3

Odo sat on the speck of land, his back against one of the rock spires. He had raised his eyes to the dim sky, but he no longer saw the stars as he recalled that night in Dax’s closet with Kira. Those hours with her seemed so far away, the events of their lives intervening between then and now like a broad chasm that forever separated yesterday from today. He could peer across the gulf and see what had come before, but he could never return there.

Even awash in his memories, Odo felt the passage of time in a way he did not within the Great Link. He’d come to understand that he needed that, needed to measure the hours and days, the weeks and months as they elapsed. If there was to be change in the Founders, if he was to help guide them from their past of suspicion, fear, and violence, to a future of acceptance, understanding, and peace, it would take time. The Link seemed slow to change, but not impervious to it.

When he’d first rejoined his changeling family after the war, Odo had found his people mired in unrest. As individual Founders came back to the Link, bringing with them reports of the continuing outcome of their defeat to the powers of the Alpha Quadrant, the turmoil increased. Odo hoped that his own return would calm their communal emotion, but the reverse was true. His rejoining prompted both excitement and agitation, the Link joyous to have back one of the Hundred, but troubled at the ideas he brought back with him. Indeed, his notions of peaceful coexistence with solids, and nonviolent resolution to disturbances within the Dominion, were met not only with skepticism, but with defiance. The Founders reacted swiftly and severely to rebellions kindled on some of their subject worlds by the Alpha Quadrant’s victory in the war, sending in Vorta with Jem’Hadar troops to restore order.

Eventually, though, Odo had perceived a change. The Link seemed to settle down, and resistance to his ideas diminished, if only slightly. But then he left to pursue the rumors of an Ascendant, and the reports that had led him to Opaka. When he came back this time, he expected to find his people in much the same emotional state as when he’d left them. Instead, he encountered tremendous agitation, which had only increased in the weeks that followed. Now, as he pulled his gaze from the heavens and peered out over the Great Link, he saw that its surface had grown choppy, and he knew that the return of Laas had stirred even greater emotion in the Founders.

Ahead of Odo, a whine suddenly grew out of the silence, as though emanating from the surface of the islet. He quickly stood, not comfortable being seen in such a relaxed position. A moment later, the air seemed to solidify, glints of light flashing and then thickening to a mass of color. When the transport had completed, it had deposited Weyoun there.

“Founder,” he said, and this time, Odo felt a look of annoyance cross his features before he could stop it. “Odo,” Weyoun corrected himself. “I noted your prolonged presence here, and I wanted to see if you required anything.”

“No, Weyoun, I don’t,” Odo said. “But thank you.” Most of the islands sprinkled throughout the changeling sea—including this one—had communications equipment cached on them so that a Founder could contact any of the Jem’Hadar vessels in orbit. But the Vorta also monitored the planet, an added precaution against interlopers, and a means of anticipating the needs of the Great Link.

Weyoun inclined his head slightly. “It is always my pleasure to serve,” he said. He took a couple of paces toward Odo. “Will you be transporting up to—”

“Weyoun,” Odo said sharply, holding the flat of his hand out. The Vorta stopped walking, just as a grinding sound emerged from beneath his feet. He had stepped into the remains of the dead changeling.

“Odo?” he asked, peering down at the gray ashes. He backed up quickly, then looked up with an expression that appeared equal parts disbelief and dismay. Odo did not know if Weyoun had ever seen the dusty vestiges of a dead Founder, or if he reacted simply from intuition. It seemed apparent, though, that he at least suspected the nature of what lay before him.

“It is a dead changeling,” Odo confirmed. “Laas brought it back with him.”

Weyoun’s mouth opened soundlessly as he regarded the mass of ashes, the look on his face transformed now into one of horror. Odo went to him, striding across the islet until he stood beside him. He reached out and took hold of Weyoun’s upper arms, forcing the Vorta to turn and face him. “Weyoun, it’s all right,” he intoned. “It’s—” He paused, wondering about the truth of his own words. How could the death of a Founder ever be all right? And yet, the universe would not end, the life of the Great Link would not stop. Odo still had responsibilities, still had duties to perform, chief among them right now, learning the Great Link’s reaction to Laas and then dealing with it accordingly.

“It’s all right,” he told Weyoun once more. “Go back to the ship. I’ll probably beam up later.”

Weyoun nodded vacantly, then stepped back and reached for the transporter control wrapped about his wrist. Before he could trigger it, Odo said, “Keep this to yourself for now.” Though he did not necessarily agree, he knew that the Founders would be reluctant to allow news of the death of one of their own to disseminate through their empire. Weyoun nodded again, and then activated the transporter. Odo watched as his body dematerialized amid a quick shimmering of light.

Alone again on the islet, he considered what to do with the remains of the lost changeling. He realized that he did not know if his people practiced funerary customs. When the Founder who’d infiltrated Defiant had been killed—accidentally pushed by Odo against the containment field surrounding the warp core—Starfleet had taken possession of the remains. And when the unformed changeling that had been brought to DS9 and nurtured by Odo had died, it had somehow infused itself into Odo’s body. The latter event caused him to wonder now if incorporating the remains of the dead back into the Great Link might be what the Founders normally did. He would need to find out.

Odo walked to the edge of the land, where he turned his mind’s eye inward, to the flows and eddies of his changeling anatomy. He felt his cells quicken, and his body gelled into an inchoate mass. He reached out over the Link and down, into its wavering collective.

Beneath the surface, the Great Link roiled. Living currents rushed past his shapeless though still gathered form. Thoughts and feelings inundated him as he let himself go. His body extended outward, spreading into flats and gyres, wisps and strands. He came into contact with more and more of his people, and through them, with the rest.

The immense sea of changelings churned in a frenzy, driven, Odo perceived, by the trauma of a dead Founder brought home to them, and by Laas’s demand for answers. Flashes of great sorrow buffeted Odo, interspersed with bolts of anger and opposition. Echoes of Laas’s pleas reached him, repeating the questions that Laas had asked him earlier.

And there’s something else, Odo thought. Something that perched on the edge of discernment, segregated by the high emotions flooding the Link. He reached for it, attuning his cells to it, sending the filaments of his body into closer contact with those Founders from whom he sensed—

Unease. Expectation.

For a month now, since his return to the Great Link after his travels to Ee and Deep Space 9, that combination of anxiety and eagerness among his people had persisted. When the havoc caused by Laas had subsided, Odo would have to resume his pursuit of an explanation. For now, though, he wanted to communicate with his fellow member of the Hundred.

He concentrated, searching through the innumerable connections he shared with other changelings, seeking Laas. Around Odo, beside him, against him, figures morphed into and out of existence, transient shapes embodying thought and sensation. He sought Laas in every contact, and beyond. He heard echoes of his questions—When were the Hundred sent out? Why did you send us? How could you abandon us like that?—but could not locate the mind that had originally posed them.

Within the flaxen deep, Odo felt a Founder attempt to bond with him, and he opened himself up to it. Their connection grew as more and more of the other changeling’s cells interwove with his own. A tranquillity exuded through their junction, a stillness that diverged from the furor infusing the rest of the Great Link. Odo sensed a long arc of time, and of purpose, and wondered why this Founder wanted to join with him.

The other changeling shifted, the range of its body contracting, drawing into an embryonic hulk beside Odo. The serenity it radiated receded then, as it spun into definition, spawning limbs and features and colors. Finally, Odo found the thin, papery structures of his own body wrapped about the humanoid form of Laas.

The form of Laas, but not the real Laas. Just as it had not been the real Nerys.

Odo understood what had happened—he had been sought out by this changeling, just as he had sought out Laas—but not why. In response, the figure of Laas dissolved in a whirl of movement, replaced an instant later by a Bajoran. In his present amorphous state, Odo possessed no eyes, but his changeling senses nevertheless allowed him a clear image of the man. He searched his memory, but could not identify him.

Who is this? Odo asked, sending the question through his link with the other changeling. At once, the man’s face changed, but continued to be unrecognizable. And then it changed again, and again, and several times more, revealing to Odo a series of Bajoran strangers. Odo studied the visage of the final man in the sequence. Like the others, it bore the effects of a life lived over many years: deep crags lined the face, the flesh of the jawline and neck sagged as though gravity had begun to assert itself over it, and frail, colorless hair hung down limply.

Time, Odo thought. He was aware of time, a long stretch of time, and he realized that he had just been presented something like that, etched in the series of old Bajoran men paraded past him. Again, he took meaning from the forms: not time, but age. Age, and experience. This Founder who communicated with Odo had been around for centuries, perhaps millennia.

Through their link came confirmation of that conclusion. But the ancient changeling conveyed more than merely an introduction of itself. This also articulated an answer to one of Laas’s questions: When were the Hundred sent out?

Long ago, Odo now understood. Seemingly further in the past than he had thought. But could that truly be? He himself had been found adrift in the Denorios Belt decades ago, not centuries ago.

Odo visualized the internal currents of his changeling body, and moved, pulling his malleable cells into himself. He pictured the humanoid form he took, and then altered the familiar image. When he finished shapeshifting, he floated next to the old changeling as the humanoid Odo, but aged, as though he’d lived centuries as a Bajoran.

Beside him, the ancient Founder transformed again. As Odo awaited the end result of the shift, the word indurane occurred to him—Bajoran for ancient—and he decided to apply it to this changeling. Although the Founders generally eschewed the use of names, Odo did not. In fact, over the years, he had found it not only inconvenient to have to refer to the changeling leader without any sort of proper appellation, but often felt insulted by terms such as the female Founder, as though only one such individual existed. He had often invoked such terms himself, but did not like doing so.

The aged Founder—Indurane—completed his alterations, this time becoming the double of the wizened Odo, a clear confirmation that Odo had lived far more than the four decades since he’d been found. He’d considered this possibility before, when back on DS9, Laas had revealed that he’d begun his own life among the Varalans two hundred years earlier. But Odo had concluded that Laas must simply have been sent out a century and a half prior to Odo. Now, though, he was being told something different, something that seemed not to make sense. For when Odo had been discovered by the Bajorans, he’d been unformed and unknowing, a shapeless mass that lacked the knowledge and ability to modify its own form into anything definite.

Floating in the changeling deep, Odo asked the question of Indurane by changing form once more. Odo gave up his face and limbs, and all his humanoid traits, collapsing into a nebulous sac of metaplasm. He surrendered control of his body, and permitted himself to tumble down through the changeling tide. He existed as when he had been found: unformed, unable, an infant.

The old Founder followed Odo down, still linked with him, still in the semblance of a wrinkled, humanoid Odo. Time passed, and they neared the surface of the planet, the lower bound of the Great Link. Odo noted with appreciation, as he always did, the complex shapes that decorated the nether landscape. Although they had only inhabited this world for five years, the Founders had already modified vast tracts of this land, carving into the rock, sculpting it to fit their needs and desires. Odo recalled the structures he had installed in his quarters on DS9, and the pleasure he had taken assuming their myriad forms. But his small menagerie of shape and texture paled in comparison to the massive and diverse collection below. A geometer’s paradise, the topography held all manner of figures, including cylinders and spheres, planes and polyhedra. Surfaces varied from smooth to rough, hard to soft, and every grain and durity in between. Indescribable manifolds abutted tunnels and ridges, hills and chasms. Odo had spent days down there himself, and had never emulated the same shape twice.

He came to rest beside a hexagrammic antiprism, Indurane settling beside him. Odo waited for an answer to his question—How can I be centuries old when I was an infant just decades ago?—and Indurane answered with another change to his shape. The aged Odo-form disappeared, shrinking into an unformed changeling infant.

Not an infant, came a thought directed to Odo through the link with Indurane. Beside him, the indistinct structure seemed to fade away, and Odo understood that Indurane had shifted his cells to match those of the Founders surrounding them in the Great Link in order to produce the effect.

I don’t understand, Odo communicated, even as he thought he did. In response, Indurane formed an infant changeling once more, only to then dissolve its form, as though it had never existed.

I don’t understand, Odo thought again, and again, Indurane became the image of an infant changeling, and then disintegrated into seeming nothingness. Odo resisted the apparent meaning in the transformation, gleaning the unacceptable implications of the message before he even acknowledged its veracity. He refused to—

There are no changeling infants, Indurane told him.

Odo scoffed at the claim, even as he dreaded that it might be true.

There are no changeling infants, Indurane repeated, because changelings cannot procreate.

* * *

The large, interlacing metal doors separated with a sharp clang, then hummed smoothly apart. Kira walked into the sizable shuttlebay of the Starfleet vessel Mjolnir, its commanding officer at her side. The two women walked between the numerous and varied support craft housed aboard the Norway-class starship, wending their way through work bees, support modules, maintenance platforms, shuttlepods, and short- and long-range shuttles.

“I’m actually a little disappointed in the numbers,” Kira said, holding out a personal access display device for Captain Hoku to see. “My chief engineer was told that the upgraded waveguides on the new runabouts would provide a significant increase in warp velocity.” Kira pointed to a section on the padd detailing performance expectations and field-trial results of the new craft. While both sets of figures represented improvements over the capabilities of Deep Space 9’s current complement of runabouts, the differences amounted to only marginal advances.

“If you study the final specifications, I suspect you’ll find that no new waveguides were installed,” Hoku said. “My guess is that they haven’t even been manufactured yet. The shipyards are still overburdened just trying to replenish the fleet.”

“I know,” Kira agreed. “Believe me, I know.” She felt that she appreciated as well as anybody the staggering cost to Starfleet—in both matériel and personnel—of the Dominion War. She had witnessed firsthand enough ships being blasted to nothingness in the unforgiving vacuum of space, had read enough names on the rolls of the dead and wounded.

Checking the production log at the top left of the padd display, Kira saw that the new runabout had been constructed at the Antares Fleet Yards. Many of the more powerful starships had been built there, she knew, and such vessels composed a priority for the Federation these days, given the loss of defenses incurred during the war. She supposed that she should consider the station fortunate to be getting a new runabout at all.

Kira deactivated the padd with a touch and dropped it to her side. Not wishing to dwell on remembrances of the war, she thanked Hoku for her hospitality. In the ninety minutes since Rio Grande had touched down in Mjolnir’s shuttlebay, the two captains had spent most of that time in Hoku’s quarters, first completing the formalities of transferring responsibility for the new runabout to Deep Space 9, and then catching each other up on their lives. During Defiant’s recent three-month exploration of the Gamma Quadrant, Mjolnir had initially been scheduled to stand in at the station, but Starfleet Command had then altered those plans. The ship had arrived at DS9 weeks early, and had spent just enough time there to allow Admiral Akaar to meet with Kira. She and Hoku had been able to speak only briefly, and only in their official Starfleet capacities.

Today, though, the two friends had at last been able to visit. For her part, Hoku had asked about Kira’s captaincy, Bajor’s entry into the Federation, and the new first minister. In turn, Kira had wanted to discuss the hearsay intimating an impending promotion for Hoku to rear admiral, but it ended up that the Mjolnir captain had heard fewer rumors about it than she had.

As the two women came abreast of a work bee, Kira spied their reflections in one of its wide viewing ports. Each wearing a Starfleet captain’s uniform and standing approximately the same height, they might have looked a great deal alike, but did not. Although cropped short, Hoku’s blond hair had something of a wild appearance about it, and her brilliant blue-green eyes peered out of a milky, delicate complexion. Most distinctively, she carried herself with an elegance and confidence that almost suggested royalty.

As for Kira’s own aspect, even more than two months after her being commissioned as a Starfleet captain, it still occasionally startled her to see herself in anything but a Bajoran Militia uniform. Just when she thought she’d become accustomed to her new habiliments, she would find herself surprised by an inadvertent glance at her likeness in a mirror or, as in this case, a viewport. The same thing had occurred during the final weeks of the war, when she’d gone to Cardassia as a Starfleet commander.

Rounding the pointed bow of a type-ten shuttle, Kira and Hoku arrived at the bay’s landing pad. The new runabout sat directly ahead of them, its forward hatch on the port side swung open, its interior lights shining out onto the decking. To the left, Rio Grande appeared dark, its hatches closed. Past the runabouts, in the direction the craft faced, the shuttlebay doors stood open. Through them, the sable sprawl of the universe, sprinkled with countless specks of stars, provided an impressive backdrop. A thin, electric-blue strip of light bordered the wide aperture, signaling the operation of the force field that prevented the atmosphere in the bay from boiling off into space. Beyond the opening, the inner hulls of Mjolnir’s nacelle struts stretched away on both the port and starboard sides, extending outward in shades of gray and white.

As Kira and Hoku approached the new runabout, Lieutenant Bowers exited down its steps. “Captain Hoku,” he acknowledged, then addressed Kira. “Captain, we’ve completed our diagnostics and the preflight checks, and we’re all set to go.” He pointed toward the forward side of the craft, and added, “Specialist Lynn finished with the name.” When Kira and her crew had arrived here to take possession of the new runabout, the craft had already been adorned with its Starfleet registry—NCC-75353—but its name had not been applied, as the privilege for selecting that designation fell to DS9’s commander. Once Rio Grande had touched down, Captain Hoku had assigned one of her crew to add to the hull the name Kira had chosen.

“Yolja,” Hoku read now. “I know that Starfleet runabouts are all dedicated for Earth rivers, like Rio Grande—” She nodded her head in the direction of the other runabout. “—But there’s no terrestrial waterway called Yolja that I’m aware of,” she finished, a knowing look in her eye.

“It’s on Bajor,” Kira verified. “In Kendra Province.”

“That’s right,” Hoku said.

“This is the first one we’ve given a Bajoran name,” Kira said, pleased with her selection.

Hoku smiled. “Now seems an appropriate time,” she offered.

“I thought so too,” Kira said, nodding in agreement.

Hoku glanced inside Yolja—young Ensign Aleco had appeared in the hatchway, Kira saw—and then looked over her shoulder, her gaze coming to rest on Rio Grande, its systems clearly powered down. “Where is Taran’atar?” Hoku asked. Kira noted her conspicuously conversational demeanor, which displayed no hint of concern, nor even of real curiosity. She’d also observed that the Mjolnir captain hadn’t posted security outside the shuttlebay, though Kira suspected that the ship’s internal sensors had been trained on this location since Rio Grande’s arrival. No matter that Taran’atar had lived aboard DS9 for more than half a year now; as a Jem’Hadar and a formerly active soldier of the Dominion, he would continue to be monitored closely by Starfleet.

Particularly where we’re going, Kira thought, and a knot of tension tightened in her abdomen.

“He’s still aboard Rio Grande,” Bowers reported of the Jem’Hadar. When Kira and her crew had set down aboard Mjolnir, they’d been greeted by Captain Hoku. Kira had introduced Taran’atar—as well as Bowers and Aleco—and then she’d followed the captain to her quarters for their meeting. During their discussions, Hoku had expressed a desire to speak at greater length with the Jem’Hadar. Kira had explained Taran’atar’s discomfort with social situations, and had suggested that such an interaction might be better at a later date. Hoku had understood, and so Kira believed that her query now about his whereabouts concerned her wish, not to talk with him, but to confirm that a well-trained and potentially dangerous Dominion soldier did not currently roam the corridors of her ship.

“Well, please convey my satisfaction in meeting him,” Hoku said.

“I will,” Kira told her. Then, to Bowers and Aleco, she said, “Lieutenant, Ensign, it’s time we departed.”

“Yes, sir,” Bowers said. He mounted the steps up into Yolja, Aleco moving into the cockpit ahead of him. The two men would take the new runabout back to Deep Space 9, while Kira and Taran’atar headed for a different destination.

As Yolja’s hatchway folded closed, Kira turned back to Hoku. “It was great to finally see you again, Kalena,” she said, making reference to the missed opportunity at DS9 a few months back. Kira held out her right hand, and Hoku took it in her own.

“And you, Nerys,” the captain responded. “I’ll have to see if Mjolnir can put in for some R and R at Bajor one of these days.”

“Maybe when you’re an admiral,” Kira joked.

“Maybe,” Hoku said with a chuckle.

They parted, Hoku heading back toward the doors through which they’d entered the bay, and Kira for Rio Grande. She quickly accessed the controls behind a small panel in the hull, triggered the hatch open, and climbed into the runabout. Inside, the lights came up, increasing the dim illumination already coming into the cabin through the bow viewports. Seated at a forward station, Taran’atar said nothing as Kira boarded the craft. Taking the chair beside him, she said, “I see you’re anxious for us to be on our way.”

“I am merely prepared for the journey ahead,” he said stonily, “and for anything that is required of me.”

Again, Kira felt a twist of anxiety. I am prepared…for anything that is required of me. What did that mean, exactly? What did he think would be required of him, and by whom?

Nearly a month ago, when Taran’atar had first made his request to visit Ananke Alpha, Kira hadn’t known what to make of it; in truth, she still didn’t. She’d neither supported nor hindered his petition, instead taking the matter directly to Admiral Ross. Knowing the principals involved, and wanting to forge whatever good will he could with Taran’atar—as well as with the legion of Jem’Hadar, and ultimately with the Dominion itself—the admiral had consented to the appeal. Although not sure that Ross had made the right decision, Kira had chosen to trust Taran’atar. She’d agreed to escort him on his journey, and the scheduled rendezvous with Mjolnir had provided an opportunity to do so without drawing unwanted attention.

She leaned forward in her chair and worked the runabout’s primary station, cycling Rio Grande up to full power. For a few moments, only the beat of the engines and the electronic chirps of the controls dressed the cabin, until she opened a comm channel to Yolja. With Bowers, she coordinated the launches of the two runabouts, and obtained clearance from Mjolnir’s bridge, currently under the watch of the ship’s first officer. A minute later, Kira watched through Rio Grande’s viewports as Yolja glided forward just a couple of meters above the decking. It reached the force field and punched through, a flash of bright, blue pinpoints sparking about the hull as it flew out into space. The new runabout immediately assumed a downward trajectory in order to clear the wing structures that supported Mjolnir’s warp nacelles.

After confirming that Yolja had reached a safe distance, Kira worked the flight controls. “Prepare for launch,” she said automatically, her fingers skipping in practiced movements across the main panel, extracting from it the measured tones that accompanied its operation. The runabout lifted from the deck, its antigravs engaged, then followed Yolja’s path, first off of the ship, and then down and away from Mjolnir’s nacelle supports. “Setting course for Ananke Alpha,” she announced as she set Rio Grande’s navigational parameters. Around them, the thrum of the drive rose and then evened out as it took the small ship to warp.

Kira studied the readouts for a few moments more, verifying the runabout’s route, velocity, and overall performance. Satisfied, she leaned back and peered over at Taran’atar. He still sat stiffly in his chair, facing forward. She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again when she could not determine how to start.

Although Taran’atar could never have been accurately described as social, Kira had perceived an increased iciness in him of late. He’d been more reticent, less approachable, and had not seemed as inclined as previously to spend time observing life among the residents of the station, the task Odo had set him. Kira knew that Taran’atar had recently found it necessary to sleep a few times a week, an aberration for his species. She’d assumed that had been troubling him, and that the changes she’d perceived in him had been the result. Still, perhaps more than at any time since he’d arrived at DS9, she felt intensely aware of him being a Jem’Hadar, along with all that implied: the physical prowess, the extensive military training and experience, and the determination bred into him to follow and serve the Founders. And that last fact concerned Kira more than anything else right now: Taran’atar’s devotion to his gods. After all, what would she not do herself in order to satisfy the will of a Prophet?

“Are you looking forward to this?” she asked him, the monotonous drone of the warp drive an undercurrent of sound in the cabin.

“I am doing what my duty dictates I do,” he said, continuing to face forward.

“Right, I understand that,” Kira said, although when Taran’atar had first made his request, he’d phrased it in a way that had implied his motivation to be more personal. “But I thought that you might still want to do this, apart from its being your duty.” When he did not respond, she asked, “Is that the case?”

Taran’atar turned to look at her. His face bore no discernible expression, but the gaze of his dark eyes held her as surely as if he’d forcibly restrained her. “I am doing what my duty dictates I do,” he said again. “That is all.” He clearly did not appreciate being questioned, particularly about his motivations. Kira had recognized that in him a long time ago: he knew his purpose, and that purpose determined his actions; he considered questions irrelevant and a waste of time.

Kira nodded to Taran’atar, acknowledging his response, then looked back over at her station. In her peripheral vision, she saw him do the same. I have to trust him, she thought. During his stay at DS9, he’d given her no reason not to do so. He’d followed her orders without question, as Odo had instructed him to do, and he’d been instrumental in the successful resolution of a crisis on more than one occasion. More than that, the success of Taran’atar’s visit to the Alpha Quadrant could influence the course of relations with the Dominion for some time to come. Kira therefore felt that she had to do everything she could to help him fulfill his mission. And right now, that meant trusting him.

She leaned forward and touched a control, then another, checking Rio Grande’s course. Then, with nothing else to do, she settled back in her chair, lacing her fingers together in her lap. She thought about getting a raktajino, but decided against it. Instead, she gazed through the viewport and out at the stars as the runabout flew on, headed for Ananke Alpha, the Federation prison facility where Taran’atar would soon visit the Founder leader.

* * *

Exhaustion and an unflagging ache enveloped Odo, like those times when, after holding form for an extended period, he was unable to return to his natural state. Anger welled within him, directed not at Indurane, but at the whole of the Great Link. Had his people hidden this information from him—information obviously essential to understanding them—or had they sent one of their number to lie to him now for some concealed purpose? They had done both in the past, but in this case, Odo simply could not credit what he had just been told.

You’re lying, he told Indurane through their interface. Odo expected the charge to be met with denial, but instead, Indurane replied with a question.

Have you ever known a changeling infant? he asked.

I was a changeling infant, Odo responded. Laas was a changeling infant.

Indurane seemed to pause before answering. Around them, the Great Link continued to stir agitatedly. But Odo could not attend to those matters right now; he had to concentrate on his union with Indurane.

Were you an infant? the old changeling finally asked. Was Laas?

Odo wanted to answer affirmatively, definitively, but his career as an investigator told him that he needed to consider the evidence before he could reach a meaningful conclusion. He drew on the facts he had at hand, and found few that bore on Indurane’s assertion. Odo knew that he had been discovered in the Bajoran system, in the Denorios Belt, decades ago. While he had only a vague memory of the event—merely an impression really—Bajoran and Cardassian records, as well as several Bajorans and Cardassians, provided support that it had actually occurred. Odo’s own awareness had come later, along with the ability to consciously shapeshift. Laas had related a similar tale about his own life, although he had been found by the Varalans more than two centuries ago.

Little in either Odo’s story or Laas’s, but for their limited memories of their pasts, provided any sort of substantiation that they had both been infants at some point. Such a deduction relied more on assumption than actual fact. It seemed clear that both he and Laas had each been unformed at one time in their lives, but did it unavoidably follow that they had been infants?

Odo recalled the words of the changeling leader when he had first met her. He had been drawn to the world in the Omarion Nebula where the Founders had lived then, and had told her that he wished he could have remembered the place as his home. “It’s understandable that you cannot,” she’d explained. “You were still newly formed when you left us.”

“Newly formed?” he had asked her. “You mean I was an infant?”

“An infant,” she had replied, as though pondering a concept that did not entirely make sense to her—or perhaps to any changeling. She’d then finished by saying, “Yes,” but Odo allowed now that the answer could have been a part of her calculations in dispensing limited information about the Founders to him. For later, when he’d questioned her about how long he had been away from the Great Link, she’d said, “A long time.” Odo realized now that, if he had been away for, say, a century, then he had clearly not been an infant when he’d been found in the Bajor system just a few decades ago. And that implied that being an unformed changeling did not mean being an infant changeling.

But how can that be true? Odo wondered, still unable to believe that his people could not reproduce. He clung physically to Indurane, their cells meshing through their link, as he contemplated what he grasped of how species survived in the universe. Those that developed characteristics necessary and sufficient to their continued existence endured; those that did not met with extinction. And absolutely vital for a species to survive, it needed to be able to produce offspring. For without succeeding generations, how could the natural attrition caused by death be overcome? Unless…unless the Founders did not experience death.

Odo rejected the idea at once. We are not immortal, he offered, part declaration, part question. As fanciful as the notion of an unending lifetime seemed, it would at least provide some sort of justification for Indurane’s contention that the Founders could not procreate.

Intertwined with Odo, Indurane modified his cells again, matching them to their surroundings so that it appeared as though he had vanished. The significance of the shift remained the same as earlier: nonexistence. Indurane concluded by affirming the idea that Odo had hesitantly proffered: We are not immortal.

But then how can the Founders lack the ability to reproduce? Odo questioned. How could we have possibly evolved that way?

The Founders did not evolve, Indurane averred, his cells adjusting to form a shapeless mass once more. We are not some random event in space and time, he continued, his contempt for such a concept manifest. We are not the result of some fortuitous juxtaposition of matter and energy.

But then how? Odo reiterated, even as Indurane’s body grew, the volume of space he filled increasing radically. Left as a small body linked to the suddenly sizable changeling, Odo waited for Indurane’s thoughts to reinforce the answer he had given by way of his form.

The Great Link was generated by design, he claimed. The Founder population was created in its entirety by the Progenitor.

Disconcerted, Odo thought of the Bajorans. His people were different from Kira’s kind, he knew, this belief was different from theirs, and yet he could not fathom the reality of what Indurane had just revealed: a Founder god.

* * *

Kira looked up from her readouts as the tractor beam took hold of Rio Grande. Already she’d had to relinquish control of the runabout’s weapons, and now its drive systems. The ship shuddered mildly, the inertial dampers disrupted briefly by the contact with the directed-energy field. Through the forward viewports, Kira spied the telltale blue luminescence that she knew now surrounded the runabout. Just visible past the glow, Ananke Alpha hung alone in space, a slim, crescent-shaped slice of the sphere illuminated by the planetless star that hosted it.

Located in a remote and untraveled region of Federation space, in a system that offered virtually nothing in either useful natural resources or interesting characteristics, the facility provided little likelihood for detection by even itinerant voyagers. The dark metal object measured less than a kilometer in diameter, and maintained a low sensor profile, emitting microwaves that mimicked the background radiation of the universe. A lightless speck that saw extremely few visitors, and whose few inhabitants practiced almost complete radio silence, Ananke Alpha would have been difficult to find without assistance. A small sensor-and-communications station tucked indiscernibly into an asteroid—one of several, Kira assumed—had passively scanned Rio Grande when it had approached the system, had authenticated its identity, and then guided it toward the facility. Now, Kira disengaged power to the engines so that the prison’s tractor beam could bring the runabout in the rest of the way; had she not done so, the crew of Ananke Alpha would have fired upon the ship.

The procedures enforced here had been meticulously delineated for Kira by Admiral Ross. Until their meeting, Kira hadn’t even been aware of the prison’s existence, though she easily could have presupposed the necessity for something like it within the Federation. According to the admiral, it had been designed and constructed half a century ago, for the purpose of incarcerating a small number of criminals, those evaluated as the most dangerous and the most difficult to confine. After the end of the Dominion War, the few prisoners detained there had been transferred to other facilities, and the prison had been overhauled and modified so that it could safely and effectively hold its new, single inmate: the female changeling.

Kira peered again through the viewports—she could now make out the rest of the globe’s shadowed body—and then over at Taran’atar. He’d said very little during their long journey, and only when Kira had spoken first. All of his responses had been terse, if not unfriendly. Since he’d arrived on Deep Space 9, he’d tended toward the laconic in his communications, but his taciturnity had peaked during this time aboard the runabout and the days leading up to it.

Why shouldn’t he act that way? Kira thought. How would she feel, how would she behave, if presented with the prospect of a one-on-one meeting with a Prophet? While she did not consider the Founders to be gods—far from it—she knew that the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar did.

But he just spent weeks with Odo, she argued with herself. She’d observed some of their interactions, and although Taran’atar had been deferential to Odo, perhaps even reverential toward him, he hadn’t been awed into near-silence. Now, though—

Admit it, she reproached herself. Admit what’s really concerning you. Kira typically had little difficulty expressing her feelings, either to herself or to others. If anything, the reverse had been true, and she’d had to learn to be more diplomatic during her tenure on DS9.

“Taran’atar,” she said.

“Yes?” He responded without looking at her. She said nothing more, waiting until at last he turned toward her. “Yes, Captain?” he said.

“Why do you want to visit the Founder?” she asked him.

“I’ve already told you my reasons,” he said, turning back to face forward once more.

“I know that,” Kira said, keeping her tone even. “I’m asking you to tell me again.”

He did not answer right away, and for a moment, Kira thought that he might not reply at all. But in the months he’d been on the station, he had yet to disobey any order she’d given him. He did not do so now. “I wish to be of some small service to my gods,” he said.

“How?” Kira persisted.

He looked at her again. “The Founder has been alone for a long time now, separated from the Great Link since shortly after the war started, and isolated from the entire Dominion since the end of hostilities,” Taran’atar explained. “I hope to be able to offer some relief for that circumstance.”

This had been the reason—the very personal reason, she thought—that Taran’atar had cited when he’d first come to her with his request. It sounded plausible to her, both then and now. Taran’atar had obviously convinced Admiral Ross of his motives as well. But regardless of the justification for the visit, just the fact that Taran’atar would be interacting with the female Founder concerned Kira. What if the changeling gave him new orders? Would the immediacy of those orders supersede Odo’s directives to Taran’atar? And what if…what if—

“Are you going to attempt to free the Founder?” she asked bluntly. Like herself Kira knew Taran’atar appreciated candor. Still, his horned brow raised in apparent surprise at her question.

“No, I have no intention of breaking the Founder from her prison,” he said. “For the sake of the Dominion, she has decided on this course, and I must respect that.” In exchange for Odo saving the Great Link from extinction by providing the cure for the disease wracking their people, the female changeling had agreed to stand trial and accept responsibility for her actions with respect to the war. In the end, though, she’d waived her Federation right to a trial and had pled guilty to the numerous charges leveled against her. She had been sentenced to life imprisonment in a maximum-security facility, where she would be kept in isolation, both as part of her punishment, and as a safety precaution. Unsure of the ethics of interning for life such a long-lived being—the Founder had admitted to an existence that had lasted more than seven centuries already—the Federation had also decided to revisit the judgment every fifty years.

Kira considered what Taran’atar had told her, and realized that he hadn’t entirely quelled her concerns. He had spoken of his intentions only, and not of his possible actions. “What if the Founder wants you to free her?” she asked.

“Captain Kira,” Taran’atar said, “I have no doubt that if the Founder wished to escape her confinement, she could do so without my assistance.”

Rio Grande was jarred slightly, and Kira recognized the sensation of the runabout passing through a forcefield. She looked again through the viewports, and saw that they had been towed close enough to Ananke Alpha now that she could make out features on its surface: weapons turrets, shield generators, and directly ahead, a single-paneled door opening to reveal a shuttlebay. “My question wasn’t about your intentions, Taran’atar,” she said, and looked over at him again. “What will you do if the Founder orders you to break her out? Would you disobey her, or do as she commanded?”

“Admiral Ross asked the same question,” Taran’atar told her. “Captain, if you were asked to do something by one of your gods—by one of the Prophets—can you imagine a scenario in which you would not abide them?”

No, Kira thought at once, and did not like the answer. Taran’atar had implied an equivalence between her potential actions and his own, meaning that if asked to do so by the Founder, he would abet her attempt to flee her captivity. Kira did not believe they would succeed; Ross had described the facility as a fortress, essentially impossible to escape. He’d maintained that any effort to break out of Ananke Alpha would result in failure, with the death of the prisoner a possible outcome. And though it seemed clear to Kira that the death of the Founder would serve neither the Federation nor the Dominion—

Suddenly, as the runabout rumbled again—obviously passing through a second forcefield—Kira understood the point Taran’atar had been trying to make to her. “No, I can’t imagine disobeying the Prophets,” she said, “unless, by my doing as they say, they might come to harm.”

“Then we are of like mind,” Taran’atar said, “for I would not follow the Founder’s instructions to help her escape her prison, not at the risk of her life.”

Kira nodded, believing him. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—”

“But it is,” Taran’atar asserted. “You don’t trust me. But that is of no concern to me.” The light in the cabin increased as the tractor beam pulled Rio Grande into Ananke Alpha’s brightly illuminated shuttlebay. “What I find…interesting,” Taran’atar continued, “is that even though you do not trust me, you still asked me what I was going to do. If I had planned to break the Founder free of this prison, do you think I would have admitted that to you?”

“Yes,” she said, and she could see again that she had startled Taran’atar with her response. “Yes, because of your dedication to the Founders. Odo directed you to follow my orders, and when I ask you a question, it’s clear that I am expecting you to answer me honestly and completely. For you to do otherwise would be contrary to what Odo wanted you to do.”

Kira felt the gentle impact as Rio Grande touched down. The sapphire radiance of the tractor beam fled as the energy field released the runabout. She stood up and moved toward the portside hatch.

“You are correct, of course,” Taran’atar said as he got up from his chair and joined her. “And I have told you the truth.”

“I know you have,” Kira said. But as she reached for the controls that would open the hatch, she thought something different:

I’m about to find out.

* * *

Wearing his humanoid appearance, Odo paced across the islet, then back again, his thoughts a storm of confusion, doubt, and concern. After communing with Indurane, he’d retreated here, wanting time alone to process what he had learned—or at least what he had been told. Since then, he’d spent a considerable amount of time debating both the reality and the content of the ancient Founder’s pronouncements. Although he had never even conjectured much of what the old changeling had communicated to him, Odo now found explained several questions he’d long contemplated. For him, though, the details proved far worse than any disappointments he’d suffered from not fully understanding his people.

Odo leaned against the rock spires situated at one end of the islet, the heel of one hand resting against each. He gazed between the two formations, out at the fluctuating mass of the Great Link. The notion of their population as one—a concept often advocated by the Founder leader—had never led Odo even to consider that the changelings did not multiply. But even as the idea readily explained the intense paranoia of his people—since each Founder death would move their species closer to extinction—it seemed almost impossible to credit, more likely a ridiculous lie than an implausible truth. He peered over his shoulder at the ashes of the dead changeling, and wondered again how a species could survive without the ability to produce succeeding generations. And yet…thinking back, Odo realized now that, within the Great Link, he had never perceived any gender among the Founders.

Pushing away from the twin spires, Odo began to walk along the edge of the islet. The strange silence that encompassed this world surrounded him as he walked, broken only by the crunch of his own footsteps on the rock surface, and the occasional lapping sounds of the changeling sea as it rubbed along the banks. Odo remembered the initial time he’d ever seen members of his own kind emerge from that golden soup and take humanoid forms. The first Founder to address him had been the individual who had come to be known in the Alpha Quadrant as the “female changeling,” and her appearance did contain distinguishing sexual characteristics. But her distaff form could have been simply a component of her emulation, rather than reflecting a personal attribute. Odo himself had chosen his own Bajoran-like façade, during the time in which he’d learned to shapeshift, from that of the person he’d known best: the male doctor, Mora Pol.

Still, changelings did not necessarily require gender in order to breed. They conceivably might have been able to reproduce by fission, or via some other unusual means. Odo had told Indurane that, looking back, he’d always considered himself an infant at the time he’d been found in the Denorios Belt. Now, he recalled the undersized changeling Quark had once purchased from an Yridian—a changeling Odo had also believed newborn, based upon its mass and its inability to change its shape. But Indurane had ascribed such characteristics to inexperience, and not to infancy.

Trying and failing to make sense of what he knew of his people, and of what Indurane had told him, Odo felt his frustrations boil over. He reached the rock towers again, and brought his closed hands down hard against the surface of one of them. His fists flattened and spread against the dense material, absorbing the impact, but the sudden, violent movement did little to stanch his frustrations.

Indurane claimed that the Great Link hadn’t evolved, but had been created in its entirety by a Being the changelings called the Progenitor. This supreme Being, Indurane asserted, had made the whole of the universe: energy, time, matter, life. Then, in the final stages of Its creation, It had gathered a population of solids and imbued their physicality with Its own awesome, changeable essence, making the Great Link after Its own image. Odo remembered questioning the changeling leader about whether the Founders had always been able to shapeshift, and her response that, eons ago, their people had been like the solids. Indurane’s contentions did not contradict that.

According to the ancient Founder, the Great Link had been formless at first, possessing no knowledge and no understanding of shapeshifting. But as time had passed, some portions of the Link had separated from their collective mass, and with their changeling senses and intellect open to the universe and to their own selves, they’d learned about existence—about the world without, and the world within. Rejoining with their people, they’d shared their new knowledge and experience, and their civilization had developed.

During his time with the Founders, Odo had intuited the presence of unformed, unaware segments within the Great Link. He’d always thought of these as infants, but Indurane described them as those who had not yet divided from the Link, had not yet begun to learn. When eventually they did, they would be considered newly formed—just as Odo had been, prior to being sent out as one of the Hundred.

Behind him, Odo heard the familiar sound of a changeling varying its form. He stepped back from the rock formation, pulling his hands back into normal Bajoran shapes. He spun on his heel to see a glittering column swirling upward out of the Great Link. He watched as it arched forward over the surface of the islet and down. Its form tightened and coalesced, and Odo expected Laas’s humanoid form to materialize from the biomimetic mass. Instead, an alien appeared, taller than Odo, taller even than Laas. An exoskeletal lamina covered its body and limbs—two legs, two arms—the hue and texture of the shell resembling a silvery, liquid metal. It had rounded, pearlescent features, and parallel grooves rimmed its large golden eyes, causing the orbs to look as though they were dissolving into its lustrous flesh. Odo identified the being from the data he’d collated from historical reports, as well as from Opaka’s description of her own encounter with such a being: an Ascendant.

Although Odo knew the striking alien to be only a facsimile, its manifestation nevertheless chilled him. His recent confirmation of the continued existence of the Ascendants, and of their possible return to this region of space, concerned him greatly—particularly if, as Indurane had alleged, the Founders did believe in the Progenitor. Religious zealots on a quest to unite with their gods, the Ascendants destroyed any whom they believed worshipped falsely.

Indurane, Odo thought, sensing that the ancient Founder had followed him here. “You’re the changeling I just linked with,” Odo said, seeking verification.

In response, the Ascendant nodded slowly.

“Why are you here?” Odo demanded, but he thought he already knew: Indurane had come here to finish providing the information Odo had sought. For of all the questions he had just posed, one—Laas’s question—remained unanswered: Why were the Hundred sent out into the galaxy?

“I am here for you,” the old changeling said, its tone high-pitched and musical.

Odo studied the form of the Ascendant, looking for clues. He understood that, as had occurred within the Great Link, Indurane intended his shape to convey an idea. Thus, embodied in the image of the resolute and fearsome being, the historical disposition of the Founders revealed itself, the emotional context in which they’d sent out the Hundred: certain and fanatical.

Indurane shifted form again, the metallic covering of the Ascendant seeming briefly to melt before hardening into a figure resembling Odo’s. The smooth-featured male Bajoran walked forward, to the center of the islet. He looked down, his mouth contorting into a rictus of grief. “This is one of the Hundred,” he said, the words sounding almost as though they had been delivered by Odo’s own rough, masculine voice. He looked up. “We failed you,” he said.

Odo wanted to agree, wanted to tell Indurane that the circumstances that would have allowed him a complete life had been unfairly taken from him when he’d been sent away. He’d spent decades wondering about his people, yearning for them, and then when he’d found them, lamenting that he had no place among them. Except, for all of that, his life had improved immeasurably when Nerys had fallen in love with him, something that surely would never have happened had he not been sent out as he had.

“We failed the Hundred,” Indurane said again before Odo could formulate a response. “But the Hundred did not fail the Great Link.”

“What?” Odo asked. “What do you mean?”

“As the Great Link diminished over time,” Indurane began, “persecuted by solids, decimated by wars, unable to reproduce, we sought completion of our lives…we sought to join with the Progenitor. But It had left us after creating the Great Link, back in the beginning of time. We had no idea where to search for It, or how. We had been met with suspicion, hatred, and violence by the solids we’d encountered, and fearing our metamorphic abilities, they hunted us, beat us, murdered us. We withdrew to a planet in the Omarion Nebula, where we made a home for ourselves in isolation. We wanted to seek the Progenitor, but dared not venture back out into the universe.”

“So you sent out a hundred newly formed changelings,” Odo said, angered at the blatant disregard for the well-being of the Hundred. “As bait.”

“We’d hoped your lack of knowledge and experience would protect you from the solids,” Indurane said. “Some argued against this, but the opinion ultimately prevailed.”

“But how could you expect us to find the Progenitor,” Odo asked, “when we didn’t even know who we were, let alone of Its existence?”

“We did not expect you to find the Progenitor,” Indurane said. “We hoped that It would find you.”

“A hundred innocents lost in the universe,” Odo said, understanding. “A hundred innocents, programmed to return to the Great Link.”

“Yes. We hoped that you would attract Its attention, enjoy Its protection, and that It would ultimately be drawn back to the Great Link itself.”

“It sounds preposterous,” Odo said, even as he believed it. “Why did you keep this from me?”

“We did not expect any of the Hundred to return to the Great Link for hundreds of years,” Indurane said. “We were not prepared, and we did not know when we could reveal it to you in such a way that you would not hate us. And your relationships with the solids…our quest was not for them to know, so that they could thwart us.”

“Then why now?”

“Because Laas wanted to know,” Indurane said. “And…”

“And?” Odo asked.

In response, Indurane lifted his head and gazed up into the sky. “And because the Progenitor has finally returned,” he said, almost rapturously.

“What?” Odo said. Indurane continued peering up into the heavens, but behind him, a disruption began in the Great Link, its surface suddenly growing rough, its gently wavering form becoming wild and frenetic. Indurane turned just as a wave formed, a high wall of the changeling sea rising up just off of the islet. He turned back to Odo.

“There is much to decide,” he said. As he rounded to face the wave again, the shining mass reached toward him, sending tendrils oscillating above the islet. Indurane reached up and joined with the filaments, his humanoid form losing shape and becoming one with the Link. In seconds, he was gone, the wave departing with him back into the golden flows.

Odo pondered what he had been told. The belief in the Progenitor struck Odo as almost religious, though he was sure that the Founders would have disagreed, claiming it to be a simple fact, rather than a matter of faith. But of course, a lack of doubt often defined faith. Odo thought of Nerys, of her great faith in the Prophets, and he remembered again their conversation in Dax’s closet. They’d discussed faith then too.

Odo stared out over the Link, his thoughts wandering from Indurane to Nerys, from what he had just been told to what he recollected. After a few minutes, he pictured Indurane standing there, gazing upward. Odo turned and looked up, past the paired rock formations, and into the sky. And there glowed the nova he’d first seen when he’d returned from the Alpha Quadrant, a brilliant disk shining more brightly than anything else in the heavens.

A harbinger of a bright future for his people, he’d thought when he’d first seen it from the islet after beaming down.

Now he was not so sure.