She entered and found herself looking down a dozen meters into a bowl-shaped pit with a floor of loose soil and walls of broken rock. Below her, Taran’atar was fighting a nightmare.
The creature appeared to be insectile—five meters tall, eight long limbs, each one ending in a twopronged horny claw. The claws at the end of the foremost limbs were more flexible than the others and were holding heavy clubs that looked like they might have been rubbed or shaped somehow for easier grasping.
The insect aimed one of the clubs at Taran’atar’s head, but the Jem’Hadar sidestepped a half-meter to the left. The club head was momentarily buried in the sandy soil, and Taran’atar leapt up onto the creature’s back, then took a swipe with his kar’takin at the soft, flexible part where two sections of the insect’s chitinous armor overlapped. The blade bit deep and the joint spurted a thick, purplish ichor. The insect made a strange metallic noise, then tore the club out of the soil. Taran’atar backflipped off the creature and landed softly, knees bent, then tumbled to the side as the club descended again.
The creature, which apparently had poor peripheral vision, didn’t see where its opponent had gone and issued another piercing cry as the kar’takin landed again. It reared, rolling itself up onto only four legs, waving the claws and clubs of its forelimbs but finding no target.
Taran’atar stepped lightly onto the insect’s back again, took three quick strides up its dorsal ridge, and landed a heavy blow on the crown of its head. The carapace didn’t crack, but what passed for the creature’s central nervous system must have been under that part of the shell, because the blow staggered it, its saplingthick legs buckling beneath it. Taran’atar used the creature’s forward momentum to tumble over the top of its head, curled into a shoulder roll, and came to a halt about three meters from where the insect now lay dazed.
Taran’atar rolled nimbly to his feet, then paused, watching the swaying giant. Kira expected him to approach the insect and end the battle, but the Jem’Hadar was obviously waiting for something. Kira wondered distantly if the Jem’Hadar was simply enjoying having the creature at his mercy and wished to prolong the moment as much as possible.
Then, suddenly, the insect’s whole body spasmed and it curled into a tight ball, all eight limbs wrapping around its lower abdomen. The edges of the armor plates on its back lifted and stubby, thorny spikes slid out from underneath. Muscles contracted, the creature shuddered again and the spikes shot out in every direction, some embedding themselves in the loose soil, others shattering against the shapely walls. Kira flinched in spite of herself, startled by the simulated carnage.
Taran’atar leapt lightly into the air, correctly judging the trajectory of the half-dozen projectiles that were heading in his direction. He slipped between the two highest-flying spikes, clearing the other four by half a meter, then dropped to the ground directly in front of the bug’s great head. He raised his blade high and Kira braced herself for the sight of split carapace or splattered brain matter, but instead heard only “End program.”
A momentary shimmer, and Kira suddenly found herself on the same level as Taran’atar, in the otherwise empty holosuite. Taran’atar was leaning on his weapon, gazing at her fixedly, but without concern. “Good day, Colonel,” he said, his loose black coverall as clean as it must have been when he started the program. At Kira’s request, he had shortly after his arrival on the station stopped wearing his gray Dominion uniform in favor of the less provocative garment.
“Good day, Taran’atar. I hope my presence didn’t interrupt your exercise.”
“No,” he said. Kira had spoken to the Jem’Hadar a number of times since he had come onto the station, but she still had not grown accustomed to his voice. She always expected something on the order of a Worflike growl, but his tone was higher, richer, more melodious. She wondered if Jem’Hadar ever sang, and, if they did, could they carry a tune?
“But you shut off the program before . . .” She faltered. “You weren’t finished.”
Taran’atar studied the edge of his blade, then looked up at her. “The battle was won. I would have killed it with the next blow.”
“Well, yes, that was obvious,” Kira said. “What was that, anyway?”
“On the world where they live, the natives called it something which, translated, means approximately ‘Comes-in-the-night-kills-many.’ They lived in burrows and would tunnel up underneath their prey, pull them down, and then consume them.”
Something suddenly dawned on Kira. Taran’atar had come aboard the station with few possessions, and holoprograms weren’t among them. “Did you create that simulation yourself? From memory?”
Taran’atar inclined his head slightly. “I knew the parameters, and was able to encode them onto a data rod preformatted for the holosuite.”
A Jem’Hadar of no small talents, Kira mused. Or were they all as capable as this one, and she’d just never known it? One thing was certain, she was never going to underestimate Taran’atar again.
“That one was using weapons. They must possess some sort of rudimentary intelligence.”
Taran’atar tilted his head in the Jem’Hadar equivalent of a shrug. “Perhaps. You may be right. It was not my concern. My orders were to kill them, not to study them. They were decimating the population of a settlement the Founders had assigned to grow food crops.”
“And you were guarding them, the settlement? That’s what you did before you came here?”
“Not before I came here. This was many years ago, long before I became an Elder. The survey team found them before the settlement was established. My unit was assigned to eradicate them.”
“Are you telling me you wiped out a native species to establish the farming community?”
Taran’atar nodded. “It is the practice among the Founders to assign peoples who have proven themselves to be superior tillers of the soil to worlds where they may best serve the needs of the Dominion. This group—I do not know what you would call them—was transplanted from another world, one that the Founders had conquered many years earlier. They were a small species, poorly equipped for combat, so my unit was called in to secure the settlement.”
“Secure the settlement?” Kira asked. “You mean commit genocide.”
Taran’atar took note of her change in demeanor, but didn’t hesitate. “Our goal was to completely eradicate the population, yes. This disturbs you?”
“It would disturb any of my people. We ourselves were once enslaved by invaders, too.”
“We did not enslave these creatures . . .”
“No, you eradicated them,” Kira said. “Can you tell me which is worse?”
Taran’atar asked, “Is it your wish to debate this issue, Colonel?”
Kira felt her jaw tighten. “No, I’m not interested in a debate. That wasn’t my intention. In fact, I came here to make a request.”
The Jem’Hadar seemed uncertain. “A request?”
“There’s something I’d like you to do, but I don’t want you to feel compelled to do it. You have to decide whether you wish to or not. It is our custom to ask our guests for assistance, and to let them make the choice.”
Taran’atar clearly wasn’t just uncertain now, but agitated and impatient. “I am not your guest, Colonel. I am a Jem’Hadar, with a mission to obey, observe, and learn. The Founder . . .”
“Odo,” Kira said.
Taran’atar accepted the correction, but his agitation only increased. “Odo gave me this task, to serve your will as I would serve his. I still do not understand completely how this can be done, but I took an oath and so I will obey you. But he never said anything about making choices.” And with this, Taran’atar slammed the head of his kar’takin into the holosuite floor. The computer that controlled the room’s simulated environments sensed the imminent impact and attempted to generate a cushioning forcefield, but was too slow to block the full force of the blow. The blade bit into the deck and a shower of sparks erupted from a pierced EPS conduit. Safeties kicked in and the sparks stopped.
Kira was too surprised to say anything for several seconds and before she could protest Taran’atar’s behavior, the room’s com came on and she heard Quark say in diffident tones, “Ah, hey. Hello in there? Maybe you could take it a little easy on my holosuite? No offense, but since Rom stabbed me in the back and took off for Ferenginar, there isn’t anyone on the station who knows how to fix the frinx ing thing. Okay, Mr. Jem’Hadar? Hello?”
“Everything’s fine, Quark,” Kira said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll have Nog come down and look at it later.”
“Oh, Colonel. Heh, well, so you’re . . . ah . . . joining the fun, too. Well, okay. But Commander Vaughn won’t let Nog . . .”
“I’ll speak to Commander Vaughn,” Kira said. “All right?”
“Okay, Colonel. Fine. You two just have fun in there, all right. No problem.” He paused. “There isn’t any problem, is there?”
“Not unless you don’t go away,” Kira said.
“Right,” Quark said. “Gone.”
Kira and Taran’atar stood looking at one another for a moment or two. Then, Kira reached down, tugged the kar’takin out of the deck and hefted it in her two hands. It was heavy, heavier even than it looked. “Did you program a replicator to produce this, too?”
“Yes.”
Kira nodded, appreciating the balance of the weapon as she scrutinized it. “By the way,” she said. “How much did Quark charge you to use the holosuite?”
Taran’atar looked confused again. Kira was momentarily struck by a guilty feeling that she was using up the Jem’Hadar’s lifetime supply of confusion. “Charge?” he asked. “When I learned that this facility existed, I told the Ferengi that I would be using it today. He did not mention anything about a charge.”
“Yeah,” Kira said. “Okay. Never mind. No surprise here. I’ll set up an account for you. Try to remember that there are other people on the station who might want to use things and some of them might be in line in front of you.” She handed him back the weapon.
The Jem’Hadar accepted it.
“Now, getting back to my request . . .”
“Simply tell me what you want me to do,” Taran’atar said.
“I want you to consider accompanying Dr. Bashir on a mission to a planet where a human has taken control of a Jem’Hadar hatchery.” Briefly, Kira outlined the story of Locken and their guesses about his plans.
Taran’atar listened without comment until she had finished, then said, “It will be as you say. You may consider the Jem’Hadar serving this human already dead.”
Kira shook her head. “I’m afraid you aren’t getting this. I’m not asking you to go kill all the Jem’Hadar . . .”
“But there are Jem’Hadar on this planet who have been conditioned to serve this man whom you oppose. Correct?”
“Yes, correct.”
“Then I must either kill them or they will kill the doctor and anyone else who accompanies him on his mission.”
“Let’s get something straight,” Kira said. “Your participation in this mission is contingent upon your helping my crew according to their needs. I realize you have a genetic predisposition toward killing your enemies, and use of lethal force may in fact become necessary, but it isn’t to be your first option. Am I understood?”
The Jem’Hadar looked down at her. “You wonder at my willingness to kill my own kind. You think because you have fought my species, that you understand what drives it, that it’s defined solely by the controlled genetics used to create us. Tell me, Colonel, is that how you feel about Dr. Bashir?”
Kira was taken aback by the question. Taran’atar continued. “You have accepted that he is genetically predisposed to act differently, to think differently, to feel differently than you do, even though this disposition was devised by the hand of other beings no greater, no more divine than yourself.”
Kira could see where the logic of the argument was headed, but she was helpless to steer a passage around the upcoming rocky shoals. “Yes,” she said.
Taran’atar then said, with surprising calm, “Then please extend the same courtesy to me.”
Kira’s eyes narrowed. “You make some very valid points,” she said. “But we’re still going to do things my way. So I’ll ask you one more time. Am I understood?”
The silence was deafening and seemed to last for too long for Kira’s comfort.
“No,” Taran’atar admitted finally. “But it will be as you say.”