“The Inamuri,” Ezri said. “The Prentara called the beings of the thoughtscape the Inamuri. And the clouds aren’t the thoughtscape; the clouds are an extension of the interface. That’s how Dax could commune with the Inamuri when I touched the substance.”
“‘Commune’?” Julian asked. “Not communicate?”
“No, there was no communication,” Ezri said. “Dax could sense the minds of the Inamuri, and their memories, and maybe even Prentara memories imprinted on or swallowed up by the Inamuri. And this story I’m telling…Dax didn’t learn all of this in this form; we’ve deduced it from what Dax did learn.”
“What happened to the Prentara?” Juarez asked.
“I don’t know,” Ezri said. “I don’t think even the Inamuri know. But we saw the probe’s readings. There’s nobody alive down there except for our people.”
“Maybe the subsequent pulses killed them,” Bowers suggested.
“But what are the pulses?”
“I think they’re the result of the Inamuri trying to push their way into our universe,” Ezri said.
“They may still be trying to fight the invasion into their domain,” Julian said.
“Yes,” Ezri said, the word invasionprompting Dax’s memory. “The Inamuri considered the Prentara to be invaders…but…” She searched for the remainder of the recollection. “…they also thought of them as saviors.”
“I don’t understand that,” Bowers said.
“Neither do I,” Ezri admitted. “But I know what we have to do to prevent any more pulses.” Again, all eyes in the room focused on her. “We have to close the interface,” she said.
Per Julian’s orders, Ezri would remain in the medical bay for at least another day—a recommendation perfectly acceptable to her. She felt fatigued beyond any measure she had ever known, even back during the war. Before she could sleep, though, she needed to complete the information load. Julian had provided her with a mild stimulant so that she could do so, but the effects had now begun to abate.
Ezri operated the padd in her hands and played back the last few sentences she had recorded. The clarity of one piece of data seemed suspect to her, and so she erased that part and rerecorded it. Then she listened to it again. Satisfied, she moved on to the final part of her tale.
While she worked at this task, she knew that Nog and his engineering team worked at another. Within an hour of Ezri’s contention that they had to close the thoughtscape interface, Nog had devised a means of doing just that. As she understood it, his plan involved triggering a series of explosive devices to detonate simultaneously in various dimensions of space, including subspace. The idea reminded Ezri of the “Houdini” mines that the Jem’Hadar had used against them at the siege of AR-558.
Nog had explained that each device would destroy a portion of the “walls” of the interface. If enough of the interface was destroyed at the same time, then the surrounding space in this universe would essentially cave in and permanently seal off the realm of the Inamuri. Nog had been specific about the number of devices—thirty-two—because if too few were detonated, then the energy of the Inamuri would be able to overcome the force of the collapsing space, and would instead widen the interface.
Once the devices had been completed, they would be loaded onto a probe, along with Ezri’s account of the Inamuri and the Prentara, and then the probe would be sent down to the planet’s surface. Keyed to lock on to human and Andorian life signs, or to land beside the interface if bioscans could not locate the crew, it would reach the site about half a day before the next pulse. That left more than enough time for the away team to set the devices in place, and retreat from the site to safety, before the multidimensional explosions closed the interface.
Ezri finished her recording, then worked the padd to transfer it onto an isolinear optical chip. “Julian,” she called. With Ezri out of danger, both Richter and Juarez had left the medical bay. Now, across the room, Julian turned from a console.
“Have you finished?” he asked, walking over to her. She held up the isolinear chip, which he took from the tips of her fingers. He slapped at his combadge. “Bashir to Nog.”
“Go ahead, Doctor,”came the lieutenant’s response.
“Lieutenant Dax has finished recording her data,” Julian reported.
“All right,”Nog said. “I’ll send somebody up for it. Nog out.”
Ezri felt herself outlasting the stimulant Julian had given her, but amid all the difficulties of the last week or so, a moment of playfulness suddenly asserted itself in her. “So,” she said.
“So?” Julian asked, looking down at her, his blue eyes peering into hers.
“I told you so,” Ezri said, referring to her belief that her contact with the object might help the crew stop the pulse.
“You did indeed,” Julian said, obviously picking up her meaning. “I guess that nine lifetimes of experience trump mere genetic engineering.”
“I guess so,” she said, and chuckled.
“You know, I’m proud of you,” he told her. His intense gaze held hers. “Not for being right about this, but for fighting to do what you thought needed to be done. For being strong enough to lead this crew even in the face of your own personal troubles.”
His words touched her deeply, because they meant that he had been able to see in her what she had striven to be. “Thank you,” she said, and she could not keep from smiling. Her eyes slipped closed for a second, and she forced them back open.
“It’s all right,” Julian said. “Get some rest…Captain.”
Captain,Ezri thought, the word like a medal pinned to her chest—or a couple of extra pips on her collar. It echoed in her mind as her eyes closed once more, and she imagined Julian’s voice saying it again as she fell asleep: Captain.
58
“I’m an idiot,” Quark pronounced. The words filled the almost empty room. Quark looked around and saw the few other people here glancing in his direction. He ignored them, and turned back to the person across the table from him.
“Hey, you’d know about that better’n I would,” Vic said, shrugging. The holographic singer returned his attention to his holographic breakfast. Quark peered over at his plate, then quickly looked away; the notion of eating flaky, dried-up grain fragments immersed in cow’s milk, even when the concoction was made out of photons and force fields, turned his stomach.
Hew-mons,Quark thought, but even as he did so, he knew that his revulsion was misplaced. Nothing and nobody disgusted him right now more than himself. “Yeah, well, trust me,” he told Vic. “I’m even more of an idiot right now than my simpleton brother.”
Vic lifted a flute of a bright orange liquid that looked quite a bit like pooncheenee,though without the reddish tint. Quark knew that the drink could not have been the Bajoran beverage, since this holoprogram ran period-specific. “You mean your brother who’s now in charge of the whole shebang back home?” Vic sipped at his drink, then set it back down.
“Not to mention ruining the entire Ferengi economy,” Quark moaned. “Thanks for reminding me.”
Vic shook his head slowly as he chewed noisily on his breakfast. “So that’s why you’re upset?” Vic asked. “’Cause your brother’s wreckin’ the out-of-town books?”
“I’m upset,” Quark said, “because there’s something going on here on the station, and I don’t know anything about it.”
“Hey, you can’t know everything, right?” Vic said.
Quark leaned forward across the table. “If it happens on this station,” he intoned, “I make it my business to know about it.” He sat back in his chair. “And if there’s profit to be had, then I make it my business.”