Beneath the surface, the Great Link roiled. Living currents rushed past his shapeless though still gathered form. Thoughts and feelings inundated him as he let himself go. His body extended outward, spreading into flats and gyres, wisps and strands. He came into contact with more and more of his people, and through them, with the rest.
The immense sea of changelings churned in a frenzy, driven, Odo perceived, by the trauma of a dead Founder brought home to them, and by Laas’s demand for answers. Flashes of great sorrow buffeted Odo, interspersed with bolts of anger and opposition. Echoes of Laas’s pleas reached him, repeating the questions that Laas had asked him earlier.
And there’s something else, Odo thought. Something that perched on the edge of discernment, segregated by the high emotions flooding the Link. He reached for it, attuning his cells to it, sending the filaments of his body into closer contact with those Founders from whom he sensed—
Unease. Expectation.
For a month now, since his return to the Great Link after his travels to Ee and Deep Space 9, that combination of anxiety and eagerness among his people had persisted. When the havoc caused by Laas had subsided, Odo would have to resume his pursuit of an explanation. For now, though, he wanted to communicate with his fellow member of the Hundred.
He concentrated, searching through the innumerable connections he shared with other changelings, seeking Laas. Around Odo, beside him, against him, figures morphed into and out of existence, transient shapes embodying thought and sensation. He sought Laas in every contact, and beyond. He heard echoes of his questions—When were the Hundred sent out? Why did you send us? How could you abandon us like that?—but could not locate the mind that had originally posed them.
Within the flaxen deep, Odo felt a Founder attempt to bond with him, and he opened himself up to it. Their connection grew as more and more of the other changeling’s cells interwove with his own. A tranquillity exuded through their junction, a stillness that diverged from the furor infusing the rest of the Great Link. Odo sensed a long arc of time, and of purpose, and wondered why this Founder wanted to join with him.
The other changeling shifted, the range of its body contracting, drawing into an embryonic hulk beside Odo. The serenity it radiated receded then, as it spun into definition, spawning limbs and features and colors. Finally, Odo found the thin, papery structures of his own body wrapped about the humanoid form of Laas.
The form of Laas, but not the real Laas. Just as it had not been the real Nerys.
Odo understood what had happened—he had been sought out by this changeling, just as he had sought out Laas—but not why. In response, the figure of Laas dissolved in a whirl of movement, replaced an instant later by a Bajoran. In his present amorphous state, Odo possessed no eyes, but his changeling senses nevertheless allowed him a clear image of the man. He searched his memory, but could not identify him.
Who is this? Odo asked, sending the question through his link with the other changeling. At once, the man’s face changed, but continued to be unrecognizable. And then it changed again, and again, and several times more, revealing to Odo a series of Bajoran strangers. Odo studied the visage of the final man in the sequence. Like the others, it bore the effects of a life lived over many years: deep crags lined the face, the flesh of the jawline and neck sagged as though gravity had begun to assert itself over it, and frail, colorless hair hung down limply.
Time, Odo thought. He was aware of time, a long stretch of time, and he realized that he had just been presented something like that, etched in the series of old Bajoran men paraded past him. Again, he took meaning from the forms: not time, but age. Age, and experience. This Founder who communicated with Odo had been around for centuries, perhaps millennia.
Through their link came confirmation of that conclusion. But the ancient changeling conveyed more than merely an introduction of itself. This also articulated an answer to one of Laas’s questions: When were the Hundred sent out?
Long ago, Odo now understood. Seemingly further in the past than he had thought. But could that truly be? He himself had been found adrift in the Denorios Belt decades ago, not centuries ago.
Odo visualized the internal currents of his changeling body, and moved, pulling his malleable cells into himself. He pictured the humanoid form he took, and then altered the familiar image. When he finished shapeshifting, he floated next to the old changeling as the humanoid Odo, but aged, as though he’d lived centuries as a Bajoran.
Beside him, the ancient Founder transformed again. As Odo awaited the end result of the shift, the word indurane occurred to him—Bajoran for ancient—and he decided to apply it to this changeling. Although the Founders generally eschewed the use of names, Odo did not. In fact, over the years, he had found it not only inconvenient to have to refer to the changeling leader without any sort of proper appellation, but often felt insulted by terms such as the female Founder, as though only one such individual existed. He had often invoked such terms himself, but did not like doing so.
The aged Founder—Indurane—completed his alterations, this time becoming the double of the wizened Odo, a clear confirmation that Odo had lived far more than the four decades since he’d been found. He’d considered this possibility before, when back on DS9, Laas had revealed that he’d begun his own life among the Varalans two hundred years earlier. But Odo had concluded that Laas must simply have been sent out a century and a half prior to Odo. Now, though, he was being told something different, something that seemed not to make sense. For when Odo had been discovered by the Bajorans, he’d been unformed and unknowing, a shapeless mass that lacked the knowledge and ability to modify its own form into anything definite.
Floating in the changeling deep, Odo asked the question of Indurane by changing form once more. Odo gave up his face and limbs, and all his humanoid traits, collapsing into a nebulous sac of metaplasm. He surrendered control of his body, and permitted himself to tumble down through the changeling tide. He existed as when he had been found: unformed, unable, an infant.
The old Founder followed Odo down, still linked with him, still in the semblance of a wrinkled, humanoid Odo. Time passed, and they neared the surface of the planet, the lower bound of the Great Link. Odo noted with appreciation, as he always did, the complex shapes that decorated the nether landscape. Although they had only inhabited this world for five years, the Founders had already modified vast tracts of this land, carving into the rock, sculpting it to fit their needs and desires. Odo recalled the structures he had installed in his quarters on DS9, and the pleasure he had taken assuming their myriad forms. But his small menagerie of shape and texture paled in comparison to the massive and diverse collection below. A geometer’s paradise, the topography held all manner of figures, including cylinders and spheres, planes and polyhedra. Surfaces varied from smooth to rough, hard to soft, and every grain and durity in between. Indescribable manifolds abutted tunnels and ridges, hills and chasms. Odo had spent days down there himself, and had never emulated the same shape twice.
He came to rest beside a hexagrammic antiprism, Indurane settling beside him. Odo waited for an answer to his question—How can I be centuries old when I was an infant just decades ago?—and Indurane answered with another change to his shape. The aged Odo-form disappeared, shrinking into an unformed changeling infant.
Not an infant, came a thought directed to Odo through the link with Indurane. Beside him, the indistinct structure seemed to fade away, and Odo understood that Indurane had shifted his cells to match those of the Founders surrounding them in the Great Link in order to produce the effect.
I don’t understand, Odo communicated, even as he thought he did. In response, Indurane formed an infant changeling once more, only to then dissolve its form, as though it had never existed.
I don’t understand, Odo thought again, and again, Indurane became the image of an infant changeling, and then disintegrated into seeming nothingness. Odo resisted the apparent meaning in the transformation, gleaning the un
acceptable implications of the message before he even acknowledged its veracity. He refused to—
There are no changeling infants, Indurane told him.
Odo scoffed at the claim, even as he dreaded that it might be true.
There are no changeling infants, Indurane repeated, because changelings cannot procreate.
The large, interlacing metal doors separated with a sharp clang, then hummed smoothly apart. Kira walked into the sizable shuttlebay of the Starfleet vessel Mjolnir, its commanding officer at her side. The two women walked between the numerous and varied support craft housed aboard the Norway-class starship, wending their way through work bees, support modules, maintenance platforms, shuttlepods, and short- and long-range shuttles.
“I’m actually a little disappointed in the numbers,” Kira said, holding out a personal access display device for Captain Hoku to see. “My chief engineer was told that the upgraded waveguides on the new runabouts would provide a significant increase in warp velocity.” Kira pointed to a section on the padd detailing performance expectations and field-trial results of the new craft. While both sets of figures represented improvements over the capabilities of Deep Space 9’s current complement of runabouts, the differences amounted to only marginal advances.
“If you study the final specifications, I suspect you’ll find that no new waveguides were installed,” Hoku said. “My guess is that they haven’t even been manufactured yet. The shipyards are still overburdened just trying to replenish the fleet.”
“I know,” Kira agreed. “Believe me, I know.” She felt that she appreciated as well as anybody the staggering cost to Starfleet—in both matériel and personnel—of the Dominion War. She had witnessed firsthand enough ships being blasted to nothingness in the unforgiving vacuum of space, had read enough names on the rolls of the dead and wounded.
Checking the production log at the top left of the padd display, Kira saw that the new runabout had been constructed at the Antares Fleet Yards. Many of the more powerful starships had been built there, she knew, and such vessels composed a priority for the Federation these days, given the loss of defenses incurred during the war. She supposed that she should consider the station fortunate to be getting a new runabout at all.
Kira deactivated the padd with a touch and dropped it to her side. Not wishing to dwell on remembrances of the war, she thanked Hoku for her hospitality. In the ninety minutes since Rio Grande had touched down in Mjolnir’s shuttlebay, the two captains had spent most of that time in Hoku’s quarters, first completing the formalities of transferring responsibility for the new runabout to Deep Space 9, and then catching each other up on their lives. During Defiant’s recent three-month exploration of the Gamma Quadrant, Mjolnir had initially been scheduled to stand in at the station, but Starfleet Command had then altered those plans. The ship had arrived at DS9 weeks early, and had spent just enough time there to allow Admiral Akaar to meet with Kira. She and Hoku had been able to speak only briefly, and only in their official Starfleet capacities.
Today, though, the two friends had at last been able to visit. For her part, Hoku had asked about Kira’s captaincy, Bajor’s entry into the Federation, and the new first minister. In turn, Kira had wanted to discuss the hearsay intimating an impending promotion for Hoku to rear admiral, but it ended up that the Mjolnir captain had heard fewer rumors about it than she had.
As the two women came abreast of a work bee, Kira spied their reflections in one of its wide viewing ports. Each wearing a Starfleet captain’s uniform and standing approximately the same height, they might have looked a great deal alike, but did not. Although cropped short, Hoku’s blond hair had something of a wild appearance about it, and her brilliant blue-green eyes peered out of a milky, delicate complexion. Most distinctively, she carried herself with an elegance and confidence that almost suggested royalty.
As for Kira’s own aspect, even more than two months after her being commissioned as a Starfleet captain, it still occasionally startled her to see herself in anything but a Bajoran Militia uniform. Just when she thought she’d become accustomed to her new habiliments, she would find herself surprised by an inadvertent glance at her likeness in a mirror or, as in this case, a viewport. The same thing had occurred during the final weeks of the war, when she’d gone to Cardassia as a Starfleet commander.
Rounding the pointed bow of a type-ten shuttle, Kira and Hoku arrived at the bay’s landing pad. The new runabout sat directly ahead of them, its forward hatch on the port side swung open, its interior lights shining out onto the decking. To the left, Rio Grande appeared dark, its hatches closed. Past the runabouts, in the direction the craft faced, the shuttlebay doors stood open. Through them, the sable sprawl of the universe, sprinkled with countless specks of stars, provided an impressive backdrop. A thin, electric-blue strip of light bordered the wide aperture, signaling the operation of the force field that prevented the atmosphere in the bay from boiling off into space. Beyond the opening, the inner hulls of Mjolnir’s nacelle struts stretched away on both the port and starboard sides, extending outward in shades of gray and white.
As Kira and Hoku approached the new runabout, Lieutenant Bowers exited down its steps. “Captain Hoku,” he acknowledged, then addressed Kira. “Captain, we’ve completed our diagnostics and the preflight checks, and we’re all set to go.” He pointed toward the forward side of the craft, and added, “Specialist Lynn finished with the name.” When Kira and her crew had arrived here to take possession of the new runabout, the craft had already been adorned with its Starfleet registry—NCC-75353—but its name had not been applied, as the privilege for selecting that designation fell to DS9’s commander. Once Rio Grande had touched down, Captain Hoku had assigned one of her crew to add to the hull the name Kira had chosen.
“Yolja,” Hoku read now. “I know that Starfleet runabouts are all dedicated for Earth rivers, like Rio Grande—” She nodded her head in the direction of the other runabout. “—But there’s no terrestrial waterway called Yolja that I’m aware of,” she finished, a knowing look in her eye.
“It’s on Bajor,” Kira verified. “In Kendra Province.”
“That’s right,” Hoku said.
“This is the first one we’ve given a Bajoran name,” Kira said, pleased with her selection.
Hoku smiled. “Now seems an appropriate time,” she offered.
“I thought so too,” Kira said, nodding in agreement.
Hoku glanced inside Yolja—young Ensign Aleco had appeared in the hatchway, Kira saw—and then looked over her shoulder, her gaze coming to rest on Rio Grande, its systems clearly powered down. “Where is Taran’atar?” Hoku asked. Kira noted her conspicuously conversational demeanor, which displayed no hint of concern, nor even of real curiosity. She’d also observed that the Mjolnir captain hadn’t posted security outside the shuttlebay, though Kira suspected that the ship’s internal sensors had been trained on this location since Rio Grande’s arrival. No matter that Taran’atar had lived aboard DS9 for more than half a year now; as a Jem’Hadar and a formerly active soldier of the Dominion, he would continue to be monitored closely by Starfleet.
Particularly where we’re going, Kira thought, and a knot of tension tightened in her abdomen.
“He’s still aboard Rio Grande,” Bowers reported of the Jem’Hadar. When Kira and her crew had set down aboard Mjolnir, they’d been greeted by Captain Hoku. Kira had introduced Taran’atar—as well as Bowers and Aleco—and then she’d followed the captain to her quarters for their meeting. During their discussions, Hoku had expressed a desire to speak at greater length with the Jem’Hadar. Kira had explained Taran’atar’s discomfort with social situations, and had suggested that such an interaction might be better at a later date. Hoku had understood, and so Kira believed that her query now about his whereabouts concerned her wish, not to talk with him, but to confirm that a well-trained and potentially dangerous Dominion soldier did not currently roam the corridors of her ship.
“Well, please convey
my satisfaction in meeting him,” Hoku said.
“I will,” Kira told her. Then, to Bowers and Aleco, she said, “Lieutenant, Ensign, it’s time we departed.”
“Yes, sir,” Bowers said. He mounted the steps up into Yolja, Aleco moving into the cockpit ahead of him. The two men would take the new runabout back to Deep Space 9, while Kira and Taran’atar headed for a different destination.
As Yolja’s hatchway folded closed, Kira turned back to Hoku. “It was great to finally see you again, Kalena,” she said, making reference to the missed opportunity at DS9 a few months back. Kira held out her right hand, and Hoku took it in her own.
“And you, Nerys,” the captain responded. “I’ll have to see if Mjolnir can put in for some R and R at Bajor one of these days.”
“Maybe when you’re an admiral,” Kira joked.
“Maybe,” Hoku said with a chuckle.
They parted, Hoku heading back toward the doors through which they’d entered the bay, and Kira for Rio Grande. She quickly accessed the controls behind a small panel in the hull, triggered the hatch open, and climbed into the runabout. Inside, the lights came up, increasing the dim illumination already coming into the cabin through the bow viewports. Seated at a forward station, Taran’atar said nothing as Kira boarded the craft. Taking the chair beside him, she said, “I see you’re anxious for us to be on our way.”
“I am merely prepared for the journey ahead,” he said stonily, “and for anything that is required of me.”
Again, Kira felt a twist of anxiety. I am prepared…for anything that is required of me. What did that mean, exactly? What did he think would be required of him, and by whom?
Nearly a month ago, when Taran’atar had first made his request to visit Ananke Alpha, Kira hadn’t known what to make of it; in truth, she still didn’t. She’d neither supported nor hindered his petition, instead taking the matter directly to Admiral Ross. Knowing the principals involved, and wanting to forge whatever good will he could with Taran’atar—as well as with the legion of Jem’Hadar, and ultimately with the Dominion itself—the admiral had consented to the appeal. Although not sure that Ross had made the right decision, Kira had chosen to trust Taran’atar. She’d agreed to escort him on his journey, and the scheduled rendezvous with Mjolnir had provided an opportunity to do so without drawing unwanted attention.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three Page 23