Kira glanced back across the room, over at When the Prophets Cried.She had felt the urge to consult the old book this morning, not because she sought direction for herself, but because she hoped to gain some insight into the current, tumultuous times. Dramatic events had unfolded for Bajor during the past few months—the Ascension of the Emissary, the death of the kai, the banishment of the Pah-wraiths, the unearthing of the Ohalu text—and Kira had begun to wonder if a new era might be dawning for her people. Allusions to a restoration of all the highest accomplishments the Bajoran people had ever achieved appeared in several canon sources, though conventional interpretations held that such a time, if it ever came, would be far in the future. But with the return of the Orb of Memory, Kira had started considering the possibility that the future had arrived.

She lifted the mug to her lips, then rose from her chair and went over to the replicator. She deposited the raktajino,no longer hot enough for her liking, on the pad, then touched a control to recycle it. Hazy, whirring strands of light swallowed the mug and converted it back into energy and raw materials. “Raktajino,”she said, once the mug had disappeared. “Extra hot, two measures of kava.”As the replicator hummed back into action, she turned and looked again at When the Prophets Cried.

The title referred to the Orbs, which, at the time Vedek Synta had written the tome, had been known only as the Tears of the Prophets. Bajoran faith represented the Orbs as indirect physical links to the Prophets themselves. During Vedek Synta’s time, seven Tears had been known, and since then, three more had been found. When the Cardassians had withdrawn after the Occupation, they had taken all but the Orb of Prophecy with them, and the Orb of the Emissary, which had yet to be discovered. But over the last few years, the Orbs had begun returning to Bajor, a prophecy foretold by Vedek Synta, and which she hinted might be a preamble to the restoration and Bajor’s greatest age.

Almost four years ago, Kira remembered, the Orb of Wisdom had made a circuitous route home, acquired by the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi from the Cardassian black market and eventually sold to the Bajorans when Ferenginar and Bajor had come to the brink of war. And then the Cardassians had given back the Orbs of Time and Contemplation. And now, after Commander Vaughn had found the Orb of Memory aboard a derelict Cardassian freighter, five of the original nine Tears of the Prophets were in the possession of the Bajoran people for the first time in Kira’s lifetime.

Kira turned and picked up the new mug of raktajinofrom the replicator pad, but she remained standing there a moment, still considering Vedek Synta’s old work. Kira could picture herself sitting on the ground, her legs up, with the book set open against her thighs, the pages, fragile with age, crackling as she turned them. As a child, as a teen, in the Singha refugee camp or on the run with the resistance, she had most often read the book that way, her back against a fence or a tree or a cave wall, wherever she happened to be. And prior to the Attainder, that was how she still read the book, very often, on the floor of her quarters or in a hidden corner of her office.

A short laugh escaped her lips when she remembered the day— How long ago was it? Three years? Four?—when Captain Sisko had paid an unexpected early-morning visit to her quarters and caught her reading on the floor, leaning against an outer bulkhead. She had been embarrassed, but the captain had quickly made her feel at ease, revealing his own predilection for lying out in the middle of a baseball diamond he re-created in a holosuite. That image of the captain sprawled out in a grassy field had amused her back then, and it amused her now.

She missed Benjamin Sisko. Not the Emissary or the commanding officer of Deep Space 9—though she missed those aspects of the man as well—but just her friend. He was an unusual man, not only because he had been touched by the Prophets, but because he was worthy of being touched by Them. A man of robust principles, quick to action, loyal, and strong. Kira believed that he would return one day from the Celestial Temple, as Kasidy had been promised in a vision, and she hoped that day occurred during her lifetime. She missed her friend.

A signal chirped in the quiet office, followed by the voice of Ensign Ling. “Ops to Colonel Kira,”she said.

“This is Kira. Go ahead, Ensign.”

“Colonel, theU.S.S. Mjolnir is hailing the station,”Ling said. “They’re requesting an approach vector and permission to dock.”A note of hesitation played in the ensign’s voice, echoing Kira’s own confusion.

“Mjolnir?”she repeated. Captain Hoku and her crew were not due at the station for another three weeks. Kira put the raktajinoback down on the replicator pad and moved back behind her desk. She sat down and quickly skimmed her overnight correspondence again, the computer interface beeping as she scrolled through the list. She saw nothing from Starfleet. “Ensign,” Kira asked, “did they say why they were arriving so far ahead of schedule?”

“No, sir,”Ling answered right away. “Should I inquire?”

Kira’s initial inclination was to say, “Yes, inquire,” a remnant, no doubt, of her days in the resistance, when even a single, small piece of information might prove vital to the cause. Even as first officer and now commander of DS9, she frequently sought as much data as she could about any particular situation. But if Captain Hoku had wanted to provide that information right now, Kira realized, she already would have done so.

“No,” she finally said. “Send my greetings and bring them in.”

“Aye, sir.”The channel closed with a short tone.

Kira sat back in her chair, her arms sliding back along the glossy surface of the desktop until her wrists rested atop its rounded edge. Mjolnirhad been slated to arrive three weeks from now, she knew, and a week after that, to begin a three-month tour of duty at Deep Space 9 while Defiantexplored the Gamma Quadrant. Kira wondered if those plans had been changed.

A sudden, wild thought occurred to Kira: perhaps Mjolnirwas carrying yet another Orb back to Bajor. The notion was an idle one, she knew, but it brought her back again to Vedek Synta’s book. “Bajor Rising” was the title of one prophetic tale in the collection, a tale from which some inferred that the return of the Orbs would usher in a resplendent new age for the Bajoran people.

When the children have wept all,Kira quoted to herself, anew will shine the twilight of their destiny,and she realized that When the Prophets Criedhad not been taken from her; as often as she had read it, as well as she knew it, that could never happen. When the children have wept all,she thought again, anew will shine the twilight of their destiny.This single sentence had sparked more controversy and disagreement than any entire section of Vedek Synta’s book. Did childrenrefer to the people of Bajor? Did the mention of weeping allude to the Tears of the Prophets? Did the word destinyonly mean fate,or did it also connote the Orb of Destiny? And was twilighta reference to dawn—a beginning—or to dusk—an end? Even the very language itself evoked debate, with numerous translations generating wildly divergent versions of the passage.

Kira sat back up in her chair and spoke toward the center of her office. “Kira to Ensign Ling,” she said.

“Ling here, Colonel,”came the response.

“What’s the ETA of the Mjolnir?”

“Checking,”Ling said, and then, “Ninety-four minutes.”

“Thank you, Ensign. Kira out.” She knew there was no merit to the idea that Mjolnirmight be carrying an Orb. Her intuition had served her well over the years, especially with respect to tactics and warfare, but this was not intuition; this was fantasy, and she knew it. Still, she could not shake the feeling that something was coming. So much had happened during the past half-year, so many extraordinary events had come to pass, that she somehow felt that it could not be less than the auguring of things to come.