Star Trek Deep Space 9 Millenium 01The Fall of Terok Nor

Star Trek - DS9 - Fall of Terok Nor

At that moment, before the sky was opened, it was all a flurry of this and that and the everyday. But with

the Opening, there came a stillness, a pause in the endless avalanche of life, if you will, as if the stars

themselves whispered for us to turn away from what troubled us and glimpse what waited at our

journey's end. And the truth is, what the stars showed was no different from what we had already

suspected: There were many paths to that final destination, and even in the Temple of All That Had Been

and Was Still To Come, the place where all answers waited, it was up to us-to us-to choose our own

way.

-JAKE SISKO, Anslem

PROLOGUE

In the Hands of the Prophets

"THERE was another time," the Sisko says.

"It is not linear," Jake answers. The twelve-year-old boy dangles his fishing line in the quiet water of the

pond, rippling the reflections of towering trees, green fields, and the pure blue sky of Earth. The sun is

strong, and the rich scent of the bridge's sun-warmed wood makes uncounted summers happen all at

once for the Sisko.

"But it is, was, will be...." The Sisko falters with the syntax of eternity. His father plays the upright piano in

the restaurant in New Orleans as the Sisko plunges into the depths of the Fire Caves with Gul Dukat and

first takes his captain's chair on the bridge of the Starship Defiant, all within a single heartbeat- the same

heartbeat.

-The heartbeat of his unborn child, now grown,

now fulfilling a destiny unimaginable to the Sisko, a destiny now known to him, now unknown.

The Sisko laughs at the wonder of it all.

"You're laughing again," Jean-Luc Picard tells him in the ready room of the Enterprise, in orbit of Bajor.

The Sisko looks down at the old uniform he wears at this moment. The texture feels so real to him, even

as it dissolves beneath his fingers and he is in his bathing suit on the beach carrying lemonade to the

woman who will be/is/was his wife-still at this same moment.

"That is correct," Solok confirms. The young Vulcan walks beside the Sisko on the path leading from

Starfleet Academy's zero-G gymnasium to the cadets' residences. "All moments are the same."

"In this time," the Sisko says. He watches Boothby plant fall flowers by the statue of Admiral Chekov.

"But there are other times. That's my point." The gar-dener now prunes bushes for the spring.

"This is not logical" Solok says. His cadet's uni-form becomes that of a baseball player, and he tosses a

small white ball into the air, then catches it with the same hand an infinite number of times.

"Logic has no place here," the Sisko says. He reaches out and intercepts the ball even as Solok attempts

to catch it. "Because logic is linear."

"Some logic is absolute," Sarah Sisko says. She % stands by the viewport in the Sisko's quarters on

Deep Space 9, the radiance of the opening doorway to the Celestial Temple filtering through her hair.

Wormholes within wormholes. Temples within temples. An infinite regression. Or an eternal one.

"I think I finally know why I'm here," the Sisko says. "Why you... had to be certain my mother would

marry my father, give birth to me."

"You are the Sisko," Major Kira agrees. She stands at her station in Ops.

"You need me here," the Sisko says.

"You are the Sisko," Curzon Dax agrees, the vast spacedocks of Utopia Planitia orbiting with flawless

precision beyond the viewport of his shuttle.

"You need me here to teach you," the Sisko says.

Interruption.

The Sisko finds himself in the light space. Around him Sarah, Jake, Kira, Solok, Curzon, Worf, and

Admi-ral Ross.

"You have much to learn," the admiral says.

"Then shouldn't I already know it? "

"Your language is imperfect for these matters," Solok says.

"You have much to realize that you already know," Worf says.

"That you have always known," Jake says.

The Sisko holds up a finger, and each of his observers watches it, as he knows they will.

The Sisko regards their expectant faces and laughs again. "Look at you all," he exclaims. "You want to

know what I'm going to say next. Because you don't know! "

The Prophets are silent

The Sisko thinks of a thing, of a time, of a moment, makes it real.

And they are on the Promenade of Deep Space 9, as it is the day the Sisko first sets foot upon it.

The Sisko can smell stale smoke, hear the clamor of work crews. Feels what the Prophets cannot feel,

the... anticipation.

He leads them to the entrance of the Bajoran Temple.

"Since you do not know time, how can you know of

other times?" the Sisko asks, so much that is hidden now known to him.

As he knows they will, the Prophets continue their silence.

The Sisko holds out his hand to them. "Welcome, Prophets," the Sisko says with a smile. "Your Emissary

awaits you."

All enter the Temple then. Intendant Kira and Jadzia and Ezri, Jake and Kasidy, Weyoun and Damar,

Quark and Rom and Nog, Bashir and Garak, Vie and Worf, O'Brien and Keiko and Eddington and

Vash. All at the invitation of the Sisko.

It takes hours for them all to pass through, all in a single moment.

The last is the Sisko, poised on the threshold of the Temple.

He remembers his own words the first time he stands here.

"Another time."

An infinity of eternities in just two words. An infinity beyond the understanding of the Prophets.

Until now.

The Sisko enters the Temple.

Not to show them the beginning of things. Because that would be linear.

He enters the Temple to show them the end.

As it was.

As it is.

As it will be....

CHAPTER 1

on this day, like a beast with talons extended to claw through space itself, the Station stalked Bajor one

final time.

Viewed from high above, from orbit, the dark, curved docking arms angled sharply downward, as if

gouging the planet's surface to leave blood-red wounds of flame. And from each blazing gash of

destruction, wave after wave of ships lifted from the conquerors' camps and garrisons, on fiery,

untempered columns of full fusion exhaust.

As those ships exploded upward through the planet's smoke-filled atmosphere, the sonic booms of their

passing were like the echo of the death-screams of the ravished world they left behind. The jewel-like

sparkle of the departing ships' thrusters like the glitter-ing tears of that world's lost gods.

On this day, on this world, sixty years of butchery and brutality had at last come to an end.

But on the dark station that was Terok Nor, with viewports that flashed with phaser bursts and

shim-mered with the fire of its own inner destruction, there was still far worse to come.

On this day, the Day of Withdrawal, the Cardassians were leaving. But they had not left yet...

Held within the cold and patient silence of space, the Promenade of Terok Nor itself was a tumultuous

pocket universe of heat and noise and confusion.

The security gates that had bisected its circular path had by now collapsed, twisted by hammers and

wire-cutters and the frantically grasping hands of slaves set free. Glowing restraint conduits that once had

bound the gates now cracked and sparked and sent strobing flashes into the dense blue haze that choked

the air, still Cardassian-hot.

Hull plates resonated with the violent release of multiple, escaping shuttles and ships. A thrumming wall of

sound sprang up as departing soldiers phasered equipment too heavy to steal.

Decks shook as rampaging looters forced inter-nal doors and shattered windows. Among the empty

shelves of the Chemist's shop, a Bajoran lay dy-ing, Cardassian blood on his hands, Cardassian

bootprints on his back, his collaboration with the enemy no guarantee of safety in the madness of this

day.

Turbolifts whined and ladders rattled against their moorings. Officers shouted hoarse commands. Soldiers

cursed their victims. In counterpoint, a calm recorded voice recited the orders of the day. "Atten-

tion, all biorganic materials must be disposed of according to regulations. Attention...."

But on this day, the only response to that directive was the desperate, high-pitched shriek of a Ferengi in

fear for his life. And in fear for good reason.

Quark the barkeep kicked and fought and shrieked again, as the Cardassian soldiers, safe in their

scarred, hard-edged armor, dragged him from his bar, soiling and tearing his snug multicolored jacket.

Quark opened his eyes just long enough to recog-nize the scowling officer, Datar, a glinn, who waited for

him with a coil of ODN cable. In the same quick glimpse, he saw the antigrav lifter from a cargo bay

bobbing in the air nearby; he heard the soldiers as they mockingly chanted the last words he would hear

before he stood at the doors of the Divine Treasury to give a full accounting of his life-

"Dabo! Dabo! Dabo!"

Yet even as he faced his last minute of existence, Quark still couldn't help automatically tallying the

damages each time he heard a crash from his establish-ment as the Cardassian forces laid waste to it.

A sudden blow slammed Quark to the Promenade deck, and a quick, savage kick from a heavy leather

boot forestalled any thought of escape.

But even as he cried out in pain, Quark wondered if his brother and nephew had made it to a shuttle, and

if the Cardassians had found his latinum floor vault. He gasped in shock as he felt Glinn Datar's rough

hand claw at the sensitive lobes of his right ear, the viola-tion forcing him to his feet. In the same terrible

moment, Quark found himself wondering just why it was Cardassians always had such truly disgusting

breath.

"Quark!" the glinn growled at him. "You have no idea how it pains me to take my leave of you."

"All good things," Quark muttered as waves of incredible pain radiated from his crushed right ear lobe

and across his skull and neck.

Datar's swift, expert punch to the center of his stom-ach doubled Quark over, his lips gaping in vain for

even a mouthful of air.

"Relax, Quark," the glinn hissed, reaching out for Quark's earlobe again. "It's not necessary for you to

speak-ever again!"

Quark felt himself hauled up until he stared right into Datar's narrowed eyes. He felt his poor earlobe

throb painfully, already starting to swell.

"My men and I are going to make this a real farewell." The glinn nodded once and Quark felt huge hands

forcibly secure his shoulders and arms from behind. Datar addressed his soldiers as if reading from a

proclamation. "Quark of Terok Nor, you miserable mound of sluk scum: For the crime of rigging your

dabo table, for the crime of watering your drinks, short-timing the holosuites, inflating tabs, and... most of

all for the crime of being a Ferengi... I sentence you to death!"

Incredulous, Quark tried to plead his innocence, but his rasping exhortations were drowned out by the

cheers of the surrounding soldiers. He tried to blurt out the combination of his floor vault, the shuttle

access codes Rom and Nog were going to use to escape, even made-up names of resistance fighters, but

the sharp cutting pressure of the ODN cable Glin Datar suddenly wrapped around his neck ended any

chance he had of saying a word. Even the squeak that escaped him then registered as little more than a

soon-to-be-dead man's chocked-off wheeze.

Eyes bulging, each racing heartbeat thundering in bis cavernous ear tunnels, Quark could only watch as

two soldiers hooked the other end of the thick cable to the grappler on the cargo antigrav.

Datar slammed his hand on the antigrav's control and the meter-long device bucked up a few

centime-ters, steadied itself, then rose smoothly and slowly and inexorably, trailing cable until it passed

the Prome-nade's second level.

The cable snapped taut against Quark's neck, yank-ing him at last from the grip of the soldiers who had

held him. Kicking frantically, he felt a boot fly free. He grimaced in embarrassment as he realized his toes

were sticking through the holes worn in his foot wrap-pings. Hadn't his moogie told him to always wear

fresh underclothes?

Even Quark knew that was a foolish thought to have, especially at the moment in which he was draw-mg

his last breath. His fingers scrabbled at the cable around his neck, but it was too tight and in too many

layers for him to change the pressure.

Dimly through the pounding that now filled his bead, Quark could hear the soldiers' laughter and hoot-ing.

Even as his vision darkened, he raged at himself for having failed to predict how quickly the end of the

Occupation would come.

He had seen the signs, discussed it with his suppli-ers. Another month, he had concluded, perhaps two.

Time enough to profit from the Cardassian soldiers being shipped out, eager to convert their Bajoran

"sou-venirs" to more easily transportable latinum. He had even already booked his passage on a freighter

and-

-Dark stars sparkled at the rapidly shrinking edge of Quark's vision, as he mourned the deposit he had

paid to Captain Yates. Just then the roar of something large approaching-something loud and silent all at

the same time-swallowed the jeers of the Cardas-sians, and Quark felt himself fall, flooded with shock

that he was not ascending to the Divine Treasury but apparently on his way to the Debtors' Dungeon.

How could that be possible? He had lived a life of greed and self-absorption. How could he not be

rewarded with eternal dividends? He wanted to speak to someone in charge. He wanted to renegotiate

the deal. He wanted his moogie!

And then the back of the deck of the Promenade smacked into the back of his bulbous head and

scrawny neck.

Through starstruck vision, he saw the glow of a phaser emitter node by his chin, felt a searing flash of

heat at his neck, and then the constriction of the ODN cable was gone.

"Breathe!" a harsh voice shouted from some distant place.

"Moogie?" Quark whispered. His mother was about the only person he could think of who might have

any reason at all for saving him from the Cardassians.

Then Quark was roused from his lethargy by four nerve-sparking slaps across his face.

He wheezed with an enormous intake of breath, then choked as he saw who was saving him from the

Cardassians.

Another Cardassian!?

This new Cardassian, gray-skinned and cobra-necked like all the others, was someone Quark had never

seen before. He wore an ordinary soldier's uni-4. form but had the bearing and diction of an officer,

per-haps even of a gul. All this Quark observed in the split

second it took for the new Cardassian to haul him to Ms feet. As a barkeep, Quark was a firm believer

in the 194th Rule, and since he couldn't always know about every new customer before that customer

walked through the door, to protect his profits he had been required to become expert at deducing a

customer's likely needs and desires from but a moment's quick observation.

This Cardassian, for instance, would order vintage kanar, and would always know if the Saurian brandy

was watered. An officer and a gentleman. Quark (bought admiringly. Reflexively he considered the

likelihood of the Cardassian also needing wise and seasoned-and not inexpensive-investment help.

But then the gray stranger locked his free arm around Quark's neck to violently spin him around as he

fired his phaser at two other Cardassian soldiers across the Promenade at the entrance to the Temple.

Quark flopped like a child's doll in the stranger's grip. He goggled in surprise as he saw the body of Glinn

Datar sprawled on the deck nearby, smoke still curling up from the back of his head and adding to the

Hue haze that filled the Promenade. Cardassians fight-ing Cardassians? It made no sense. Especially

when it seemed they were fighting over him.

Suddenly Quark's captor crouched down and misted to return fire to the second level. Still held in a

stranglehold, Quark squealed as with an ear-bruising thump he was whacked backside-first against the

deck. Crackling phaser bursts lanced past him, blackening the Promenade's deck. The scent of burning

carpet now warred with the stench of spoiled food wafting along from the ruined freezers in the

Cardassian Cafe.

"... I'm going to be sick..." Quark whimpered.

But clearly, the Cardassian stranger didn't hear, or didn't care.

Quark felt his gorge begin to rise. Under other cir-cumstances, he woozily decided, he might wish he

were dead rather than feel the way he felt now. But he seemed too close to that alternative already.

"... I have a stomach neutralizer in my bar..." Quark mumbled hoarsely. He waved a hand vaguely in the

direction of an area behind his captor. If he could just get back to his bar....

But there was an abrupt lull in the phaser firefight, and the gray stranger jerked Quark to his feet. He

pointed spinward toward the jewelry shop-or what was left of the jewelry shop. "That way!" he shouted.

"As fast as you can!"

Protectively holding onto both of his oversize ears, Quark peered through the haze at what appeared to

be other figures hiding among the debris in front of the gem store. Their silhouettes were unmistakable.

More Cardassians.

"Could I ask a question?" Quark whispered.

The Cardassian glared at him, then shoved him down to the floor again and leaped to his feet, slam-ming

both hands together on his phaser as he fired blast after blast at a group of Cardassians suddenly

charging him from the other direction.

Quark risked looking up just long enough to see multiple shafts of disruptive energy blast his captor and

send him flying across the Promenade. Alone now, Quark acted on pure instinct and did what any

Ferengi would do.

He sped for his latinum, all injuries real and imag-ined forgotten.

Scuttling like a Ferengi banker crab, half crawling,

half running across the deck, he finally reached the door of his bar.

Quark rolled through the door and jumped to his feet once he was securely inside his own domain.

"Safe!" he cried out, then cursed as his one bootless foot trod on a piece of shattered glass.

Only after digging the glass out of his sole did he

think of looking over his shoulder. The scene was one of mayhem. The Promenade had become a full-

fledged war zone. Phaser fire streamed back and forth like lightning in the atmosphere of a gas giant. On

the

one hand, Quark had no problem with Cardassians killing Cardassians. Especially since it would be a

few days before he could get his bar reopened, so a few missing customers wouldn't be noticed. On the

other hand, could it be possible they were killing themselves over him?

"Get down, you fool!"

Quark whirled around at the guttural command. He had no idea where it came from, but the rough voice

was unmistakable.

"Odo?" Quark asked.

Suddenly, a humanoid hand shot out of a dark cor-ner behind the overturned dabo table, trailing a

qua-sitransparent golden shaft of shape-shifter flesh.

For an instant, Quark felt as if he were about to be engulfed by a Terran treefrog's tongue, then the hand

slurped around his already bruised neck and snapped him into the shadows.

With the enforced assistance, Quark somersaulted to a sitting position behind a tumble of broken chairs.

Automatically, his barkeep mind tabulated the poten-tial cost of the damage. Half of them would have to

be replaced, at two slips of latinum each. Three, he could

see, could probably be repaired for half a slip each. He might even be able to get a deal from Morn if he

could be persuaded to stay on the station. But the way Morn was always traveling around, never staying

put for two days in a row-

"Quark! Get your head down!"

Instantly, Quark flattened out on the floor beside Terok Kor's shape-shifting constable. Odo's

half-finished humanoid face, with its disturbingly small ears, stared ahead toward the front of the bar, as if

he were expecting an attack any moment.

"How long have you been here?" Quark hissed.

"An hour. Since Gul Dukat left the station."

Quark felt a rush of indignation. If Dukat was already safely evacuated, why were all these other

Cardassians still here? "You were hiding here when they dragged me out there?" he said accusingly.

Odo looked at him, nothing to hide. "Yes."

"Aren't you supposed to be the law on this station?"

"I am a duly appointed law-enforcement official."

"Doesn't that mean you're supposed to protect law-abiding citizens?"

"Your point would be?"

"They were going to kill me!"

"Yes," Odo said again.

Quark fairly vibrated with outrage as he tried to find the proper words to express his fury and sense of

betrayal. "Then why didn't you try to stop them?!" he finally said, adding sarcastically, "In your capacity,

that is, as a duly appointed law-enforcement official."

Odo shrugged as best he could for someone lying on his stomach among a cluster of broken bar chairs.

"A shrug?" Quark said. "That's your answer? The law doesn't apply to people like me? You're not a law-

enforcement official, you're the judge and jury too, is that it?"

As usual, Odo's eerily smooth visage revealed no emotion, only the weary resignation of a teacher forced

to repeat a lesson for the hundredth time. "Fifty-two hours ago, Terok Nor ceased to be a protec-torate

of the Bajoran Cooperative Government. Martial Jaw was declared under the provisions of the

Cardas-sian Uniform Code of Military Justice."

Quark waited... and waited... but Odo said noth-ing more, as if his most unsatisfactory explanation had

Been fully complete.

"And?" the Ferengi said in a state approaching apoplexy.

"Quark, I heard the charges the glinn read against you. You have rigged your dabo table. You do water

jour drinks. You short-time the holosuites and inflate the tabs you run for customers who have consumed

too much alcohol to be able to keep track of their spend-ing. Under military law, the Cardassians were

within their legal rights to execute you."

Quark's mouth opened and closed silently as if the ODN cable were wrapped around his neck once

more. The only words he managed to utter were, "But they were going to hang me for the crime of... of

being a Ferengi!"

Odo shrugged again. "Even the Cardassians are allowed poetic license." Then Odo held a finger to his

lips and nodded sharply at the main entrance to the bar.

Quark looked out to the Promenade. The firefight had stopped. It was too much to hope that both sides

had killed each other. Which could only mean one side or the other had won. "I hope someone steals

your bucket," he snarled at the shape-shifter.

His insolence, however justifiable, earned him a sharp jab in the ribs. Unfortunately in the very location

where the brutish Cardassians had kicked him.

Then three figures stepped into the bar.

Quark recognized them at once. They were the same three he had seen silhouetted by the gem store.

Which meant the loser in the fight he'd just survived had been the Cardassian who had tried to save him.

One of the three interlopers scanned the bar with a bulky Cardassian tricorder. It took only seconds for

him to point to the mound of chairs by the overturned dabo table.

A second of the three stepped forward. "Ferengi. Constable Odo. Step into the open, hands raised."

Quark looked at Odo. The shape-shifter had the expression of an addicted tongo player calculating the

odds of calling a successful roll.

"Step out now," the Cardassian threatened, "and you will have a chance to live. Remain where you are,

and you will certainly die."

"I'm convinced," Quark said and pushed himself to his feet, in spite of Odo's accusatory glare.

He frowned at the angry shape-shifter. "Oh, turn yourself into a broken chair or something." Then he

stepped forward, hands stretched overhead, wincing as his torn jacket sleeve momentarily brushed his

injured earlobe.

As Quark limped heavily toward the three Cardas-sians, he actually heard Odo step out from cover

behind him. But then his attention was diverted by another surprising observation that had escaped him

on first seeing the three strangers: These Cardassians weren't in uniforms. They were civilians. Three

young males clothed in drab shades of blue, brown, and gray,

without even the identity pins that might establish them as members of the Occupation bureaucracy or

diplomatic corps. Two of them, though-the ones in blue and brown-carried military-issue

phase-disrup-tor pistols, the housing of each weapon segmented like the abdomen of a golden beetle.

What is it about Car-dassians and bugs? Quark wondered. If he could just understand that about them,

he'd know exactly what

would tempt them to buy, and he'd corner yet another market missed by others.

But then Quark's soothing thoughts of profit were displaced by alarm as the gray-clad Cardassian shoved

tricorder like a weapon in the barkeep's face. This particular Cardassian was distinct from the others

because he was bald. Quark had never seen a bald Car-dassian before. In some ways, the sleekness of

the

Carrdassian's skull made the alien look more intelli-gent. Except, of course, for his pathetically small ears.

Not to mention the two secondary spinal cords running up the sides of his wide and flattened neck like

cables of a suspension bridge. And the spoon-shaped flap of gray flesh on his forehead that made him

look like a-

The light from the tricorder's small screen flashed a different set of colors across the bald Cardassian's

face. "This Ferengi's Quark."

The Cardassian in the blue tunic gestured at Quark

with his phaser. Quark noticed that his overgarment

was torn at the shoulder and smudged with black soot, as if its wearer had ripped it on burning debris.

"There are two other Ferengi on the station."

The Cardassian in blue didn't have to ask the obvi-ous question for Quark to decide to answer it. There

was no profit in withholding information for which they could easily torture him. "My brother and

nephew. They left on a shuttle as soon as we heard what was happening on Bajor." Quark was confident

he could carry off the lie. He had been dealing with the Cardassians-and the gelatinous Odo-long enough

to have developed a reasonably effective tongo face.

The Cardassian in the torn blue tunic stared at Quark a few moments longer, as if he expected the

Ferengi to suddenly break down and confess the real whereabouts of Rom and Nog. But since Quark

had no actual knowledge of where his cowardly brother and confused nephew were at this precise

moment, it was doubly easy to stare back with an expression of total innocence.

Star Trek Deep Space 9 Millenium 01The Fall of Terok Nor

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