Kira Nerys lay on the bunk in the barracks that she shared with a dozen other soldiers. It had been surprisingly easy to readjust to sleeping in uncomfortable beds or no beds at all. Since arriving here—
Whenever that was….
—she had either slept on cold ground or on uncomfortable beds, either way crammed into a too-small space with dozens of other soldiers.
Just like the good old days, millennia from now.
Kira’s memories of arriving in Bajor’s past were hazy. She often didn’t bother trying to think about it, simply accepting what her senses told her as reality.
Tonight, facing the end of the conflict that had raged since she arrived here—
However that happened….
—and the start of something new, she once again cast her mind back to see how she should proceed forward.
The last thing she remembered with any clarity was that arid desert planet in the Delta Quadrant.
Everywhere she looked on the ground was sand, broken very rarely by bits of plant life, and the one freshwater lake that she had made sure to land near. It was flat land, with the only variations being the curvature of the planet itself. Not even any hills or mountains or sand dunes in sight. She’d gone there and abandoned her runabout in order to block a gateway, a portal in space through which deadly theta radiation was flowing into orbit around the inhabited planet of Europa Nova, in the Alpha Quadrant. Kira’s actions had prevented one lethal piece of radioactive waste from going through the gateway, thus saving the lives of the Europani as well as the task force she herself had assembled to evacuate the planet.
But to do that, she’d also had to abandon her companion, the Jem’Hadar named Taran’atar, who had stayed behind to fight a Hirogen hunter, keeping him occupied while Kira blocked the gateway.
After that, she couldn’t recall what happened. She knew that she found a gateway on the planet where there had been none before. She knew that the theta radiation on the planet had grown to fatal levels.
And she knew that she was now many thousands of years in Bajor’s past, fighting in a rebellion that the history of her time had long forgotten. She wasn’t even sure how long it had been since she’d arrived in this time. All she was sure of was that she no longer had the radiation sickness she’d been afflicted with—
—and the Prophets had something to do with her sojourn to the past.
Maybe.
The gateways weren’t built by the Prophets, after all, but the Iconians—in fact, there weren’t any gateways within ten light-years of the Celestial Temple. Based on the reports she’d read en route to Europa Nova, the gateways had not only come in all shapes and sizes, but types. Some even seemed to work interdimensionally—so it was quite possible that they could move through time as well.
(Of course, the Orb of Time had that capability, too, as Kira knew from more than one firsthand experience….)
Still, she hadn’t questioned her odyssey, simply because it felt right. Once before, during the Reckoning, she had served as a vessel for the Prophets. That same feeling she’d had then, she had now.
Well, okay, she thought wryly, it’s not exactly the same—then I couldn’t even control my own actions. But I can’t shake the feeling that They’re the reason I’m here, somehow.
She lay awake on her pallet, listening to the sounds of the other slumbering soldiers. Some snored, some mumbled in their sleep, some simply breathed heavy. Until the Cardassians pulled out of Bajor, Kira Nerys had always slept in large groups of people, so tuning out the sounds came easily to her. In fact, when she’d first been assigned to Deep Space 9, one of the hardest things had been learning to sleep in a room by herself.
But sleep eluded her, not because of the noise, but because she wrestled with her conscience. Fighting with the rebels had been an easy choice. Agreeing to accompany Torrna to his new duties at the Natlar Port was somewhat less so.
On the one hand, she was concerned about altering the past. On the other, very little was known about the history of this region.
If the Prophets had sent her here—and she felt at the core of her pagh that they were involved somehow —then they’d done it for a reason. She needed to continue down the path that was set before her.
Dying didn’t concern her. She had accepted the reality of her own death in the Delta Quadrant. As far as she was concerned, any living she did from this point forward was a gift. That was why she had no compunction about fighting alongside Torrna with weapons far more primitive and, in their own way, more brutal than any she used in the resistance.
Besides, she thought, I have to believe that I’m here for a reason. There are far too many similarities to my own life for this to be a coincidence.
She resolved to accept Torrna’s offer first thing in the morning.
Within minutes of making that resolution, she fell into a deep, peaceful slumber, unbothered by the breathing and snoring around her.