by Diane Carey
Only one question slapped back and forth in Ben Sisko’s mind, like tide knocking on rocks. “When do we go?”
“As soon as everyone’s in position.”
“It will be a glorious battle,” Martok claimed on his half of the split screen.
“But a costly one,” Ross said unhappily. “Estimates project our casualty figures could be as high as forty percent And God knows how much higher they’ll go once we send in our ground forces.”
Fearful that Ross might be talking himself out of this offensive, Sisko quickly said, “The Dominion’s beaten and they know it. But they’re going to make us pay for every kilometer of that planet.”
He hoped his tone communicated that he was willing to pay, and to take out of the enemy forces every pound of flesh they exacted from his own side.
“Yes, they will,” Ross said, then did not make any further complaints or voice any doubts. “Godspeed,” he added.
Chancellor Martok wrapped up their session in what might be the last word they would ever hear from each other.
“Qa’pla!”
* * *
In the flaming cavern, waiting for their great reward, Dukat and Winn joyously poured wine from a flask into a ceremonial goblet. Dukat watched the dark liquid flow and thought of Federation blood.
“What is it?” he asked, still holding the Kosst Amojan.
“This?” Winn raised the goblet. “This is the most important part of the ceremony.”
She held the goblet high above her and chanted …
TARNA PU-ONO ULL-KESS PAH-RAN
LANO KA’LA BO’SHAR LANU….
She lowered the goblet, preparing to drink, and as the warm brass touched her lips she stopped and turned instead to Dukat.
“After you,” she offered, beaming at him.
Gently Dukat set the book down, quite frankly glad to be rid of it, and bowed before her. “I’m honored.”
The wine was sweet and warm, with an exotic pungence that coiled its way down his throat and seemed to effervesce. He had never tasted anything like it and suspected it had been part of the Kai’s private cellar for many years. Certainly this was a special enough occasion …
“Now you,” he offered.
Winn smiled, took the goblet, and smelled the wine indulgently.
Rather than drink it, though, she leered at him and poured the remaining liquid to the bubbling cavern wall. It sizzled in the heat from the flaming abyss.
Dukat stepped back from her. Why would she refuse to share the sacrament?
Raw pain bolted through his intestines. The wine burned its way deeper and deeper into his body. He choked, nearly heaved, but nothing came up. Reaching for Winn, seeking support, Dukat slipped forward and fell to his knees. Shock gripped his throat. He could no longer stand!
Winn backed away from him, refusing him any support. Why did she look like that? What was that glow in her eyes?
“Why—” he gagged.
Winn outstretched her arms, but not to him.
“Because,” she began, speaking loudly, “the Pah-wraiths demand a sacrifice! Someone worthy of them … devious and cruel … twisted and corrupt … whose soul lusts only for power and vengeance!
“Who better … than you!”
She smiled.
As Dukat’s insides began to wither, he stared in horror at her joy and fulfillment, the pure love and unmatched hatred jousting in her face.
“That’s why you were sent to me,” she told him, “so that darkness could feed on darkness, hate on hate! Your death will be the key that brings forth the Restoration of the Pah-wraiths!”
The hot ground came up and embraced him. He tumbled onto his back. Towering over him, Winn’s form seemed enormous, elongated, stretching higher and higher into the vaulted flames which lit her wide face. He reached for her. The fires rose higher. His hands burned, withered to black, blew to cinders. As a searing curtain closed slowly around his vision, Dukat saw through his paralysis the last moments of sacrifice, and heard the last words of the depraved life he had so abused.
“I offer you this life for your nourishment! This martyr to feed your hunger! May it fuel the fires that will set you free! Kosst Amojan! I am yours! Now and forever! Now and forever! Now and forever … now and forever … forever….”
CHAPTER
9
Odo held his silence with great difficulty, as he watched Kira Nerys make her report on the viewscreen to Captain Sisko. What torture it was to keep his emotions in check! She was alive, she was alive … the bird and the fish—was there a place for them to live together?
“I’m very glad to find you in one piece, Commander,” Sisko was saying to her.
“Very glad,” Odo murmured.
He hadn’t thought he’d spoken very loudly, but Kira looked at him and seemed relieved to see him clean of the Changeling disease. Her kind smile embolded him, and he smiled back.
The ship rocked from another hit—yes, they were still in the middle of the battle, but somehow it seemed less consequential now that he knew Kira was alive and in charge of Dominion Headquarters.
“What’s your status?” Sisko asked.
Kira shrugged meagerly. “Only three of us made it to the briefing room.”
“What about Damar?” Odo asked.
“He’s dead.”
Sensing the subject changing, Sisko changed it back. “Is your position secure?”
“I don’t think the Jem’Hadar will attack. They won’t risk endangering the Founder. She’s in pretty bad shape … she won’t speak to anyone … just sits at her desk, deteriorating.”
At tactical, Worf spoke for the first time. “If she dies before ordering the Jem’Hadar to surrender—”
“They’ll fight to the last man,” Sisko finished.
“There’s another problem,” Kira offered. “When the Jem’Hadar realize what’s happened, they’ll storm the building. They’ll try to rescue their ‘god.’”
“We’ll beam you out of there.”
At the engineering console, O’Brien turned from where Bashir was still cauterizing his shoulder wound. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, sir. I’ve locked onto their biosignatures, and according to these readings the Changeling won’t survive the trip.”
“I agree,” the doctor said, looking at O’Brien’s monitor. “Her morphogenic matrix is too unstable.”
Odo stepped to the captain’s side. “Sir—Captain, I’d like to beam down as well.”
Sisko watched the screen. “I understand you want to help Kira, but—”
“It’s not that.” Not all that. “I want to talk to the Founder. I might be able to reason with her.”
“You haven’t had much success reasoning with her in the past,” the captain rightly reminded him, courteously holding back the fact that, actually, Odo’s attempts had turned out to be downright disasters.
“I’d still like to try.” He refrained from pointing out that things had changed—that the female was dying, which would alter anybody’s outlook, and that he had things in mind which Sisko would not find particularly comforting.
The ship shook again, saving him from having to explain.
Instead he quickly added, “Think of the lives it might save.”
“Point taken,” Sisko said. “Good luck, Constable.”
Sisko shrugged, not about to be put off at this late hour. “Commander, tell the Founder that Odo would like to pay her a visit.”
“The more, the merrier,” Kira accepted.
The ship rolled again, then pitched forward. Another hit. The Jem’Hadar weren’t giving up. In dismay Odo watched as the comm screen cut off the view of Kira and went again to the view of space, showing relentless Jem’Hadar ships sweeping around them at all angles.
Sisko turned to Ezri. “Contact Admiral Ross and tell him we need to secure that facility.”
“I’m on it,” she responded.
* * *
Odo hurried to the transporter room, collecting six St
arfleet security guards on his way through the ship—and given the casualties and the action still going on, it wasn’t easy to get the department heads to give up manpower. Six guards with phaser rifles would be sufficient to guard the facility until more could be available.
“We’ll have to beam down in two waves, sir,” Ensign Bremerton told him as they crowded into the Defiant’s little transporter room. “Systems are damaged and we don’t want an overload.”
“Very well,” Odo accepted, and started for the pad.
“Sir—” The ensign stopped him by stepping up there first, having the common sense not to actually touch him. “With your permission, sir, I think three guards should go down first, and secure the situation before you have to go down.”
Odo surveyed the young man’s bruised face. “Ensign, I have been for many years the senior security officer on board a fully armed deep-space outpost. Are you telling me I can’t handle the first wave of a landing party?”
The young man came suddenly to attention. “No, sir! It’s just that … we just all thought you might … want somebody else to have a look around down there first.”
So. His situation had not been a secret among his security teams. He had underestimated the intimacy of life at Deep Space Nine.
His instinct to lash out and claim his prowess and self-control subsided as he studied the young security man’s expression and the deep sympathy he saw there. In it was reflected their loyalty to him, their sorrow that they couldn’t protect him perhaps as he had always tried to protect them by indeed going first into every situation.
“Ensign,” he began, “yes, thank you … but whatever is down there, I cannot shy from it. I will lead the first wave. You follow me, and beam directly to the outer perimeter of the building. Signal us when you believe the entrances are secured.”
Bremerton nodded sadly. “Aye, aye, sir. Whatever you say.”
Odo led two other beefy guards into the transporter and steeled himself for the nauseating process of beaming. Unlike with solids, the transporter usually seemed a bit fitful and confused at trying to rearrange the molecules of a Changeling, and he always had to fight to hold form just as he was being reconstituted.
Using the coordinates supplied by Kira, he was able to beam directly into the corridor outside the briefing room.
Kira was there waiting for him, and charged into his arms with a passion that drove him wild with joy and sorrow. He clutched her slim form against his and wished she had more meat on her bones so there would be more to hold. The fear of her death came to its full flowering and broke to the wind. He hadn’t let himself think she might be gone until finally he saw that she wasn’t. The sensation of victory nearly overwhelmed him.
When his head stopped swimming, he noticed that the two guards had dutifully taken positions outside the briefing room door.
Kira drew back from a heart-drowning kiss and gazed at Odo happily.
“Nerys,” he murmured.
“It’s been a while,” she said, not quite joking. She lowered her voice. “Watch yourself … I don’t trust her.”
He looked down at her. “But you trust me, don’t you?”
“Of course!”
“That’s all I need to know.” Odo peered down at her, cupping her knobby shoulders in his hands.
Yes, he was sure. All his decisions had been made. He had weighed all the consequences both larger and smaller than himself, and he knew what he wanted.
In the briefing room, Garak stood with another Starfleet guard. “Constable,” he greeted tightly.
Odo nodded. “Garak.”
And there, in the chair, was the female of his own kind with whom he had shared so many dreamlike moments.
She looked up to see him. Her face was a demolished mask of illness and dessication. He pitied her deeply. She must be in indescribable pain, yet there was serenity in her eyes. Whatever her fate, she was taking it courageously.
“You’re looking well, Odo,” she said. Her voice was tight.
“Thank you for seeing me,” he said sincerely.
“It’s always good to see you. But don’t think even you can change my mind. I have no intention of surrendering my forces. If I did, it would be a sign of weakness … an invitation for the solids to cross into the Gamma Quadrant and destroy the Great Link.”
So that was at the bottom of her stubbornness—expecting others to act with the same ruthlessness she and their kind had shown.
“Believe me,” he told her, “I’m well aware that the Federation has its flaws, but a desire for conquest isn’t one of them.”
She offered him the smallest of shrugs. “And what of the Klingon and Romulan Empires? Can you make the same claim for them?”
He glanced at Kira. “The Klingon and Romulan Empires are in no shape to wage a war against anyone. Besides … the Federation wouldn’t allow it.”
The female shuddered momentarily, then regained control. “The Dominion has spent the past two years trying to destroy the Federation … and now you’re asking me to put our fate in their hands?”
“Yes.”
A very simple answer … the one word communicated all his faith in the civilization in which he had lived for so many more years than the last two.
She paused, reading his eyes, but in the end she rejected what he said.
“I can’t do that, Odo. I don’t share your faith in solids.”
For that, too, he was ready.
With one final glance at Kira, at the bird who should be free to fly, Odo reached for the female of his own kind.
“Perhaps I can change your mind. Link with me.”
CHAPTER
10
“Odo, what are you doing!”
Though Kira’s protest certainly did have its effect upon him, Odo had not a thought of changing his mind. He knew she didn’t understand yet what was motivating him to dare the heretofore tricky and threatening link with this dangerously enticing creature from his own world.
Until now he had been the child, always at risk, drawn by the intrigue of the adult who tempted him away from his safe street corner. This wonderful day, for the first time, things were very different.
Kira, who loved him and wanted to protect him, had no way of knowing that. She had no way of knowing the depths of his conviction this time. He could never hope to explain it to her in simple human words. There would have to be another kind of understanding between them.
Before this, in every Link he had attempted, he had always been thinking about himself, the mystery of his origins, the otherworldly nature of his abilities, and the differences between himself and the solid beings who had embraced him as one of their own. Exploring the vast clutter of fantasies allowed him when he discovered what he was—a Changeling, a shapeshifter, part of that great merged Link of millions of other souls that freely intertwined. The revelation had been shocking, and had filled him with questions.
Since he could remember he had been a single entity, alone in his unusual body, just like all the other people around him. All at once he had been told he wasn’t alone, that he could blend, share, flow with a whole civilization, that instantly they would know him and he them. An extended family beyond anyone’s idea of extended families, the shapeshifters were an entire race that could freely merge, separate into individuals, then merge again, giving a whole new meaning to the word “alien.”
After a lifetime alone—individual, vulnerable—Odo now knew that he could merge with them and not lose his singular personality. He would keep his private self. They could never drive him to the blended ecstasy of artificial togetherness and make him forget who he was. Never again.
So he wasn’t afraid or hesitant This time he would merge on his own terms, and he would be the one in charge.
“I’m afraid I can’t Link with you,” his counterpart said. “This disease prevents me from changing my form.”
He offered his hand. “If we Link, I think I can cure you.”
Garak didn’t step
toward them, but did say, “That’s a very bad idea, Constable.”
Kira, on the other hand, did come closer. “I’m afraid I have to agree with Garak.”
Odo glanced at Kira. “Nerys, I know what I’m doing.”
And there isn’t time to make you understand. People are dying.
“Take my hand,” he said to the other Changeling.
“And if you do cure me? What will you ask in return?”
“All I ask is that you Link with me.”
Garak brandished his weapon again. “I’m warning you, Odo—”
Imploringly, Odo looked at Kira. Would she have faith him, as he had asked?
Kira stepped back and motioned Garak back also. “Lower your weapon, Garak.”
“I don’t think so,” he refused.
Moving sideways, Kira simply put her hand on his rifle and pushed it down. “I said put it down.”
“Why?”
“Because I trust Odo.”
Overwhelmed with affection and gratitude, Odo was warmed with confidence. He lifted his hand to the female Changeling. He was giving her no choice. She would accept this, but on his terms. They were for the first time on completely equal terms. No—better than that. He, for the first time, was superior in ability.
After a few seconds she summoned the strength to raise her hand to his. With ease that surprised even Odo, he wished a blending and it happened. His hand liquefied and engulfed hers, assisting her in morphing the sickened flakes and the mottling of her diseased limb. Starfleet had the cure and had given it to Odo, and then quite wisely and bravely elected not to share it with the ugly culture of the beautiful Changelings.
Why?
Because they didn’t deserve it. They were using their abilities to conquer and repress others, a decidedly less noble cause than their lofty super-ideal of themselves should have embraced. They could not be superior if they would not treat others with mercy and respect. Starfleet had been right. Odo was going to show her what the “lowly” Federation had that the Changelings had not been able to develop for themselves.