ON SIX SWIFT LEGS, the Cardassian vole scurried along the overhead power conduit mounted near the top of the bulkhead just outside the Boreth’s main engineering station. Visually indistinguishable in color from the stained Klingon structural panels that lined the ship’s corridor, the diminutive orange creature froze in the shadows near the ceiling, almost as if to avoid being heard by the sensitive ears of the two Romulans passing by below.
But when the two stopped, and each reached out in turn for the engineering security panel, the vole’s tiny head jutted forward, its spine nobs pulsing in time with its rapid breathing, the hairless flaps of its bat-like ears flattening close to its skull, its glittering, bulbous eyes focusing on each move the Romulans made as they tapped out their individual security codes.
The engineering doors slid open.
In the same instant, the vole released the opposable claws of its two front pairs of legs and dropped from the conduit, straight for the Romulans—
—who didn’t even bother to look up as the annoying buzz of a Klingon glob fly swerved around them, then vanished into the cavernous upper levels of the largest open area on the Boreth.
Seconds later, before the Engineering doors could close, the Cardassian vole gripped the edge of a second-level safety rail with its claws, then vaulted to engineering’s upper deck and slipped through the narrow gap between two heavily shielded quantum-wave decouplers, both aglow with flickering status lights. Just then, an exhausted Romulan technician who had been working all shift to trace the source of an intermittent photon leak near the decouplers glanced away from her padd toward the gap. And saw a dim orange blur streak by.
A momentary frown creased the technician’s face. The Boreth, however, was a vast ship and contained a veritable secondary ecosystem of parasites and vermin, so the sighting of the occasional pest was not worth reporting. Thus duty won out over curiosity. The photon leak was real. The technician dismissed the fleeting sighting.
And far back in the twisted labyrinth of barely passable access paths that ran behind the wall of power relays that supplied the ship’s Romulan-designed singularity inhibitor, the vole stopped, and after looking all around took a deep, squeaky breath and began to expand….
In the shadows of engineering, Odo watched carefully as his humanoid hands sprouted from the sleeves of his Bajoran constable’s uniform. Unlike the other, more common shapeshifting creatures in the galaxy, changelings such as he had the ability to alter their mass as well as their form. Though it was a completely instinctive process, Odo’s first mentor in the world of solids, Dr. Mora Pol, had theorized that Odo’s ability to alter the shape of his molecular structure actually enabled him to form four-dimensional lattices in the shape of hyperspheres and tesseracts—geometric shapes that could not exist in only three dimensions.
In effect, this allowed Odo to shunt some of his mass into another dimension, depending on the requirements of the form he assumed. Odo acknowledged that as a scientific problem his innate ability was interesting, and that Pol’s theory, if true, made some sort of sense. Yet because of Dr. Pol’s belief that changelings faced the risk of inadvertently pushing too much of themselves into that other dimension and disappearing altogether, Odo still experienced unease when attempting to reduce his mass to a matter of micrograms. As a result he had seldom dared push his shape-changing ability to the extremes of becoming anything as small as a Klingon glob fly, a creature only half the size of a Terran mosquito.
Since learning more about his true nature from his fellow changelings in the Great Link, Odo had learned that Dr. Pol’s fear resulted from his misunderstanding the shapeshifting process; still, old habits died hard, and Odo still felt uncomfortable transforming himself into anything smaller than voles or creatures of similar size.
Relieved at his uneventful reversion to normal humanoid mass and size, Odo now turned to the one or two details still requiring his attention.
On his reconnaissance mission he had observed that almost all crew members of the Boreth wore uniforms apparently modified from something similar to the one he had customarily worn on Deep Space 9. Except that the Boreth crew uniforms featured slightly different shades of brown-and-tan fabric and had a single swath of a contrasting color running across the chest from shoulder to shoulder, instead of the two seemingly separate shoulder pieces his own uniform displayed. Also for some reason, Odo recalled, the Boreth crew uniforms were an invariably sloppy fit, as if the ship’s clothing replicators no longer had accurate measuring capabilities.
Still the changes were simple, and as he now formed a mental picture of himself wearing a new uniform, Odo sensed the familiar rippling and shifting of his outer self as his external uniform updated itself to the new standard appearance, its surface even sagging and bunching to suggest a bad fit. Then, just to further the illusion should he be seen in engineering, Odo gave his head a shake, and his sleek, brushed-back hair—a near duplicate of Dr. Pol’s own style and color—slithered forward to become black Romulan bangs. At the same time his simply shaped ears elongated slightly to form Vulcanoid points, and his brow became more pronounced. Odo knew that under normal lighting conditions there would still be an unfinished look to his features (despite his ability to duplicate every vane of every feather on an avian species, the far less demanding details of a humanoid face had always remained such a difficult challenge for him he sometimes wondered if his people had engineered a sort of facial inhibition into him when they’d adjusted his genetic code, to make him long to return to his homeworld). At least, he reasoned, his new Romulan form would offer some protection during his passage through engineering, while he committed the acts of sabotage so painstakingly planned by O’Brien and Rom.
Captain Sisko, of course, had given his express approval for the operation. From the briefing the survivors from the Defiant had received only a few hours ago, it had become obvious to all that despite the Starfleet emblems that adorned this vessel, the institution served by the crew of the Boreth bore no allegiance nor resemblance to the Starfleet of twenty-five years past. The emblems, in the captain’s judgment, were a lie. Odo and the other survivors suspected the briefing was also.
Odo directed his attention to an exposed bulkhead between two large and unidentifiable cylindrical housings, where he found a power-relay switching box surrounded by a nest of conduits. The box itself was a meter tall, no more than a half-meter wide, and labeled with a Bajoran identification plate that had been haphazardly attached over a Klingon sign. From what Chief O’Brien had seen of the Boreth’s power-distribution system as he was led through the corridors, he had told Odo he was confident that the switching mechanisms in the ship would not have changed significantly since their own time. Odo studied the Bajoran plate more closely, confirming for himself that it did use the same terminology with which he was familiar. Still, when he swung open the access panel, he was relieved to see that the layout of the box’s interior was indeed very close to what Rom had described.
At any given time, Odo was aware from experience, a starship generated a constant amount of power for internal use, though the demands on that power varied according to what subsystems—from replicators to sonic showers—were operating from second to second. Thus, a ship’s power-distribution system was constantly adjusting the amount of power, available as either basic electricity or the more complex wave-forms of transtator current, that moved through specific sections of the ship’s power grid and prevented localized surges, brownouts, and overloads. Odo knew that interfering with that system would, as a matter of course, make such interruptions in the flow of power more likely. And a properly timed interruption that affected engineering could have the desired result of forcing the Boreth to drop from warp. That, in fact, was Odo’s goal.
Sisko had admitted that it was a risky plan, but the captain had also thought it likely that, given the speed with which the vessels of the other Starfleet had attacked the Opaka, if the Boreth were to lose warp propulsion in deep space, it would also come under swift attack.
Odo concentrated on transforming his fingers into right-angled wiring grippers in order to disconnect an inline series of transpolar compensators. He trusted that Kira would be as successful with her half of the mission: obtaining a Bajoran combadge from one of the guards watching over the Defiant’s rescued crew and passengers. His Deep Space 9 colleague had taken the challenge because, whatever the truth of this future, as Bajorans Kira and Commander Arla were not subject to the same level of scrutiny as the other survivors. Consequently, Kira and Arla had each been given separate staterooms, while the remaining sixteen … prisoners, Odo decided was the best term for them … had been grouped into four main barracks-type rooms, each room featuring enough tiered bunks for twenty-one crew. O’Brien had identified the holding areas as enlisted men’s communal quarters—a living area typical of some Klingon warships.
Whatever the barracks’ original purpose, Odo had been pleased enough to have been placed in so large a confinement chamber. It had made it easier to move to the back of the room nearest the sanitary facilities and discreetly transform himself into the Klingon insect capable of escaping through the door with the departing guards. While he had originally planned to reach engineering through the ventilation shafts, the Chief had been quick to point out to him that various environmental systems on the ship employed charged grids specifically designed to incinerate unwanted pests.
Odo gave a final twist to the secondary connector ring, and the status lights of the compensators winked out. One down, five to go. By O’Brien’s calculations, if he could compromise at least six relay switches within engineering, and then short-circuit a seventh, he’d be able to cause a surge that would interrupt power to the ship’s warp generators long enough to trigger an automatic safety shutdown. Although the chief engineer had doubted it would take the crew of the Boreth more than ten minutes to bring their ship back into warp, if Kira had her communicator and Rom was able to reconfigure it and there were real Starfleet vessels nearby, Odo reckoned that ten minutes might be just long enough to bring the Boreth under attack.
Whether that attack would result in the rescue of the Defiant’s survivors now held prisoner on the Boreth was a risk everyone had accepted. Action, in Odo’s experience, was always preferable to imprisonment.
First changing the right-angled grippers at the end of his arm back into a hand, he carefully shut the access panel and glanced around his cramped work area. In the dim light, there appeared to be another power-relay switching box four meters along the bulkhead, mounted between two large vertical pipes. Odo approached the switching box, located the release latch for its cover and, just as he was about to open it, heard a soft voice in his ear murmur, “Odo. You can stop now.”
Startled, Odo stepped back, unsuccessfully scanning the shadows and darkness for the source of the voice. He couldn’t be sure, but it had sounded like Weyoun. Either Weyoun himself was here, or his voice had been relayed through an overhead communications speaker. It was unclear which.
Odo quickly decided against staying long enough to find out. He took a breath, formed a mental image of a vole, and—
—nothing.
Odo tried again.
And again. But his shape appeared to be locked in his half-formed Romulan disguise.
“Such a useful precaution,” Weyoun’s voice said breathily, from nowhere and from everywhere, “the inhibitor.”
Odo simultaneously blinked and stepped back, as a small cylindrical device suddenly appeared to be hovering a few meters in front of him. One end was segmented like a series of stacked golden rings, the other bore a black panel dotted with sequentially flashing lights.
“The original was developed by the Obsidian Order.” To Odo, it was as if Weyoun were speaking from the unsupported device, and he wondered if antigravs had actually been miniaturized to such an extent. “A very long and arduous process, as I’m sure you know. Then Damar had it further refined. I believe he was planning on betraying the Founder … once the Dominion-Cardassian alliance had proved victorious over the Federation, of course.”
And suddenly Weyoun’s pale face appeared in midair, smiling with a distracted expression, near the floating inhibitor. Then, with a series of jerky movements, the rest of Weyoun’s body came into view.
Odo stared in amazement, as a flurry of small energy discharges revealed the Vorta before him in his entirety, half-dressed in a vedek’s robes, half in what could only be an isolation suit with its cloaking field switched off.
“Also a most useful device, wouldn’t you agree?” Weyoun said as he stepped neatly out of the bulky red suit and let it fall to the deck. “I’m surprised you people forgot about it. It was a Starfleet invention, after all. Apparently, something called Section 31 reverse-engineered the Romulan cloaking device on the Defiant. Quite illegal. It’s fascinating what the passage of time brings to the release of secret documents.”
Odo had no idea what Weyoun was talking about, and didn’t care to know. “Turn off the inhibitor,” he said.
Weyoun looked at the device in his hand, shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
Odo regarded him sternly. “I gave you an order.”
“So you did.”
Odo was uncomfortable with what he had to say next, but in this one limited case, surely the end justified the means. “Weyoun, I am your god. Do as I say.”
Unexpectedly, Weyoun moved toward him, holding out the device as if making an offering of it. “Odo, do you realize you’ve never spoken to me like that before,” the Vorta said as if concerned for his welfare. “I don’t believe you know how much it has always troubled me to see you so conflicted, refusing to admit what you are, what you have meant to me.”
“Well, I don’t refuse to admit it any longer. Turn off the—”
The cylinder struck Odo’s face like a club, knocking him to the deck.
Odo held a hand to his all-too-solid face. The pain was intense, and he looked up at Weyoun in shock. The Vorta appeared to be trembling in the throes of nervous excitement.
“I can’t tell you how many times in the past twenty-five years I’ve wondered if I could do that. Did it hurt?”
Slowly, Odo got to his feet, only now recalling Sisko’s warning that Weyoun had somehow overcome his genetic imperative to regard changelings as gods. “Yes.”
“And that was just a simple blow. Imagine what it must feel like … to die.”
Odo braced himself. Not only did Weyoun’s attack confirm that the Vorta was capable of striking one of the beings he used to worship, it seemed he was preparing himself to kill. Only one explanation was possible. Weyoun was a clone and this one was defective.
“I’m not defective,” the Vorta said before Odo could state his conclusion. “I prefer to regard myself as restored. Cured. Freed?” The Vorta shrugged. “The important thing is, I can finally think for myself.”
“Perhaps,” Odo growled, “you’ve just been more effectively programmed.”
Weyoun merely grinned. “I wondered that myself, Odo, after I returned from the True Temple. After all, if some minor realignment of my amino acids were responsible for my former belief that you and your people were gods, I realized I really couldn’t rule out the possibility that some other agency might have made a further modification in my program.”
“And what answer did you find?” As if I don’t know, Odo thought sourly.
As if delighted to share a confidence with one who would truly understand, Weyoun favored him with an intimate smile. “First, I returned to my own homeworld, as it were. To the Dominion cloning facilities on Rondac III. I awoke one of the other Weyouns. And you know, the most sophisticated medical scans showed that there was absolutely no difference between myself and him. Except in our thoughts and beliefs.”
“Weyoun Eight believed the Founders were gods.”
The Vorta sighed. “To the end, sadly.”
Odo snorted. “You mean, you killed him.”
Weyoun pursed his mouth, pious. “He was defective, Odo. It was a mercy.”
“And what happens when the next Weyoun tracks you down and decides you’re defective?”
“There is, there will be, no next Weyoun,” Weyoun said firmly. “I am the last. The cloning facility, you see, had … outlived its usefulness.”
“You mean, you destroyed it.”
“You know very well it was in Cardassian territory, so—technically—the Cardassians must take the blame for its loss, because they would not surrender. Believe me, Odo, I would have preferred to have kept at least some other Vorta around to help me through these difficult years.”
“You’re sure you’re the last of your kind?”
Weyoun nodded. “Just as you are the last of yours. At least in the Alpha Quadrant. Isn’t that reason enough that we should be united in our purpose?”
“And what purpose would that be?” Odo steeled himself to continue the discussion with the odious creature before him. The more Weyoun babbled on, the more information he would supply that might suggest a way out of this intolerable situation.
“Think of the suffering you’ve endured, Odo.”
Odo loathed the false concern in Weyoun’s oily voice, but gave no outward indication of his feelings, waiting to see what the Vorta really wanted from him.
Encouraged, Weyoun warmed to his argument that he and Odo were soulmates. “Cast out by your own people. Forced to become a plaything of Bajoran and Cardassian scientists. Never really belonging to any world, even your own when you returned to the Great Link. But you and I … we share so much pain. Isn’t it right and proper that we should dedicate our lives to eliminating pain forever?”
“Pain is a necessary part of life,” Odo said gruffly. “It enables us to appreciate pleasure.”
Weyoun gazed at him thoughtfully. “I never knew you had such a philosophical streak in you.”
“Do you really want to end my pain?” Odo asked skeptically. “And the pain of all the others from the Defiant?”
Weyoun bowed his head as he had done countless times in Odo’s presence, but not this time to Odo. “The cessation of pain, the onset of joy … that is the will and the one goal of the True Prophets,” he intoned.
“Then free us,” Odo said.
Weyoun sighed, lifting his head. “You’re not being held prisoner here. You’re being protected.”
“It seems some words have changed their meanings in the past twenty-five years.”
“Not words, Odo. The galaxy has changed. The Federation has become an abomination. Starfleet an organization of brutal murderers. If I gave you a shuttlecraft and sent you to … to Vulcan … or Andor, do you know how long you’d last?” Weyoun didn’t even pause before answering his own question. “They’d shoot you out of space before you finished opening hailing frequencies.”
For no distinct reason he could articulate, Odo was beginning to feel that he really wasn’t in immediate danger from Weyoun. It was obvious that the Vorta had been changed in some way. Whatever set of neurons in his brain had been programmed to revere changelings had somehow been reconfigured to revere the Pah-wraiths instead. Recalling that once even the Ferengi Grand Nagus Zek had been altered beyond recognition, having entered the first wormhole, only to reemerge as an altruist determined to give away his fortune. As a result, Odo now had little doubt that alteration of fundamental personality traits was well within the capability of wormhole beings.
But still it somehow also appeared to Odo that Weyoun maintained a type of residual respect for him. The Vorta seemed anxious that he talk with him, listen to him, perhaps even come to understand him. And just as Weyoun’s worship of him had been advantageous in the past, Odo decided that in this situation, it was still worth capitalizing on any remaining shadow of that behavior, no matter how distasteful it was.
“Weyoun,” he began, without a trace of his previous challenging attitude, choosing instead to play along altogether with whatever Weyoun was up to, “I acknowledge there is a great deal about this time I don’t understand. But if there is just one question you can answer for me now, then tell me: Why are the people from the Defiant so dangerous to the Starfleet of this time that they would kill us on sight?”
Odo was gratified by the effect of his changed tone on Weyoun, who responded by lowering the inhibitor and no longer making a point of threatening him with it. “Rest assured it’s not you, Odo. It’s Captain Sisko.”
Odo kept his surprise to himself. “Why him?”
The Vorta regarded Odo earnestly. “Because he’s the False Emissary to the False Prophets. And according to prophecies of Jalbador, the One True Temple cannot be restored until the False Emissary accepts the True Emissary.”
Weyoun’s face became grave. “There are those in Starfleet who have determined that if they can prevent Captain Sisko from being present when the two halves of the Temple at last open in conjunction, the Day of Ascendancy will be postponed for millennia.”
It was beginning to make sense to Odo. “So everyone knew that the Defiant hadn’t been destroyed along with DS9. That the ship had been caught in a temporal rift.”
Weyoun nodded. “Not at once, of course. But as the Ascendancy regained its rightful position of primacy on Bajor—oh, I tell you, Odo, no world has ever seen such a cultural flowering. You would not believe the treasures those Bajoran monks concealed over the centuries, because they contradicted the teachings of the False Prophets. It is only now that ancient texts thought lost forever have been brought out into the light. Together with all of the writings and prophecies that … that the world had forgotten even existed, all of them hidden in caverns, walled-up in temples….”
Odo forgot himself for a moment. “And these texts, these writings, described the Defiant’s return, did they?”
But Weyoun just smiled, and waggled a finger at him. “I hear that skeptical tone. And, no, the ancient texts didn’t say that a twenty-fourth-century starship named the Defiant would be caught in a temporal rift only to reappear twenty-five years later.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Ah, but several texts did say that the False Emissary would arise from those who had perished at the fall of the gateway, just as I explained to Captain Sisko. The three great mystics of Jalbador—Shabren, Eilin, and Naradim—they had to describe their visions in the context of their time, you know.”
“Weyoun,” Odo said, choosing his words with care, “I have no doubt that ancient mystical texts can be interpreted to support recent events. Humanoids have been doing that for millennia on hundreds of worlds. What I find troubling is that you say Starfleet has also accepted these interpretations.”
“What’s left of Starfleet. Yes.”
“Then what I don’t understand is why Starfleet would accept that the writings on which you base your faith are true, yet not then also accept your faith.”
Weyoun’s smile faded from his face, and for just an instant Odo thought he detected the flash of a red shift in the Vorta’s clear gray eyes. “In the final battle to determine the fate of the universe,” Weyoun said passionately, “Starfleet, for reasons which no sane mind can comprehend, has chosen to support the wrong side. Could we say they are afraid of that which they don’t understand? That they’re afraid of change? Or is it something simpler, Odo? Can we simply say that in a universe in which all sentient beings have been given free choice, some, invariably, will choose evil?”
The Vorta paused as if in contact with something or someone of which Odo was unaware, and then disconcertingly began speaking again as if there had been no interruption in his speech. “These same questions have been asked since the True Prophets created sentient beings in their own image, and I doubt we will answer them here in engineering.”
Even though he sensed Weyoun becoming threatening again, Odo pushed on.
“Weyoun, all things being equal, how can I know that it’s not you who’ve chosen … evil?”
The Vorta studied him for a moment before responding. “You know, if my crew had heard that question come from you, Odo, not even I could have acted fast enough to save your life. If anyone else had asked that question, I would not even try to save him. But you and I…?” Weyoun sighed deeply. “I will make allowances. But just this once. Do you understand?”
Odo nodded. “I understand I’m not to question you like that again.”
An appreciative smile touched Weyoun’s mouth. “Spoken like a Vorta.” And then he was deadly serious again. “If you truly want to know who has allied themselves with the forces of evil, consider this, Odo: My forces rescued you and your ship from a Starfleet attack wing.”
“Only,” Odo interjected, “because you need Captain Sisko to fulfill
your prophecy.”
“Exactly!” Weyoun said, apparently unoffended by the interruption. “I do need Captain Sisko alive. But the ancient texts say nothing about you, Odo. Or about the others I saved with your captain. If I were serving some evil purpose, would it make sense for me to keep you all alive? Or would I simply have you killed? Just as those Starfleet ships tried to do?”
The Vorta held up his inhibitor device and checked its energy level. “It’s time for you to go back to the others now, Odo. Tell them what we’ve talked about. Be especially sure to tell Captain Sisko that if this ill-conceived escape attempt by some unimaginable set of circumstances had worked, all he would have been escaping from was my protection, while at the same time delivering himself up to those whose only goal is to kill him.”
Weyoun twisted a control on the inhibitor and, shockingly, Odo felt his outer surface instantly begin to lose its integrity, shifting from his Romulan disguise to his usual humanoid form.
Weyoun waved the inhibitor at him. “I think you would agree, Odo, that my scientists have made a great many advances in the time you’ve been gone. Just remember I can use this to turn you into a cube of duranium and have you thrown out an airlock if I have to.”
Odo shivered in spite of himself. In a way, the experience of forced transformation had been like being in the Great Link. But in that surrender of individuality he himself had made the choice. Weyoun’s machine had just chosen for him.
Weyoun’s voice again filled his ears. “Tell Sisko what I’ve told you,” the Vorta said with finality. “If you want to live, I am the only hope you have.”