Cathedral by Michael Mangels (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

aimed at safeguarding their respective delegates to the signing. Several of them were concerned about the previous evening’s disturbance in the Bajoran shrine, but Ro explained clearly that the Ohalavaru had been making a religious statement, and that they had expressed no interest whatsoever in interrupting the proceedings today. Most of them, in fact, had already left the station, since there had been little justification for keeping them in custody.

Gard had asked more probing questions, reviewing the capabilities of Ro’s security scanners, the types of weapons being screened, making sure that all personnel were alert for changelings or shrouded Jem’Hadar, and inquiring about the readiness and training of Ro’s deputies. Ro might have taken umbrage at some of the questions had they come from anyone else, but since she knew of Gard’s police background, she felt relatively at ease with his highly specific interrogation.

After being assured that the station’s shields would be up throughout the ceremony as an added precaution, most of the visiting security teams seemed satisfied with Ro’s elaborate measures. Even the Klingons grumbled only slightly, mainly at having to leave their bat’leths, d’k tahgs, and other bladed weapons in their quarters. Ro made a point of going out of her way to prepare each security contingent not to overreact at the sight of Taran’atar. She wondered if the war-weary peoples of the Alpha Quadrant would ever learn to be at ease in the presence of a Jem’Hadar soldier, however benign his current mission.

“Are there any further questions?” Ro asked, winding up the morning’s final security briefing. Seeing none, she was about to adjourn the meeting and release everyone, when she saw Etana reenter the room, an unreadable expression on her face. The deputy made a subtle hand gesture, part of a set of prearranged signals which were well known to every member of Ro’s regular staff. Ro acknowledged Etana with a small nod. Something big is happening, but no lives are in danger.

“Thank you all for your attention and your help in making this historic event go smoothly and safely for all involved,” Ro said, adjourning the meeting. Etana quickly approached her as the wardroom emptied, and they partially turned their backs to the people still leaving.

“The Trager has just returned without calling ahead,” Etana said quietly. “Vedek Yevir is aboard. He and Gul Macet are awfully excited about something, but they won’t tell us what it’s all about yet.”

Ro sighed heavily. The last thing she needed right now was another complication.

23

I know this place, Julian thought a moment after the transporter beam released him. And he felt some genuine surprise that this should be so, given everything else he knew he’d forgotten.

Clad only in paper slippers and one of the loose, robe-like garments he recognized from his childhood doctor visits, he stood alone on the shattered stone steps that led to the entrance of the Hagia Sophia. But sixth-century Istanbul’s grandest cathedral was much smaller than it had been during his last visit. Its gleaming dome was far shallower than he remembered it, and now lay many meters closer to the sun-baked street. The structure gave the impression of a scale model, its entire physical footprint now scarcely larger than a Starfleet runabout.

Shrunken down, just like me.

Julian gazed around at the tumble of block buildings flanking the ancient cobblestone streets. Except for the faint echoes of some distant, semimusical noise, the city was utterly still. No people at all were in evidence, not Ezri, Nog, or anyone else. This realization made the small hairs on his neck stand up like vigilant soldiers.

At least Ezri was right about the monsters, he thought, seizing the notion for whatever small comfort it provided.

Perhaps, he thought, his friends had already gone inside the cathedral. That was where they’d said we were all going, after all. Into the cathedral. He knew that they had come here with him in search of healing. And this place was where he kept every cure and remedy he had ever studied.

Whatever he had not yet forgotten was either here, or nowhere.

Julian had to crouch to get through the door to the gallery at the cathedral’s perimeter. Once inside, he bumped his head painfully on the ceiling when he tried to stand up straight. The great gallery was cleared of the rubble he recalled from his previous visit, and it was as empty of people as the surrounding city. But the gallery was now only a narrow corridor, lined with makeshift walls of bricks and plywood. The low ceiling forced him to walk stooped over as he made his way toward the now-tiny staircase—

—which he now saw led up to a library doorway so small that not even Kukalaka would have been able to wriggle through it. There’s no help here, Julian thought, looking back over his shoulder at the way he had come. He saw that the door through which he had entered was now impossibly small as well.

Panic electrified him. Trapped!

He turned his head toward where he remembered a large external window ought to be. It was boarded up, but the wood didn’t look very strong. Curling into a fetal position on the marble floor, Julian braced his back against a gallery wall and pushed his feet against the wood with all his strength. He heard the building itself groan, as though its ancient bricks and mortar were actively struggling against him.

The wooden barrier suddenly gave way in a shower of chips and flinders, and his own momentum launched him like a missile through the window frame—

—and into a large, white, brightly lit chamber. He looked up and saw three people, two human women and a dour-faced Vulcan male, sitting behind a long table, gazing at him in expectation. All of them wore blue Starfleet uniforms.

“Well, Mister Bashir?” the Vulcan said. He sounded impatient, and not very much fun. “Which is it? A preganglionic fiber, or a postganglionic nerve?”

Starfleet Medical School, he thought,