Inferno

Star Trek Millennium, Book III: Inferno

© 2000 Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

410 pages

"I did everything I could," Sisko cried into the silence that engulfed him.
But everything he had ever done was for nothing.
Everything that had ever been was for nothing.
Zero seconds.
It was over. (p. 366, The War of the Prophets) 

Well, it's over. The universe is kaput. The two Bajoran wormholes have collided and the very fabric of existence winked away, just as the Bajoran prophecies foretold.  But the competing gods of Bajor, the Prophets and the Pah-Wraiths,  are still fighting -- and while their cosmic struggle tarries for just a little while longer, hope lingers for what few survivors there are. In the final moments of the universe's existence, two ships entered the Bajoran wormholes, and were thus sheltered from oblivion. Aboard them are the crew of the Defiant,  three 'emissaries', and a scattering of civilians. As surprised as most of them are to learn that the Bajoran prophecies came to past, the wormholes -- now, truly, the Celestial Temple -- also carry within them the space station Deep Space Nine, protected -- as with the ships -- inside a bubble of existence. Deep Space Nine still exists -- though in what timeframe, no one can be sure -- and by returning home, Sisko and his crew hope to change history and prevent the end of everything.

This is truly a wild series. The first novel contained an intriguing mystery that partially buds off the station's history, while the second throws the reader into a kind of fantasy/political drama. Inferno is another beast all together: a science fiction novel in which our characters try to figure out a way to restore existence from the past without actually changing the past: every timeline, every 'universe' is like one face of a diamond which is the multiverse, and if the multiverse itself is destroyed, nothing else matters. I like time travel stories, and this novel forces Sisko, Kira, O'Brian, Jadzia Dax, Worf, Jake Sisko, Quark, Garak, and others to scurry around the station while constantly shifting to various timeframes, trying to figure out some way of preventing history from repeating itself while being harried by two madmen, the Pah-Wraith possessed Gul Dukat and  Kai Weyoun, infested by nanites that make him a loyal servant of the other Pah-Wraiths.  Though this has been a series deep in Bajoran mythology, here it takes a backseat to temporal mechanics and a race against....well, time. True to form for a book about time travel, quite a few plot developments are counterintuitive and resolve -- or create -- some of the mysteries seen in the first book. The ending shocks even the characters. While this series isn't notable for the kind of intense character drama seen in say, David Mack's work, there are some golden scenes in here -- most notably, between Sisko and his son. 

This series was written after the television show's end, and is set before "Tears of the Prophets", in which a canon Pah-Wraiths v. Prophets storyline erupts. (Jadzia Dax is killed there, while she's still alive and kicking here.)  Foreshadowing for the rest of the sixth season and the whole of the seventh season abound,  though they tend toward the depressing -- the writers allude to Jadzia's future death on several occasional throughout the series. 

As good as I remembered. Though a different kind of epic story than Destiny,  Millennium is grand storytelling in its own class.

The War of the Prophets

Star Trek Millenium: Book II, The War of the Prophets
© 2000 Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
372 pages

Riker reappeared on the virwer, eyes afire with rage. "The War of the Prophets is coming! Choose your side, Emissary -- because this is your war now!"  - p. 408, The Fall of Terok Nor

When Captain Sisko and the rest of the Ds9 crew recovered three lost Bajoran artifacts -- the lost Orbs of Jalbador -- they thought a great mystery and the murderous schemes surrounding it had finally been put to rest. When when the three orbs spontaneously gathered together and opened a second wormhole, glowing crimson,  the Defiant and all aboard her were thrown into the future while attempting to escape the destruction of Deep Space Nine.  They found themselves trapped in a nightmarish future, where Klingons, Cardassians, and humans were all but extinct species -- where the remnant of Starfleet which remained is allied with the Borg and dedicated to the wholesale destruction of Bajor --a Bajor which is the seat of power for a new, mighty empire intent on enacting the Apocalypse.

Defiant jumps 25 years into the future and is immediately caught between the opposing forces: the Ascendancy need Sisko alive to fulfill prophecy, while Starfleet is determined to kill or capture Sisko to prevent his taking a role in the things to come. Gone is the Prime Directive and Starfleet's scientific, diplomatic culture:  the universe may very well be doomed if Bajor is not eradicated. It's a bizarre, disturbing future the authors introduce us to, and when Defiant's crew is captured by both warring parties, the readers are able to see how truly demented the powers that be have become. Weyoun, formerly an agent of the Dominion, is now Kai of the Bajoran people -- and while he happily waits for the universe to end in two weeks, Starfleet --  and specifically, Fleet Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Nog -- are sending a timeship 25,000 years into the past to prevent cosmic catastrophe.

Sheer morbid curiosity in this strange world kept me reading the first time, but now I enjoy it more for the fun the authors had with their characters. Kira is the only weak point, reduced to a religious fanatic who yells "That's blasphemy" and does little else. Garak, the station's longterm resident Cardassian and former covert operative for the Obsidian Order, gives a unique perspective on the end of things, commenting surreally as he awaits the inevitable.  The drama ramps up toward the end, when Starfleet's master plan is supposed to unfold....but it all goes to hell.

I had no intention of reading this so soon after The Fall of Terok Nor, but I picked it up to read with supper...and didn't stop until I was done. If I can find the third book, I just may read the entire trilogy in as many days.

The Fall of Terok Nor

Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Millennium, Book I, The Fall of Terok Nor
© 2000 Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
464 pages

The Millenium trilogy was, prior to Destiny, the most epic story ever approached in Trek literature, and  in fact even spawned a PC game -- a third-person action/adventure shooter called The Fallen.  It's a story of the past and future, of grand mythology, in which the good guys battle for nothing less than the existence of the Universe -- and lose. It brings together characters from all the Next Generation-era shows,  and is responsible for many of my favorite scenes in Trek literature. But it all started when an Andorian merchantman of questionable repute was found dead in the lower levels of the station...and flooded  Deep Space Nine with mysteries.

The investigation of the Andorian's murder leads to two more bodies -- old bodies, which had been fused into the station's bulkheads at some point around the Day of Withdrawal, when the Cardassian Union ended its occupation of Bajor and abandoned its ore-mining station -- a day, strangely enough, that three of the station's residents who were around back then can't remember.  Suddenly smugglers are coming to the station in droves, which frustrates Captain Sisko mightily, given that he's in the middle of the Federation's equivalent of World War 2.  All the little threads seem to lead to three religious artifacts, the Red Orbs of Jalbador -- which could open a second wormhole. Though dismissed by most Bajorans as apocryphal,  the various smugglers, a sect of Bajoran cultists, and three Cardassian operatives pretending to be humanitarian officials are all quite obviously interested in finding them.

This first volume of the trilogy is an impressive start: mystery and adventure seem to end in resolution, only things to go badly wrong: Terok Nor ends with the destruction of the station and the DS9 crew aboard the Defiant being thrown into a nightmare.

I had no intention of re-reading this: I just found the first volume while digging through a trunk of books looking for The Ancestor's Tale,  and foolishly opened it up to see if it was good as I remembered. I read 200+ pages that very night and 200+ more the next day. It would appear my fond memories do it justice.