Taran’atar froze, his muscles still tensed, his body beginning to admit fatigue after hours of these illusory combat exercises. Since Odo had first sent him here, he had little utilized these quarters that Kira had assigned to him, spending the majority of his time either observing station residents and transients throughout the starbase or training in one of the holosuites. While he’d also served on several missions with Kira and her crew, he’d used this personal space for little more than the storage of weapons he’d crafted for his military preparations. But in the three days since he and Captain Kira had returned to Deep Space 9 after his visit to the Founder in the Ananke Alpha prison, he had not left these quarters even once.
I’m failing Odo, he thought, not for the first time. Taran’atar had essentially abdicated the mission to which he had been assigned, limiting his contact with the station’s inhabitants as much as possible, and thereby failing to continue the role of observer given him by Odo. He could change that, of course, simply by leaving this cabin and moving once more among Deep Space 9’s population. But he did not want to do that—he had never wanted to do that—and he knew that he no longer would. I’m failing Odo, he thought again, and understood that he had grown increasingly comfortable with that reality.
He suddenly became aware of his left hand trembling. Moving only his head, he peered at his fingers wrapped tightly about the haft of his weapon. A tremendous rage boiled within him, and without thinking, he pivoted on his right foot, whipping his left arm down and hurling the weapon across the room. It struck the bulkhead beside the door that opened into the corridor, metal clanging loudly against metal. One of the dual prongs snapped off, spinning upward until it hit the overhead. Both the weapon and the broken tine fell to the carpeted deck with dull noises.
Taran’atar crossed the room and examined the bulkhead beside the door. Where the weapon had collided with it, a gouge had been scratched into its surface. It left him feeling…unsatisfied.
Whirling around, Taran’atar surveyed the cabin. Looking past the furniture—a sofa and several chairs, a number of tables and shelves of different sizes—he once again conceived of enemies standing close at hand. He saw the Ferengi worm with whom he had to deal when using the holosuites; he saw the two men who’d run the child-care center when he visited there; he saw the other puny Ferengi who functioned as the station’s chief of operations; he saw the head of security, the chief medical officer, the executive officer. A multitude of people, Starfleet and civilian, surrounded him, standing with their backs against the bulkheads. He wondered if he might be dreaming again, and knew that not to be the case. He was not dreaming; he was furious.
Taran’atar shrouded and sprinted across the cabin, one hand sending a stuffed chair toppling over as he passed it. He ran directly at the genetically enhanced doctor, putting his shoulder down and throwing himself against the bulkhead. If Bashir had truly been there, his rib cage would have fractured and collapsed, crushing his heart in his chest. Taran’atar felt the bulkhead give, and when he stepped back, he saw that he had left a sizable dent in the hard, metal surface.
Spinning around again, he pictured the executive officer on the other side of the room, to his left. Again, he sped forward, this time kicking aside a low glass table as he crossed the center of the cabin. The table flew into the side of a companel and shattered, sending transparent shards flying in every direction. Almost all the way to his target, Taran’atar picked up a chair and raised it high above his head. As he reached the place he imagined Vaughn to be, he brought the piece of furniture down and thrust it against the bulkhead. In his mind, he saw Vaughn collapse to the deck, his midsection gored by a chair leg, his body ruined by the force of the impact.
Taran’atar continued his rampage. He visualized taking down Ro by splintering her neck, Nog by gutting his body, Quark by ripping off his limbs. His thoughts showed him Gavi and Joshua, the two men from the child-care facility, strangling beneath his grip, one man held in each of his clenching hands. He stormed back and forth across the room, battling the imaginary forms of the station’s residents.
Finally, he paused, feeling the places on his hands and forearms where he had scraped his hide during his exertions. He calmed his breathing, which had grown heavy and ragged, and attempted to slow his hearts, both of which now beat quickly within him. After several minutes, he recovered his strength, though he felt exhausted.
Turning in place, Taran’atar inspected his surroundings. The cabin stood in ruins. Almost none of the furniture had survived his onslaught. Chairs, tables, shelves, the sofa, all had been strewn about, demolished, crushed, pieces of each lying about like lifeless soldiers. Motes of glass covered the deck, and flickered here and there through the air, like falling snow catching sunlight as it fell.
And still his wrath had not been sated.
Taran’atar looked across the room again, and this time brought to the forefront of his thoughts the image of Captain Kira. He saw her standing where Bashir had, and he studied her closely. The notion came to his mind that of all those he’d met in the Alpha Quadrant, Kira alone had drawn his greatest respect. But as he scrutinized her unreal form, the readiness of her stance, the strength of her frame, the tension in her face—that face—whatever positive assessment he had made of Kira left him. A guttural roar escaped his throat, and he raced across the cabin, throwing himself feet first at his vision of the station’s commanding officer.
He could almost feel her midsection give way beneath his attack, her internal organs bursting as he pinned her against the bulkhead, her death instantaneous. As he toppled to the deck, his sense of victory tempered by the lack of his foes’ actual presence here, a loud report reached his ears, followed by a low-pitched alarm of some sort. He climbed to his feet, slivers of glass crunching beneath his weight.
Taran’atar examined the bulkhead where he had first struck Bashir, and where he’d just now slain Kira. The dent he’d made earlier had deepened, he saw, and several hairline cracks now emanated from it. He guessed that the alarm signaled the failure of the bulkhead, even though it had occurred in an internal structure, not in the hull, and therefore did not threaten the safety of the station. Ro’s voice emerged from the comm system a moment later, confirming his suspicion.
“Ro to Taran’atar,” she said. “We’re seeing an alarm down here originating in your quarters, a fracture in an internal bulkhead. Are you all right?”
Taran’atar looked to his right, to the companel situated just a few paces from him. He could see himself tapping its controls and responding to Ro, but he had no intention of doing that. Instead, he waited, motionless.
“Taran’atar,” came a second voice. “This is Kira. What’s going on down there?”
Still, he said nothing.
“Taran’atar,” Kira said again. “Please respond.”
This time, he did respond. He paced quickly over to the companel and drove his right hand into its display screen. The slick, reflective surface ruptured, the circuitry behind it sparking. He withdrew his hand, then raised both fists above his head and brought them down onto the panel’s controls. Again, the equipment could not withstand the power of his assault.
Taran’atar turned toward the door that led from these quarters and into the corridor. He had spent months failing to accomplish the task Odo had set him—a task he understood now that he should never have been given—and then over the past three days he’d tried to determine what actions he should next take. Now he found an answer.
As Laas and Indurane and the others stepped into the transporter alcove, Odo waited just outside of it. He watched Weyoun approach across the central section of the bridge. The Vorta carried in one hand a portable scanner, which Odo had requested prior to the six Founders beaming down to the planetary fragment, about which Jem’Hadar Attack Vessel 971 now circled. Despite their close proximity to the large, dome-shaped object, radiation continued to interfere with any but the coarsest scans made via ship’s sensors. Even with the lesser pow
er and range of a portable scanner, Odo hoped that actually being on the surface would allow him to overcome the interference and execute meaningful sweeps.
Weyoun handed him the device. “I hope you find what it is you’re looking for,” he said. He bowed his head and closed his eyes, then moved to the control panel beside the alcove.
“Thank you, Weyoun,” Odo acknowledged before joining the other Founders on the transporter pad. He regarded his fellow changelings in their humanoid forms, and realized that even now he could sense from each of them—except for Laas—their profound anticipation. Since learning of the Progenitor from Indurane, Odo had come to believe It nothing more than a myth, and he’d worried about how his people would react once they’d discovered the truth. Now he wondered if they really would find the Progenitor on the planetary fragment below, and if they did, he wondered what would happen next. Would the Progenitor return to the Great Link and alleviate the Founders’ slow slide toward extinction, as Indurane and the others expected? And how could that possibly happen? Could—and would—the Progenitor somehow grant the changelings the ability to procreate, or would It somehow bestow upon them immortality? Nothing seemed likely to Odo, and from his own, admittedly limited perspective, he still found it terribly difficult, if not impossible, to envision any positive outcome to the events currently unfolding. He’d had similar feelings during some of the investigations he’d made as chief of security aboard DS9. Rarely had his instincts proved wrong, but he hoped that would be the case this time.
To the other Founders, Odo said, “Prepare yourselves.” Rotan’talag had pointed out to them the small gravitational force of the planetary fragment, and that its atmosphere had boiled off into space. Changelings could exist in such conditions, but needed to alter their physical composition accordingly. Odo himself made the necessary adjustments to his own makeup, then told Weyoun, “Begin transport.”
Weyoun operated the transporter controls, which emitted clicks and soft tones beneath his touch. A whine grew in the alcove, and Odo’s sight went dark. The hum of the transporter reached a climax, then drifted back down. Before Odo, his new location revealed itself as the materialization process completed.
In dim illumination, he stood on a vast, empty plain that stretched to the distant, curved horizon in shades of gray. Above, stars shined brightly, and patches of colored gases, doubtless ejected by the nova, spread like abstract artwork across the canvas of the ebon sky. The flaring star itself could not be seen, tucked out of sight somewhere beyond the edge of the partial world.
Odo looked around to make sure that the other changelings had materialized as expected. Already, Indurane and the three other Founders had come together. As Odo watched, they melted fully into each other, spilling downward into a shapeless mass and once more forming their small link. Laas stood apart from them, separate, an expression of curiosity on his imitation Varalan face. Other than the half dozen Founders, there appeared no indications of the presence of any other changelings.
As Laas started toward him, Odo lifted the scanner and peered at it, unable to see it clearly in the low light. He concentrated, shifting the composition of his eyes, adjusting the quantities and concentrations of rods and cones, until he could see the device through the night. Quickly, he worked its controls—the beeps and chirps of its operation absent in the missing atmosphere—and took readings of the immediate surroundings. He performed simple searches for movement and any objects visible on the surface—both of which provided negative results—then executed a scan for biomimetic substances.
The readout filled at once with information. He studied it for a moment, confused by what the scanner told him. According to the device, he currently stood atop a plain filled with changeling material.
Odo dropped the scanner to his side and looked all around, seeing nothing but the dull gray surface of this wounded world. Of course, a changeling could disguise itself as anything.
As Laas stepped up beside him, Odo bent and reached down toward the ground. He hesitated, leery of abruptly linking with an unknown shapeshifter—and perhaps even wary of finding himself connected to the Progenitor. But then he continued to move, pushing his hand downward. His fingers pushed through the surface, and Odo braced himself, prepared for the commingling of his thoughts and form with another.
Nothing happened.
Surprised, Odo closed his eyes and let his mind drift inward, into the spirals and circles of transformation. He wanted to reach out, and he did so, his fingers elongating and pushing forward through the insubstantial surface, attempting connections with whatever changeling life it encountered.
And still nothing happened.
He felt a touch at his side, and the distinctive pressure that came from a proffered link. Odo yielded at the point of contact, and then Laas was there with him. Odo, he called, and then offered the form of sand spilling downward, and the sensation of a fine mist landing on the body.
What? Odo thought, his mind reaching out to Laas, even as his fingers continued to reach out in search of changeling life here. Laas did not respond right away, and Odo’s hunt turned up nothing.
And then Laas repeated the form of the sand, the sensation of the mist. Odo stopped the expansion of his body along—through—the surface, then pulled his flexible cells back into his Bajoran shape. He lifted his hand from beneath the surface of this strange place, and as he did so, delicate granules slipped from atop it and streamed back down to the ground.
Except it was not the ground.
Odo lurched to his feet, awkwardly pulling away from Laas, breaking their link. He stumbled forward, dragging his feet, and looking down to see them kicking up clouds of ash. He felt like screaming out the idea that rose in his mind, but instead dropped to his knees and slammed his fists into the powdery surface. They penetrated up to his wrists, and then to his forearms, and then to his elbows. Again, he looked inward, directed his cells into whorls as they changed their configuration, their shape. Half a meter beneath the surface, his arms extended, just as his fingers earlier had. Down and down, he reached into this world he suddenly knew was not a world, not even a portion of a world. He opened his mouth and screamed into the night, any sound that would have emerged lost in the nonexistent air.
Laas staggered up beside him, and once more touched him, putting his hand on Odo’s shoulder, offering again to join with him. Odo peered up at him and saw a haggard, shocked look on his smooth face, an expression that seemed to mimic what Odo felt right now: realization, and awful sorrow. He could not imagine what Indurane and the others would feel when they made the discovery.
With the thought of the other Founders, Odo leaned his head to the side—arms and hands still buried in the ashes—and gazed over at the small link of the other four Founders. The entire mass quivered uncontrollably, and then portions of it reached upward, only to tumble back down. Even without being connected to his fellow changelings, Odo could feel their torment.
He felt pressure against his shoulder again, and he allowed Laas in. Odo, he called once more. But no words came after that, and he offered none, the shared silence a testament to all that existed around them.
Feeling small and lost, Odo gathered his body back into its normal Bajoran form, pulling the extensions of his arms back to their usual dimensions. Carefully, he withdrew his hands from beneath the surface, palms upward, sides pressed together, a cup filled with ashes. After a moment, Odo pulled his hands apart, and those gray grains sifted back down in silence.
He knew now that no planet had ever orbited here, torn to pieces when the star had gone nova. The ashes that stretched in all directions did not cover the rocky remnants of a destroyed world; they composed this spaceborne dome in its entirety. Here, all around and beneath Odo, lay the biomimetic cells of a single enormous changeling—perhaps even the Progenitor Itself.
But It was dead.
Terminus
Odo dropped the scanner, broke from Laas, and padded across the surface of this non-world, his fe
et kicking up the fine ashes of shapeshifter death. Laas followed, but Odo kept his eyes focused on Indurane. The three other changelings had parted from him, Odo saw, but the ancient Founder no longer moved at all. Then the others with whom he’d been linked departed, altering their forms in order to rise into the night. And still Indurane had remained motionless. Had Odo not sensed his profound anguish, he might have believed the old Founder as lifeless as the planet-sized corpse below them.
Odo stopped and turned to Laas, reaching for him. His hand touched Laas’s upper arm, and amid the golden glitter of shifting flesh, they linked again. In just seconds, their two bodies became one, an amorphous column of moving cells.
Dead, came the singular concept from Laas, the texture of his body turning momentarily to powder where it mingled beside Odo’s.
Dead, Odo confirmed, matching Laas’s shapeshifting for an instant. As he did so, a terrible feeling of loss overcame him. The idea of a Founder god had only recently been made known to Odo, an idea he had at first considered a possibility, before finally concluding it nothing more than a myth. Even now, present atop the enormous mass of a deceased changeling, he hesitated to believe that they had found the Progenitor, or that the Progenitor existed—or had existed—at all.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three Page 34