The War of the Prophets by Judith Reeves-stevens & Garfield Reeves-stevens

Author:Judith Reeves-stevens & Garfield Reeves-stevens [Reeves-stevens, Judith & Reeves-stevens, Garfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, General
ISBN: 9780671024024
Google: OhZHqOtnWHQC
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2000-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Julian Bashir felt as if he were caught in a dream. The sense of unreality that had begun to envelop him as he had watched the briefing tape on the Augustus had become more than a minor sense of unease at the back of his mind. Now that he was on Mars, his apprehension was like a cloak that covered him completely, weighting each breath he took, obscuring his vision, masking his powers of analysis.

Even worse, at times he only felt human.

Of the fifteen temporal refugees who had heard Captain Nog’s proposal at Starbase 53, nine had volunteered to join Project Phoenix and lose themselves even more thoroughly in time.

Of the six who had declined, five had been the Bajorans among them—three members of the militia and two civilians. In all good conscience, they had honestly explained that they could not take action against B’hala and their own people, though they understood why Starfleet felt it must They requested instead that they be allowed to spend the next few weeks in prayer, so that they might put all their trust in the Prophets.

To Bashir’s relief, the Bajorans’ request had caused no consternation among Nog and his staff. Arrangements would be made, the Bajorans were told. Despite the War of the Prophets, their refusal had been accepted as simply as that. Some sense of Starfleet’s original decency, it seemed, still existed in this time.

The last holdout to refuse the mission was—to no one’s surprise—Vash. And also to no one’s surprise, the volatile archaeologist was not allowed to go anywhere or do anything except accompany the others to Utopia Planitia. Nog informed her that she would not be forced to join the crew of the Phoenix, but neither would she be released from custody until the end of “hostilities.”

Bashir recalled cringing at that euphemism, though he realized that the Ferengi captain had also felt uncomfortable using it. Under current conditions, such a term could refer to the approaching end of the universe as much as to the end of the great undeclared war against the Ascendancy.

Nog had subsequently left Starbase 53 on the same day he had first met with the temporal refugees, after an oddly tense dinner he shared with them. The spirited, private conversation Jake Sisko had with his aged childhood friend before they were all seated in the officer’s mess did not go unobserved by Bashir. Clearly there was some conflict between those two.

By itself, Bashir did not find such discord remarkable. No doubt there would be abandonment issues on both sides of the friendship: Why was it that Nog was left behind on the day that DS9 was destroyed? Why was it that Jake had apparently died, yet now lived again, full of the energy of youth, which Nog as a middle-aged Ferengi no doubt missed?

Yet something more had passed between the two friends and Bashir, for all his intellectual powers, had to admit his frustration that he had no way of determining just what that something more was.

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