“So what brings you back?” Kasidy asked, her eyes smiling toward Jake’s companion.

“There’s someone I wanted you to meet,” Jake turned to the young woman, took her hand, and stood with her facing them. She was Bajoran, Sisko saw, and lovely. The way she smiled, there was something familiar about her…

“Dad, Kas,” Jake began, “I’d like you to meet Azeni Korena.”

Sisko blinked. Korena?

“It’s wonderful to meet you,” she told Sisko, then turned her smile on Kasidy. “Both of you.”

“Did…did you say Korena?” Sisko asked.

“Yeah,” Jake said, his grin a light-year wide. “My wife. We just got married.”

Once the initial shock had worn off, Sisko embraced his daughter-in-law— My daughter-in-law!—bearly able to speak past the elation he felt. Kasidy was equally jubilant, and began bombarding the young couple with questions as she led them back to the house, where introductions were made, and congratulations offered. Korena seemed a little shocked to find Bajor’s First Minister and former kai among the well-wishers, but recovered quickly. As the sun crept over the horizon, the mood in the Sisko house was merry once again.

Jake followed as Kasidy led Korena inside to look in on Rebecca in the nursery, leaving Sisko to stare after them in amazement. His guests had gone from congratulating the young couple to congratulating him,Vaughn pouring another round of groszand offering a toast that Sisko barely heard.

Married,Sisko thought. To the same woman I once met in an alternate future. A future Jake doesn’t even remember.

And that meant…what? That some events were inevitable? That some things couldn’t be avoided? Was this a sign of something deeper?

Enough, Ben,he told himself. You’re a father-in-law. Don’t be a killjoy and overanalyze it. Not every event is an omen, and not all events are threaded together. Not everything dovetails back to you. Or Them.

He raised his glass with the others and sipped, deciding darkly that if groszwasn’t illegal, it should be.

Suddenly Kira had rejoined them. “Nerys,” Sisko said, beaming at her. “Jake just got back. He’s married, can you believe it?”

“Captain,” Vaughn said, addressing Kira. “Is something wrong?”

Sisko then noticed that Kira had not come out onto the porch again, but was standing in the threshold of his front door, her expression grim.

“I’m sorry to interrupt the celebration,” she said, “but I need you all to join me in the study. Right now.”

“What is it?” Sisko asked.

“Ro has new information about what happened in Hedrikspool,” Kira said. “And you all need to hear it.”

Standing in front of the familiar array of green lights that covered the back wall of Deep Space 9’s security office, Ro Laren spoke quickly from the companel screen in Sisko’s study, reviewing the chronology of Sidau’s destruction before launching into her new findings.

“…As insular Bajoran communities go, Sidau was rather unremarkable in all respects except one,”she said. “The villagers had a peculiar annual ritual: They supposedly battled a mythical elemental creature called aDal’Rok for five consecutive nights every year. I had assumed it was a lot of nonsense. What I learned from the logs of Doctor Bashir and Chief O’Brien, however, is that theDal’Rok was real. At least, it was real to the inhabitants of Sidau.”

“Only to them?” asked Asarem.

“It was evidently a psionic manifestation of their fears,”Ro explained, “brought about and repulsed by the villagers’ collective will—which was channeled by the community’s shaman, thesirah.”

“A storyteller,” Opaka said, an instant before Sisko himself recognized the Old Bajoran term. This was starting to sound familiar…

“Right,”Ro answered. “Except this one wasn’t the kind of scholar we normally associate with the term today. Apparently, at some point in the village’s early history, discord among the inhabitants threatened their demise. The details about it are vague, but what Bashir and O’Brien reported was that this led thesirah of that time to come up with theDal’Rok ritual as a way of bringing the people together by giving them the appearance of an outside threat to rally against. The fact that they were actually contending with their own fears became a secret passed down fromsirah tosirah for decades, maybe centuries.”

“I remember this now,” Sisko said, his expression darkening. He looked at Kira. “Doctor Bashir and the Chief went there while we were mediating the border dispute between the Paqu and Navot.”

Kira nodded. “I realized the same thing.”

“Lieutenant,” said Vaughn, “you said the Dal’Rokwas a psionic construct. Were these sirahtelepaths?”

“Sirahna,” Ro corrected. “And good guess, but no. That’s where the beginning of the answer to the massacre of the village comes in. According to Bashir and O’Brien, aSirah would employ an artifact to conjure and control theDal’Rok.”

“What sort of artifact?” Asarem asked.

“It was a bracelet, at the center of which was a small green stone reputed to be a fragment of an Orb.”

“An Orb fragment?”Vaughn asked, echoing Sisko’s own thoughts. All eyes turned briefly to Opaka, but the former kai said nothing, only frowned as she listened to Ro’s tale.

“I know it sounds unlikely,”Ro said. “I wasn’t even aware myself that that could happen to an Orb. And for what it’s worth, I haven’t had any luck verifying that itever happened. But it’s hard to imagine another explanation for what Bashir and O’Brien experienced. We know the Orbs aren’t made of ordinary matter. Starfleet’s best guess was always that they were energy vortices that didn’t exist entirely within our universe. If the bracelet stone really was an Orb fragment, it might explain why Sidau village was destroyed.”

“Someone learned about the bracelet, and went after it,” Vaughn said.

“And maybe got it,” Kira chimed in.

“If it isan orb fragment,” Asarem said, “is there any way to know which Orb it may have come from?”

Ro shook her head. “I’m afraid not, First Minister. I checked with the Vedek Assembly, and while it’s hard to be absolutely certain, given the unusual nature of the Orbs, there’s no obvious sign that any of them was ever damaged, assuming such a thing is even possible. The fact that the fragment is supposed to be green isn’t a clue; the Orbs have been known to change colors from time to time, though no one knows why. And the use to which thesirahna put the fragment doesn’t exactly tie it specifically to any of the abstract concepts for which the Orbs were named.”

Their appellations ran through Sisko’s mind: Prophecy and Change. Wisdom. Contemplation. Time. Memory. Destiny. Truth. Souls. Unity.Ro was right; it could be any of them.

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to go after one of the actual Orbs,” Vaughn asked, “not just this bracelet?”

“The Tears have been hidden,” Kira explained. “The close call we had with the parasites led the Vedek Assembly to place them in a secret location for the time being, until new security measures can be implemented to insure their safety in the shrines.”

Asarem nodded. “Bajor is determined that they never again be compromised in any way.”

“Besides,”Ro added, “a missing Orb would be noticed immediately. The bracelet was all but unknown outside Sidau. I think the perpetrators thought that by incinerating the village and everyone in it, it would prevent or at least delay our learning about the bracelet.”

“How powerful is this artifact?” Vaughn asked.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”Ro said. “The Cardassians captured most of the Orbs during the Occupation as part of the overall plundering of Bajor, but either they were never able to make use of them, or they chose not to risk trying. But if someone with an agenda were to get hold of one, even this supposed ‘fragment,’ who knows what they could do?”