Lesser Evil Read online

  “We’ve Lost Primary Power in Ops,” Nguyen Said.

  “Auxiliaries have kicked in, but most of our systems are down.”

  “Can you get the primaries back up?” Lenaris asked.

  “Trying,” Nguyen said. “It looks like an override from somewhere…” He tapped different sequences into his control interface, then slammed his hands on the console in frustration. “I’m locked out. We no longer have control of the station.”

  “Then who does?” Akaar demanded.

  An electronic hum from the transporter stage gave him his answer. A figure materialized and took a single step forward, phaser in hand, surveying the operations center with a glare that, Lenaris thought, could melt neutronium.

  Ro Laren.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2002 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-4566-X

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Cover art by Cliff Nielsen

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com/st

  http://www.startrek.com

  It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

  It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

  And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

  Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,

  “ULYSSES”

  Prologue

  Smells were not, contrary to what most people believed, the most memorable things about kitchens. What stayed with a person, long after an aroma had faded, were the sounds. The clatter of pans, the crackle and snapping bubbles of oil boiling, the crisp, loud crunching snap of fresh vegetables cut on a worn chopping board, or of a stolen stem of celery chewed while a salad is prepared. Voices, laughing. It was, thought Judith Sisko, symphonic. It spoke to heart, and to soul, and it told a tale.

  As she stood at the foot of the stairs that led up to the family rooms above Sisko’s Creole Kitchen and thought back over the most vivid memories of her childhood, it was the sounds coming from the kitchen Judith remembered most vividly. Life centered around that place, not just because her father was a chef or that he ran the restaurant below their home, but because the kitchen was the place that everyone gathered to share news, and where her father somehow, no matter what the news was, always seemed able to make the worst moments feel happy.

  Sounds of life.

  So it was with a great sense of loss that she stood there now, in the place where she’d grown up, to find it utterly, desolately silent. The restaurant had been closed for weeks now. Where once Humans, Bolians, Vulcans, and a half-dozen other species had all eaten casually in the main dining area at any given time…now a fine layer of dust covered the bare wooden tables.

  “Can I fix you some breakfast?” a voice said, snapping Judith back.

  “Thanks, Gaby, but I’ll pass,” she said. Gabrielle Vicente was perhaps the only other constant for Judith at the restaurant. She almost always looked as she did now, dressed in a neatly pressed white shirt and pants. The only thing missing was her apron, which was invariably stained with okra and olive oil.

  Gaby walked past Judith on her way to the garden, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” she said. “I was going to head home after I tended to the vegetables, but if you need me to stay—”

  Judith smiled weakly and shook her head. “No, go home. You deserve to rest. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Judith nodded.

  “I’m just a call away if you need anything, anytime,” Gaby insisted.

  “I know. Thanks.” They hugged, and Gaby proceeded out back.

  Judith’s gaze followed the stairs up to the second floor. There was no putting this off. Her hand took hold of the great post that anchored the smooth wooden banister, and she started her ascent.

  Walking down the hallway next to the stairwell, Judith stopped at the closed door of the master bedroom, her hand hovering over the knob. She released a breath and opened the door.

  Sitting at the window overlooking the garden was her father.

  The first thing she noticed was how stooped his shoulders were. Sitting or standing, Dad always had his head held high, shoulders back, as if daring the world to push against him. Ramrod straight and facing whatever came his way, that’s what she remembered. His hair, always salt-and-peppered from the earliest images she had of him, was more white now than anything else, and the side of his face seemed tight, drawn. His arms had become so thin they practically disappeared in the sleeve of his loose-fitting shirt. She knew he’d been losing weight and wearing his age even before his collapse. He sat forward with his large, gnarled hands pressed together between his knees, looking out the window, like a caged bird who misses the sky.

  “Dad?” she said when the standing and staring was too much to keep doing. He didn’t answer, so she said it again.

  “The Crenshaws aren’t going to make it this season,” Joseph Sisko said without turning. “Some kind of grubs been chewing at the roots. Gaby tries hard, but she can’t stay ahead of them.”

  “Grubs need to eat, too,” she said.

  Dad nodded. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”

  Then Judith heard something she hadn’t since she arrived from Portland a few days earlier—a laugh. Slight, but it was there.

  “Nice to hear you laugh.”

  “It’s just strange not to hear someone nag at me about getting out of this room.”

  “I would if I thought it’d do any good. But you’ve always known your own mind.”

  “Finally, one of my children shows some sense,” Dad said.

  “You’re still thinking about Ben, aren’t you?” Judith asked. She’d hesitated mentioning her brother’s name before now, dancing around it whenever possible, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to be able not to mention him forever.

  Dad continued looking out the window. Several minutes passed before he spoke again. “You know, I’ve always worked that garden with my hands, from before you were born. With all the technology in the world—and believe me, I appreciate it all, in its place—that was the one place where nothing aside from water, sunshine, and time could make a difference. When Ben was a little boy, he used to go out there and wiggle his toes in the dirt. You, too, as I recall. It never seemed like those days would end.”

  “Ben knew the risks that came with his job, Dad,” Judith said gently. “We all did. The day he left for Starfleet Academy, we knew we might have to deal with the possibility that he’d never come home.”

  “Don’t talk to me about risks,” Dad snapped. “He wasn’t kill
ed by the Tzenkethi or vaporized by the Borg or blown to hell by the Dominion. Even that I could accept. I could make peace with it and move on. But he was taken from us, Judith. That damn planet and those so-called prophets took him away from everything he loves, and everyone that loves him. And still they weren’t satisfied. They had to take my grandson, too.”

  “We don’t know that, Dad. What happened to Jake, wherever he is, it may have nothing to do with Ben.

  He scowled at her. “Maybe you can convince yourself of that. I can’t. The boy’s ship disappears the moment it leaves for Earth, and you want me to believe it has nothing to do with that damned thing…that wormhole?

  Her father shook his head, muttering, “I told him not to take that assignment. Seven years ago, I told him. Stay on Mars, I said. Build ships. At least you’ll be close to Earth. Or forget Starfleet and just come home. He wasn’t over Jen’s death. He needed more time. But he went anyway, and what’s worse is that he took Jake with him to that floating junkyard. Now they’re both gone.” He buried his face in his hands. “God forgive me, sometimes I wish Ben had never been born.”

  “Dad, you don’t mean that—”

  “Sometimes I do,” he confessed, eyes welling with tears as he spoke. “I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. They did it, Judith. They made him. Used me and Sarah both just so we’d bring Ben into the world, so that years later they could use him. Like they used me. Like they’ve used all of us.”

  Judith took her father’s head in her hands and pulled him close as he wept. He seemed so much smaller now, so diminished.

  She recalled when her father had come to see her in Portland over a year ago—an unprecedented visit—just so he could try to explain the bizarre story he needed to share. How her late mother Rebecca had actually been Dad’s second wife, and not Ben’s mother at all. How Ben had learned the truth, that his birth mother Sarah had been the vessel for one of the alien entities who supposedly lived in the Bajoran wormhole, just so that Ben could be born to fulfill his destiny on the other side of the quadrant. It seemed impossible, even in a universe already teeming with unlikely wonders. Judith had not been sure she could believe it. But as her father told her his tale, she knew that he did.

  Ah, Ben…How do I make sense of this? To her, Benjamin Lafayette Sisko was nothing more or less than her gawky older brother: adorable as a child, infuriating as a teenager, a source of pride as a man. But there was nothing supernatural about him. He was the obnoxious brat who pushed her into the creek when she was nine. He was the mechanical genius who helped her construct their robotic skeleton float for that last Mardi Gras before he enrolled in the Academy, then blamed her when it fell drunkenly against the ornate wrought-iron railing on one of the balconies that lined Bourbon Street. (She never did get him to admit that he’d overloaded the servos, causing the float to veer off course as it walked.) And he was the awkward Starfleet ensign introducing his fiancée to the family for the first time. Judith remembered thinking she’d never seen a man so nervous as when Dad launched into stories of Ben’s mischievous youth…or a man more in love as Ben kissed the heads of Jennifer and their nursing newborn son the morning after Jake was born.

  When Jennifer died…Judith had known it was a wound from which Ben would never completely recover; it had been too brutal, and too closely tied to his life as a Starfleet officer for him not to believe he bore some responsibility for her death. After his reassignment to Utopia Planitia following a brief stint supervising construction of habitats in orbit of Earth, Judith made a point to visit him and Jake during her annual tour with the Martian Philharmonic. He’d been so distant, and she worried that the old connection between them was lost forever, as so much else had been lost when Jennifer died. But then after Jake had turned in, he came out to see her on his apartment’s observation deck, and as they both stood watching the red planet rotate overhead, he started talking.

  “I’ve been reassigned,” he began.

  She looked at him, knowing from the way he’d said it that he hadn’t meant he was going back to Earth. “Where are you headed?” she’d asked.

  “Bajor,” he’d said.

  “I don’t think I know it.”

  “No reason you should,” Ben told her. “It’s a Cardassian subject world. The Cardassians are withdrawing after fifty years of occupation. Now the Bajorans have petitioned the Federation for membership and invited Starfleet to help them administrate a space station the Cardassians are abandoning, for use as a Federation starbase.”

  “Cardassia…” Judith had repeated. That was a name she’d recognized. Ben’s new assignment would be taking him to the fringes of Federation space.

  “I’m to be the station commander,” Ben elaborated. “Starfleet needs someone to work with the Bajorans, help prepare them for entry into the Federation. They’re promoting me to full commander for the job.”

  “Why you?” Judith had asked.

  Ben had smiled grimly as he watched Olympus Mons come into view. “I’ve been asking myself the same question. I suspect one reason is all those years working with Curzon. They have this misplaced idea I’ve learned the fine art of diplomacy.”

  Judith had decided to ignore Ben’s modesty. “Is there another reason?”

  Ben sighed, then turned his gaze toward an EVA crew working on the hull of a nearby starship nestled inside the surrounding lattice of a repair scaffold. “I think they feel I’ve been back in drydock long enough.”

  “Have you told Dad yet?”

  Ben shook his head.

  “When do you leave?”

  He met her eyes for the first time that evening. “Jake and I ship out in three days.”

  “Three days?” she’d cried. “Were you even going to tell me if I hadn’t come to Mars? Ben, what the hell are you waiting for? How can you spring this on Dad with only three days’ notice?”

  “The orders came through yesterday,” Ben had explained. “I was planning to take a shuttle to Earth tomorrow.”

  “He won’t be happy about this, you know.”

  “I know. But he’ll get over it…” Ben must have seen how angry that response had made her, because he added quickly, “…because chances are the assignment won’t last, anyway. Nothing I’ve heard about the political situation on Bajor makes me optimistic about their readiness. And…I’ve been giving serious thought to resigning, coming back to Earth.”

  Judith frowned. “Let me get this straight. You’re accepting a new assignment at the edge of Cardassian space, just so you can quit after you get there? Ben, who are you kidding?”

  “Jude—”

  “I’m your sister, Ben. I know you. Lie to yourself if you want, but don’t lie to me. Or to Dad. If you were serious about resigning, you wouldn’t take this assignment. Much less take your son with you. This is about your need to run from your pain. About trying to distance yourself from Jen’s death.”

  Ben slammed his hand on the viewport ledge. “That’s enough, Jude.”

  “But what you don’t seem to get yet,” Judith had persisted, “is that no matter how far you go, that pain is going to stay with you until you turn around and deal with it.”

  Ben said nothing. Judith walked back into the living area and began gathering her things. He followed her. “You’re leaving?”

  “I need to get dirtside. I have to get some sleep before rehearsal tomorrow.” She was rummaging through her shoulder bag.

  “You could stay here,” Ben suggested. “Jake’ll be disappointed if you’re gone when he wakes up.”

  Judith refused to look at him. “He’ll get over it. Here.” Finding the item she sought in her bag, Judith handed her brother a small gift-wrapped package. “I was going to give this to you guys tomorrow, but…here, just take it.”

  Ben accepted the gift. “What is it?”

  “Holoprogram,” she’d said. “The Early Years of Baseball. A friend of mine designed it. I thought we could all try it next week after I was done in Brad bury City. But maybe it�
��ll give you guys a way to pass the time during the voyage.”

  “Jude, please don’t go yet.”

  “What do you want from me, Ben? You want me to pretend I don’t see what you’re doing? Well, I can’t. Jen’s dead, and that’s a tragedy. But you’re never going to heal by running from it.”

  No other words had passed between them as she walked out, and part of her believed she’d seen her brother and nephew for the last time.

  So it was with some surprise that she returned home to Portland a few weeks later to find a subspace message from Starbase Deep Space 9 waiting for her. It was from Ben. Something had obviously happened to him: she could see it in the piercing, purposeful look in his eyes, smiling with an excitement and a self-awareness she hadn’t seen in two years. His message was brief and to the point.

  “Just thought you’d want to know…I’ve stopped running.”

  She learned the story later, in subsequent letters and messages from him and Jake, and from their rare visits to Earth: about the discovery of the wormhole and Ben’s first contact experience with the entities inside it. And later, his growing connection to the gods and the people of Bajor…until he even came to believe that the wormhole beings had brought about his very existence. She’d been skeptical about that last part, and remained so, but she couldn’t deny the transformation in him.

  Ben had indeed rediscovered himself. But true to her fears, and their father’s, she knew also that in doing so, he was lost to his family, maybe forever.

  And now Jake, too…

  Dad stirred, pushing her away. “Go,” he whispered, turning back to the window, turning away from her. “Just go. I want to be alone.”

  Unhappily, Judith respected her father’s wishes and withdrew. At the bedroom door she looked back to see him once again as she had found him, hunched over as he stared out the window.

  “I just don’t know what to do about him, Kasidy,” Judith said into the companel late that night, after Joseph had finally fallen asleep. His hopelessness that morning had stayed with her, feeding the stillness and silence of the old house. He simply wasn’t the man she once knew. “I knew Ben’s disappearance hurt him, but Jake vanishing without a trace so soon after…it’s like his heart has been torn out. He hasn’t been in his kitchen in days. He just sits in his chair by the bedroom window. I think…I think he’s waiting to die.”