She didn't know what had happened. There would be time for explanations later.
"Come on, Benjamin." Jadzia wrapped her arm around the commander's shoulders, bearing his weight against herself. In the few seconds that he had been gone, struck from existence by McHogue's hand, his strength had been drained from him; he could barely stand upright.
"Where . . . where's McHogue . . ."
She half-carried, half-dragged him toward the runabout. "I don't know." That much was true; the smiling, black-clothed figure had vanished as abruptly as Sisko had. "It's not important right now—"
Overhead, the sky had darkened with the return of the storm clouds; their first winds rushed through Moagitty's broken walls. The inlaid marble floors, spattered with blood, trembled from upwellings deep beneath Bajor's surface.
The runabout's door slid open, and she managed to dump Sisko sprawling into one of the seats. There wasn't time to strap him or herself into the restraining harnesses; she slapped the pilot controls, readying the thrusters for maximum force.
Sudden acceleration was enough to pin her against the seat's back. Without having plotted a course, Jadzia manually aimed the craft for the only opening she saw above them. Only when the Ganges had broken beyond the planet's atmosphere did she throttle back on the engines' force.
They were beyond the reach of something else as well. She felt something inside her, filling a hollowness as wide as her heart.
Welcome, child. The symbiont didn't need words to speak, its thoughts becoming her own again.
Beside her, Sisko stirred, his eyes dragging open for a moment. "Where are we . . . where are we going . . ."
Dax glanced over at him. "Home, Benjamin. We're going home."
He thought it to be a most peculiar thing. Where was everybody?
There had been so many of them here . . . and now they were all gone. McHogue looked around himself, wondering what had happened.
So many, and only one that wouldn't fit, that had to be gotten rid of. He had done that, out there on the station that was the other part of his world, and had come home to Moagitty. And found it empty.
Very peculiar . . .
Other changes had taken place in his absence. The broken walls had seemed to heal themselves, the domed ceiling again arching overhead. That was a good thing; he took a definite pride of ownership in the place. But none of his guests remained, none of his people, the lives that he had taken into his own and transformed into glory. No gamblers at the Dabo tables, the banks of holosuites all unoccupied; no one.
The odd thing, it occurred to him, was that there was no other place they could all be. This was the only world there was; there could be no other. He had seen to that.
He called out, voice echoing down the empty concourse, but there was no answer. So he would have to go find them. They had to be around somewhere.
McHogue started walking. The empty corridor stretched out before him, seemingly infinite. He realized he had no idea of how big it actually was.
He kept walking. He'd already decided that he would go on walking, for however long it might take. . . .
A FEW LAST QUESTIONS
CHAPTER 18
Major Kira Nerys stepped into the center of the Ops deck and gazed about herself. For a moment, it seemed to her as if she might still be mired in the dreaming that had accompanied her long sleep. The fatigue had drained from her at last, but had been replaced by a measure of guilt and surprise at discovering how long she had been out.
She looked with deep suspicion at the calm, orderly activity surrounding her. The last time she had been here, the very atmosphere had been electrified with the sense of crisis and impending disaster.
One of the comm technicians passed close by; she reached out and grabbed the tech's arm. "Did I miss something?"
In the commander's private office, Chief of Security Odo reviewed the statement that had been received from the Cardassian ruling council.
"Gul Dukat's formal apology—" Commander Sisko Pointed to the words on his desk's computer panel. "The line they've taken is that it was a rogue group of their scientists who had developed the new cortical-induction technology and supplied it to McHogue. Naturally, everyone involved will be severely punished."
Odo looked at the text on the screen with a cold eye. "In Cardassian society, failure is always accompanied by punishment. Its just a question of who receives it."
He watched as the commander nodded and blanked the panel. There had been other accounts, of measures taken and fates decided. The most satisfying had been the word received from Bajor, of the collapse of the Severalty Front and the reestablishment of the previous provisional government. At last report, the disgraced General Aur, chastened by experience, had resigned all positions and entered one of the contemplative religious orders that had formerly been headed by the Kai Opaka.
"Oh, and Dukat appended a personal message." The commander leaned back in his chair. "Seems that he intended to tell us about the trapdoors, the whole system of surreptitious access, when we first took over the station. It just slipped his mind, is all."
"The Gul's memory can be . . . convenient when necessary." Odo had firsthand knowledge of that. "If there's nothing else, I should be returning to my duties at the security office."
"Yes, of course, Constable; I didn't mean to detain you. Though I noticed, when I passed through the Promenade, that our friend Quark seemed rather upset about something. I would have thought that he'd be feeling pleased now, what with the effective eliminating of his competition."
Odo shrugged. "The Ferengi does not easily let go of any grievance. Something occurred a few shifts back, something not quite to his liking, and he requested my assistance in determining absolute proof of the culprits involved. So he could press for damages from certain, shall we say, responsible parties."
"Oh?" The commander raised an eyebrow. "And what did you tell him just now?"
"I told him that absolute certainty, at least in this existence, was not to be acquired. He would just have to do the best he could, with what knowledge he did have available to him." Odo gazed up at the office's ceiling, as though contemplating the tiresome sins of the universe's sentient species. "I'm afraid, Commander, that this is something you're going to hear more about."
He had been idly tossing up a baseball and catching it with his fielder's glove when his father came into their living quarters. Jake looked up at him.
"You look kind of tired," he said.
His father managed to raise a smile. "A little more than usual, I suppose."
For a moment, his father regarded the wooden crate that still sat in one corner of the room. Jake still wasn't sure exactly what was in the crate; he'd been told that it was stuff that had belonged to the Kai Opaka, down on Bajor. His dad would have to do something about it all, eventually.
But not just yet.
Weighed down with fatigue, his father sat, slumping into the couch with his eyes closed. Jake wondered if he was going to fall asleep right there.
He didn't. One eye opened, regarding Jake with an alert, sidelong gaze. "I have a question for you." As Jake watched, his father drew himself upright; he took out his data padd and turned its small display panel around. "Could you tell me why Quark would send me a bill for two dozen broken items of assorted glassware?"
Jake gazed at the laced spheroid sitting in the center of his glove's padding. "I can explain. . . ."
"You know," said his father, "I really don't think you have to." He set the data padd down on the low table before them. "Quark will just have to realize . . . that it's one of those games where anything might happen." He plucked the baseball from Jake's glove; with a quick snap of his wrist, he side-armed it down the living quarters' long hallway. It could be heard crashing off unseen objects.