STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change

by Marco Palmieri, Editor

  Jadzia spied the datachip sitting on the coffee table.

  When ... ? A stretcher bearing one of the shrouded corpses had passed, she’d averted her eyes, and then saw the chip—a download of the visual record of the experiment that one of Romulan scientists had made, forgotten during the flurry of mop-up activity. She’d forgotten that she had it.

  Twenty minutes before her shift. Probably should get going.

  Fixed where she stood, she stared at the datachip.

  Who am I fooling? I’m gonna be late. ...

  Pulling a chair up to the monitor, she scanned the datachip contents into the computer memory and sat back to watch. She wanted answers. Now. Pretending to review ships’ logs and casualty reports at her science station would be an exercise in futility as long as her thoughts lingered elsewhere. She held her breath, waiting, waiting ... The screen flickered. The footage began.

  The recording device had been mounted on the ceiling, giving her a global view of the laboratory. From this vantage, were it not for their uniforms, their dark hair might have made it difficult to distinguish between her and T’Rul. Jadzia found their apparent similarity amusing: the possibility of being mistaken for a Romulan had never occurred to her.

  “Get on with it,” she muttered, scooting in closer to the monitor so she could fast-forward through the gurney being brought in, the techs connecting the monitors to the test subject’s body. I’m leaning against the worktable, prepping the rebreather, cover his face, administer the dose. ... For long moments, she impassively studied the pictures until the juncture where the Jem’Hadar broke free of his bonds. She held her breath.

  In rapid succession: The Jem’Hadar assaulted the tech; she reached for the phaser, releasing a blinding blaze of energy—

  Firing. Her stomach tightened.

  And again. She shivered. “Computer, halt playback.” Something didn’t feel right, but she couldn’t say exactly what or why.

  “That’s not what happened,” she finally said aloud, her voice sounding thin to her ear. What she’d seen wasn’t right—it couldn’t be; confusion still seethed inside her. Answers meant reason. Reason meant order. Principles of scientific inquiry and order governed her life and voided confusion. She would not accept anything less.

  She ordered a replay of the previous minutes.

  Again the Jem’Hadar broke free. She pointed her phaser at the back of his skull. She fired.

  Involuntarily she gasped, jerking back, refusing to believe her eyes. That’s. Not. What. Happened.

  She blinked. She saw rows of dutiful Jem’Hadar, weapons drawn, aiming at their victims’ heads. She blinked. Clinically detached Jadzia Dax, scientist, secured the rebreather to the test subject. All for the cause. She blinked. She saw cold fear in the faces of Romulan civilians prepared to die. All can be justified. She blinked. She saw Jadzia with a snifter of kanar, throwing back her head in a great belly laugh and she cried out to the woman in her vision.

  I’m like them.

  Staggering out of her chair, she collapsed on her knees, hot silent tears washing down her face. Through her tears, she fumbled for the controls, for the datachip, longing to make it all stop. To make it all disappear. But she knew she didn’t have the right to look away. She had demanded answers and now she had them.

  In her mind’s eye, the room receded, giving way to a cavernous emptiness that surrounded her, pressed down on her, rendering her small and swallowed. Dizziness washed over her and she doubled over with waves of nausea.

  She sobbed. She sobbed for all she had lost. Sobs became hiccoughs; hiccoughs became short, irregular breaths until finally, exhausted silence. She lay still on the floor, her head pillowed on her hands.

  Emotionally spent, she could finally see a crucial truth that she had avoided acknowledging since Blue Sky had begun: For all her protestations, she wanted the Romulans involved, counting on their amoral pragmatism to push the war in a direction she knew the Federation would never take. Had her research with T’Rul proved effective, the Romulans would have used the weapon without a moment’s hesitation while Starfleet would have wrung its hands over the moral imperatives. And she wanted it used. She wanted to bring down every Jem’Hadar killing machine in the galaxy. She simply wanted someone else to do the killing. The Romulans hadn’t deceived her; she’d chosen to look the other way. Benjamin’s faith in me is misplaced, she thought. I have no idea how to find my way through the shadows.

  “Ops to Commander Dax.” A long pause. “Commander Dax?”

  She shook her head, willed her voice to be steady. “Go ahead—” She took a deep breath.

  “There’s been an emergency. Molly O’Brien has disappeared. We think there’s some kind of anomaly—”

  Wiping her eyes on her sleeves, she said, “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  How so much could go so wrong so quickly never ceased to astonish Jadzia. She’d been redirected to the Defiant before she even reached ops. During their brief journey to Golana, she’d been in constant communication with Miles, doing her best to assess the problem and brainstorm possible solutions. She’d been so hopeful that she could solve this mystery that she hadn’t been prepared for the grim reality of witnessing Miles’s and Keiko’s shock. The O’Briens’ distress had strengthened Jadzia’s resolve to find their missing daughter. And she found Molly—after a fashion. The wild, rangy teenager they’d pulled through the time portal might have been genetically Molly, but she bore no resemblance to the playful child who loved storybooks and colored pictures to decorate Miles’s workroom.

  In all the confusion about how to proceed with Molly, Jadzia had volunteered to baby-sit Yoshi—it was the least she could do. And from a more selfish standpoint, she knew that going back to her quarters feeling helpless and worried would only plunge her into a black mood. She didn’t want to be alone with her own thoughts.

  She had swung by the O’Briens’ quarters to pick up Yoshi’s things. Having vivid memories of Audrid’s colicky daughter, Jadzia knew that sometimes the difference between a happy baby and a screaming baby was the availability of a favorite toy or blanket. Neema had been fond of a tattered square of violet crochet; she’d rubbed it against her face to soothe her when she needed to sleep.

  Jadzia discovered when got back to her quarters, after he’d been changed and fed, that Yoshi had his own unique taste.

  “And Mister Froggy goes ‘rbbt-rbbt,’ ” Jadzia croaked.

  Yoshi giggled, and grabbed for the stuffed toy. The slobber-covered amphibian went straight into his mouth.

  She ruffled his fine silken hair, amused by how intently he gummed the webbed foot. “I’d think you were slurping down jumja instead of sucking on artificial fur,” she said. Babies’ needs are so much simpler than adults’, she thought. She watched Yoshi bash Mister Froggy’s head repeatedly into her coffee table. He soon became bored, casting the toy away. He looked at Jadzia, looked down at the couch, dropped on all fours and peered over the edge.

  “All gone,” Jadzia said and shrugged. “All gone.”

  His face screwed up into a tight, wrinkled frown and he catapulted himself into her chest with a frustrated sob.

  “There, there.” She inhaled deeply, savoring his clean, sweet scent, and was carried back more than a hundred years to the last time she had mothered a baby. Savoring the nostalgic moment, she rubbed his back while simultaneously craning to see over the armrest of the sofa. Scooping him up into her arms, she walked over to where the hapless amphibian had landed. Yoshi’s tears promptly dried up. “All better?”

  He giggled.

  I wish making it all better for me was as easy as it is for you, she thought, feeling a twinge of envy.

  As she watched him play, she thought of how lucky he was to be oblivious to his parents’ current crisis. Keiko must be in agony, Jadzia thought. 7 know I would be. Even Kira was upset. She’d grown so close to their family during the time she’d carried Yoshi that she’d become like a favorite aunt to the children and a sis
ter to Miles and Keiko. But little Yoshi here. Little Yoshi can just play and play, without a care in the world while his mother—while both of his mothers—worry. Both of his mothers ...

  Intellectually she’d known what a technological wonder it was that Keiko’s baby had been transported into Kira’s womb. Sitting here, listening to Yoshi’s uninhibited, gleeful laughter reminded her that it had been nothing short of a miracle.

  A miracle would be required if she and Worf should decide they wanted to have children.

  They’d agreed to put off serious discussions about starting a family until after the war, but the possibility always lived on the fringes of her thoughts. Even during her hell-bent pursuit of a weapon to defeat the Jem’Hadar, Jadzia acknowledged to herself that the infertility technology she’d adapted for the weapon was the same technology she’d need to conceive. Especially now, in retrospect, the irony of using a technology developed to create a life in order to take a life wasn’t lost on her; she’d thrown something inside herself out of whack. She had to make it right. She had to. The slow hemorrhage of loss had to stop.

  “Buda-buda-buda!” she said, wiggling Mister Froggy back and forth in front of Yoshi’s eyes.

  Yoshi tried grabbing for the stuffed animal, but Jadzia would make the frog run away and hide whenever he came too close. His eyes widened and he leaned forward, straining to reach the pillow where Jadzia had hidden the toy. In his efforts, he toppled over, landing face-first on her lap. Impulsively, she pulled him up on her chest, holding him tightly against her. She looked deeply into his wide eyes, bent forward and rubbed his nose with her own.

  T’Rul’s words came back to her unbidden—her invocation of an old human saying: an eye for an eye. It could go the other way, should go the other way—a life for a life. Replacing one life she’d taken with the creation of another.

  I could have a baby. The thought prompted a smile. It might be a place to start.

  Yoshi wiggled out of her arms, plopping back onto his haunches, looking at her expectantly.

  Jadzia pulled Mister Froggy out from behind the pillow.

  “And Mister Froggy goes ...” she tickled him. “Wee!”

  The door hissed open. She knew without looking that Worf had returned.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Amazing how even his “hi” sends shivers up and down my arms. “We have a visitor.”

  Bending over, he placed a kiss on her forehead.

  Dax smiled inwardly. And so I begin again.

  Foundlings

  Jeffrey Lang

  Historian’s note: This story is set during the three-month period between the sixth and seventh seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

  Jeffrey Lang

  Jeffrey Lang is the author of the novel Star Trek: The Next Generation—Immortal Coil and the short story “Dead Man’s Hand” in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—The Lives of Dax. He’s also the coauthor (with David Weddle) of Section 31: Abyss; and (with J.G. Hertzler) the two-volume tale The Left Hand of Destiny. He lives with his family in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Thanks to Joshua for contributing the first line of “Foundlings.”

  Odo asked, “Are you sure arresting Quark is the best first step in this investigation?”

  As he strode down the Promenade with his companion, Odo watched the faces of the men and women coming from the opposite direction. Many of them were new Starfleet recruits passing through Deep Space 9 on their way to a new ship or posting. Every one of them did a doubletake as they passed. If animosity was a measurable thing, the readings around his Cardassian guest would have been off the chart.

  Only the old station hands, longtime residents and merchants who considered DS9 a second home didn’t glare, but stopped and stared as this Cardassian threaded his way through the crowd. One or two recognized him and halted in their tracks, then turned to watch as he walked past. Odo heard someone whisper, “Thrax!” but the tide of the crowd swept the caller away before Odo could see a face.

  Watching Thrax move, Odo saw that, even after so many years, his predecessor as chief of station security still had a policeman’s walk: a loose-hipped, stiff-kneed gait that could carry a man effortlessly though a crowd, or across kilometers in pursuit of his objective. Odo recognized the walk because he had one very like it himself.

  In response to Odo’s question, Thrax clenched his jaw and pressed his lips together in an expression that, if pressed, Odo would have grudgingly categorized as a smile. “Come now, Constable. You’ve been at this for—what is it?—ten years now? When a crime has been committed, isn’t arresting Quark always the best first response?”

  Odo snorted appreciatively. There was no denying that this was often his first reaction. Certainly, when he had learned the facts of the case that had brought Thrax to Deep Space 9, his first impulse had been to track down Quark, but only to question, not to arrest. “While I agree that an investigation is necessary,” he conceded, “I’m not convinced this incident should be considered a crime. But perhaps you know something I don’t.”

  “Just that Quark is Quark. Crime is crime. And punishment ...”

  “Is not quite so quick to follow as it was in your day,” Odo said. Thrax was a civilian now, and although he claimed to have returned to DS9 for the first time in a decade as a private citizen with humanitarian concerns, Odo wasn’t about to lower his guard or leave any doubt about whose jurisdiction they were in.

  Thrax gave Odo a questioning look while skillfully sidestepping a bolting Bajoran child who had escaped his father’s grasp. “Some might not consider that a change for the better.”

  “But those who were unjustly accused and convicted under the old regime might,” Odo said sternly as they stopped outside the double doors of the security office. “As much as it pains me to say this, I think in this instance that category may include Quark. He’s been involved in many shady deals over the years, but this ... event, this ...”

  “Tragedy?” Thrax suggested.

  Odo pressed his lips into a thin line and shook his head. “People are quick to apply that word to circumstances that are, by definition, not tragic. For tragedy to occur, there must be hubris and the one who suffers must bring it upon himself. Whatever else may be true of these events, these individuals did not bring their fate upon themselves. Or—again—do you know something I do not?”

  “I’m in possession of certain facts that may elucidate matters,” Thrax said. “But before I discuss them I’d like to interview Quark.”

  “ ‘Interview’?” Odo asked. “Not ‘interrogate’?”

  “We’ll see,” Thrax said as he and Odo stepped together through the doors.

  Quark was seated in one of the two chairs habitually set in front of Odo’s desk. The Ferengi looked over his shoulder when the doors opened, and Odo saw Quark’s eyes widen first in surprise and then, surprisingly, in delight. “Thrax,” he said, rising from his chair and bowing in Cardassian fashion. “How the hell are you?”

  Bowing in response, Thrax asked in proper Ferengi protocol, “As well as can be expected in current economic circumstances. How is business, Quark?”

  “Unpredictable, but I see better days ahead,” Quark said, returning to his seat and indicating the chair next to him. Rolling his eyes, Odo walked around his desk and sat in his chair across from his visitors. He had been under the impression that these two had each been the other’s worst enemy during the Occupation. The way they were talking he wondered if they expected him to order some tea, excuse himself, and let them get caught up.

  “Really?” Thrax said. “And why do you say that?”

  “War’s got to end sometime soon,” Quark said amiably. “One way or another.”

  “And you’ll adapt no matter which side wins?”

  The Ferengi shrugged. “A good businessman has to build flexibility into his plans. I like to think of myself as someone who can accommodate the needs of any clientele.”

  “Indeed,” Thrax said. “I suppose this must be true, seeing as you’ve
survived so many years under so many—hmph, what’s the word? Administrations?”

  Quark grinned and spread his hands modestly. “What can I say? I’m a people person.”

  “I am not,” Odo snapped, attempting to regain control of the meeting. “And yet here I sit with you two. Could it be it’s because I have an investigation to conduct?”

  “Of course, Constable,” Thrax said. “Apologies. We have serious matters to discuss.” He turned to Quark and said matter-of-factly, “Why don’t you just confess now and save us all a lot of time and energy?”

  Still smiling, Quark crossed his arms and settled back into his chair. “Why don’t you tell me what I’m being charged with first? Then I’ll decide.”

  “I don’t know what the final charges will be, Quark. That’s up to Odo, but I have a few suggestions. Smuggling. Criminal negligence. Conspiracy to commit murder. Those are the first three to come to mind, but I’m sure we could think of more.”

  Shifting his eyes over to Odo, Quark’s smile slipped the millimeter that separates pleasure from paralyzed rictus. “Is he serious?”

  “Is he?” Odo asked. “I’m not completely certain myself. Perhaps the time has come for the recitation of facts. Then we can decide together.” Picking up a padd, Odo read, “Forty hours ago, a Lurian freighter, registry NRX-01772, outbound from Cardassia, experienced a catastrophic core failure less than a light-year from Bajor. The ship was lost with all hands, and two hours after the station detected the explosion, a Bajoran Militia patrol ship found the debris. Does the registration number ring a bell, Quark?”

  Quark seemed to consider the question carefully, then, apparently deciding there was no reason not to tell the truth, said, “Sure, I owned a piece of the ship. Silent partnership. One of the owners sold me his share to cover a gambling debt.” He sighed. “Guess I’m going to have to write that one off. But, so what? It’s not my fault the ship exploded.”