At last.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
June 24, 2400
"Captain ... Sir ... something wrong? Captain! Benjamin!"
"Major?"
"Are you all right?"
"I was there."
"Sir?"
"B'hala. It was the eve of the Peldor Festival. I could hear them ringing the temple chimes."
"You were dreaming."
"No, I was there. I could smell the burning bateret leaves, taste the incense on the wind. I was standing in front of the Obelisk. And as I looked up, for a moment, I understood it all. B'hala ... the Orbs ... the Occupation ... the discovery of the Wormhole ... the coming war with the Dominion."
"You could see the future as well as the past?"
"And for one moment, I could see the pattern that held it all together."
"You had a pagh'tem'far — a sacred vision."
"I don't know what I had. But it felt... wonderful."
"The Prophets chose well when they made you their Emissary. So how does it all fit together?"
"I wish I knew. Someone woke me up."
***
Sabrina woke up in the middle of the night, wearing only her pajama pants. That's how she slept when Annie wasn't there, and her friend was on the Bridge at the time.
Only this wasn't the Captain's quarters.
Her bed had been carried in some kind of vast, very vast grass field with a few trees here and there. The grass was emerald green, the sky was so blue, almost azurite blue. The weather was reasonably warm, enough for her naked torso anyway, but the grass was cold and moist. "Probably the morning dew", she thought.
And then she thought again.
"Why am I feeling the grass?"
But before she could start thinking about it, she noticed something on her left. She walked to it. There, under the tree, was a table. On the table, a chess set. Not the 3D version popular since the late 22nd century, no, the old, classic version, which was played on an 8 by 8 two-dimensional chessboard. It was made of wood, and so were the pieces, of the classical Staunton design. The game had not started yet.
Sabrina knew how to play that game. She had been initiated by Boothby, who had "adopted" the lonely, shy little girl at her arrival to Starfleet Academy. Boothby had been her first father figure, until she had met Wilkins. In fact …
Yes! It was Boothby's set! She recognized the little scratch in the corner, not on the surface itself, but on the side. Boothby had told her that it had happened when he had thrown it at Picard's head, after he had won a game against him — the only game Boothby had ever lost during his tenure at Starfleet Academy.
Sabrina was so lost in her thoughts that she had already forgotten the cold of the grass under her bare feet, and had not noticed the characters coming to the table.
The human was not hard to identify. Black skin, bald as an eagle, goatee, Starfleet Captain's uniform, it could only be …
"Captain Sisko?"
The man looked at her, smiled and sat down on the white side.
Now the second guy was quite different. For one thing, he was not human but Cardassian. He wore the standard military uniform, and his posture betrayed a high ranking officer. He looked briefly at Sabrina and just said:
"The Sisko is of Bajor."
"Who are you?" Sabrina asked him.
"The Sisko is of Bajor."
"Yeah, I know Captain Sisko's family history, but …"
"The Sisko is of Bajor."
As the Cardassian said this, Sabrina felt herself tied by her wrists and suspended to a horizontal beam floating in the air. She was taken away from the table yet, strangely, she still could look at it very closely, as if her eyes were at the table.
Then the scenery changed, as all now were in some kind of large jail cell. Around the walls were suspended all kinds of tools, leather and metal alike. In the corner was someone, whom Sabrina couldn't identify, for he was wearing some kind of monk outfit, with a large hood covering his face.
The Cardassian, who was playing with the black pieces, moved first.
"You may not do that, Dukat."
As Sisko was saying that, Sabrina felt the multiple bites of a cat o' nine tails tearing her back. But she didn't scream. Somehow she couldn't. Yet the pain was excruciating.
The Cardassian Sisko had called Dukat had taken back his pawn. But he was not happy. He turned to Sabrina, who was trying to stay calm, and repeated:
"The Sisko is of Bajor."
Sabrina looked again, and lo and behold, Sisko had played his first move, a very classical Pawn to King 4. Then he looked at Sabrina and smiled. She tried to talk, but no sound came out of her throat.
Dukat played the Queen Pawn. But instead of simply moving it forward one or two squares, he moved it two squares forward and one square in diagonal, taking Sisko's pawn. Immediately the whip burned Sabrina's from the side of her breast, all around across her chest. She tried to scream, but the intense burn stopped her breath.
Sisko moved his Queen Pawn alongside Dukat's. As he let it go, the black pawn turned white. Again Sisko smiled at Sabrina.
"Those are very weak pieces", he told her.
Then Sisko stood up and came to Sabrina, who was trying to understand what was happening to her. He showed her another chess piece, unlike any she had ever seen. It looked like an hourglass, but clearly it wasn't one, as there was no sand and it was so small.
Sabrina was about to guess what it represented when Sisko added:
"You are of Bajor."
At that moment, Dukat jumped out of his seat, pushed Sisko apart and, as the Starfleet Captain fell down, he seized the cat o' nine tails and started furiously beating Sabrina's chest and belly with it. Again the poor girl tried to scream but couldn't, even as the whip ploughed through her flesh, burning every of her nerve endings as harshly and painfully as molten lava.
And then the scenery changed again.
***
The Mogai had just emerged from the Great Cordon. But something was not right. Now Teroth was taking a good look at T'Shiya, who was looking at the star charts, trying to find out the answer to the question her captain had asked here three hours earlier.
Teroth was ordinarily a very patient woman, but she liked to torture her so young Science Officer. So she was there, breathing in her neck, trying to make her uneasy. Was it possible to make a Vulcan feel uneasy?
"So, Lieutenant, have your cogitations produced any ray of light on our current situation?"
"No, Captain."
"So you cannot explain what happened?"
"No, Captain."
"In other words, you do not know? Please say it."
The little lieutenant lowered her head.
"I do not know what happened, I do not know what is in front of us or why it has that appearance, and I do not know where we are, Captain."
Teroth smiled.
"I did not think that I would live old enough to hear a Vulcan say that. Relax, Lieutenant, obviously this is a situation that requires more than logic. So your Romulan cousins will help you."
"Th … Thank you, Sir."
"Please recapitulate what you know."
"The space in which we are now seems to bathe in some conditions giving it the strange aspect we see in the viewer. As if the light was polarized and inverted. We cannot form a warp field. Our sensors catch nothing. Finally, we cannot find the thermobaric barrier that we just finished crossing."
"And which took us four days to come out of."
"Yes, Captain."
"What is the logical conclusion then, Lieutenant?"
"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. That is what Surak teaches us."
"And what remains?"
"We started on one side of the Great Cordon, but arrived where the other side should be and did not find it. Therefore, either we have been diverted somewhere else during the crossing or …"
"Or?"
"The Great Cordon has only one side or …"
"Or?"
"We are still in it."
