For his part, Weyoun seemed suddenly to realize how he had just addressed Odo, and he retreated from the remark. “What I mean to say is, given the circumstances, I’m finding this a difficult task to accomplish quickly,” he said, turning to face Odo. He wore a headset, but its small monitor had been swung up and away from his eye, deactivated. “I will endeavor to do better,” he finished.
“I’m sure your efforts are more than satisfactory,” Odo told him. Then, seeking to reassure him, he added, “In fact, I may have given you a task that will not yield any positive results.”
“Founder,” Weyoun began, and then peered left and right at the Jem’Hadar operating the adjoining consoles. “May I speak with you privately?” he asked, raising a hand and gesturing toward the center of the bridge.
Odo nodded once, and paced with Weyoun away from the Jem’Hadar. “What is it?” Odo asked once they’d stopped in the currently unoccupied middle of the bridge.
“I ask this only to aid me in my inspection of space around the nova, and because you made me privy to your research before we began this mission,” Weyoun said, obviously referring to the files he had collected and decrypted for Odo and Laas. “Are we looking for one of the Hundred?”
Odo considered disclosing the truth, but decided not to do so. He could not be certain how Weyoun would react—how any individual would react—at learning those he worshipped as gods actually believed in the divinity of Another. Such news might contribute to the empowerment of the Vorta, possibly even to their flight from servitude, but it also might result in less desirable consequences, including violent revolt. Until Odo could deliberate at greater length about revealing such information, and until the Founders had completed their quest for the Progenitor and dealt with the impact of their failure to locate It, he opted to keep the Founders’ goal for this mission from the ship’s crew. “We’re not looking for one of the Hundred,” he answered Weyoun honestly. “But you would be well served if you conducted your search as if we were.”
Weyoun cocked his head slightly to one side, a quizzical look appearing on his face. “Are you asking me to intentionally fail at the task you’ve assigned me, Founder?”
“No, I’m not,” Odo said, understanding Weyoun’s interpretation of what he’d just been told, that he should carry out his investigation by hunting for something—one of the Hundred—for which the Founders were not actually looking. “What I’m suggesting is that you direct your search by looking for changelings, but you should not expect to find any. The Founders here are—”
A pair of rapid, high-pitched electronic tones interrupted Odo. He peered over toward the source of the sounds, in the direction of the console at which Weyoun had just been working. Rotan’talag looked up from his own station and said, “Weyoun, I’ve found something.”
“What is it?” Weyoun asked, striding over to the Jem’Hadar seventh. Odo followed behind him.
“Sensor sweeps in the neighborhood of the nova have detected an unusual object,” Rotan’talag said, pointing to a diagram on his console that showed at its center the flaring white dwarf. “It is as massive as a planet.” He detailed its size and its distance from the brilliant star.
“As ‘massive’ as a planet?” Weyoun asked. “Is it not a planet?”
“It is not an intact planet,” Rotan’talag said, “though it may be the remnants of one. Its shape is that of a spherical cap, approximately twenty percent of the volume of what would have been the entire sphere.” Odo imagined a huge, solid dome hanging in space, the lone portion remaining of a planet that had been destroyed by some cataclysmic event—perhaps by the impact of the ejecta of the nearby nova. “But if it is the surviving section of a planet, it is not obviously so,” Rotan’talag continued. “Radiation in the immediate vicinity is interfering with sensors, and so I am able to scan only the surface of the object, but I detect no rock, mineral, or metallic substances there.”
“What do you detect?” Odo asked.
“Biomimetic cells,” Rotan’talag said.
As the implication of that information struck Odo, he saw Weyoun turn his head sharply toward him. He found the sudden movement accusatory. Only moments ago, he had told Weyoun that he should not expect to locate any changelings during the search, but to the Vorta, the veracity of that statement had obviously just been called into question. Wanting to maintain Weyoun’s trust in him, Odo made a note to discuss the matter with him later. Right now, though, he needed to understand exactly what Rotan’talag had discovered.
“Are there changelings down there?” he asked the Jem’Hadar seventh.
“From the available readings, I would conclude that the biomimetic cells belong to a single shapeshifter, possibly a very large one,” Rotan’talag said. “But I would also conclude that they do not belong to a Founder.”
“What?” Odo said before he could stop himself.
“Through a few random breaks in the radiation interference, I have been able to isolate DNA sequences in the scans, although just a few,” Rotan’talag explained. “The readings are consistent with shapeshifting abilities, but while the readings resemble those of a Founder, they do not match precisely.”
Odo gazed past Weyoun and Rotan’talag at the console screen, at the golden circle to which the Jem’Hadar had pointed, and that represented the unusual, dome-shaped object. Though surprised by the scans of a shapeshifter on its surface, Odo had been prepared to believe that they had coincidentally run across a Founder, perhaps even one of the Hundred. And maybe finding one of the Hundred here would not constitute happenstance, but merely the outcome of traveling near the Omarion Nebula, to which all of the cast-out Founders had been internally directed. But if the changeling on the vestiges of the decimated planet was not a Founder, then could it be—could it possibly be—the Progenitor?
Odo peered across the bridge to where Laas and Indurane and the others stood linked with each other. They had become further enmeshed, Odo saw, their bodies having drawn closer together, although they had not yet dissolved into an indistinguishable mass. He would have to tell them what Rotan’talag had found, and he already knew how they would react: with certain conviction that they had located their God, with keen anticipation that they would soon reunite with It, and with the joy that would come from knowing that their people would soon be saved from eventual extinction.
Despite his own disbelief, Odo felt his own excitement rise dramatically. He looked back to Weyoun, knowing what they would have to do next.
“Take us there,” he said.
In the deep of night, hell descended upon the city. It arrived in the guise of soldiers, squadrons of them, who appeared in the streets, in homes, on outlying farms and in nearby processing plants, bringing with them agony and death. They loosed their well-muscled bodies in hand-to-hand attacks, inflicting pain, breaking limbs, fracturing necks. The steel of their knives, honed to a lethal edge and wielded with merciless skill, sliced through flesh as easily as though through water. The electric-blue bolts of their energy weapons flared and found their targets, searing clothing and charring the skin beneath. Blood spilled, thick as the cries in the darkness.
Vannis preceded all of this by a matter of minutes. She stood in the large, quiet bedroom, the reflected light of this world’s moon stealing in through a casement and lending the surroundings a silvern cast. Remaining for a moment where the transporter had deposited her, she calmly surveyed her environs, alert for the unexpected. Though she squinted, her poor eyesight failed to allow her to make out much detail in the darkened room. Blockish shapes suggested furniture, and bulky hanging frames bordered what the inhabitants of this home no doubt considered art. A wide, flat screen set into the wall, along with a dimly illuminated control panel beside it, surely composed a computer or communications console.
A low sibilance, nearly a whistle, emanated from the far end of the room. Vannis studied the gentle sound for a moment, her keen audition verifying the slumbering presence of the two Rindamil who lived here. Un
hurriedly, she started across the room, her shoes whispering quietly along the carpeted floor. Abreast of the wall monitor, she caught sight of her own reflection in it, blurred but recognizable enough. Even in the low light, her indigo eyes seemed to shine.
Moving past the monitor, Vannis stopped a meter or so from the raised, padded platform on which the two Rindamil slept. Before she spoke, she brought her hands together at her waist, preparing to activate the transporter recall affixed around one forearm. She likely would not need to employ its use, but she would sooner retreat than be captured or killed. Her transcorder implant, continuously recording her experiences and also uploading them to the Dominion subspace network, rendered her death, in some sense, impermanent. But she also knew from her previous demises—or more precisely, from those of her six predecessor clones—that dying carried with it anguish like no other. Whether the result of an accident, or murder, or even her own intentional use of her termination implant, the moments when life ended, leaving her to an incomprehensible nonexistence, had never failed to terrify her.
“Get up,” she said, her mellifluous voice filling the still room, and belying her anxious thoughts. Her finger brushed along the side of the recall control as she awaited reaction. On the sleeping surface, both Rindamil stirred. “I said, get up,” Vannis repeated, louder than before. This time, both of the aliens awoke, sitting up abruptly.
“What—?” asked the nearer of the two Rindamil. “Who—who’s there?” His bass voice sounded gravelly. Beside him, his mate reached quickly toward the wall. Vannis braced herself, preparing to flee an attack, but scans had already shown the room to be free of any weapons. An instant later, overhead lighting panels flickered on, obviously triggered by the second Rindamil. Pastel-colored linens sat in disarray about the couple, the golden, semirigid plates that covered their stout bodies visible from their waists upward. The two appeared shocked and somehow small, hardly presenting the air of command to be expected from the viceroy and vicereine of a planet. The male blinked, once, twice, a third time, green nictitating membranes arcing slowly across his outsized, dark eyes. He seemed to struggle to come fully awake, and to make sense of what he saw, but then the four sections of his blunt beak parted in an expression of obvious recognition. “You,” he said simply.
“Yes, me,” Vannis agreed, elongating both words, almost singing them. “I’m delighted that you remember me, Teelent. I, of course, remember you.” She watched for any indication that he might rush her, and saw none.
“Why wouldn’t you remember us?” yelped Teelent’s mate, Alsara, the dread in her voice plain. She jumped onto the floor on the other side of the sleeping platform, pulling a linen panel tightly about the lower half of her body. She stood about as tall as Vannis, not quite a meter and three-quarters, a full head shorter than Teelent. “You chose us. You came here uninvited and made demands of us, threatened us.”
“On the contrary,” Vannis said, injecting a note of offense into her tone, “when I first visited your world, I did so in order to welcome your people into the Dominion.” She raised her arms and spread them wide, a gesture intended to underscore her words.
“To ‘welcome’ us?” Alsara said. Her voice rose with each word. “We never asked—we never wanted—to be in your Dominion. We told you—”
“How?” Teelent said softly, the single word quieting his mate in midsentence. “How did you get in here?”
“Why, I simply beamed in,” Vannis said, knowing that the words, spoken truthfully, would have a chilling effect on the two Rindamil. Their society had developed technologically only to the point of visiting their world’s moon, but they had somehow managed to construct and use elementary transporters. They had also consequently determined how to thwart such devices.
Or so they had thought.
“You beamed in?” Alsara echoed.
“But we…” Teelent began, and hesitated. Vannis suspected that he worried about revealing too much about his people’s capabilities, but then he went on anyway. “We draped all of our cities in forcefields. And this very building. It should have been impossible for you to transport inside.”
“And yet here I am,” Vannis offered. She noted a change in Teelent’s bearing. He seemed to deflate, and she grew less concerned that he would try to attack her.
“Why have you come back here?” Alsara demanded, her voice rising in volume again. She rounded the foot of the sleeping surface.
“She’s here for our food,” Teelent said quietly.
“It has been a particularly harsh winter in the northern hemisphere of Overne III,” Vannis confirmed.
Alsara looked to her mate, then directly over at Vannis. “You can’t take our food,” she asserted.
“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to disagree about that,” Vannis said. “When I welcomed you into the Dominion, I informed you of the responsibilities attendant with your membership.”
“You can’t just—” Alsara began, but Teelent raised a hand, signaling her to be quiet.
“Based upon your threats,” he told Vannis, “we have done everything we could to increase food production. But crops are crops, and there’s only so much arable land, only so many people to work that land.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Vannis said. “I thought I was quite clear about what would be expected of your people.”
“Oh, you were,” Teelent said, the parts of his beak clicking together twice in what Vannis took to be the Rindamil version of a sardonic laugh. “We can provide you all of our emergency stores,” he continued. “They constitute—”
“No,” Alsara interrupted, turning toward her mate. “We can’t take that chance. Three of the last eight winters have been so severe that we’ve had to use our emergency stores.”
“I know,” Teelent responded, though he still looked at Vannis. “But what choice do we have?”
“No choice at all,” Vannis agreed.
“Our emergency stores measure twelve percent of our entire stockpile. It is a significant amount, one I’m sure that will assist you combating the famine on the other world.”
“I’m afraid that won’t provide enough assistance,” Vannis said. “As I already indicated, the northern winter on Overne III has been quite harsh. We’ll require seventy-five percent of your foodstuffs.”
“What!” Alsara shrieked, clearly staggered.
Teelent stepped forward, and Vannis reached for the controls around her forearm. But Teelent stopped after a single step. Rather than engaging the transporter recall, Vannis signaled the Jem’Hadar ship she commanded, currently in orbit about the planet. She needed to move this situation along.
“Seventy-five percent is excessively high,” Teelent said. “Much of our own population would be unable to survive our own winter. Perhaps if we ration our food, we can increase the amount we can safely give to the people of Overne III. Perhaps we can part with as much as twenty percent…perhaps even twenty-two.”
“I’m afraid you’re not understanding me,” Vannis said, although she knew that her voice contained no hint of sympathy. “The Dominion requires seventy-five percent of all food caches on the planet. Immediately.”
“No,” Alsara said again, but her voice had fallen to a mere whisper. Her eyes seemed no longer to focus.
“Yes,” Vannis said. As though on cue, the sound of weapons fire reached Vannis’s keenly tuned hearing. “This is not a request. We will take the stores we need.” She motioned toward the window across the room, and Teelent and Alsara hurried over to it. One of them gasped when they arrived there, although Vannis could not tell which one. “Your only choice in this matter,” Vannis said behind them, “is whether or not to cooperate. Jem’Hadar troops have transported down, not just here, but all over your world.”
As more and more Jem’Hadar weapons fire screamed through the night, Alsara turned back toward Vannis. “How can you do this? Without enough food, hundreds of thousands of our citizens, maybe millions, will die over the next few months.”
For long moments, Alsara stared at Vannis, saying nothing, but obviously enraged. Behind her, Teelent continued to peer through the window at what Vannis knew to be Jem’Hadar soldiers giving his people no quarter. Finally, without turning, he said, “Take seventy-five percent of our food.”
This time, Alsara said nothing.
“Excellent,” Vannis said, and she touched another of the controls wrapped about her forearm. Shortly, she knew, her signal to her ship would be transmitted to all of the Jem’Hadar troops deployed on the planet. The attack would be halted, in favor of the collection of the Rindamil food needed for the Overne.
To Teelent and Alsara, she said, “Welcome to the Dominion.” Then she activated her transporter recall and returned to her ship.
On Deep Space 9, Taran’atar stalked across his cabin, executing a complex series of small but difficult tactical movements. Wielding a short, two-pronged weapon that he had just replicated, he imagined an adversary at the ready before him: a Merakordi paladin, tall and well muscled, clad in traditional armor, brandishing a cutlass in one gloved hand and a spiked flail in the other. Taran’atar took one long stride, two, and lunged forward, then feinted to the right, toward where he envisioned the Merakordi’s blade to be. He knew that his foe would be unable to bring the sword to bear at such close quarters, and would instead reach back with his other arm in order to swing the flail forward and down. As Taran’atar pictured the spiked metal ball arcing upward behind the paladin, he changed direction at speed, pitching his own weapon across more than a meter of open air, from his right hand to his left. In the same motion, he drove the weapon up beneath the bottom edge of the breastplate protecting his virtual opponent’s torso. Recalling with precision the two battles in which he’d fought on Merakord II, he easily summoned to mind the sensation of the twin prongs penetrating through soft flesh and into vital organs, delivering rapid death to this nonexistent enemy.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three Page 33