Runabout Liata:

Cmdr. Therikh Personal Log

He is not dead.

Starfleet, it seems, is preoccupied with the safety of Earth. To keep the Federation alive, this planet must be protected at all costs, and the Breen's recent raid has rattled the nerves of our chiefs of staff. They are panic-stricken. So I suppose their reluctance to support this investigation can be understood. They have more immediate concerns.

Desperate times breed despair, and weakness. The Starfleet I know wouldn't abandon one of its most loyal officers if there were even a single scintilla of a chance that he was still alive. But war is a hard taskmaster. Unacceptible losses become commonplace, routine.

But Captain Logan is alive, and here, near Earth's polar cap, I have secured the evidence of his survival. Sifting through the wreckage of the shuttlecraft Sulu, our team has found not a single trace of the captain's body. Not even on a molecular level. Nothing. Which indicates that the craft was bereft of crew and passengers at the time of planetfall. Which indicates that sometime between the Breen attack and the shuttle's crash...the Captain was taken from the craft.

Routine tricorder readings have turned up the first piece of the puzzle...a deck plate, with a slight spike in its electrostatic resonance. A spike not suggestive of a deep scan, nor a phaser impact...it is my belief that Captain Logan was beamed out of the shuttle prior to impact, by the Breen. A tempting target of opportunity. Capital ships being too well-shielded for such a tactic, planetary shuttlecraft were the best chances the Breen had for taking prisoners of war.

This theory does not, of course, account for whether or not Captain Logan is still alive. Nor where he might be incarcerated at the present time. Starfleet's rush to judgment has cost me precious days. The trail is cooling too quickly for my liking. The odds are totally against me.

But what choice do I have?

He is my captain.

Setting a course for Dominion space.

Behind Enemy Lines:

Sixth Vasak'tor grunted with displeasure. The Breen. They were everywhere these days, it seemed. Fourth Nakorr had ordered him to continue the Starfleet prisoner's interrogation jointly with Breen officers. The Founders, their wisdom be praised, wished to foster stronger relations with their new allies. But the Breen. Were he not Jem'Hadar, Vasak'tor would have shaken his head in disgust. He would have, perhaps, expressed a difference of opinion with the decisions of the lords of the Dominion. Of course, such divergence was simply not possible for him. He was Jem'Hadar. All he felt was a slight, fleeting twinge of despairing resignation that he would, he must, carry out his orders to the fullest. And even that flickered and vanished before he was consciously aware of it.

"The Founders are wise," Vasak'tor grumbled to himself as the ice-blooded Breen approached him.

The Starfleet prisoner - a captain, a prize of the Breen's assault on the Federation capital world - was being held in Cell 1235. He had proven, to put it charitably, unreceptive to initial interogatory efforts. After the last session had ended in the human's being pummelled into unconsciousness, his jailers had suspended him from the ceiling. It was hoped the blood rushing to the human's brain, in tandem with his earlier beatings, would disorient and confuse him.

The Breen were better suited for this duty. Jem'Hadar were guards, or soldiers. The only ways they wanted to interact with the enemies of the Dominion were to kill them, or to guard them until it was time to kill them. Stealing secrets from the soft, confused brains of humans was the job of a Vorta. Or a Breen. They seemed to share a reptilian cunning with the Vorta.

Cell 1235 recognized them, Jem'Hadar and Breen, and opened itself compliantly. He heard the human's voice. The Founders are wise, he intoned, a supplication for patience and strength. Fourth Nakorr would demand Vasak'tor's suicide if the prisoner did not prove strong enough to survive his interrogation.

Logan hung by his ankles from the ceiling of Cell 1235. His ribs ached, his legs were stiff and sore, his face full and darkened with blood. His left eye was swollen nearly shut, a gift from Ninth Glarass during the last questioning session. He was producing noise composed of a certain pitch and rhythm....it was called singing, Vasak'tor remembered. It was a rather peculiar and unnecessarily complex form of communication common to many Alpha Quadrant races.

Impossibly, the captain grinned ruefully at the sight of the Breen and Jem'Hadar. He stopped singing, gave a husky laugh.

"Come now," he mumbled through swollen lips, "base, ill-born brood." He chuckled painfully, feeling cracked ribs grind against flesh and muscle.

More madness, Vasak'tor thought. Possibly genuine, more likely a pretense to confuse his captors and disrupt the Breen's scans. Irritably, he snatched away the Breen's shock wand and nudged the captain with its tip. The prisoner grunted, biting down on his fleshy lips in agony. Then more laughter, given voice and power by the pain. The laughter of the mad. "Infamous beings!" the human shrieked, thrashing about. His arms were numb but still he swung them about ineffectually. "Vile, gibbering..." A surge of pain silenced his rantings as the Jem'Hadar struck him with his open palm. Logan flashed his captors a blood-flecked grin of defiance. He was fairly certain none of them were familiar with Cervantes. But the words gave him strength. He spat them out at his captors like bullets. They would have to kill him to shut him up.

Vasak'tor moved to shock the human again. The gibberish was growing tiresome. But one of the Breen reached out to stay his hand. "Stop that," he chided in that contemptible monotone voice. "You'll damage the tissue."

Vasak'tor submerged an instinct to snap the Breen's neck.

Logan rolled his head up and eyed Sixth Vasak'tor coolly. "You..." he started. Trailed off. Regained his strength. "You Jem'Hadar. You're...a sad case."

Vasak'tor submerged an instinct to snap the human's neck. It was a rather common instinct for him.

"I mean...no woman or song, and a poor substitute for wine...that putrid white slime they pipe into your system. And here I am, reciting...reciting great literature for you, and you don't even have the faculties to appreciate it..." Logan was trying to take control of the situation, provoke a response from his jailers to prove he was not totally helpless. The Breen seemed indifferent to the captain's taunts. "The Changelings are either sadists or fools, to create such a race." Bloody spittle punctuated Logan's words, spraying the interrogators.

The mockery of the Founders was too much for the Jem'Hadar. Vasak'tor, without thinking, raised the wand again. He stopped when he noticed the human's mouth. He recognized the expression - the disposition of facial musculature revealed much about human moods - as a smile. "That's right," Logan nodded, "use that thing freely. Burn away all those Starfleet secrets." He began to laugh again. "I don't mind."

Vasak'tor knew Logan was right. The human was trying to goad him into destroying that soft, fragile brain, thus protecting his precious Starfleet. Very clever. He handed the shock wand back to the Breen and punched Logan in the stomach. The force of the blow was enough to smash the wind out of Logan, and he flopped around, his stomach doing somersaults, his lungs desperately struggling to reinflate themselves. His vision clouded with tears. When the world came back into focus, the three interrogators were gone.

Logan felt his strength, born of bravado and bluster, start to ebb from his brusied body. He couldn't take much more of this. Which was probably a good thing. Either way, his ordeal would be over soon.

He started to sing "Behold the Lord High Executioner." It seemed oddly appropriate.

Tiva III:

K'Syra crossed the courtyard solemnly. The main temple of the Syka' sat before her, a squat stepped ziggurat of ancient architecture. The setting sun's dying rays played over the temple, sending flickering daggers of orange and gold across the shadowy courtyard. The temple itself appeared ablaze with celestial power.

Her robes, the brown and black of a high-ranking Syka' Master, trailed behind her like a shroud. They contrasted sharply with the shorter orange robes of the two initiates who flanked either side of her, escorting her to the temple on the council's orders. She felt a chill across the nape of her neck, felt invisible eyes staring through her, sifting through her memories. She narrowed her eyes and focused, her feet continuing to stride the distance of the courtyard at the same even pace. Equilibrium. Was it the council? Had the crisis driven them paranoid, untrusting? No. The probe came from elsewhere....perhaps....

Best not to invite further scrutiny, she thought. The council would have the answers.

K'Syra noticed as she entered the temple that the windows had been sealed. Every aperature, every opening save the main entrance, had been sealed. A last desperate measure of defense. It was more dire than she had allowed herself to believe.

The temple was silent as a tomb. The only noise K'Syra heard was the sacred pyre, blue-green flames flickering languorously at in the darkness. She knew the council was there, sitting in assembly around the pyre. Presently she could make out the edges of their robes, hear their shallow breathing, feel the numb dread poisoning their thoughts. One of the Syka' rose to address her - H'Nok, she guessed.

"Yes," the figure, who was indeed H'Nok, said grimly. "It is indeed as bad as you fear." She strained to peer through the darkness, to make out H'Nok's features, but realized it didn't matter. It was best to let the council indulge in their fondness for theatrical flourishes.

Other voices called out to her across the darkness. They seemed to issue forth from the pyre itself. Another clever display.

"With our assistance you shall transcend Tiva and enter a higher plane of existence."

"Learn the fate of the man who lived and died as H'Tan."

"The caress of Omega has given him power beyond measure. Power that cannot be handled by mortal men."

"Adjudge for yourself whether H'Tan might rejoin the Syka'."

"But," H'Nok said severely, "you must not engage him directly. Above all other matters, this edict is inviolable, intractible and adamantine. We beg your indulgence. You must not engage the one called H'Tan directly. Choose instead an agent to enact our wishes."

But, K'Syra thought. The question hung vague and unformed within her mind. Her loyalty ran deep, and she loathed to question or undermine the wisdom of the council. But the uncertainty would not be dispelled. It spread over her face. H'Nok saw her confusion and answered before she could verbalize a query.

"Omega cannot be handled safely. It has warped H'Tan, perhaps irrevocably. It will corrupt you. And through your link to us, it will corrupt this council. And that, we are not prepared to risk. We dare not. All our powers are needed here, to keep Tiva intact and alive." H'Nok leaned forward in the darkness, and a flicker of luminiscent corpse-light played over his face, mirrored in his eyes. "Great navies war in the heavens, K'Syra. H'Tan's madness has endangered the planet entire. All the council's energies must be focused on keeping the planet sane and pacified, and diverting our enemies from Tivan space. You are our hope, K'Syra. H'Tan must be saved. If he cannot be saved, then he must be stopped. Lest the madness of Omega one day consume him utterly. On that day...on that day, the universe will tremble."

The flame of the pyre flickered and dimmed briefly, indicating the audience was at an end.

She took one final deep breath, relaxed her heartbeat and vital functions, then reached out with her mind.

She felt the council all around her, astral arms locked together in a circle of power. She felt the atoms of her body tingle and vibrate with the power of the Syka'. Her astral form was being gently goaded from its cage of flesh. She felt hands on her, pulling her out of herself...hands holding her aloft, pushing her up, and up...a golden doorway opened up within the darkness, and she felt her astral form rise up and enter it, and the temple was gone, Tiva was gone, and she was in an endless ocean of light...

Elsewhere:

H'Tan was now a god.

A god, a genuine god, swollen to the bursting point by the obliterating touch of Omega, and the universe was stained crimson with his rage.

He floated alone in the void. He was no longer within the universe of his birth

(and death, whispered something in the back of his brain)

but had opened a portal to a higher dimension, from which he could look down and survey the whole of the galaxy at a glance. Hanging suspended within the emptiness, he watched it swirl and spin, a smear of stars and planets vaster than any weak mortal mind could comprehend. H'Tan's endless mind reached out...

he watched as an armada of Borg cubes, hundreds of ships strong, sailed through the void of the Delta Quadrant in pyramid formation, millions of drones marching and breathing and thinking in unison, yoked together under a single indominable will;

he watched as delegations from the warring Jyntara Republic and Beo'Nhar Empire, sworn enemies for a thousand years, formally signed an armistice of peace, bringing peace to their distant corner of the Beta Quadrant;

he watched a lifeless world deep within the Gamma Quadrant, beyond the furthest reaches of Dominion-explored space, as proteins and amino acids churned within its turbulent violet oceans, colliding and combining and breaking apart, a seething, churning soup of protomatter struggling to generate life from its own lifelessness;

he watched as a convoy of Romulan Warbirds were set upon and systematically annihilated by hordes of Jem'Hadar fightercraft, the joyless Jem'Hadar smirking mirthlessly as they carried out the battleplans of their Changeling gods. It was this final image that caught H'Tan's interest. He watched a Warbird, bleeding fire and radiation from a dozen wounds in her hull, list slowly out of the line as her sister ships closed ranks and attempted to seal the defensive breach. Effortlessly, H'Tan scanned the minds of the Romulans aboard the dying vessel. He tasted fear, rage, regret, courage. The Jem'Hadar, contrarily, felt nothing. Nothing but a steady, numbing, impenetrable sense of duty. They were almost as dreary as the Borg.

And now, Tiva. Tiva, alone, an opalescent orb gleaming against the stark canvas of empty space. H'Tan turned his mind upon the Syka', his former brethren. They sat, huddled in their temple, whispering in the shadows. H'Tan sneered at their scheming. Treacherous, sycophantic fools. Weak-minded. Cowardly. Mortal. No wonder they had turned against him, siding with the Federation's slack-jawed puppets within the Royal Family. The air around him stirred with his agitation. He tore oxygen molecules apart, ground them up, reduced everything to a total vacuum for miles around him. His body rebelled slightly at this lack of air before he remembered to compensate. He was still adjusting to his godhood. Sometimes it was difficult to remember.

He was Tivan. But Tiva had proven to be such a grave disappointment.

Now he had the power. The power to cleanse the Alpha Quadrant, to avenge

SEIZE THE NEWCOMER.

Before H'Tan's mind could comprehend what was happening he felt energies coalesce around him, physically constraining him, walling in his newly acquired psionic senses, ensconcing him inside an impenetrable coffin within a fraction of an instant. He screamed aloud, half in rage and half in terror, and lashed out with the Omega power. But his tendrils of energy smashed against his prison and crumbled without effect. He was...helpless.

The thought was unbearable. His mind became a swirling, screaming blizzard of obscene anger, and he swore vile oaths and vulgarities against his unknown jailers in every language ever spoken by every race that had ever existed within the Alpha Quadrant. To his chagrin, he sensed from beyond his coffin a chiding, condescending tone of irritation. This only enraged him further.

LET US ADJOURN TO THE CONVOCATION. WE MUST DETERMINE THIS ONE'S FATE.

he resists us, his strength is growing...fueled by rage...

PRECISELY. INTERVENTION IS MANDATED BY THIS ONE'S INSTABILITY. HE WILL BE FOUND WORTHY OF THE POWER, OR UNWORTHY. THE MATTER MUST BE DECIDED.

H'Tan focused his energies and redoubled his assault against the walls around him. They buckled slightly, but held. Struggle was futile. The one voice was right, he was growing stronger, more confident and capable with his new power. Perhaps prudence was in order. Best to learn as much about these beings, whose power exceeded his own, before he destroyed them. The certainty of that filled him with a cold pleasure. He would destroy them. Of that there could be no doubt.

Deep within him, the energies of the Omega particle throbbed with a perverse malevolence.

Runabout Liata:

Cmdr. Therikh Personal Log

By now, of course, Starfleet has declared me AWOL. Desertion during wartime can mean my death. Perhaps, if fate is merciful, they will ascribe my disappearance to enemy captivity, and I will not return home to a court-martial. Besides, Starfleet officers did this all the time a hundred years ago. I could always justify my actions with such precedents.

A flippant and cavalier attitude, to be sure. But in the face of Captain Logan's dire predicament, I find it difficult to remain concerned about a possible loss of pension.

I'm presently on a course for the Rynstat Nebula. It lies along the current wartime borders between the Federation and the Dominion alliance's territories. If Starfleet possessed any substantial bases here, the nebula would be a major asset to our operations against the Dominion...but of course, until a month ago the nebula was nowhere near the frontlines. The Dominion's logistical preparations have proven far superior to our own; our best intelligence analyses indicate a substantial naval presence has already been established on the Dominion side of Rynstat, a series of Dominion space stations and small Jem'Hadar battlegroups bolstered by the remnants of the Breen armada that assaulted the Earth system recently. It seems logical to presume that all new Starfleet prisoners of war would be taken here to be processed and interrogated. Our monitoring of Dominion communications transmissions have indicated the likeliest locations for them to be holding such prisoners. I can only hope that Captain Logan has remained alive long enough to be rescued. Knowing the Captain, if he hasn't goaded them into killing him yet they're well underway with the torture.

The odds are...to be brutally candid, the odds are not in my favor. The chances of finding the Captain are slim. He could be dead already. He probably is dead.

Captain Logan is dead.

...I say the words, and they sound hollow, ridiculous. I cannot bring myself to believe them. Not while there's hope. Hah. The mantra of the stupidly optimistic and the suicidally courageous alike. Which one am I? Perhaps both.

Never give up. Never surrender. Not while there's hope.

Visual contact with the nebula.

Behind Enemy Lines:

"Captain."

A new voice within the cell. Logan hadn't heard anyone enter. Perhaps during one of his blackouts...but he hadn't fainted in a while. Had they been standing there in the shadows all this time? He reached up, rubbed his swollen eyes. Blinked away the sweat and blood. And was taken aback by the bright white light.

The darkness of the cell was gone. In fact, he was no longer constrained, and was standing upright. "What the hell?" he muttered. An endless light as far as he could see, without horizon, without a single distinguishing feature. A mildly disturbing thought occurred to him.

Dead?

He pinched his forearm. It hurt. Ergo, he couldn't be dead. It was the kind of logic that especially appealed to men who'd been steadily beaten in and out of consciousness for days on end.

"I have need of you, Captain Frank Logan," the voice repeated.

Logan turned. A strikingly handsome woman in flowing brown and black robes stood before him. From conversations with H'Tan, he had the feeling she was one of the Syka'. Which might start to explain what was going on. Might.

"Okay," he said, unsure of what else he could possibly say. "But perhaps you could tell me just what the hell's going on here?"

"There will be time for that later," K'Syra answered. "They are coming." She nodded off into the distance behind Logan. He saw...he saw...flickering humanoid outlines of fierce light, floating children, black-lipped humanoids, swirls of radiant energy... impossible contortions of matter unfolding out of nothingness. His mind rebelled at the sight. He felt dizzy, anxious. He wanted to scream, to simply not know about the things he was seeing. It was too much.

"Too much," he whimpered. Steady, damn it! he raged, struggling to maintain his composure. You are a Starfleet officer, now stand tall and act like it! He shut his eyes tight, trying to concentrate on something else, anything else. No, no, no. His mind thrashed about, clawing for release like an anxious housecat.

He felt his knees buckle. Then a numbing feeling of weightlessness came over him. He could hear nothing, see nothing. And yet he was aware of voices, somewhere above him...talking about him.

extremely limited...primitive brain, almost deaf and blind by any reasonable standards...

Logan felt like his brain was being poured out of his skull into a mug. Random memories, images from his Academy days, his childhood...and other images, from the past, centuries ago...he clutched at his eyes, tried to block it out.

"Captain," the Tivan woman said, gently touching his shoulder. He opened his eyes. His nostrils were assaulted by the pungent aroma of unwashed bodies and something that must have been horse manure. Logan noted, totally nonplussed, that they seemed to have been transported in time and space to colonial America, 18th century Earth. A horse-drawn carriage passed them. Logan looked around, wondering why no one was staring at his Starfleet uniform...then realized he was no longer wearing it. He was dressed in the rather drab garb of this time, a black brass-buttoned coat with red and grey trim over a ruffled white shirt and a butternut vest and trousers. K'Syra, as well, had changed into a flowing black and brown dress.

The Syka' Master seemed genuinely concerned for Logan. "Is this...easier?" she asked, her lilting Tivan accent making her seem like some expatriate European baroness.

Logan was starting to understand. "We...we haven't travelled in time, have we?" he asked, staring around incredulously. Horses...dirt roads...the architecture, the clothing, it was all so real, far more vivid than any holodeck fantasy. "This is all an illusion. It isn't real."

K'Syra shook her head and clicked her tongue, the traditional Tivan negative response. "The setting...the way things appear to be, which I assume is from the past history of your world...is a mirage. A rather vulgar one, if you ask me. But it has been woven for your protection. Your mind is untrained to deal with this plane of existence. It is easier this way, Captain."

Logan remembered reading something about this, while at the Academy. Some paper about Starfleet's various encounters with so-called "cosmic" entities. The Apollo incident, the encounter with the Melkots...it had been dubbed the "Museum Effect." Such powerful entities and races preferred to deal with "lesser races" in forms more familiar and agreeable than their own four-dimensional bodies. Invariably, they chose images from past cultures and histories. The being codenamed "Q" was rather unique in that he often preferred to appear in a contemporary Starfleet uniform rather than....his mind was wandering. Logan forced himself to attention. This was all so unreal, the Syka' was right, it was too easy to pretend it was a dream. He had to focus. He knew this very well might be the most important event of his life.

"I am K'Syra," the Syka' Master said. Logan examined her more closely now. She was older than he had first thought, but no less striking. Her eyes were a soft, watery blue, and seemed immensely sad, as if she had the weight of a hundred years of bad memories upon her conscience. "I am a Syka' Master, here on behalf of the Council."

"Had a funny feeling," Logan said. He recognized a building that seemed to be Independence Hall...or something similar enough to it. "I assume, then, that this has something to do with my former first officer." Logan had long known that Commander H'Tan, while a loyal Starfleet officer, had also served the Syka' Council on Tiva as one of their Knights.

"H'Tan is not the man you once knew," K'Syra said. "He has usurped the Royal Family and allied Tiva with the Dominion. But-"

"What?" Logan was astonished. "I can't believe that."

"It is not him, Captain. It is the power that has possessed him. H'Tan has absorbed the power of an Omega particle. We...are not certain how it was accomplished. But it has given him tremendous power, the power to control men, to reshape reality. The process has warped him, perhaps permanently. We still know so little about what has transpired....

"We do know that H'Tan's reign on Tiva must come to an end. He plans to lead the Dominion alliance straight to the heart of the Federation. The Council cannot act directly against him; he is a god, and the Tivan people would not support an insurrection against him. It would be tantamount to blasphemy. Besides, his power dwarfs ours now."

"I don't understand," Logan said. His mind was reeling from all of this information. It was harder and harder to take it all seriously. "Assuming this is all true...which I have difficulty believing...what can I possibly do? The H'Tan I knew wouldn't be capable of such madness."

"It is the hope of the Council," K'Syra said, "that H'Tan, our H'Tan, can be saved. If not...the end of the universe must be witnessed. It is the duty of the Syka'. We are the guardians of the universe. If it is time for creation to end, we cannot shy away. We must witness its ending."

A dread silence fell between them. Logan could sense the uncertainty this woman felt, the fear. She didn't feel that she would succeed, he realized with a strange sadness. She thought it a suicide mission. "You're unarmed," he said awkwardly, noting her lack of the traditional Syka' weapon, the laser sword.

K'Syra allowed a small smile to crease her lips. "Would a laser sword do me any good here, Captain?"

"Probably not," Logan said. "But you never know until you try." A devilish grin lit up his face.

"So where do I come in?" he asked her. They were entering Independence Hall now.

"I cannot deal with H'Tan directly," K'Syra said. "By edict of the Council." She would not elaborate. The Syka' probably felt easier risking the lives and immortal souls of heathen offworlders, Logan thought. The Sacrificial Pawn, attemping to draw out the King's defenses. Fine. H'Tan needed his help. His immortal soul was the least he could give up for the life of his friend.

"Well," Logan muttered, "I always wanted to save the universe."

Somewhere a bell began to toll.

The Convocation:

"Are you looking for something?" K'Syra asked.

"Someone," Logan said. "Benjamin Franklin. I always wanted to meet him."

K'Syra smiled. "If that is someone from your world's history, you'll most likely be disappointed. This isn't an exact historical recreation. Merely an analogue. It's unlikely any of the delegates will take the form of an actual historical persona."

"Really?" Logan arched his eyebrows in surprise and disdain. "I always thought that was what they preferred to do." He shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I have a lot to learn about deities." It was easier to be jovial about all this than he would have thought. He wasn't sure if that was courage, or the creeping onset of insanity. He supposed in this case one was just as good as the other.

The hall was crowded with...a rather ordinary-looking group of middle-aged and elderly white men, dressed in the clothing of the period. Logan was unimpressed. Which, he supposed, was the point. This entire mirage had been engineered to protect his fragile mind from things it shouldn't see. As the Syka' had said, he saw no familiar visages - no Franklin or Jefferson or Adams. Just powdered white wigs and tired old eyes. And yet...there was a certain uneasiness in the air. Like the charge of electricity before the eruption of a thunderstorm. A palpable, anxious energy that leapt from face to face as the delegates exchanged glances at the newcomer's arrival. Were they...were they afraid?

"Halt." A huge, towering brute garbed in the bright red coat of a British soldier appeared in front of K'Syra and Logan. "You will identify this one, delegate." Logan realized he was addressing K'Syra.

"Yes, Sergeant-at-Arms," K'Syra said. "This is a guest of the Tivan delegation. It is within our rights-"

"He speaks for Tiva?" The guard peered at Logan with soulless, chalk-white eyes. Logan suspected he was being scanned somehow.

"He does," K'Syra said coolly. "So say I, so says the Council. I stand here as part of the delegation, but Captain Logan is our chief representative."

The soldier nodded curtly and stepped aside. As they passed him, Logan noted the veins visible through the soldier's pale white skin. "A sentinel," K'Syra whispered as they walked to the Tivan table. "Now that you have been identified, they will trouble us no more."

They walked past the table seating representatives from the Q Continuum. "You still haven't told me," Logan said. "Why me? Why did you choose me? Not that I'm ungrateful. The torture was starting to wear a little thin."

"I didn't choose you," K'Syra said softly. "H'Tan did. He is...he was a Syka'. His memories were shared with us. His love and respect for you made you the best choice to act as his conscience."

Logan didn't know what to say. They took their seats quietly. The chairman of the Convocation, an ancient fellow with antique bifocals - bifocals!, Logan marvelled - and a drab grey coat, was banging his gavel for order.

"The Convocation will come to order," he said in a rickety voice. "The Convocation will come to order. The honored gentleman from Organia is hereby recognized."

"We thank the chair," a rich, booming voice sang out from behind Logan. He turned and saw the Organian delegate rise from his seat. A surge of awe rippled through him at the mention of Organia. A century ago, they had ground the conflict between the Federation and the Klingon Empire to a halt on a whim, then withdrew from the rancor of interstellar politicking to their idyllic homeworld. Logan wondered why they hadn't chosen to intervene in the quadrant's current problems. Perhaps they were just sick and tired of saving primitive cultures from their own stupidity. "Organia moves that the discussion presently before the Convocation, regarding the edict of termination for the, ah, newest member of this select community, be tabled at this time."

"For what duration?" the chairman inquired.

"Indefinite, kind sir," the Organian replied. "It is the desire of Organia to settle the question of the entity's...character."

"Is there a second?"

A voice in the back rang out, "Aye."

"The motion is set before the Convocation. All opposed? All against? The ayes have it. The chair hereby decrees that the discussion of the termination of H'Tan is suspended until further notice." Logan noticed that one of the delegates, a pale, gaunt figure with blue-black lips, had voted rather vehemently against the stay of execution.

K'Syra cleared her throat. She was poised and focused, the picture of the unflinching Syka', but Logan saw that her hands were quivering at her sides. She might have been a Syka' Master, but she, too, felt out of her depth. "Tiva demands to see the entity in question," she said.

They heard a door creak open. All eyes within the Convocation turned to see the newest member of their college brought before them.

H'Tan was escorted into the main chamber by four redcoats. He was shackled and chained, and dressed in rags. Like a pauper out of Dickens, Logan thought, outraged at the shabby treatment of his...his...he realized, suddenly, just how ambivalent he felt towards this man. At one point, they had been almost brothers. Captain and First Officer, perfectly in tune with each other. Logan had respected H'Tan, trusted him with his life on more than one occasion. Hell, he had loved the man.

H'Tan strode proudly down the aisle to the center of the assembly. Hatred flared from his eyes, white-hot hatred. For a second, his eyes met Logan's.

Captain.

The voice was in his mind, sharp and fierce. There was anger in it. Logan couldn't tell whether the anger was directed at him, or this convocation, or the proceedings...there was enough hatred there for the entire galaxy.

The hatred still festered from H'Tan's court-martial. Starfleet had determined that the young captain had overstepped his bounds when he had ordered the summary destruction of an uninhabited world for what he had felt to be good and compelling reasons. Captain Logan had given a stirring and impassioned defense at the trial, and most within the Judge Advocate General's Corps agreed that H'Tan had received extraordinary leniency, all things considered. But it hadn't been enough for H'Tan. And Logan couldn't blame him. H'Tan was a Syka'. He lived in a world of diametrically opposed extremes, light and dark, right and wrong, good and evil. He didn't want to see the position Starfleet was in, he didn't want to hear about the lightness of the sentence or the leniency of the court. Starfleet had betrayed him. Pure and simple. Betrayed him. Stripped him of his commission, his ship, and sent him to a penal colony. Logan couldn't blame H'Tan for being bitter. For being mad as hell. Logan saw the hatred, the miserable hatred locked behind his friend's eyes, and he felt it too. And all because of a bad decision. And it was too easy to call it that, sitting here now, with perfect hindsight and the luxury of objectivity. He hadn't been there. He couldn't judge H'Tan's actions. Maybe it had been a wrong call. Maybe he was just unlucky. But in his opinion, Starfleet had made a huge mistake hanging one of their finest out to dry over it.

A tragic mistake, it was starting to look like.

And then....K'Tee...

"I object," Logan found himself stammering weakly. The assembly turned as one to stare at him. Sharp hearing, he thought drily. Then another voice, stronger, insistent, pleading and demanding to be heard. You're here for a reason, damn it. Don't sit there and watch your friend die. Don't fail him again! Logan noticed K'Syra had edged back slightly, and was silent. Either fear, or the orders of the Syka' Council, kept her silent. He stood up. "I object!" he shouted. "Your honor, I object!"

Murmurs swept across the assembly.

The chairman levelled a withering gaze at Logan. "On what grounds do you object, Tiva?"

"I object to the treatment of this man," Logan said. "Is he a prisoner? What is he charged with? Why is he being treated in this manner?" He felt courage slowly seeping back into his bones. He was trying very hard to ignore the very obvious fact that each and every one of these very powerful entities could...very easily...annihilate him utterly in the blink of an eye.

"The entity in question has not yet been elected to this body," the chairman said. "You cannot invoke rights to which he is not yet entitled."

H'Tan looked at Logan again. His face was a mask of ice. Logan's mind reached out to his old friend, but there was no response. H'Tan lift his shackled arms as high as he could, barely a foot away from his sides, and closed his eyes. Beads of power, shiny and iridescent, trickled from his forehead, glistened from his fingertips like quicksilver in the moonlight. His whole body was suffused with energy, and exploded from him in a blinding flash. And then...he was changed. His rags and chains were gone, and a proud and resplendent Syka' Master stood before them, free and unafraid. A sneer of defiance spread across his face.

For the first time, Logan was afraid that the H'Tan he had known was gone. He couldn't associate this kind of power with the man he knew. The anger...it was so strong, so venomous, it seemed to bleed out of his every pore, a haze of hatred hanging over him like a cloud of flies. A plague. Had it only been the Omega particle that had poisoned his soul with overwhelming visions of destruction? Or had that just been the final straw? Had it been his fall from Starfleet's grace, his subsequent incarceration? Had it been the death of K'Tee, K'Tee, his beloved, his life-mate, killed in a stupid and ignominious shuttle accident? No rhyme or reason to it, to any of it. His life was in ashes. In ruins. Sitting there on that squalid rock, waiting for the days to pass, his love gone, his career gone, everything he had ever believed in gone...the power of Omega calling to him, tempting him with the power to make it right, or at least to make it even. To wipe it all clean. To find some peace of mind in the cold comfort of oblivion.

Members of the Convocation stood and one by one argued out the merits of eliminating this "newcomer," as they called H'Tan, or attempting to reform and reshape him. One delegate suggested confining him to a pocket dimension and sealing him away forever, a living death within an alien crypt. Others, like the dark-lipped fellow whom Logan discovered represented the Q Continuum, argued passionately for the being's discorporation. H'Tan, despite his cosmetic appearance of being freed, was apparently still confined by the Convocation's power, as he stood there before them and surlily answered their direct questions, otherwise ignoring their debate altogether as if it were meaningless to him. Inconsequential. He revealed, rather casually, that he planned to intervene broadly and brutally in the political and social development of the so-called "unenlightened races," namely, the Federation. H'Tan said that he planned to destroy the Federation, and rule Tiva directly as a god-king. He spoke of this as if were a fait accompli, and not open to discussion or dissension. The words chilled Logan's blood. He did not recognize the voice that spoke them. It was cold, dead.

Finally the chairman called on Logan. "Tiva, you are called upon to question the entity as you see fit," he said simply.

"I cannot speak for Tiva," Logan said. "I am here at their sufferance. And I am honored by that great privilege. But I am not one of them. I can speak only for my people. For the Federation."

The chairman seemed to consider this. "We will allow this," he said finally. "Speak as you will."

Logan breathed deeply. He moved closer to H'Tan.

"H'Tan," he said. H'Tan regarded him coolly. "Captain," he said finally.

Silence swept over the assembly. All eyes were on Logan now.

"You say you seek to destroy the Federation."

"Yes."

"What are the reasons for this wish?"

"I require no reasons. My power is justification alone."

"Yes, surely you can destroy it. Your capabilities are not in question, otherwise...this tribunal, this court, whatever the hell you want to call it, wouldn't be necessary. I ask you why you wish to do so. Your rationale for this destructive agenda."

"My reasons are my reasons. They are sufficient for me."

"Yes, but what are they?"

"They are mine!" H'Tan exploded. "I need not ennumerate them for you, my Captain. I am certain you are well aware of the Federation's treachery. Of their duplicitous manipulation of my world's internal political order, their casual desertion of me when it was convenient for them to do so. Of their weakness, their inefficiency. Their cowardice. Can you look me in the eye and say you disagree, Captain? Do it." His face was twisted in rage. "Tell me you feel I was treated with fairness and decency, Captain. Tell me you feel the Federation did right by me. Tell me you stand by their disastrous handling of the war with the Dominion, tell me you accept the fact that their weakness and stupid optimism has encouraged aggressor after aggressor after aggressor to attack them, costing billions of lives. Tell me!" H'Tan flipped back his robes, leaned toward Logan. He was straining against the limits of his confinement, and Logan could almost see the force field around him start to buckle and give way. "You think I deserved to be court-martialed?"

Logan shook his head sadly. "No. I can understand Starfleet's decision. But I don't agree with it."

"You feel they have ably defended their people against their enemies?"

Logan shrugged. "You were always the better tactician. But I feel we've done the best we can against a military alliance with every advantage in their corner. Do you think you could have done better?"

"Yes," H'Tan answered. "And I shall. The Federation shall be shattered into a thousand pieces, and the Dominion as well in its own time, and Tiva shall reunite them under a single will, a single authority. Peace is not born out of democracy, out of fairness. It is born out of force. Naked, indisputable force. And peace is more valuable than freedom. What use is freedom to the dead?"

"But what use is life," Logan answered, "to the enslaved?"

This seemed to confuse H'Tan. He turned away from Logan. "Those who oppose me," he said coldly, "will be swept aside." A dark halo of energy lit his features.

"But why?"

"Stop asking me that!" H'Tan raged. "You ask why the Federation must be destroyed, and I have answered-"

"All that is clear," Logan said, "is that you have no answer, H'Tan. None. You want to destroy the Federation. You realize this will be no easy task, even for you. Starfleet has hundreds of warships, and the Klingons will stand with them."

"Then the Klingons will join their allies in death."

"And if the Romulans choose to aid us as well?"

"Let them. There is room enough in hell for all who rise against my will."

"And the Dominion?"

H'Tan smiled. "The Founders are fools. They think to use me to divide the Federation in civil war. They haven't an inkling of my new power."

Logan nodded. "True enough. But when entire fleets begin to be obliterated, and the Dominion takes into account that Tiva has no real firepower to accomplish this, do you concede that, quite possibly, they might begin to suspect? Hmm?" He paced before the assembly, nervous energy feeding him the words to speak like rounds of ammunition. "When your power crushes us, when Earth is burnt to a cinder, do you think the Dominion will seriously believe that your ambition has been sated? Do you not think that they will perceive you as a threat?"

H'Tan considered this, then shrugged. "Then the Dominion will be destroyed as well."

"Ah, of course," Logan said cockily. "I should have realized that. And the Breen as well. And the Cardassians. Pretty much the entire Alpha Quadrant, wouldn't you agree?"

"Perhaps."

"And that doesn't frighten you?"

"I have power enough to destroy them all, if I so wish." Logan approached H'Tan as close as he could. He stared into his former friend's eyes. "And that," he said softly, "doesn't terrify you?" There was nothing recognizable in H'Tan's eyes. They were ruthless, the eyes of a shark. Logan turned to the chairman. "Your honor," he said, "this man is not H'Tan. I make a motion that he stopped being addressed as such."

"What?" H'Tan said. "How dare you..." He faltered, as if the anger had seeped out from him, and he wasn't sure how to proceed. Then he remembered himself. "How dare you speak to me in that manner! I should destroy you for such impertinence."

"I dare," Logan said, "because you are an obscenity. You mock everything H'Tan stood for, everything he lived for and cherished and fought for. H'Tan was a Syka' Knight. He revered life. Respected it, held it sacred. To talk so casually, in H'Tan's voice, about murdering billions of innocent people, is obscene to me. You murdered the Royal Family. K'Tee's family, your own kin. Don't you care? Doesn't that fact make you sick with remorse?"

"I am H'Tan!" the being shouted. He turned to the assembly, searched the room for fear or hatred in the eyes of the delegates. He found only sad understanding. "I am H'Tan!" he shrieked. Rays of power flashed from his eyes, bouncing impotently off the unseen force field that held him captive. "I have grown powerful, but I remember all that I was. I feel the pain, I remember what was done to me."

"You feel an anger," Logan said. It was starting to come together now. "A great anger. It was what drew you to H'Tan. He was angry. Alone, imprisoned....I imagine he struggled mightily, to come to terms with that anger." Logan felt his eyes start to sting, and willed back his tears. "I...I feel that perhaps, perhaps I failed him, somehow. Perhaps I failed my friend. I should have fought harder to defend him, I, I should have resigned my commission, done something...freed him from that penal colony, helped him get out somehow. I thought I was doing my duty. I, I thought....I thought it best to let H'Tan serve his sentence, and go on with my own career.

"I thought about him, all the time. Alone on that miserable planet. His honor stolen from him. It must have been...it must have been horrendous for a man like him to be humble, to try to find some dignity in defeat, to keep his resentment and anger in check. Even for a Syka'. It would have been so easy to give in to despair, and turn bitter, furious.

"I don't know...whether or not he succeeded. Because I wasn't there for him. I wish now that I had been. But I wasn't.

"So I'll probably never know how it happened. And I'll never know what H'Tan's final thoughts were, as the Omega power drank him in, sucked him dry and absorbed him."

"Lies!" H'Tan shrieked.

"Was he at peace?" Logan mused. He was seemed lost in thought, but was actually quite aware of the affect his speech was having on this being. "Was he afraid? Did he even know what was happening to him?" He saw that K'Syra was losing her composure, filled with an incredible sadness at the thought of her fellow Syka' being slain in such an ignominious manner. "I'd like to believe that he met his end with an open heart. That he did not curse the darkness. But you-" he pointed at the Omega being, "-you who usurped his memories and his feelings, you fed on that secret anger. You dragged it out into the sunlight, scraped away everything else about H'Tan and cast it aside. You wear his form, but you are not worthy to bear his name." Logan realized he was going too far, that he was risking a reaction from this...this entity, but he couldn't help himself. Fear, rage, regret, whatever it was, something within him impelled his words, forced them out past his lips in a torrent, a tyrade, and he couldn't hold them back. "You're nothing but a mindless destructive force. A pale mockery of life. You're not the man I knew."

H'Tan...the entity that called itself H'Tan...glowered at the captain, but said nothing to contradict his harsh indictment. "You cannot say such things to me," he said in a dead man's voice. "You cannot imagine...Captain...the power that I possess now. You cannot know-"

"The power?" Logan said. He shook his head, chuckled ruefully. "You don't have any power, H'Tan. The power has you. Don't you understand that you're dead?"

H'Tan said nothing. His face was a blank mask. He seemed to be considering the Captain's words for the first time. A look of horror slowly blanched his face. "No," he said simply. That was all. He could manage no more strenuous a protest.

"H'Tan...the H'Tan I knew," Logan said, "is dead. I don't know who you are. You're a fly, trapped in amber. A set of memories...emotions...but not the man. Not the man. You think you want revenge on the Federation. But H'Tan would never want to murder billions of innocents for something so shallow, so petty, as vengeance. It's the power. The Omega power wants destruction. It will begin with the Federation, but you won't be able to stop there. The anger will blind you. Cloud your reasoning. And you'll look back and suddenly realize that you've laid waste to the entire galaxy." He paused. "If this convocation of entities doesn't destroy you first."

"No!" H'Tan shouted. His voice reverberated throughout the chamber. The lights dimmed.

"I will not...be...stopped," he growled.

He closed his eyes and held his hands out, open palmed, as if he were pushing against something. They glowed orange, then red, then a brilliant white, the power rippling out in concentric circles across the curve of the force field, eating at it like acid. It began to give way. The delegates began to murmur amongst themselves, but no one rose in alarm. They seemed relatively calm. The redcoat guards, on the other hand, ran in by twos down the aisles toward H'Tan.

With a thunderclap, the force field was gone. H'Tan was free. His eyes smoldered with crimson energy. He waved his hand casually, and the first two redcoats to reach him were hurled back by a swirling blast of kinetic force, flying out over the assembly. One of the delegates - the Q representative - made a gesture and held the airborne guards fast in a force field, then lowered them to the ground. More guards swarmed in around H'Tan. He set himself in a traditional Syka' fighting stance.

The chairman banged his gavel. "Order!" he shouted hoarsely. "There will be order here! Order, I say!" The redcoats milled around H'Tan, but kept a safe distance.

H'Tan's entire body flickered with energy. It flared a bright crimson, then settled down to a cooler shade of orange. He turned to Logan. The anger was there in his eyes, but...it was different. It was less confident. It was the anger a condemned man knows when he sees the gallows for the first time...a rage born out of terror. "Please," H'Tan said. "Help me, Captain. My friend."

Logan's heart went out to this creature. He wanted to cry. "You can still come back with me," he said, his voice wobbly with emotion. "Renounce this power. Renounce it. Surrender it to this gathering, bleed it out into the cosmos, it doesn't matter. Just surrender it. It poisons your soul. Become the man I was proud to call friend again. Please," he pleaded. He held out his hand.

H'Tan looked at the hand. He stepped outside himself.

He looked down at his body. Flesh, blood, bone. Water and meat. So weak. So inefficient. It seemed like a cage. It didn't feel natural. He was drowning. He heard the roar of distant suns. He saw the end of time. His mind was throbbing, swelling, bleeding out of his ears. He was a man. He was not a man. It was too much.

Too much.

Another fraction of a second elapsed. Perhaps this was the answer. Stay here, hidden between instants. Wall off the universe, blind and deafen himself to everything and everyone else.

But it wouldn't work. These others, they would find him. They would drag him before them again. He would have to war against them, and H'Tan wasn't certain that he could win such a war. Perhaps the Captain was right. Perhaps it was too much. Shut it off. Partition the power from his conscious mind, for now. He focused.

A cold fear rolled over him. He couldn't do it. He still felt it. He tried to shut it out, but it wouldn't go away. He tried to push it away. It wouldn't be moved. He tried to wall it off. The barriers weren't high enough, weren't strong enough. Tried to bleed it off. But there was no end to it. He couldn't do it. H'Tan felt panic. Focus. He had to focus. But his mind was in chaos. Memories flooded through his brain. Warriors. Cold space. A woman. Dawn. They were clear and vivid in his mind's eye. But he didn't recognize them. They were secondhand memories. They were a dead man's memories.

They were H'Tan's memories.

H'Tan was dead.

He was not H'Tan.

He could deny it no longer. It was inescapable. Resigned, he rejoined his body, rejoined the flow of time. Logan stood there, his arm outstretched. "H'Tan," he was pleading. "Please. Renounce this power."

He found his voice again. "I cannot, Captain," he said in a flat, joyless voice. "I am the power. There is nothing else."

Logan nodded. "I was hoping...that I was wrong," he said finally. "But it's too late."

"It was too late the moment Omega touched him," the Organian said. He was suddenly standing behind Logan. "The power is too great. This being was correct, Captain. You simply cannot imagine the level of power he had to come to terms with. My people have had millenia to adjust to it. Your friend did not. It is rather simple to add a drop of water to an ocean - it's something else again to attempt to find that same exact drop of water again and remove it, unchanged. He is a new entity - not H'Tan, not the mindless Omega urge, but a composite. He is one of us now."

"One of us," the Melkot delegate said.

"One of us," the Q delegate said, with reluctant resignation.

"He must remain with us now, Captain," said a delegate Logan did not recognize. He had a preternatural appearance of youthfulness, an elfin innocence shining from his smooth, alabaster skin. "As our student, and perhaps one day, as our peer."

"Your friend, H'Tan, was most noble," the Organian said. "He saw the nature of this entity, and sought to better it. He knew that he was dying, that he was being absorbed, and did not struggle, did not rage against his discorporation. He hoped that his Syka' precepts would guide this nascent creature, give it purpose beyond its own blind lust for destruction. He hoped that in this way, he would atone for his own misdeeds, and purge himself of his anger at long last."

K'Syra smiled. She seemed relieved, Logan thought. As if this were the best possible outcome she could have imagined. Everyone seemed damned happy. No one seemed to care that H'Tan, the real H'Tan, was gone forever.

"I wanted to save him," he said simply, sadly. "You have," K'Syra said. "You've saved everything noble about H'Tan, Captain. You've preserved his legacy."

"I wanted to preserve the man," Logan said, an edge to his voice.

The delegates were disappearing now, one by one. Some walked to the doors and vanished. Others abandoned the physical conceit outright and shed their human bodies, shimmering funnels of energy floating up over the assembly and vanishing. The chairman shrugged off his form to reveal a childlike humanoid form of glowing golden light. He, too, vanished.

"People die," K'Syra said. "You will die, some day, Captain. I will die. I'm not afraid. Neither was H'Tan. He met his death with his eyes open. He knew, as all Syka' know, that death is not an enemy. It is a completion of life. It is a reward."

"Spare me, please," Logan said angrily. "I don't wish to offend your religious beliefs, but I just don't want to hear that right now. I want to see my friend one more time, I want to tell him goodbye." He couldn't help but feel as if he'd failed.

"Captain..."

Logan turned. The being that once was H'Tan was standing behind him. There was an unfamiliar expression on his face. He seemed composed, at ease with himself.

"H'Tan," Logan began. Then he corrected himself. "No, sorry...how should I address you?"

"You may call me H'Tan, if you like," the being said. "I would like that."

Logan smiled slightly. "I would too," he said. "You seem more like your old self again, H'Tan. I wasn't sure-"

"How much of me was in here?" H'Tan said, tapping his forehead with his index finger. He smiled. "I remember H'Tan's life. In a way, I still am H'Tan. But I am not only H'Tan. He is just a part of who I am now...but the most important part. He gave me his life, freely. He gave me a conscience. For that I owe him a debt, one that..." His voice trailed off. "One that, I fear, I can never repay."

"I owe him, too," Logan said. "Let's try to live up to our obligations."

H'Tan nodded solemnly. "Goodbye, Captain," he said. "May the sacred light guide you." It was how the Syka' bid one another farewell.

Logan responded in kind. "May your spirit never know darkness," he replied. "This is it, isn't it? I'll never see you again."

"No," H'Tan said simply. "You will not." He vanished.

Independence Hall was starting to fade away, replaced by the endlless expanse of pale white light. "We have to leave," K'Syra said. Logan had almost forgotten about her. He noticed, rather absently, that she was back in her Syka' robes. He, too, had reverted back to his original clothing. All of the other delegates were gone, returned to their various dimensions of origin. Had the commoners outside...when there had been an outside...had they been real, or just components of the illusion? He wondered how real any of it had been. Or how much of this he would be allowed to remember. A terrible thought suddenly pounced on him: that this was all one big delusion, manufactured by his brain in between torture sessions from the Jem'Hadar and the Breen.

K'Syra took his hand. It felt warm, reassuring. Hard to believe that it wasn't real. "Thank you," she said simply. "I was afraid that our mission could not be accomplished."

Our mission, try my mission, Logan mused. But he didn't want to end things on a sour note. And it was good to be polite to Syka' Masters, just on general principle. "Now for the part where you return me to Starfleet Headquarters, as a reward and a token of gratitude."

"I'm afraid not, Captain," she said. "We must return to the exact coordinates from which he departed. But you needn't worry about it." A wry smile. Then-

Darkness. He was back in his cell, sprawled on the cold metal floor. Logan sat up, looked around. There was a corpse on the floor, leaning against the far wall in lop-sided repose. Logan, his body one vast bruise, staggered over to it. It was a Jem'Hadar, the one who had been interrogating him with such brutal dedication. It appeared that he had been hurled across the cell, slamming against the wall, and the impact had broken his neck. The explosion must have thrown Logan from his moorings on the ceiling.

The floor shook. Logan almost fell, but regained his footing. Torpedo impact, he realized. The ship, space station, whatever it was, was under attack. He sighed. With his luck, it was only the Borg. He rolled the Jem'Hadar over and began searching the body for weapons and a key to open the door.

The universe wasn't exactly showering him with gratitude.

Runabout Liata:

Cmdr. Therikh Personal Log

The gods have been cast down from their thrones, and Heaven is in flames.

Upon warping into the system, I was immediately hailed by a group of four Galor-class warships. The ships sent greetings, and asked for the size and disposition of the Starfleet task force for which I was obviously reconnoitering. My first thought was that I had somehow stumbled into one of those parallel universes that seemed to appear in the records of more famous and illustrious Starfleet officers than myself. The sort of world where everything is reversed - Klingons are pacifists, Ferengi are poor, Andorians are inferior. That sort of thing. But nothing seemed out of place - the sensor readings were all normal.

As the Cardassians led me sunward, I saw the aftermath of a major engagement. Smoldering, flaming wreckage everywhere. Half of a Galor spun past, caroming off another dead ship and flying in a different direction. Most of the wreckage seemed to have belonged to Jem'Hadar fighters. There were Breen kills also, and Cardassian. It seemed that insurrection was a habit that the Cardassians just couldn't break. I saw corpses floating in the vacuum - Jem'Hadar, their hull breached by a Cardassian torpedo most likely. The fighting was long done by this point. The Cardassians seemed to be in control of the system for the moment.

I sped past a burning Breen vessel, watching it somersault end over end as a few escape pods ejected out the starboard side, the momentum spinning them crazily. The Galors' phasers went online, and they picked off the escape pods one by one.

Wait. Something on the sensors-

A human life reading. There, on the port side...that superstructure...moving in. I have a lock on it now.

I'm on my way, Captain. Hang in there. With any luck you'll soon owe me your life again.

Hah. Life is so envigorating. Whatever will we do when this glorious war is over?

The Breen Prison-ship:

Logan heard the heavy clanging of boots from around the corner. He swore under his breath. The only weapon his dead captor had had was the Breen shock wand, which of course had no range. If he was outnumbered, he was in for it.

The hell with it. He'd go down fighting.

The metal mask of the Breen rounding the corner was the last thing Logan saw before his body began to discorporate. Transporter lock. The Breen raised his phaser and fired straight at him, and Logan barely saw the beam head right for his head and pass through it before the prison ship vanished completely. He-

-staggered forward off the transporter platform and nearly collapsed. An Andorian wearing commander's pips caught him and set him aright. Logan was wheezing. The beating, the exhaustion - not to mention that little interim wherein he'd help to save the universe, which may or may not have actually transpired - was starting to weigh heavily upon him. "Th-thanks," he managed. He looked up at the Andorian.

"Therikh!" he said. "God damn it, man, I'm glad to see you."

Therikh smiled. "Captain Logan. I can't leave you alone for a second." For all his smug sarcasm the Andorian seemed quite relieved to see his old friend alive.

"Okay, now that I've thanked you, tell me what the hell is going on. Has Starfleet begun its new offensive?"

"Negative, sir. We were beaten to the punch - by the Cardassians, actually."

"Ah. Well, whatever works. If you don't mind, Commander, I think I'm going to collapse now."

"Go right ahead," Therikh said, but Logan's eyes had rolled back in their sockets before he finished speaking and he went limp, slumping against the wall. Therikh laid the captain down. He looked severely beaten - bruises and welts tattooed across his face, probably a substantial amount of hemorrhaging as well. But Therikh was certain that Logan would survive. He was a tough bastard. Almost Andorian in his capacity to endure and thrive upon hostile circumstances.

Logan drifted in and out of consciousness most of the journey back to Federation space. During that time Therikh intercepted enough channel traffic to get a rough estimation of just what was going on. The Cardassians, professional turncoats that they were, had risen up against the Dominion forces occupying and propping up their crumbling Union. Even with the Breen, the Dominion didn't have enough forces to put down rebellions on every single Cardassian world. And the Tivans had put their house back in order and rejoined the Federation; the usurper, who some said had been Commander H'Tan, had been overthrown, possibly executed (reports were sketchy), and the Dominion had been expelled from Tivan space. All in all, the Dominion was paralyzed. The Alliance had taken advantage of this, and were hammering their way towards Cardassia Prime, taking heavy losses but maintaining their momentum. They might be there already. The war was almost won.

Damn, Therikh thought. He had been this close to getting those captain's pips on a field commission. At least he wasn't going to wake up in some starbase sickbay and find out after the fact that it was all over, like poor Logan. When he leaned that he missed all the excitement he'd probably be furious.

Logan mumbled something in his sleep. Therikh wasn't sure, but it sounded like "friend."

Runabout Liata put in at Outpost 17. By the time Logan had fully recovered, the armistice between the Dominion and the Alliance had been formally signed, and the war was over.