right, Quark, you’ve kept your part of the bargain. Let’s talk.”

Inside the vast dark quarters, Jake lay awake for some time after his father left. He stared out at the stars through observation windows shaped like strange alien eyes.
The mention of his mother had surprised him. Dad didn’t speak about her often, though Jake knew that he, like his son, thought about her all the time. At times, the past three years seemed like three days, as if Mom had simply been away on a long trip. Sometimes when Jake couldn’t sleep, he would close his eyes and imagine his mother walking into the room, antigrav suitcase slung over one shoulder, arms spread, smiling. He could almost hear her voice: Miss me?
Yeah, Mom. Missed you awful . . . 
Sometimes he dreamed that she really did come back, suitcase over her shoulder, smiling and laughing, kneeling down so that he could run into her open arms and hug her tight and never let go.
With Dad beside her, laughing and grinning the way he never had in the past three years, she would explain how it had all been a
mistake, how she had not died on the Saratoga; that was someone else. After all, Jake had not actually seen her die; he hadn’t seen the body, right? The dream was so clear, so simple, so wonderful. Then he would wake, sobbing and giggling with relief that quickly turned to sorrow.
At other times, the past three years seemed like an eternity, especially when he thought about Dad. Their grief over Mom’s death seemed to both separate and unite them. Dad had grown fiercer in his love for Jake, and yet at the same time he had changed, become quieter, more distant. In three years Jake had not seen his father cry over his wife’s death, had not heard him speak of what actually happened that day on the Saratoga.
He remembered very little of that day, only that Mom had been off duty, classes had been canceled, and the children were all sent to their quarters because of the Borg. The teacher had been nervous, actually afraid, Jake had realized with wonder, but he hadn’t been frightened himself, until he hurried to his quarters and found Mom waiting for him there, wide-eyed with fear.
He had been too stupid to be scared. . . .
And then the firing began, and the ship started to shake like it was going to fly apart, and he had only the briefest memory of Mom putting her arms around him, holding him, telling him everything would be all right.
And then the explosion to end all explosions deafened him, threw him and Mom to the deck, and there was only a split second before consciousness winked out when he was aware the room was collapsing around them and a flaming bulkhead was bearing down on them. . . .
He came to in a starbase hospital room, Dad sitting woodenly beside him. He asked about Mom the minute he was able to speak.
Dad wasn’t able to answer . . . and in his father’s grief-stricken silence, Jake heard his worst fear confirmed. And he cried and cried and cried, more tears than he had ever thought himself capable of shedding during his entire life.
Dad had never wept. He just sat, mute and expressionless, and held Jake’s hand, and for the next three years he was never again the same. It was as if someone had drained all the life, all the joy, all the happiness, out of him, as if Dad had died, too, and an empty shell of a man had stayed behind to make sure Jake was fed and bathed and did his homework. He had tried to make his dad laugh, feel better, talk about what happened the day Mom died, but no matter what he did, there was no piercing that shell of grief.
Sometimes Jake felt he had lost both parents that day aboard the Saratoga.
The fear of Dad really dying, though, consumed Jake. If they could just go to someplace safe, someplace far away from Starfleet and the Borg and aliens and hidden danger . . . someplace like Earth. Mom and Dad were both from Earth; maybe being there again would cheer Dad up, make him the way he used to be.
Any place, even Planitia, would be better than this strange, awful space station.
Besides, the simple, awful truth was: if they hadn’t been in space, Mom would still be alive.
In his darker moments, the thought made Jake crazy with anger. He wanted to strike out, to hurt someone . . . and the nearest someone was Dad. After all, even though Dad kept promising to get an Earthside assignment, it hadn’t happened in three years. He obviously wasn’t trying hard enough. After Mom’s death, Dad didn’t care enough about anything to try hard. At times the sheer frustration of it made Jake cry like a little kid.
Dad wouldn’t do anything to save himself, protect himself, and now here they were in this dangerous place where there had just been a lot of fighting. Jake knew something awful was going to happen to Dad here; he knew it, and he knew there was nothing he could do to keep it from happening.
Or was there?
He had spent the day bored and restless in the gloomy quarters. Dad had brought along some instructional holos from Dr. Lamerson, Jake’s teacher on Planitia, so that Jake could finish his courses without interruption. But that wasn’t the same as being in the classroom in person. The other students weren’t there, and the Dr. Lamerson holo wasn’t programmed to answer all of Jake’s questions; the computer could, of course, but it didn’t know how to make its explanations sound as interesting as Dr. Lamerson’s.
So he’d finished up the day’s lesson and played some games with the computer, but then he’d grown terribly, terribly bored and sorry for himself. He had no one to play with and nothing to do; Dad was miserably unhappy and there was nothing Jake could do to cheer him up.
He didn’t want to be on this crummy old space station the Cardassians had trashed; he wanted to be on Earth, in a real class with kids his own age instead of with a brooding, grief-stricken father who had no time for him, but Starfleet and Dad just simply didn’t care about him, and the thought made him angry.
He wanted to get even, somehow, wanted to strike out and hurt someone, anyone, even Dad. If he’d been on a planet he would have run away, but there wasn’t anywhere to run to on this stupid station.
Jake sighed and tossed restlessly in the strange bed, kicking the covers down around his ankles, then sat up abruptly, frowning at
the stars as a thought occurred to him.
The Ferengi. There was a Ferengi his age, maybe a little older, right? He might know where to run to escape from trouble . . . or where to find some. Maybe he could show Jake how to get down to Bajor, and from there, Jake could find his way onto a shuttle and go all the way to Earth. Dad would have to listen then; he would have to come and get his son, and Jake would just refuse to let him leave.
In the quiet dark, it all seemed so simple.
Jake lay back down on the bed with a sigh, and resolved to find the Ferengi no later than tomorrow.

“Wake up, Miles,” Keiko said. “You’re having a dream.”
O’Brien lurched forward with a start and opened his eyes to find himself lying in his wife’s arms.
“Easy.” She drew back to avoid a collision, then leaned slowly forward again as he stilled. Even in the darkness, he could make out her face, soft and limned with starlight filtering down from the observation windows. The door to Molly’s room was open; he could hear the child’s gentle, sighing breath in the quiet.
He exhaled harshly and settled back against the pillows, his heart still beating rapidly from the adrenaline inspired by the dream. He did not want to recall it; he wanted only to orient himself, to know that he was with Keiko in the strange Cardassian bed, the one they had laughed about earlier that afternoon.
It looks like a sleigh, Keiko had said skeptically, as they stood looking down at it. An obnoxious canopied sleigh without legs . . . 
Well, perhaps we’d better test it to be sure it works, O’Brien had said in his serious-engineer voice, and she had fallen for it, as she always did, raising her head to look at him in surprise, only to break into giggles at the gleam in his eye.
He had been happy at that moment; the quarters still needed work to look like a home, but they already looked better, warmer, almost welcoming despite their alienness, simply because Keiko was in them. It was even better now that her things were here, silent reassurance that she would stay.
Soft, cool fingers stroked his forehead, easing the heat there. “Do you want to talk about it?” Keiko murmured drowsily.
“Did I . . . ” Still mildly confused, O’Brien let his head loll against his pillow and her arm as he looked about him at the strange room. “Did I—I woke you. I’m sorry. I didn’t kick you, did I?”
Keiko snuggled against his shoulder and shook her head, making a negative sound that ended in a small yawn. “You were singing, I think. And then you cried out. Did you have a nightmare?”
“Singing?” O’Brien asked, then fell silent, remembering. In the dream he had been on Setlik Three again. Captain Maxwell was there, and Keiko and Molly, and somehow Deep Space Nine and these very quarters were there, too. He and his former captain were having a wonderful reunion, drinking ale and singing: The minstrel boy to the war is gone, in the ranks of death you’ll find him . . . 
Suddenly a dream-Cardassian appeared from nowhere, phaser aimed directly at Keiko, who was holding the screaming Molly.
No! O’Brien shouted. Captain Maxwell threw him a phaser, and O’Brien fired without thought. He had no time to make sure it was set on stun and not kill. He watched in disbelief as the Cardassian was incinerated before his eyes. But Captain Maxwell was still smiling and lustily singing: His father’s sword he has girded on, and his wild harp slung behind him . . . 
In the bed, O’Brien ran his palm over his eyes. “Setlik,” he told Keiko hoarsely. He said no more; he did not want to frighten her by admitting to the sudden urgent fear he felt for her sake and Molly’s,
stemming from a ridiculous conviction that the station was in great danger from the Cardassians and that she and Molly were in imminent danger of death. He thought of Commander Sisko lying alone in his quarters without his wife and wondered if he, O’Brien, would be able to bear settling into this bed alone, without Keiko.
He shivered; she tightened her arms about him, and they were silent for a moment.
“It’s the station, of course,” Keiko said finally, firmly, in the same tone he had heard her use to soothe Molly after a nightmare. “Everywhere you look, you’re constantly reminded of the Cardassians. It’s little wonder you’re dreaming about them, Miles. I mean, look at you: you’re even sleeping in a Cardassian bed.”
“Well, then,” he said, pulling her to him, “we’d better do something to make it more our own and less the Cardassians’,” and she kissed him, giggling softly.

An hour later, as O’Brien fought to surrender to sleep, the song began silently repeating itself in his tired mind:
The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you’ll find him.
His father’s sword he has girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him.
And the voice changed from O’Brien’s to Stompie’s. Technician Will Kayden, his name had been, but to O’Brien and his peers he was known as Stompie, a nickname derived from his enthusiastic, percussive way of accompanying himself on the Celtic harp.
Against O’Brien’s closed eyelids, Stompie’s image coalesced and became as clear, as detailed, as a holograph, as if he were a breathing
flesh-and-blood man standing before O’Brien instead of a shade with an existence confined to memory. Stompie was tall but slight of build, with hair as orange as a carrot and a grin as wide as a starship. He was also young—awkwardly so—and so relieved to find a fellow Irishman aboard his very first starship that, as Captain Maxwell had so aptly put it, he hung on O’Brien like an eager puppy.
Miles didn’t mind. After all, he was glad at the sight of a countryman, too, and he appreciated the young man’s enthusiasm and warmth and passion for music. He and Stompie became loyal friends immediately; as Stompie said, true friends are recognized, not made.
In O’Brien’s memory, Stompie closed his freckled eyelids and began plucking his harp as he sang in his clear, emotion-laden tenor:
“Land of song,” said the warrior bard,
“Though all the world betrays thee,
One sword at least thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee.”
Stompie had sung that song in the rec lounge the night before Setlik, with O’Brien and Captain Maxwell and a cheerful group in attendance. O’Brien had been happy that night and had, along with Maxwell, raised his glass of ale and joined in the singing. The tune had been Stompie’s particular favorite, and so became O’Brien’s, too; but it was not until after the minstrel was gone that O’Brien found meaning in the lyrics.
That was two hours before they learned of Setlik, two hours before the Rutledge had been diverted from her course to attempt a rescue mission. It was a sleepless night for them all, knowing, as they did, that innocents would be slaughtered before the Rutledge
could arrive, and knowing also that facing the Cardassians meant facing death. Worst of all, there was the knowledge—for O’Brien and a select few—that Captain Maxwell’s wife and children were stationed on Setlik, and that all attempts at communication with them had failed.
By the time the Rutledge arrived, all communications with Setlik were out. Sensors indicated heavy casualties; the survivors had escaped to an outlying district and were still fleeing the Cardassians.
O’Brien read the faintest glimmer of hope and terror in his captain’s taut expression; Maxwell’s family lived in the outlying district.
They had to abandon their plan to scan for survivors and beam them to safety; without communications it was impossible to get a fix on them. Reluctantly, Maxwell handpicked a small squadron to beam down.
O’Brien was not surprised when Captain Maxwell insisted on beaming down to Setlik along with the other volunteers. It was irregular as hell, and the first officer registered her obligatory protest, but the halfhearted effort to stop him ended there. O’Brien and Stompie Will Kayden and Maxwell and a handful of others beamed down to Setlik.
Dawn at the outpost was beautiful; a bright orange sun rose up out of the mists into a purple sky. The air was cool and heavy with dew, and for an instant after they materialized in the deserted street, O’Brien heard only the early-morning quiet of a civilian neighborhood.
And then, in the distance, phasers whined. Captain Maxwell stiffened at the sound and turned toward Will Kayden, who lowered his somber freckled face toward his tricorder.
“Cardies,” Stompie said, stretching a long, thin arm to indicate the direction. “Less than a kilometer away. Moving in this direction
direction.” He turned the tricorder on the multifamily dwellings behind him and confirmed what the ship’s scans had already reported. “Civilians inside each one, sir.”
“Break up,” Maxwell said, and gestured toward the buildings. “Round up as many as you can and get them transported out of here. Volodzhe, Meier, Tsao, cover this block. Rendell, Lind, Garcia, take the next block. Stompie and O’Brien, come with me.”
The entrance to the building had been secured; O’Brien had to use his phaser to gain access. As they entered, they kept shouting reassurances that they were Starfleet—and hoping like hell the civilians believed them. The entrance opened onto a central living area and kitchen that serviced a dozen or so families and that led back to separate private apartments.
Maxwell gestured swiftly to the left, center, then right. “I’ll round them up from this direction. Chief, you go that way. Stompie, that way. Bring the civilians back to this central area on the double, and we’ll get them beamed to safety.”
Outside, the sound of phaser fire drew closer.
Beyond thought, O’Brien propelled himself down the hallway toward the apartment entrances, phaser at the ready. All too aware that those he was trying to save might mistake him for a Cardassian and fire at him, he kept shouting, “Starfleet! USS Rutledge. We’re here to evacuate you. Move quickly!”
A young woman, her eyes wide with fright, appeared in the doorway of the first apartment, a two-year-old boy in her arms. “The Rutledge? Captain Maxwell?”
O’Brien glanced at her over his shoulder as he hurried down the corridor. “Maxwell, yes.”
“Maria Huxley’s husband,” the woman said, breathless as she jogged behind him. “She’s here, in this building.”
Maxwell had known, then. O’Brien continued his search. In less than a minute he had assembled a group of three women and four children and returned with them to the living area. Stompie was just reappearing with his group, also women and children, and they listened for a moment to the drone of phasers growing closer, until it was just outside in the street. The woman who had asked about Captain Maxwell tightened her grip on her son, who began crying.
O’Brien allowed himself an impatient glance in the direction Maxwell had gone. “We can’t wait,” he said, tightening his grip on his phaser, and Stompie nodded, his expression calm as he smiled and reached forward to stroke the crying boy’s hair. The mother returned the smile uncertainly; the boy ceased weeping. O’Brien did not quite smile himself he pressed his comm insignia.
A sudden sound: metal slamming against metal. The sound, O’Brien knew, of the Cardassians kicking down the entryway at the far end of the building