Cerulean Stars - Chapter 147

Chapter 147 - Prophet Motive - Part 2

Stardate 48558.16 - July 23, 2371 - 17:28:53

Given the difficulties she vaguely remembered Quark had getting the Nagus to go along with things, Raine hadn’t been entirely sure Maih'da would be able to convince him to go along with the whole thing. Thankfully however, it seemed the servant hadn’t had any problems, as the two were in fact waiting for them at the entrance to docking bay one. 

“Grand Nagus.” Sisko greeted the Ferengi with a nod.

“Oh Commander,” Zek grinned. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Sisko briefly glanced over at Raine before letting out a sigh. “Yes well, when I heard you had found a Bajoran Orb I thought it might be prudent to come down myself.”

Zek turned and shot a disappointed look towards his servant. “You ruined the surprise! I was really looking forward to presenting the Orb to the Bajoran's as a gift.”

“It's all right Nagus,” Sisko put forward with a genial smile. “We haven't informed the Bajorans yet. Commander Brooks just needed to bring the issue to my early attention because of potential health and safety issues surrounding contact with the wormhole aliens.”

“Oh,” Zek nodded, his body language all but radiating thankful relief. “I suppose that makes sense.”

“So you can confirm you were in contact with them?” Sisko pressed, the slightest bit of edge creeping into his tone.

“Of course.” Zek confirmed with a nod. “I was hoping to convince them to part with some information about the future.” He let out a sigh before giving a self deprecating shake of his head. “I don't know what I was thinking going with the hard sell like that, but they weren't very happy about it and kicked me out.”

Sisko let out a sharp breath before glancing over at Raine who gave the man a somewhat sedate I told you so look in return. “And have you noticed anything… different since then?”

“Just a gnawing sense of guilt when I look back on some of my life choices.” Zek chuckled before holding up a finger and wagging it. “But I’m on track to make up for it, and when I do it’ll change the shape of the quadrant.”

That was enough to make Sisko flinch, and Raine took note of the complicated series of emotions that flitted across his features before settling into a resigned acceptance. “How about we start on that with me helping you apologize to the wormhole aliens?”

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They’d kept their departure from the station as low key as they could, which meant that the only one really aware of it was the Gamma shift duty officers who had handled the various procedures needed for the Nagus’s warp shuttle to exit the docking bay.

From there it had just been a matter of entering the wormhole and bringing the Nagus’s vessel to a stop while Maih'da brought the Orb out. 

“I wonder which one it is.” Sisko mused as he stared at the Ark sitting almost innocently on one of the ship's consoles.

“The Cardassian I bought it from didn’t know.” Zek offered helpfully.

Raine wracked her memory of what she’d been able to dig up about the various orbs. “The facing gemstones are glowing amethyst, so it’s probably the Orb of Wisdom.”

If she didn’t know for sure that it wasn’t the Orb of Time that would also have been an option, but unless there were more unknown Orb’s floating around it was only really Wisdom and Time that had possessed that purplish color.

“All right,” Sisko steeled himself with a breath before reaching towards the Ark.. “The rest of you are going to want to look away.”

The three of them followed Sisko directions, and with the click of the box opening the shuttle dissolved around Raine to be replaced by the inside of Kira’s quarters.

“Yeah… Okay… I’m not sure why we thought not looking would actually matter given we’re actually inside the wormhole…” She muttered under her breath as she looked around the slightly unreal feeling room before focusing on the couch where Kira herself seemed to be sitting in wait.

“You should not be here.” The prophet wearing Kira's face said.

“Are you talking about in the general or immediate sense?” Raine asked, frowning slightly since it really could be either given the complicated nature of her existence.

The world shifted again, and suddenly the Asari was sitting on one of the biobeds in the Defiant's med bay with Bashir standing next to her.

“Its existence is patchwork.” The Prophets wearing Bashir's face said, studying her with a darkly clinical look at odds with the actual Bashir's animated continence. “Too much does it touch the unbound.”

That was oddly ominous, and Raine waited a moment for him to maybe expand a bit before letting out a sigh. “If there's something wrong with my existence it's probably Q's fault. But I have no idea what an unbound is, so you're going to need to provide some context if you want me to understand.”

Once more her surroundings changed, and she glanced around to find herself sitting in the pilot's seat of a runabout.

“The unbound are those from your realm who are disconnected from what you consider linear time.” Kai Opaka offered, smiling slightly in the almost mysterious way Raine remembered from their few encounters. “We first began meeting them shortly after our encounter with the Sisko.”

“Oh,” Raine muttered in realization. “So probably Q.” She frowned slightly at the Prophet as the oddness of the answer fully registered. "You're one of the ones that regularly talk to the Bajoran's, aren't you?”

Opaka gave a small nod. “We are of Bajor.”

With those words the world shifted again, and Raine found herself sitting in Sisko's office as the Prophet borrowing his form stood behind the desk staring at the baseball in his hands as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

At last he looked up at her, and there was a glint of something the Asari couldn't quite place in his eye. “You knew the game's final score, why did you choose to change it?”

“I wanted to try for better.” Raine admitted with a shrug, not even remotely surprised the Prophets had been able to pick that out of her brain.

Sisko cocked his head. “But you do not know if it will be.”

“I don't.” Raine acknowledged, a small smile finding its way to the corner of her lips at the turn this had taken. 

It was a question she had asked herself more than once over the years after all. And why she had tried hard not to knock over anything that might be one of the big dominos during her time in Starfleet. 

“But I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't at least try.”

Hundreds of millions of dead in the Dominion War, hundreds of millions dead in the synth bombardment of Mars, billions dead from the Romulan supernova due to the evac failing, and uncountable trillions dead in The Burn. Any one of those things would have haunted her to the end of her days if she didn't at least make the attempt. And even if she only managed to blunt a single one of those tragedies, she would trudge up the black mountain at the end of her life with her head held high.

“It is not the score that matters, but how you play the game.” Sisko nodded in seeming understanding. “The Sisko believes similar.”

Raine furrowed her brow, not sure that was the exact analogy she would have used but unable to think of a better one. “I suppose that's close enough. Though I’m sorry to say not all of us corporeals think that way.”

“We are coming to understand that now.” Kai Opaka said as Raine once more found herself sitting in the Runabout. “Know, we will meet again.”

Raine’s eyes went wide at the clear dismissal. “Before you go could you at least tell us–”

“--what you call yourselves.” She finished with an annoyed sigh as found herself back on the Nagus’s shuttle.

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Benjamin found himself standing on a familiar beach, the feeling of fuzzy unreality that he recognized from his first encounter with the wormhole aliens persuasive enough now that he was able to keep himself from falling into the memory.

“You've returned.” Jennifer said, the familiar voice causing a muted pang in Benjamin's heart.

Looking up at him from her beach towel, Jennifer cocked her in an almost perplexed manner. “But not to here.”

Everything shifted, and Benjamin found himself standing in his quarters on Deep Space Nine wearing the apron he'd had on less than an hour ago.

“This is where you are now.” Jake said as he reached over to try and pluck one of the half cooked peppers from the skillet.

The wooden spoon Benjamin was holding shot out on instinct to tap him lightly on the knuckles. “Wait till they're done.”

He grimaced slightly at having lost himself in the wormhole alien’s odd reality for a moment. “Sorry, force of habit.”

Jake yanked his hand back before turning to offer Benjamin a happy grin. “It is a better place. One that has brought us to the middle of a new path.”

“But that's not why you're here,” Dax seemingly continued from behind him, and Benjamin turned to find himself standing in Quarks, the Trill looking up at him from her chair at the large table upon which a tango wheel was slowly spinning. “Even though a little wisdom would probably do you some good.”

“No,” Benjamin shook his head, glad he wouldn't need to figure out how to bring up the issue himself. “I'm here about the Ferengi who contacted you with the Orb.”

“The Zek,” Raine huffed, drawing Benjamin's attention to the bar where the Asari was nursing a drink. “He came to us wanting to know the outcome of the game before it was played. We could not understand why given the value you told us corporeal beings place on their linear existence.”

Benjamin held back the wince that came from hearing them misinterpret his words like that. “People value what may happen differently from what has already come to pass.”

“Yes.” Kira gave a curt nod of agreement from her seat on the opposite side of his office desk. “We are coming to understand that now. The Zek wanted to gain from what is to come. While the Raine wants what is to come to gain from her.”

Mentally filing that away to ask Brooks about later, Benjamin offered the alien a cautious nod of agreement. “Thankfully more of us tend towards the latter end of things then the former.”

“That is good,” Kira nodded. “The Zek's view was aggressive."

“Adversarial.” Dax continued as Benjamin once more found himself standing back in Quarks.

“Dangerous.” Raine added in unhappily. “We could not comprehend how any species could lead such a barren existence.”

“So you did something about it.” Benjamin followed along.

“We examined his species history.” Kira confirmed from the other side of his desk. “And discovered they had not always been as they are now.”

Raine looked up from her glass and smirked. “So we restored the Zek to an earlier, less adversarial state of existence.”

That was almost exactly what Benjamin had been afraid of given the similarities of Zek's personality change to a number of other Starfleet encounters with non-corporeal lifeforms.

“You said you examined his people's history?” He put forward as something about their earlier words began to bother him. “Then you know he's the leader of the Ferengi people?”

“He is like you.” Kira offered in seeming agreement.

“No,” Benjamin shook his head, glad his instinct was right. “I lead hundreds of other corporeals, Zek leads billions. And because of that the change you made to him will have far reaching consequences.”

Dax nodded. “It will make those the Zek leads less adversarial.”

That thought brought Benjamin up short, and he frowned slightly at the alien. “You've seen that?”

“The game is still being played.” Raine chided with an amused smile.

The urge to snap at the alien about how people's lives weren't a game was strong, but Benjamin clamped down on it, fully aware how little it was likely to help. “Still, I'd like to request you return Zek to the way he originally was.”

“Why?” Kira cocked her head, clearly perplexed over the request. “Do you yourself not find him preferable this way?”

A feeling of bemusement washed over Benjamin at the almost recognizable turn their conversation had taken. “What I think doesn't really matter, it's not my place to pass judgement on another culture's ways of life.”

Dax cocked her head. “But do you not judge those of Bajor?”

“That’s…” Benjamin grimaced, the realization settling in that he had in fact been doing just that when it came to certain matters. “Complicated, but it has to do with them seeing me as your Emissary.”

“You are the Sisko.” Kira stated in a tone that would brook no argument.

“But the needed wisdom has been granted.” Raine nodded. “So we will return to the Zek to what he was. But know that if his kind loses that wisdom and returns here we will not do so a second time.”

With those words Benjamin found himself back on the Nagus’s shuttle.

“What you call yourselves.” Raine voice rang out, only to for the Asari to follow the words up with an annoyed seeming sigh.

“Grand Nagus?” Benjamin asked as he turned to look at the Ferengi. 

“We speak of this to no one.” Zek stated, glaring at them with eyes that promised great financial suffering if word ever got out.

“Of course not,” Raine smiled at the Ferengi in a way that sent Benjamin's mind directly to red alert status. “Though of course, if you were planning to sell the Orb to Bajoran’s at a massively marked up price instead of doing something reasonable like trading it back to them in exchange for limited wormhole tariff exceptions. We would be duty bound to warn them about the newly discovered danger of this particular Orb.”

Zek frowned for a moment, before grinning at the Asari in a way that made Benjamin slump down slightly in relief. “A hard bargain as usual my dear, but I suppose it’s one I can work with.”

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Author’s Notes: There are potential wisdom insights for both Raine and Sisko in this, but we’ll have to see if they managed to figure them out. 

In other notes, yay! I managed to get this done in only two chapters!