That night, Reese’s nocturnal wanderings returned him yet again to the dusty Chin’toka flatlands. He was standing on the arid plain near the cavern that housed AR-558, near Captain Sisko and Lieutenant Commander Worf. The Klingon seemed quietly impressed as he surveyed the dozens of Jem’Hadar dead that were strewn about the exterior of the captured Dominion communications bunker.

  Reese turned away from the facility, watching as the group of Starfleet officers that had just arrived from the U.S.S. Veracruz began settling in and cleaning up the detritus of the recent battle. After five months of keeping AR-558 out of the hands of the Jem’Hadar, relief had finally arrived. The Veracruz was rotating out the injured and exhausted.

  And bringing down more spring lambs for the slaughter, Reese thought, with their fresh pressed uniforms and their full bellies. How long will it take for them to break? To become like me?

  Reese glanced down at his own disheveled body, which was clad in tattered Starfleet-issue pants and undershirt. He had wondered why the new arrivals had resolutely refused to sustain eye contact with him, until he considered the necklace of ketracel-white tubes that still hung around his neck like evil talismans.

  Only then did he notice that he was turning his captured Jem’Hadar knife over and over in his sweaty, grime-caked hands. Dried blood flaked off the blade, sprinkling onto his hands like cinnamon-sugar on toast.

  Willing his hands to be still, Reese turned his attention back to the impossibly well-turned-out young reinforcements. “Children,” he said.

  “Not for long,” Sisko replied, sounding older than God.

  Reese looked down at the edged weapon in his hand. It had tasted so much blood that he had almost come to see it as hate itself made tangible. And that kind of hatred wasn’t something he wanted to carry home with him as a souvenir.

  With a supple motion, he threw the blade to the ground. It buried itself almost hilt-deep into the hard earth, like the fang of some malevolent serpent that wanted to inject the planet itself with its lethal venom. He lifted his foot and stomped down, sending the hilt into the dirt further. It was almost invisible now, and the dust would soon cover the weapon. Eventually it would be lost to time.

  “Let’s go,” Reese said, finally feeling free of the buildup of toxic emotions the last five months had forced upon him.

  He wouldn’t realize how wrong he was about that until after several weeks of nightmares and counseling.

  “Thank you for speaking with me, sir,” said the young man on the other end of the comlink.

  “Not at all, Mr. Reese,” Captain Benjamin Sisko said, sitting erect in the padded chair in his office overlooking Deep Space 9’s busy ops center. “According to the after-action report from AR-558, I owe you my life. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve just been certified as fit to return to duty,” the younger man said. “I’d like to get back as close as I can to the front lines.”

  Sisko noticed that Reese seemed almost to burn with a barely restrained intensity that he had rarely seen, except in the heat of battle. It made him feel a need for caution.

  “I’m not sure I can help you, Mr. Reese,” he said.

  But Reese seemed determined that Sisko hear him out. “The rumor going around is that the final assault on Cardassia will be launched from DS9. When the allied forces get under way, sir, I’d like to be there with them.”

  Sisko shuddered inwardly, recalling another place he had seen that same angry intensity: in his shaving mirror, for the first three years after the battle at Wolf 359 had taken Jennifer from him and Jake. Sisko could see that Reese wasn’t merely making a request of a superior officer; for some reason, Reese needed to be present at the final assault on the heart of all Dominion power in the Alpha Quadrant.

  Would I have been any different if we were still at war with the Borg? Or if I hadn’t discovered that my destiny is wrapped up with that of Bajor?

  “Welcome to Deep Space 9,” Sisko said after a silent moment, hoping he had just granted a tortured soul some small measure of mercy. “Colonel Kira and Lieutenant Dax will see to the paperwork.” He paused. “You remember Lieutenant Dax, I’m sure. She’s the station’s counselor.”

  At the mention of the word “counselor,” Reese appeared to flinch almost imperceptibly. Perhaps he’d had his fill of counselors since his five-month ordeal in the Chin’toka system had ended. That, too, was perfectly understandable, given the young man’s obvious eagerness to return to the front lines.

  “Yes, sir, I do remember her. Thank you, sir,” Reese said just before signing off.

  Afterward, Sisko stared into the empty computer screen on his desk, recalling all the death and horror he’d witnessed during the bloody conflict with the Dominion. Faces from this war and others paraded past his mind’s eye: Declan Keogh and the crew of the Odyssey; Jennifer, Captain Storil, and all the others who had died aboard the Saratoga at Wolf 359. He remembered those who had lost their lives aboard the Okinawa years earlier, during the Tzenkethi war.

  Those faces no longer plagued his dreams, at least on most nights. But he knew they would remain with him always, no matter how much new horror the Dominion forced upon him as the current war roared toward its inevitable final battle.

  Sisko rose and headed for ops, hoping that Reese’s new posting would finally help the young man lay to rest whatever demons had hounded him since he’d left AR-558.

  Once again, good people were dying all around Reese. But this time, most of them were expiring in silent blossoms of distant light.

  He thought he’d experienced the worst imaginable carnage at AR-558. But that was before he’d come aboard the U.S.S. Defiant, which seemed to be leading the allied forces straight into the maw of hell itself. If anything, the Jem’Hadar were even more vicious when battling across many klicks of empty space than they were at close quarters.

  From his post at one of the bridge’s aft tactical stations, Reese saw space become brilliant with interlacing phaser beams. Defiant shimmied and rocked as Captain Sisko barked orders and Ensign Nog guided the starship through an unending inferno of random explosions. All around Defiant, allied and Dominion vessels alike spouted molecular flames as they vented atmosphere and warp plasma.

  Despite the loss of what had to be dozens—or perhaps hundreds—of allied ships, Defiant, the two attack wings escorting her, and the assault force elements led by Admiral Ross and General Martok pressed on toward Cardassia Prime.

  “Another Jem’Hadar to port,” said Nog, seated at the helm.

  Near Reese, Worf worked a console with surprisingly nimble fingers. “Transferring auxiliary power to the port shields.”

  “Dax,” said Sisko, “we need some support from our attack fighters.” Sparks erupted from an aft science station, and the bridge shook from another hit. Reese’s teeth rattled as he assisted Worf in routing additional power to the shields.

  “Breen ship off the starboard aft,” Nog reported.

  “Sir, most of our fighters are either destroyed or under attack themselves,” Lieutenant Dax reported calmly from her console.

  Sisko barked another order to the Ferengi helmsman. “Ensign, get us out of here.” Defiant rocked again, hard.

  “I’m trying, sir.”

  Reese’s tactical console revealed an ominous tableau: several Jem’Hadar and Breen warships were rapidly closing on Defiant. The Breen vessel approached to within a few klicks, its weirdly organic-looking weapons tubes glowing with a menacing green light.

  See you soon, Billy, Reese thought, silently marveling at how fatalistic AR-558 had made him.

  Then a golden brilliance flooded the bridge for a split second as the main viewer displayed yet another colossal explosion.

  It took Reese a moment to realize precisely what had happened, and just how unlikely that event was.

  The Breen ship nearest to Defiant had been utterly vaporized.

  Odo stared at his console, a stunned expression on the security chief’s half-formed, masklike face as he addressed the captain. “Sir, the Cardassians—they’re attacking the other Dominion ships.”

  “They’ve switched sides,” Dax said, looking as surprised as the shapeshifter.

  “Yes!” Nog shouted in triumph. Reese grinned.

  Sisko’s features remained impassive. “The timing couldn’t be better. Come about and head for the center of their lines. This is our chance to punch through.”

  “Aye, sir,” Nog said, busy at the helm.

  Working with Worf, Reese quickly took stock of the status of the ship’s armaments. After all, the battle was still anything but over, even with the Cardassian fleet apparently now fighting on behalf of the allies.

  “Sir, phaser banks are fully charged,” the Klingon reported. “But we are down to forty-five quantum torpedoes.”

  “That’ll have to do,” the captain said, pacing the bridge. He turned to face Dax. “How are you holding up, old man?” The nickname jarred Reese every time he heard Sisko use it when addressing the counselor; it was difficult getting used to the fact that the youthful-looking officer actually carried many lifetimes worth of experience within her.

  “All things considered, I’d rather be on Risa,” she said.

  “Well, that makes two of us.” Sisko moved toward Odo, who was still staring intently at his station’s monitor.

  “Have you seen these reports, Captain?” Odo said, his voice tinged with disbelief. “The Dominion has begun destroying Cardassian cities. Millions of people are dying.”

  And the orders to do that were no doubt cut by somebody very much like you, Constable, Reese thought, sparing a sidewise glance at the sandy-colored shapeshifter.

  Nog spoke up, breaking the spell of stunned silence that had momentarily engulfed the bridge. “Captain, we’re approaching the Dominion defense perimeter.”

  “Well, let’s see what they have waiting for us,” Sisko said. “On screen.”

  Cardassia, Reese thought incredulously as the limb of the planet sketched a dull brown crescent across the main viewer an instant later. We’ve actually made it all the way to the middle of the Dominion’s biggest Alpha Quadrant beachhead. Dots of orange light opened like flowers across the night side as cities burned.

  Reese tried not to think about that as the sun crested the planet’s terminator, revealing hundreds of weapons platforms, Breen vessels, and Jem’Hadar attack ships in orbit. This ferocious array reminded Reese that everyone aboard Defiant could still die at any moment, and probably would. Nevertheless, he took some grim satisfaction at having sent countless Jem’Hadar to hell ahead of him.

  “Now we know,” Sisko said quietly, his eyes riveted to the all but impassable barrier that lay in Defiant’s path.

  Rest easy, Billy, Reese thought, casting a wary glance across the bridge at Odo. We can still rid the universe of some of the architects of all this misery. Before they finally manage to kill us.

  Sisko could hardly believe that the fighting was finally over. But too much blood had been spilled on both sides to allow him to exult in the allies’ victory the way General Martok had. And far too much work still lay ahead for Sisko to consider the war truly over.

  Taking Cardassia had cost Defiant—and the rest of the massed allied fleet—dearly, both in terms of casualties and damage to the ship. And we got off easy, Sisko thought as he made his way into transporter bay one.

  “Beam them up, Mr. Reese,” he said, nodding to the young veteran who had taken over for the transporter chief, killed hours earlier by a Breen fusillade.

  “Aye, sir.” Reese said, pausing to verify the transporter lock before entering the energize command. Several humanoid forms immediately began to shimmer into existence on the transporter stage.

  An exhausted-looking Kira Nerys, still dressed in the Starfleet uniform she’d worn while assisting the late Legate Damar’s uprising against the newly fallen Dominion regime—her temporary Starfleet commission a necessary concession to Cardassian prejudice—stood beside a meter-high cargo container. On the other side of the container stood Odo, his expression as unreadable as ever.

  As Kira and Odo stepped down from the platform, Sisko’s eyes were drawn to the pair of figures who stood behind them. The first of these to step down from the dais was a young but hard-looking Cardassian soldier. The next was a female changeling, whose half-formed facial features bore an incongruously beneficent expression.

  Looking into the Founder’s sharp, intelligent eyes, Sisko felt his body tense involuntarily. Despite her having ordered her forces to surrender, Sisko remained wary. This creature was, after all, the very embodiment of Dominion aggression.

  During the war’s twilight hours, she had ordered the deaths of upwards of a billion Cardassian civilians.

  Sisko stood silently as Kira reached his side and Odo and the Cardassian soldier escorted the female changeling toward him. Her movements were supple and graceful, almost boneless. The skin of her face was smooth and lacked any visible pores, all vestiges of the wasting illness with which Section 31 had afflicted her people now gone, thanks to Odo’s intervention.

  “Captain,” the female changeling said, nodding respectfully as she came to a halt a meter from where Sisko stood. “For my crimes, I am ready to accept whatever judgment your leaders see fit to pass upon me. Odo has assured me that I can expect fairness from you and your people.”

  Sisko thought of everyone who was dead because of her. Just for a moment, he wondered if Odo might not be a foolish optimist.

  “We’ll do our best.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded once again. “My fate is in your hands.”

  Sisko found it difficult to accept her words at face value. But for the moment he had no viable alternative. “Thank you,” was all he could think of to say.

  Turning, Sisko trained his gaze on the Cardassian who stood beside the Founder. He, too, was eyeing her warily, though his weapon remained holstered.

  “This is Glinn Ekoor, Captain,” Kira said, anticipating Sisko’s question. “He was part of Damar’s uprising. Saved us all from summary execution by the Jem’Hadar, in fact. If not for his help, we might not have made it into the Dominion Command Center in time to persuade our—” she cast a flinty look at the changeling. “—guest to cooperate with us.”

  “Of course,” Sisko said, nodding politely to the young Cardassian. The soldier couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five or so, though he had the eyes of a much older man. That didn’t surprise Sisko a bit, given what Ekoor’s homeworld had just endured.

  “Welcome aboard the Defiant, Glinn Ekoor,” Sisko said. “Colonel Kira told me that Mr. Garak had asked you to accompany us back to DS9. We’ll be happy to accommodate you.”

  “You are most gracious, Captain,” Ekoor said with a smoothness that belied his years. As was the case with Nog, this glinn had evidently been strengthened and tempered by the crucible of battle.

  Sisko spread his hands. “I’m not certain how quickly we can bring you back to Cardassia Prime, though.”

  The glinn nodded soberly. “I understand completely. However, Garak has asked me to take all the time I need safeguarding the items I’ve brought.” He gestured toward the crate that sat on the transporter platform. “At least until the allied authorities take possession of them. And I expect to assist the Cardassian diplomatic delegates who are to attend the signing of the official Dominion surrender papers. Afterward, I can find my own transportation home, if necessary. I may even book passage with one of the relief convoys that I’m sure will soon pass through the Bajor sector on its way to Cardassia.”

  Sisko knew that with the fires of the war’s last battle still burning, no completely accurate assessment of Cardassia Prime’s casualties and infrastructure damage was yet available. But he also had no doubt that DS9, both because of its strategic location and the generosity of the Bajoran people, would indeed coordinate some much-needed Cardassian relief efforts.

  “Of course,” Sisko said. Raising an inquisitive eyebrow, he took a couple of steps toward the crate on the transporter stage. “What’s in it?”

  “Certain matériel used by the Dominion and its…clients. It is now a token of Cardassia’s appreciation for the allies’ assistance in ending the Dominion’s rule over Cardassia,” Ekoor said, drawing an angular Cardassian padd from his belt. He handed the padd to Sisko. “Here is a complete manifest.”

  Sisko took the padd and quickly scanned its table of contents. Among the items listed were handheld Dominion long-range site-to-site transporter controls, disruptor weapons, and a pair of still-functional Breen refrigeration suits. Sisko supposed that the suits must have been taken by Cardassian rebels during the war’s final chaotic hours, or perhaps even by members of Damar’s own resistance cell.

  Starfleet Intelligence will be very interested in taking this stuff apart, he thought.

  Handing the padd to Kira, he said, “Colonel…” He stopped when his gaze fell upon the collar of her Starfleet uniform, which bore a trio of gold pips. “Or should I address you as ‘Commander’?”

  She smiled, then looked down at her current uniform as though seeing it for the first time. “I suppose ‘Commander’ will have to do until I get a chance to change back into Bajoran Militia gear.”

  Sisko returned her grin. “Well, Commander. Please see to stowing our cargo.” He turned to Odo. “Constable.”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “I want to be on the bridge when we break orbit. Would you mind escorting our…guest to some appropriate accommodations?”

  Odo looked uncomfortable, as though unsure whether he should be steering the other changeling toward crew quarters or the brig. “Not at all, sir. But…” He trailed off.

  The female Founder sighed and shook her head, obviously sensing Odo’s quandary. “Put your mind at ease, Odo. Your highest security area will do quite nicely.”

  Now that Defiant was crossing nearly three parsecs of quiet space on her way back to Deep Space 9, the bridge was able to function with a mere skeleton crew. There was no need for extra tactical personnel in the absence of raging space battles.