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Kai Opaka, Bajor's spiritual
leader, pays a surprise visit to the station — her first journey
away from her home planet. Sisko, Kira, and Bashir escort her on
a tour of the station, and although the Kai seems preoccupied,
she expresses her desire to go through the wormhole. Sisko
accommodates her request, and she travels with the three
officers in the Yangtzee Kiang, through the spectacular anomaly
and into the Gamma Quadrant. However, though she acts impressed,
she still seems distant. But, as they prepare to return, Kira
suddenly picks up a narrow band subspace signal. Despite the
unknown origin, Opaka encourages Sisko to investigate. They
discover a small, meteor-pocked moon, around which orbits a
network of artificial satellites, one of which fires an energy
blast at the Runabout, severely disabling the vessel. The
Yangtzee Kiang crashes violently on the moon's surface. Sisko,
Bashir, and Kira free themselves from the wreckage, pulling out
Opaka's limp body. Bashir works to revive her, but with no
success. The Kai is dead. Before they can absorb the impact of
this tragedy, a group of battle-scarred humanoids brandishing
weapons appears, capturing the officers.
While Dax and O'Brien prepare
to leave the station in search of the senior officers, Sisko,
Kira, and Bashir are taken into a large cave, where the leader
of the group, Golin Shel-la, explains that he and his people,
the Ennis, are suspicious of strangers, because they are at war
with a brutal enemy, the Nol-Ennis. He explains that both sides
in this war are kept prisoner on the moon by the orbiting
satellites, and that he fears his enemy will assume that Sisko's
group, by their mere presence in the Ennis camp, has allied with
Shel-la. They have no doctors, but many wounded, to whom Bashir
gives assistance, as well as to an injured Kira, who is still
suffering from the loss of the heart and soul of her home
planet. Suddenly, the sound of weapons fire — three Nol-Ennis,
with their leader, Zlangco, make a surprise attack on the camp,
killing Shel-la and other Ennis. Kira leaps into the fray, using
a phaser to bring down part of the cave ceiling on the
attackers, causing Zlangco to retreat. The officers barely have
time to check the dead and wounded when a silhouette appears in
the cave entrance. It is Kai Opaka — come back to life!
 Bashir examines Opaka, who is just beginning to grasp her
situation. The doctor determines that her physiology has been
radically altered, and that there is some kind of bio-mechanical
presence on the cellular level controlling her metabolic
processes. Then, amazingly, Shel-la and the other dead Ennis
begin to stir. They are coming back to life. Bashir finds that
their bodies have gone through the same type of alterations as
Opaka's. Sisko learns from Shel-la that the Ennis and the Nol-Ennis
had been fighting the war for untold generations on their home
planet, and when their world's mediators could not arbitrate a
cease-fire, the two sides were banished to the moon. As part of
the punishment, they have been condemned to fight for eternity —
they can never truly die. Sisko suggests a resolution — once his
group is rescued, he will transport both sides away from the
moon in order to end the battle, and he convinces Shel-la to
attempt a truce with Zlangco.
In the Gamma Quadrant, Dax and O'Brien search for the officers
in a Runabout, frustrated at the lack of clues. O'Brien then
comes up with a way to detect the specific magnetic resonance
patterns that Sisko's vessel emits, and tries to create a device
to perform that function. Meanwhile, at the Runabout crash site,
Sisko meets with Zlangco, who has agreed to listen to his
proposal. But Zlangco is very distrusting, and once Shel-la
states that he would never allow one Nol-Ennis to leave the moon
alive, another battle between the two groups begins — and this
time, Sisko is in the middle. Just as he is about to receive a
potential death blow, Bashir knocks him to the ground. The
doctor has discovered from the Runabout's computer that they
cannot afford to die here — not even once.
O'Brien's plan has worked. He and Dax have located the moon.
Wisely avoiding the satellites, they try to get a communication
through the defense-net. On the surface, Bashir explains that
artificial microbes restore a person's body after death, but
that body then becomes permanently dependent on those microbes
for all cellular functions. The worst part is, anyone with these
microbes would die if taken away from the moon — including Kai
Opaka. Then, Dax and O'Brien make contact with Sisko, but they
can't beam up anyone until they figure out how to get a
transporter signal through the net. While they work on that,
Sisko and Bashir return to the cave to tell Opaka and Kira the
truth about the Kai's condition. But she has already decided to
stay on the moon. Here, she has found the answer to all the
prophecies of her life — to teach people who know only how to
die, how to now live. O'Brien then signals that he has a way to
divert one of the satellites, and he can beam up the officers
within minutes. Sisko tells the returning Shel-la that the Ennis
cannot leave the moon, but Bashir suggests he can disable the
program in the microbes, which would allow them to finally die
when their time comes. But Shel-la unfortunately sees this as
the ultimate opportunity to finally wipe out the Nol-Ennis for
good. Stunned, realizing there is no hope, Sisko, Kira, and
Bashir beam up when O'Brien signals ready, leaving Shel-la to
lunge into another battle, and Kai Opaka remaining as their only
hope for peace in an endless war. |
