Attico The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80336-624-1
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten

The fascinating life of Starfleet's celebrated captain, and Bajor's Emissary of the Prophets, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Benjamin Sisko tells the story of his career in Starfleet, and his life as a father and Bajor's Emissary to the Prophets. Chart his rise through the ranks, his pioneering work designing the Defiant class, his critical role as ambassador and leader during the Dominion War, and his sacred standing as a religious leader of his adopted home. Explore the hidden history of his childhood and early career in Starfleet, and the innermost thoughts of the man who made first contact with the wormhole aliens and opened safe passage to the Gamma Quadrant, and united Starfleet, Klingon and Romulan forces to defeat the Dominion. Discover Sisko's personal take on his confidantes Lieutenant Dax and Major Kira Nerys, the enigmatic Garak, and his adversaries, Gul Dukat and Kai Winn, as well as his fatherly advice for his son Jake. Passing on lessons from father to son, from his experiences with the Prophets to the writings of Benny Russell, Sisko's story is a unique phenomenon in Starfleet and human history, told in the way only he can.

Derek Tyler Attico is a science fiction author, essayist, and photographer. He is a winner of the Excellence in Playwriting Award from the Dramatist Guild of America and a two-time winner of the Star Trek Strange New Worlds short story contest. Derek is also a contributing freelance writer to the Star Trek Adventures role-playing game from Modiphius Entertainment, and a game designer for the upcoming Renegade Legion role playing game. With a degree in English and History, Derek is an advocate of the arts, human rights, and inclusion.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Attico, Derek Tyler

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION

BY JAKE SISKO

THERE WERE NO SHIPS ON THE UPPER OR LOWER PYLONS. No protests or pilgrimages on the promenade. No station repairs that needed immediate attention. No scheduled vessels coming through the wormhole.

Deep Space 9 was quiet.

The silence unnerved Lieutenant Nog as he sat at the situation table in the center of ops. On the night shift, the silence would have made sense. At night, with most of the promenade shops closed and station personnel in their quarters or asleep, there was simply nothing to hear.

But now, at 0630 hours, on the day shift of the first anniversary of the end of the war, and Captain Sisko’s disappearance, this wasn’t what Nog expected. The Ferengi had been thinking about the seventh Rule of Acquisition all morning: “Keep your ears open.” However, the ambient noise in the operations center was barely above twenty decibels.

There was more sound coming from the computers at the different stations in ops than the people manning them. No one was talking, and if they were, it was only to ask and answer the occasional question. The lieutenant looked around at the people in Bajoran and Starfleet uniforms; even the Starfleet operating system in the computers was an indication of what had been saved by winning the Dominion War. At the same time, the station’s Cardassian architecture would always be a reminder of just how close they’d come to losing everything. Nog realized maybe the silence on the station wasn’t silence at all, but a way for everyone to reflect on what had happened.

And whom they’d lost.

Without warning, the dormant sensor array at the situation table was activated. Years ago, Jadzia Dax had fine-tuned the station’s sensors to detect a sudden surge in neutrino emissions. Nog watched the emissions rise steadily on the early detection system, which could mean only one thing.

The wormhole was opening.

Outside the station, light, energy, and gravity coalesced at a single point, and neutrinos surged.

A whirlpool of light and color spiraled open, gaseous clouds miles in diameter blossomed into existence. At the center, not a rip or tear in space, but a doorway. And within the open doorway, a blazing tunnel of energy beckoned.

Nog flashed a quick look at the trans-wormhole subspace communications relay that connected the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant. Seventy thousand light-years separated the two relay stations, but a subspace filament made communication nearly instantaneous. You would know when something had entered the wormhole and was taking the two-minute trip to the other side.

However, no ship had entered the wormhole.

Lieutenant Nog had seen what the Bajorans called the Celestial Temple of the Prophets open many times before. But it was rare for the stable wormhole to do so without something entering or exiting. He tapped the communications console on the monitoring station. “Colonel, the wormhole is opening, but no ships have entered or exited.”

Less than ten seconds later, Colonel Kira Nerys stepped out of the station commander’s office. Gripping a baseball, she paused atop the short staircase that elevated the office above everything else in the operations center. As all eyes turned to her, she focused on the empty iris of the Cardassian display that sat high above ops for everyone to see. “On screen,” Kira commanded as she descended the stairs.

Like an ever-watchful eye, the elliptical viewscreen snapped to life. The wormhole appeared as it had thousands of times before.

But this time, something was different.

The energy at the heart of the doorway that always blazed like an infinite sun began to pulsate.

Nog didn’t bother to hide the anxiety he was feeling as he said, “That’s… new.”

Lieutenant Commander Amir’s attention was pulled away from the main viewscreen to the external sensor readout, at the science station he was manning. The half Andorian, half Vulcan’s antennae shot up in surprise from his head full of white hair as his blue-green-skinned hands raced over the panel.

“Something’s happening in there. I’m reading a massive buildup of tachyon energy,” he said. The science officer looked up, his face filled with concern. “The wave pattern is similar to what we see with some directed energy weapons, Colonel.”

Colonel Kira knew her science officer wasn’t prone to make rash judgments or mistakes. As she stood next to Nog at the situation table, her eyes went back to the viewscreen. Amir was right. Something was going on inside the wormhole. The energy at the heart of what the Prophets had constructed was pulsating, fluctuating, and changing somehow. Kira couldn’t allow herself to think about what that meant for the Prophets or anyone else inside the Celestial Temple. Right now her responsibility was for the station, and quite possibly everyone in the Alpha Quadrant.

The Bajoran commander of Deep Space 9 felt her grip tighten on the baseball as she ordered, “Shields!”

Less than a second after the order was given, a tight beam of energy erupted from deep within the wormhole and slammed into the forcefields that activated around Deep Space 9. The entire station shook from the strength of the impact on the shields.

Chief Engineer Tekoa was shaking her head frantically as she spoke, her soft brown eyes unable to mask her confusion. “I—I don’t understand it. No structural damage to the station; shield integrity at full strength. With the amount of power that beam is generating, it should have blown a hole in our shields, but it didn’t.”

The colonel could see it on Tekoa’s face. The station’s new Bajoran chief engineer didn’t know why or how, but somehow they’d gotten lucky. Kira looked over at the science officer. She hoped the young man had some answers. “Amir?”

The Andorian-Vulcan raised an eyebrow.

“Colonel, while the beam has the power of a Sovereign class ship phaser bank, it appears to have been attenuated to a non-lethal frequency. But I have no idea why this has been done.”

Nog interjected: “I know why.” The lieutenant tapped a few buttons at his communications station, and the entire situation table began to display the information from his monitor. A cross-section evaluation of the beam that was still impacting the shields. “The beam’s strength is probably just to ensure the fidelity of the communication. There’s a compressed message encrypted within the beam.” Nog looked up at Kira. “With Captain Sisko’s old command codes. He’s sending us something.”

Kira looked down at the baseball, the object that had become so much more than an essential tool used in a game. It had become a symbol of a presence that was as much a part of the station as the bulkheads and duranium girders that held the station together. A presence that could be felt in the laughter of the promenade on good days and in the fortitude of her new staff on bad days. But it was also a promise that had been made, and perhaps most importantly, for her, it embodied something this commander of Deep Space 9 and former freedom fighter had used all her life to guide her.

Faith.

The colonel looked up at the viewscreen and the continuous energy beam that emanated from within the Celestial Temple and gave the only order she could. “Lower the shields.”

*   *   *

A NOTE TO THE READER

What you’ve just read is an account of the events that transpired as relayed to me by Deep Space 9’s senior staff from interviews I conducted with them over a two-day period after what is now known as the Sisko Event.

There has been a great deal of speculation about what or who actually came through the wormhole that day. The rumors range from the mildly entertaining to the absurd. Some believe the wormhole has now become a conduit to the far future and that Captain Sisko returned after negotiating for wormhole technology on behalf of the Federation. Others have started a religion known as ‘The Sisko’, the followers of which think Ben Sisko now exists everywhere in the universe and should be worshipped as a deity. Conspiracy theorists even believe the wormhole is a creation of the Federation and the Dominion, that the war was really a plot set up by both governments to consolidate power in two quadrants. A deal brokered by Ben Sisko.

My stepmother, Kasidy Yates-Sisko, has recently been forced to raise my sister at an undisclosed location, away from prying eyes and the paparazzi. There are new “Sisko sightings” throughout the Federation nearly every day, and the speculations have become endless.

As a writer and journalist, my first duty isn’t to the Federation, Starfleet, or even my lifelong friends. My responsibility has been, and will always be, to the truth.

The truth is that everyone wants a piece of Benjamin Sisko.

The Bajoran people want to preserve the sanctity and deeds of the Emissary. The Cult of the Pah Wraiths want to defile everything the Emissary stood for. Starfleet wants their captain back. Me, I just want to see my father. And the truth is, no one will get what they want.

But maybe, for now, that’s okay.

It has taken me nearly two years to sort through the gift my father sent me in the beam that struck Deep Space 9 that day. Over fifty hours of video, with some moments that I can only describe as jarring. I’m not sure how my father was able to send the signal. Perhaps, now that he’s in the wormhole with the aliens the Bajorans believe are prophets, he’s learned some tricks from them—honestly, the how doesn’t really matter to me. What does is that he was...