The Ultimate Odyssey
by Naomi SiskoPROLOGUE
There is a story which every Trekker is destined to write, whether great
or small it doesn't matter. Sometimes he or she writes more than
one, but for Anja it was just the one. This one.
Then why am I recording it now, you ask? You see, Anja did not write down the whole story, only the smallest part of it, as you will soon discover. I find it my duty to add the pieces she left out, so you will know exactly how everything came to be.
It all happened once upon a time....
As Anja sat typing her once-in-a-lifetime story, someone else watched. Intrigued by her story line and needful of something to do, that someone decided that her plot should come to be. Across barriers of time and space, he read and was pleased.
He had been listening to the symphony of the stars, as he flew through a rainbowed nebula, bordered by streams of deep space wind currents. Now he sought the simple pleasure of intervening with human events, again.
"I
think I shall create a temporal anomaly today," he mused, inspired.
With a wave of his hand, Q whisked off toward his destination.
CHAPTER ONE
Anja skipped down the damp sidewalk, her finished manuscript in her book
bag. She loved mornings like these, where the clouds hid the sun
just enough for her to look up into the sky without hurting her eyes.
If only she didn't have to go to school! But to school she went,
keeping her eyes trained ahead of her, occasionally glancing upward.
It was on one such glance that she caught sight of a flash of light, almost
like a collapsing star. What was it? Her curiosity peaked,
she strolled on pondering until she reached school, making a trip to her
locker to drop off her coat and book bag before heading to first period.
Slamming her books on her desk, Anja turned to a friend. "Good morning," she greeted Hannah. "Guess what?"
Hannah looked up from the novel she was reading. "What?"
"I finished my 'Star Trek' book."
Hannah frowned. "The one you were reading?"
"No. The one I was writing!"
"Oh. Can I see it?"
Anja handed the crisp printouts to Hannah, who leafed through them, every once in a while stopping to read a sentence.
"This looks good," said Hannah. "Can I borrow it to read?"
"Sure."
The bell rang, and the students hurried to their seats. The German teacher, a lady who had immigrated from Hungary, finished some business up front and addressed the class.
"OK, class, take out your homevork." Elizabeth Boggess, known to her students as "Frau," had such a heavy accent that one might think it was actually something that was stuck in her throat. After checking off everyone's homework, she instructed, "turn to auf Seite hundert und dreissig. Today ve are going to talk about irregular werbs."
"Frau, I forgot my book in my locker," whined one of the students.
"Yeah, me too," complained another, stalling. Frau was one of those teachers the kids loved to torment. She didn't pay attention, though, and picked up a piece of chalk and began conjugating verbs on the chalkboard.
Anja's eyes grew wide as Frau was enveloped in a great flash of light, then disappeared. Hannah frantically dashed to the front of the room in a desperate attempt to save her favorite teacher, but soon followed. Then Anja's own vision was obscured by total brightness. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the flimsy protection of her eyelids did no good. Then the light disappeared, and she was left in some very dark place. Once her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she studied her surroundings and shivered. Something seemed very, very familiar. Suddenly, she knew. Spotting Frau and Hannah, she dashed over to them.
"Vhere are we?" Frau queried, knotted eyebrows contorting her smallish face.
"I'll explain that later," blurted Anja quickly. "We have to get out of here."
"Not so fast," grumbled a menacing voice from a darkened corridor.
Hannah spoke up. "I have a funny feeling about this."
Frau frowned, staring at something. "Speaking of funny, look at them."
Two Ferengi made their way out of the darkness. "Oh, my..." Hannah said, hiding her face in her hands in a half laugh, half sob.
"Vell, who are they?"
"We need to go," insisted Anja, urgently.
"They're Ferengi. From 'Star Trek,'" explained Hannah.
"I thought that vas science fiction."
"It is . . . er . . . was."
"What are you doing here?" the lead Ferengi asked.
Anja sighed. "Look. We'll get out of here the same way we came, and you won't have to worry about us. But only if we hurry." She grabbed Frau and Hannah by the hand and pulled them toward the opening of the temporal fissure that had trapped them.
"Computer, activate force field at 10.1293," the second Ferengi commanded. Anja, Hannah, and Frau, where were all running at that point, bounced off the invisible wall, thrown back into the corridor.
"No.
I think you'll stay. I want to know how you transported through our
shields. Maybe we could come up with an agreement. One that
would be very . . ." he paused, as if searching for the right word . .
."profitable."
Ben Sisko rolled his eyes. Quark had done it again. This time, instead of using the computer terminal for a little commercial, he had programmed a brochure option for the screen. Odo would soon deal with it. Sisko could face Quark some other time, if the Ferengi lived beyond the changeling's interrogation. Odo became rather fed up by the tiniest things these days.
"Captain." Dax's voice came over the comm system. "The Enterprise is ready to dock."
"Acknowledged," replied Sisko, turning over the thought of meeting Captain Picard, once Locutus of Borg, the entity responsible for his wife's death, again. His throat tightened a little, but all other traces of bitterness were gone. Perhaps he and the Captain could settle their differences this time around.
He lifted himself from his chair and left his office, trekking through the now lively corridors of Deep Space Nine, so different from the cold, heartless Cardassian war base it had once been. It wasn't until the airlock rolled open that he got some sense of the calculated militarism the station once served.
Captain Picard and company strode out of the airlock, joining Sisko and Kira, smiling uncharacteristically as Captain Sisko stood tensely, attempting to draw from her peace and confidence. Thus, his own smile came naturally, relieving his apprehension.
"Captain Picard," he greeted. "Welcome. I trust you will enjoy your shore leave. We have the supplies you requested in Cargo Bay Three."
Picard
mirrored Sisko's hopeful smile, following him down the corridor.