Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Worlds of Deep Space Nine #2 - Trill and Bajor

FERENGINAR: Quark's profit-driven homeworld is rocked with scandal as shocking allegations involving his brother's first wife, the mother of Nog, threaten to overthrow Rom as Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance. Making matters worse, Quark has been recruited by Rom's political adversaries to join their coup d'état, with guarantees of all Quark ever dreamed if they succeed in taking his brother down. While Ferenginar's future teeters on the edge, the pregnancy of Rom's current wife, Leeta, takes a difficult turn for both mother and child.

THE DOMINION: Since its defeat in the war for the Alpha Quadrant, the Great Link -- the living totality of the shape-shifting Founders -- has struggled with questions. At its moment of greatest doubt, its fate, and that of the Dominion itself, is tied to Odo's investigation of his kind's true motives for sending a hundred infant changelings out into the galaxy.

CARDASSIA: The last world ravaged by the Dominion War is also the last on which Miles O'Brien ever imagined building a life. As he joins in the reconstruction of Cardassia's infrastructure, his wife Keiko spearheads the planet's difficult agricultural renewal. But Cardassia's struggle to remake itself -- from the fledgling democracy backed by Elim Garak to the people's rediscovery of their own spiritual past -- is not without opposition, as the outside efforts to help rebuild its civilization come under attack by those who reject any alien influence.

On the eve of Bajor's formal entry into the Federation, First Minister Shakaar was assassinated, derailing the induction and plunging the planet and station Deep Space 9 into chaos. Investigation into the murder revealed the presence of a parasitic conspiracy threatening not only Bajor's future with the Federation, but the very survival of both. At the same time, the fracturing of Bajor's theology has put its people on the threshold of a startling transformation -- and the consequences now rest on the shoulders of Colonel Kira Nerys, who months ago defied the religious authority of her planet by making public an ancient heretical text that challenged the very foundation of the Bajoran faith.

Now, after a harrowing and historic voyage of exploration in the Gamma Quadrant, the weary, wounded crew of Starship Defiant is at last coming home. But the joy of their return is short-lived as the crew becomes swept up in the crisis aboard the station, with many of them confronting personal issues that force them to make life-altering choices. Among those is a grief-stricken Commander Elias Vaughn, who reaches a crossroads in his life's journey and learns the true purpose for which he was Touched by the Prophets...as well as the ultimate fate of Captain Benjamin Sisko.

One Founder, however, has dared to wonder.

Appointed by Odo himself to learn peaceful coexistence aboard Deep Space 9 ™, Taran'atar, an Honored Elder among the Jem'Hadar, had for months been a staunch, if conflicted, ally to the crew of the station, ever struggling to understand the mission on which he was sent . . . until something went horrifically wrong.

Consumed by self-doubt and an ever-growing rage, Taran'atar has lashed out against those he was sworn to aid. While Captain Kira Nerys and Lieutenant Ro Laren both lie near death aboard DS9, their assailant has taken a hostage and fled into Cardassian space, pursued by Commander Elias Vaughn on the U.S.S. Defiant. But as the hunt unfolds, Taran'atar's true objective becomes increasingly less certain, as the rogue Jem'Hadar leads the Defiant to a discovery even more shocking than his crime.

Robbed of the past sixteen years, Iliana Ghemor is back with a vengeance. Over a decade and a half of imprisonment and abuse by her former masters has brought her to the brink of madness, sustained only by the twisted belief that she is, in fact, the real Kira Nerys. She has already made one near-successful attempt on the real Kira's life, but instead of assuming the identity of the woman she was intended to replace, Ghemor has set her sights on the most unexpected target of all: Kira's other double, the malicious Intendent, Bajor's iron-fisted ruler in the alternate reality commonly known as the "Mirror Universe." But far more is unfolding in the Mirror Universe than Ghemor realizes, and the heroes of Deep Space Nine somehow must stop the false Kira without derailing the delicate flow of history that must unfold if both universes, and countless others, are to survive.

Parallel stories set in both universes reflect and build upon each other in this Two-in-One "Flip Book," the continuation of both the ongoing DS9 saga as well as the Mirror Universe line of books.

Chaos erupts aboard Deep Space 9 as the crew begins a desperate search for a killer in their midst, catapulting Colonel Kira Nerys on a dangerous chase into the heart of the Federation. But the crime she seeks to avenge is part of a plot more ancient and far-reaching than anyone suspects, and that secret, if exposed, could divide worlds throughout the Alpha Quadrant.

Meanwhile, as the Starship Defiant makes its way back toward the wormhole and home to DS9, a startling discovery shakes Commander Elias Vaughn to his core and brings to light the truth behind the most tragic mission of his long life. As the crew struggles with the implications of what they¹ve found, their captain¹s judgment comes into question...and casts doubt on the final outcome of their historic voyage through the Gamma Quadrant.

As a small child, Jules Bashir underwent illegal genetic enhancements that forever altered the natural course of his life. As an adult, ever since the day he discovered what his parents had done, Dr. Julian Bashir has wondered what he might have become if "Jules" had been allowed to live, certain he would never know the answer. But when the lure of a strange alien artifact in the Gamma Quadrant inexplicably begins to reverse Bashir's enhancements, the person he had thought long dead is given a second chance at life.

He is ripped from the family that took him in as an orphan, clothed him, fed him, always loved him unconditionally. And no matter how earnest, how caring the commander of Deep Space 9 is, the boy knows this is all a horrible mistake. How can someone from Starfleet judge him by what he looks like, not by what he is? He prays to the Prophets; he is Bajoran. They all keep telling him that the test proves the large Cardassian man is his father, that the other Cardassian -- that oily gul -- took him away from his father. But the boy keeps telling them that he is Bajoran, he only wants to go home with his father. So they send Rugal home -- to Cardassia.

On the homeworld of the Cardassian Union where sacrifice and devotion to the state are surpassed only by the government's need to keep its people in check, one very lonely boy discovers that if he doesn't resist, his life -- like those of so many others -- will be added to the tally of the never-ending sacrifice.