5

“And the Great Link sent out the Hundred,” Odo said, “to lure the Progenitor to return.”

Laas stared at him from across the islet, his face a mask of either confusion or disbelief, Odo could not tell which. “The Progenitor,” Laas said, as though about to offer an observation, but then he peered down at the ground and said nothing more. The pervasive quiet of this world settled around them, the perpetually vesper sky enfolding them like a soft cloak.

Odo had just finished describing his encounters with Indurane, detailing all of the information that the ancient Founder had imparted to him. After Indurane had been carried from the islet by the changeling tide, Odo had returned to the Great Link himself to search for Laas. When he’d located him, the two had linked, and Odo had begun to share the knowledge he’d just been given. But Laas had before long broken their connection and come here. After two centuries of communicating via the spoken word, Laas sometimes still found it easier to assimilate information in that way; as Odo himself understood, joining with another changeling could be an overwhelming experience—physically, mentally, and emotionally—making it more difficult to process data newly learned.

Odo waited, allowing Laas time to consider what he’d been told. When finally he looked back up, his expression had transformed into one of disgust. “Belief in a First Cause is such a…monoform…concept,” he said, his isolation of the word an obvious sign of his contempt for non-changeling life-forms. Despite Laas’s prejudices, though, Odo had to agree with his conclusion.

“That’s been my experience as well,” he said, recalling his conversation with Nerys in Dax’s closet, during which he’d for a moment conjectured to himself about what a Founder god or gods might be like, and about what such a concept might mean to his people. The notion had seemed fantastical at the time, even frivolous. If anything, the Great Link had set itself up as a collection of gods for many of its Dominion subjects—most notably for the Vorta and Jem’Hadar.

Still, Indurane’s beliefs had seemed to be more than simply matters of faith. Odo said as much to Laas, and then elucidated his point. “Indurane actually conveyed recollections of the Progenitor,” he said, ”although his memories were old and indistinct. But I perceived his beliefs more as issues of fact than of conviction.”

“Is that not always the way it is?” Laas asked. “Are not the so-called religious experiences of monoforms simply the result of certain electrochemical processes in their brains?”

Odo grunted, taking a look out at the constantly moving body of the Great Link. “Changelings don’t have monoform brains,” he said.

“That’s not my point,” Laas said, and he walked over to Odo, skirting the ashes of the dead Founder still piled in the center of the islet. “Isn’t the belief in a god most often a reaction to the fear of death, a way for an individual to cope with the limitations of their life? And this ancient changeling told you that our people cannot reproduce. Even if we are long-lived by monoform standards, we are also not immortal. That means that not only will individual changelings die over time, but eventually, so too will the entire Great Link.”

Odo looked at his fellow Founder, his fellow member of the Hundred, and tried to separate the reason in Laas’s arguments from the contemptuous perspective from which he viewed humanoids. “You’re suggesting that the Progenitor is not a matter of fact, but one of belief only, and essentially a means of coping with the ultimate extinction of the Founders?”

“I am saying that, yes,” Laas confirmed.

“I don’t know,” Odo said. “Would the Great Link exile one hundred of its own kind, solely on the basis of belief?” The idea horrified him.

“The history of the Varalans is littered with barbarous episodes,” Laas said, speaking of the humanoid civilization with whom he’d lived for two hundred years. “They often utilized their faith in the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient creator and savior as justification for heinous behavior, for cruel acts of savagery against even their own kind. The same story is true of many monoform races.”

“But the Varalans and those other species are not changelings,” Odo protested.

“No,” Laas allowed, “and it pains me to think that our people can be compared to such inferior beings. And yet you’ve told me that the Founders sent out the Hundred based upon an absurd belief in a creator, a belief motivated by a fear of communal death.”

“Indurane maintains that it is more than belief, more than faith,” Odo said. “According to him, it’s reality.”

“That is what believers say,” Laas contended.

“Except that Indurane thinks that the Great Link has succeeded,” Odo said, divulging the final piece of information that the aged Founder had divulged to him.

“What?” Laas asked, clearly surprised. He took a step closer to Odo, almost coming into contact with him. Odo thought that Laas might reach out at any moment in order to link with him.

“The Great Link thinks that the scattering of the Hundred throughout the galaxy has brought about the result for which it was intended,” Odo said. “They believe that the Progenitor has come back to them.” He remembered the great anticipation and anxiety he’d perceived in his people recently, feelings which he’d ascribed to his own return from the Alpha Quadrant, and then to Laas’s bringing home two more of the Hundred, and finally to the revelation of the death of a Founder. But he saw now that such collective emotions could also be explained by the belief that the Progenitor had returned.

“Why do they think that?” Laas wanted to know, a question Odo had been asking himself ever since Indurane had revealed the information to him. “If that’s true, then where is the Progenitor?”

“I don’t know,” Odo said slowly, and he visualized all of the shapes Indurane had become in response to his questions. But suddenly, his investigative experience and skills told him that he had been asking the wrong questions. Indurane had explained what the Great Link had done in sending out the Hundred, and why it had done so, and even when. But Odo understood now that he needed to know other things: Where had they sent the Hundred, and to where did they think the Progenitor had returned?

He looked back at Laas. “We need to contact Weyoun,” he said.

As Taran’atar stood before Rio Grande’s port hatchway, waiting for Ananke Alpha’s shuttlebay to finish pressurizing, a calm clarity overtook his mind, like the break of day enveloping a suddenly still battlefield. He felt as he often had on the cusp of military action. I am dead, he thought, reciting to himself the dictum of a Jem’Hadar first about to take his men into combat. He continued by altering the rest of the philosophy to fit the circumstances: I go to visit the Founder to reclaim my life; I do this because I am Jem’Hadar.

The litany, though skewed, seemed to Taran’atar as appropriate as ever—and perhaps even more apposite than usual. He hadn’t felt in possession of his own life for some time now, ever since Odo had assigned him to reside alongside inhabitants of the Alpha Quadrant aboard Deep Space 9. Although in that time he’d employed his martial abilities on occasion, and although he’d filled much of the substantial downtime with numerous training exercises, it often felt as though his existence as a Jem’Hadar soldier had ended. The necessity for him to sleep—a feeble attribute shared by weaker species—underscored that characterization.

An indicator light beside the hatchway blinked from amber to green, signaling that the pressurization of the shuttlebay had completed. Taran’atar worked an adjoining control, and the hatch slid open. Before stepping forward, though, he glanced over his shoulder at Kira, who sat at Rio Grande’s primary console. Since no waiting rooms or guest quarters had been built into the prison, she would be required to remain aboard the runabout during his time inside.

Looking at her now, Taran’atar saw that in one hand she still held his kar’takin. After Rio Grande had set down aboard Ananke Alpha an hour ago, they’d prepared to disembark, but then had been instructed to wait while the facility’s staff had utilized sensors to scrutinize the runabout and its passengers. During that period, Taran’atar and Kira had been apprised of the prison’s rules and procedures, which had been few, specific, and strict. One regulation prohibited visitors from carrying anything inside, including not only weapons, but even equipment such as tricorders and medkits. Taran’atar had therefore disarmed himself, handing his blade over to Kira as he’d prepared to depart.

“Good luck,” she said now, peering back at him from the bow of the runabout. “I hope you get what you came here for,” she went on, though even the smile she offered could not camouflage her trepidation about his imminent visit to the Founder. Had it been her decision whether or not to allow such a meeting, he doubted that he would have been here right now. He had told her, and then told Admiral Ross, that he wished to call on the Founder in order to check on her well-being, and also because she’d been alone since the end of the war, segregated not only from the Great Link, but also from any members of the Dominion; he hoped that his presence might help relieve her isolation, however briefly. In truth, Taran’atar also sought his own relief, wanting the view of another Founder about the mission Odo had assigned him, as well as any assistance he could get about resisting his body’s new requirement for sleep.

He stepped from the runabout and walked along a red line on the decking, as he’d been instructed. On the way, he noted several surveillance and sensor ports, as well as what appeared to be phaser emitters, security obviously considered a premium commodity here. He also assumed that the facility had been outfitted with transporter inhibitors. Following the guide line, he headed toward the lone door in the shuttlebay, located in the inner bulkhead. The solid panel retracted at his approach, and he continued on into a long corridor.

As the door closed behind him, another opened up ahead. He passed a closed door in the bulkhead to his left, and moved through the open doorway into a large, square room, perhaps ten meters on a side. Empty but for a small free-standing partition off to the right, the room possessed few other features: more surveillance, sensor, and weapons ports; the door through which he’d entered and one opposite; a continuation of the red line connecting the two; and a long window in the bulkhead to his left. He surmised the gray, metallic walls of the room to be constructed of rodinium or tritanium. Through the window—which appeared to be a thick slab of transparent aluminum—he saw several monitors and control panels, and he counted five security officers, all clad in Starfleet uniforms. Two appeared to be human, one Vulcan, one Orion, and one Tellarite.

“Mr. Taran’atar,” a female voice said via a comm system, the words coincident with the moving of the Vulcan officer’s lips. He made eye contact with her as she spoke. “I am Commander T’Kren. I am required by the United Federation of Planets to inform you that this facility has been deemed a no-hostage zone. In the event that you are taken captive by Ananke Alpha’s prisoner, or by forces attacking this facility, Starfleet will not negotiate for your release. Do you understand and consent to these conditions for your visit?”

“Yes,” Taran’atar said.

“Then behind the screen to your right,”’ she continued, “you will find a Starfleet-issue coverall. Please step behind the screen, remove the apparel you are currently wearing, and dress in the Starfleet attire. Please do this with alacrity.”

Taran’atar would have removed his clothing immediately, but recalled an admonition he and Kira had been given aboard the runabout: while within the confines of Ananke Alpha, follow all instructions precisely, or be stunned with phaser fire into unconsciousness and removed from the facility. “Acknowledged,” he said, and did as he’d been told, switching the black coverall he wore for the bright red one he found hanging behind the screen. He noted the closeness of the fit, and assumed that the outfit had been replicated for him after he and Kira had been scanned aboard the runabout.

He emerged from behind the screen less than twenty seconds after he’d moved behind it, leaving his black coverall on the decking. He saw only three security officers through the window now.

“Thank you,” the Vulcan commander said, her politeness in this situation evocative of the unctuous nature of the Vorta. “Please move to the approximate center of the room.” Once he had done so, she continued to issue instructions. “In a moment, you will be joined by two security officers who will escort you to the cell housing the Founder. One will walk ahead of you, the other behind you. Please follow their instructions exactly. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Taran’atar said, barely able to contain the contempt he felt for these people who dared to believe that they had the right to imprison a god.

“Once you have entered the Founder’s cell, you will have one hour to visit with her,” the Vulcan officer went on. “At the end of that time, you will be escorted back here. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Taran’atar said again, careful not to let the strong emotions he felt show on his face. He would do nothing to risk his meeting with the Founder.

The inner door opened, and two of the security officers he’d earlier seen through the window entered the room. One, an Orion male, moved quickly over to the outer door, now closed. He stood not even a meter and three quarters, with short, muscular legs, a wide chest and shoulders, and brawny arms. He had dark eyes and short black hair. The appearance of the other officer, a human female, contrasted significantly with that of the first; tall and lean, she had light coloring, shoulder-length blond hair, and narrow features. Both officers had small black pouches attached to their uniforms at the waists, and both held hand phasers at the ready.

“I’m Lieutenant Commander Matheson,” the woman said from beside the inner door, which had closed behind her, “and this is Lieutenant Jenek.” She pointed with her empty hand toward the Orion. “We are now going to walk with you to the Founder’s cell. At seven junctures along the way, either Lieutenant Jenek or I will ask you to stop. Please do so at once, and remain stationary until I ask you to proceed again.”

“I understand,” Taran’atar said, wanting nothing more at this point than to be on his way to the Founder.

“Good,” Matheson said. “Please take a position between Lieutenant Jenek and me.” Taran’atar did as directed. “Thank you,” she said. “We’ll now proceed.”

As though Matheson had willed it, the inner door glided open. She walked from the room and into a corridor that ran to the left and right. She turned to the right, and Taran’atar followed. Out of Jenek’s line of sight for just a moment, he quickly peered back the other way down the corridor, and saw a second door—closed—standing beside the first, doubtless leading to the control room crewed by the Vulcan commander and the other security officers.

Taran’atar looked forward again. Behind him, he heard Jenek exit the room, his footsteps falling heavily on the decking. Ahead, beyond Matheson, Taran’atar saw the corridor curving into the distance, its end lost from sight. Brightly lighted by panels in the center of the overhead, the enclosed space offered no adornments, the stark, gray bulkheads uninterrupted by anything but the ubiquitous surveillance, sensor, and weapons ports mounted high on their surfaces.

Just a few paces away, another corridor intersected the first, perpendicular to it and leading off to the left. Matheson turned into it, and Taran’atar did the same. The metronomic thumping of Jenek’s boots clocking along the deck followed behind.

Up ahead, perhaps thirty meters away, a door reached across the corridor, impeding the way. As she reached it, Matheson turned and said, “Stop.” Taran’atar complied immediately, and he heard Jenek do the same, the sounds of everybody’s heels echoing for a few seconds before fading away.

Matheson faced the side bulkhead, holstered her phaser, and took hold of the pouch at her hip. She opened it and spilled its contents into her hand. She selected one of the long, thin, clear items she held, which looked like isolinear optical chips, though each had a serrated edge. After returning the others to the pouch and then the pouch to her hip, she reached forward and inserted the chip she’d chosen into a slot.

A physical key, Taran’atar realized. An added means of security, he reasoned, one which worked in concert with other measures, but would by itself allow access and egress through these passages should the facility’s power systems fail.

Matheson turned the key, which produced an audible click, then placed her hand against a plate inset into the bulkhead. “Identify: Matheson, Lieutenant Commander Jacqueline,” she recited. “Requesting access.”

A light beside the plate shifted from red to amber, not unlike how the external-atmosphere indicator aboard Rio Grande had done earlier. As seconds passed in silence, Taran’atar detected movement, a vibration he perceived through the deck. Beyond the closed door, he was sure, something moved—something big.

Finally, the light blinked from amber to green, and the door lumbered aside slowly, the panel at least ten centimeters through. Matheson spun the chip, withdrew it from the slot, and replaced it in the pouch, then drew her phaser once more. “Let’s continue,” she said, and strode through the doorway. Taran’atar started after her, and he heard Jenek follow behind him.

As Taran’atar crossed the threshold, the lighting levels seemed to decrease, and he detected a change in the texture of the decking, from metallic to something less rigid. The sound of his steps grew muffled, as did those of Matheson and Jenek. He saw two narrow lines of blue running along the walkway, along either edge. Forcefields obviously surrounded the deck here.

Still, the claustrophobic feel of the corridor gave way to an unexpected openness here. Taran’atar looked to both sides and saw a cavernous area, extending outward, up and down, left and right. The modified deck bridged the space, running to another doorway fifty meters ahead. At a remove from the walking surface, on either side, what appeared to be emitters of some sort—large, silver cones—lined the distant bulkheads.

Radiation, Taran’atar thought. A line of defense. He guessed that the security officers kept this zone constantly irradiated, protecting against unauthorized passage to and from the cell encased in the heart of the prison. Even if hostile forces penetrated the facility, or the Founder broke from her cell, even if closed doors could be forced open, the radiation would provide a barrier difficult to cross without ultimately sacrificing the lives of those who did—including that of the Founder.

They continued along the walkway to the far door. Shortly after Matheson did, Taran’atar passed through the second doorway and back into a corridor. They continued forward until Lieutenant Jenek spoke up behind them. “Stop,” he said simply, just as Matheson had a few minutes ago. The lieutenant commander turned around to watch her colleague, and Taran’atar did the same. At the second doorway, Jenek performed the same series of tasks as Matheson had at the first—setting aside his phaser, retrieving a chip from his pouch, inserting the key into a slot, flattening his hand against a plate—but rather than requesting access, he asked for closure.

After the door had sealed behind them, Taran’atar continued on with the two security officers. Now, though, they encountered numerous intersections, and various corridors of differing lengths crossing each other at oblique angles. Matheson made several turns, seemingly at random. As they walked, Taran’atar saw a minuscule gap between the walls and the deck. He wondered at first if they might be part of a defensive system that could deliver debilitating gaseous agents into the corridors, but in light of the many junctions, turns, and odd angles behind them, he concluded that the bulkheads here moved. Walls would shift, new corridors would be created, old ones eliminated, with dead ends abounding and no obvious course through the maze. If Taran’atar ever returned to Ananke Alpha, he suspected that he would find gone the path that he followed this time to reach the Founder. He found it a clumsy but probably effective countermeasure to any escape attempts begun either inside or outside the prison.

Along the route, Matheson led the way through two more lines of defense, neither of them configured precisely as the radiation barrier had been. Taran’atar believed one of the zones to be kept heated beyond the endurance of most life-forms, and the other to be filled with a constant barrage of phaser fire. To be sure, the variegated fortifications would pose difficulties for anybody plotting to break into or out of the facility.

Which is why, he thought, I would avoid altogether any attempt to breach the barriers.

After Matheson had taken them through the third defensive zone, they traveled once more through a single corridor, the maze apparently behind them. At a T-shaped intersection, Matheson halted and addressed Taran’atar again. “Stop,” she said, and he did so. “At the end of this corridor,” she said, pointing to the right, “is the Founder’s cell.” She explained in detail the procedures for Taran’atar’s entry into and exit from the cell, and then moved into the corridor off to the left. Taran’atar paced forward until he reached the junction, then turned right. Ten meters away stood a set of parallel doors, the first of the two transparent. As he approached the doors, he heard Jenek enter the corridor behind him.

Taran’atar looked over his shoulder and waited as Matheson used another of her keys and her handprint to request access to the Founder’s cell. When the transparent door glided open, he entered the small antechamber. A moment later, that door closed behind him, and the inner one opened. He stepped forward into a long room, fifteen meters long and half as wide. A collection of seemingly unrelated items filled the space: a few plants of varying dimension and color, several regular and irregular geometric forms constructed of diverse materials, a tank of clear liquid, a box of sand, what appeared to be a crumpled piece of paper. He saw surveillance, sensor, and weapons ports here as well.

He did not see the Founder. At least not that he could identify.

“I am Taran’atar,” he said as the inner door closed behind him, sealing him inside. “I am a Jem’Hadar first.” He waited, but received no response. “I humbly seek to visit with you, Founder, to speak with you.”

Still nothing.

Taran’atar waited, keenly aware from the moment he had first considered coming here that the Founder might not wish to see him. Merely a servant to her kind, he had little to offer her, and knew that, even if Admiral Ross had consented to this meeting, it remained to be seen whether the Founder would deign to speak with him.

“If you do not wish my visit, Founder,” he said at last, “then I shall leave. It is of course your choice.” He waited ten seconds, then ten more. When a full minute had passed, it became clear that the Founder did not want to see him.

Taran’atar began to turn, but as he did so, he saw movement in the room. Directly in front of him, the overhead seemed to slump down, as though melting, until the mass began to shimmer. It elongated until it touched the floor, spilled downward, then reached up into a humanoid figure. Color and texture appeared as though from nowhere, transforming the shining golden shape into a woman of medium height and build, her features smooth, like Odo’s when he took Bajoran form.

Taran’atar had seen Founders shapeshift throughout his twenty-two-year lifespan, but it never ceased to produce in him a sense of awe. He stood motionless, waiting for the Founder to speak. He felt anticipation, pleased that he had managed this opportunity for himself.

The Founder took one stride forward and peered up into Taran’atar’s eyes. Her lips formed a thin, straight line, almost hidden within the doughy flesh of her face. At last, she spoke:

“Why are you here?”

The two Founders waited behind him, their presence in his quarters a palpable, weighty thing, like a dense fog pushing in, unstoppable, suffocating. The bass drone of the ship’s engines contributed to the onerous atmosphere. Weyoun attempted to concentrate on the readouts before him, on operating his companel, but could not prevent himself from stealing a look backward from time to time, hoping to verify that neither of his guests had yet lost their patience. Although Odo continued to pace anxiously back and forth across the room, the attitude of the other, motionless Founder—Laas—concerned Weyoun more. Like many changelings, Laas did not conceal his scorn for Vorta and other lower life-forms, but more than that, the intensity of his disgust appeared to cross the line into hatred. Weyoun doubted that any service he provided right now, no matter how helpful or beneficial to the Great Link, would gain him Laas’s approbation.

At the same time, Odo represented a different challenge. Weyoun’s memories, extending not only through his own brief existence, but through the lives of his predecessors, composed complex, often inconsistent portraits of the Founder. Odo had seemed to despise several of the Weyoun clones, but on an individual basis, and not because he judged Vorta to be intrinsically inferior to changelings—although of course they were. But after initially distrusting the motives of the sixth Weyoun—the defective Weyoun—Odo had come to show him sympathy, even tenderness. More difficult to fathom, the current relationship between Founder and Vorta had been marked by Odo’s frequent attention. Although he still often displayed a stern manner, he regularly sought contact with Weyoun—as well as with the Jem’Hadar seventh—transporting up to the ship and engaging in lengthy conversations about a multitude of subjects. Such personal interaction delighted Weyoun, but it also disconcerted him a bit. Accustomed to striving constantly to serve the Founders to the best of his abilities and at all costs, he did not really know how to conduct himself with them in an alternate role.

“Weyoun,” Odo said sharply from across the room, though he sounded more anxious than angry. “Are you making any progress?”

“I am,” Weyoun responded, turning to face the Founder. Odo had stopped pacing and now stood beside the closed door that led out into the corridor. He had his arms folded across his chest. Laas leaned against the bulkhead in an adjacent corner. “I’m making significant progress,” Weyoun said. As he peered from one Founder to the other, he became acutely aware of his many projects lying scattered about the room, spilling over just about every flat surface, including the deck. Vorta had no sense of aesthetics, but they did possess an intense curiosity. Many, including Weyoun, found satisfaction in studying and learning about almost anything, no matter how trivial or uninteresting such things might seem to others. He continually collected items from various places, bringing them here for later examination. Between his position at the companel and Odo, he saw shoes, coasters, bits of string, broken bottles, power cells, picture frames, and a chair leg. Knowing the changeling penchant for order, Weyoun felt embarrassed by the ragtag assortment of objects. Had he had any warning that Odo and Laas would visit him here, he would have packed away his academic olio.

“If you’re making progress,” Laas snapped, “then what’s the delay?”

“My apologies, Founder,” Weyoun said, folding his hands together and bowing his head. “I’m afraid that the information you’re seeking is stored in numerous files, in different locations,” he explained. “They’re also encrypted in a variety of ways.”

“But you do have the necessary clearances to access and decode the files?” Odo asked.

“Yes, I do, thanks to your foresight,” Weyoun said. Prior to embarking on the task the two Founders had given him, Odo had increased Weyoun’s already-high security authorization. “I’ve collected all of the files you asked for, and decoded most of them. I’m just waiting for the last few files to go through decryption, and then for the final collation of data.”

“Is there no one who can do this faster?” Laas asked Odo.

Before Odo could respond, the companel emitted two quick tones, signaling the completion of the deciphering of the last files. Weyoun looked back to the readouts and verified the results. He told the Founders, then worked the console again for a few minutes, this time to bring the newly decoded data into the collection of the other files he’d already assembled. He touched one final control, which hummed at his touch, and then he turned back to Odo and Laas.

“Done,” he announced, the smile on his face a gauge of the pleasure he felt in accomplishing a service for not one, but two of his gods.

“Then leave us,” Laas said brusquely, pushing off of the bulkhead and standing up straight.

Weyoun felt his smile evaporate, sorry to be dismissed instead of being permitted to continue providing assistance. He hesitated for only an instant, though, before forcing a smile back onto his face, but Odo must have sensed his disappointment.

“If you don’t mind,” the Founder said. “It’s just that Laas and I would like to discuss the contents of the files in private.”

“Of course,” Weyoun said. “I understand completely, and I’m more than happy to volunteer my home for you to work in.” He padded across the room, sidestepping a large, green pyramidal object that he couldn’t quite identify, although he recalled that the fifth Weyoun had retrieved it several years ago from Innerol V, during the repression of an insurgency against the Dominion. The door opened at his approach, and he passed Odo and started out into the corridor. Then he stopped and looked back at the two Founders. “As always, it is a pleasure to serve you.”

“Thank you, Weyoun,” Odo said. “Good work.”

Weyoun could not prevent his smile from growing wider. “Thank you, Odo,” he said, then he continued out into the corridor, the door closing behind him. As he headed for the bridge, he hoped that he had supplied Odo and Laas with what they needed. He felt privileged to have such close contact with Founders.

Most Vorta, Weyoun knew, were not so fortunate.

The cliffs rose high above a barren, meteorite-pocked plain. The dawning sun peeked over the arc of the horizon, throwing roughly curved shadows into the many craters strewn across the lunar surface. Still cool from the night, the air blew in a steady breeze here, occasionally gusting stronger. Above, a smattering of clouds scudded across the sky.

Vannis peered down from atop the cliffs and surveyed the unfriendly surroundings. She observed the steepness of the precipice, then turned toward the rocky hills rising just twenty-five meters away. “Are you certain this is the location?” she asked.

The middle of her three Jem’Hadar escorts stepped forward. “It is,” First Rekan’ganar said. “Residual traces of a propulsion trail are scattered through the area, and ship’s sensors detected small amounts of refined metals spread along this flat as well.”

Vannis nodded. She looked behind her again, out over the cliff’s edge, and considered the narrow strip of land upon which they stood, situated between the high, steep drop on one side and the hills on the other. “It must have been a crash or an emergency landing then,” she said. No pilot would have intentionally chosen this place to put down, except in the case of a crisis. Such a conclusion supported the little information that the Founder had provided her—namely, that a former inhabitant of this moon reported that an Ascendant’s ship had crashed here. “Find whatever you can learn,” Vannis ordered the Jem’Hadar, quoting the Founder’s instructions to her.

With a nod from Rekan’ganar, the Jem’Hadar fanned out immediately along the edge of the cliff, each operating a portable scanner. Vannis remained in her current location, and activated her own scanner. After a few minutes of scrutiny, she could find nothing of significance around her. She quickly looked about the area, then paced toward the hillside.

From the ship, sensors had identified a web of satellites in orbit about the planet. They appeared to encircle the moon, though they had all been deactivated. Their orbits had begun to decay, but the pattern they described seemed to indicate three satellites missing from the network. Scans substantiated that conclusion by revealing small pieces of irradiated metal near those locations, the remnant energy of weapons fire still detectable on them. Vannis had deduced a battle between the Ascendants’ craft and the network, with both achieving measures of victory. She speculated that the trio of absent satellites had been destroyed by the Ascendant, and the remainder of the net ultimately deactivated, but not before it had forced the Ascendant’s ship down.

As Vannis neared the hillside, a sound reached her sensitive ears from somewhere up ahead. It could have been a minor rockfall, but she also knew from ship’s sensors both that the moon’s small population resided nearby, and that a system of caves snaked through the hills. She continued her scans, but kept alert for additional sounds.

A few moments later, Vannis heard more noises, including a shuffling that might have been footsteps. She also detected a slight echo, suggesting a presence in one of the caves. Without altering her gait or posture, she reset the scanner to search for life signs. The device distinguished a single humanoid, just inside the mouth of the nearest cave. The individual appeared relatively small in stature, and carried no weapons of any kind.

Vannis considered calling back one of the Jem’Hadar, but didn’t feel the need. Instead, she gradually altered her path toward the hills, until she ended up close to the cave entrance. Without looking in that direction, she said, “Hello there.”

No response came, but neither did Vannis hear the individual fleeing. “Yes, I’m speaking to you,” she said, and then she turned slowly toward the cave mouth, until she faced it from just a few meters away. “You, in the cave.”

Vannis waited. If this was one of the local populace, she wanted to interrogate them about anything they might know regarding the crash or emergency landing of the Ascendant’s ship. Just when she thought she might have to take different actions to accomplish this, she heard the shuffling sound again, and then somebody emerged from the cave.

The child, a young man, raised a hand before his face, obviously shielding his eyes from the morning sunlight shining in his direction. A patina of grime covered the swarthy skin of his hands and face, as though his travels had kicked up soil from the floors of the caves and deposited on him the resultant dust. Even through the layer of dirt, though, Vannis could see what appeared to be scars on his face, pale streaks slashed about his features. “Hello,” he said excitedly, squinting in the bright dawn. “I was just playing and I saw you.” Despite the remnants of injuries sustained, the boy behaved with a childlike bearing.

“I know,” Vannis said. “What’s your name?”

“Mine’s Misja,” the boy said. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Vannis.” She paused, then asked, “Do you live here?”

“In the village, yes,” he said. “With my tribe.”

“The Sen Ennis,” Vannis ventured, sure of the fact, but wanting to verify it anyway.

“Ye-es,” the boy said hesitantly.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Vannis told him. “I’m not here to hurt you or your tribe.”

“Why are you here?” Misja asked, as Vannis had easily maneuvered him to do.

“I’m here to find a friend of mine,” she said. “Quite tall, and silvery.” Vannis had gotten a description of the Ascendants from Dominion historical files.

“Raiq,” the boy said eagerly.

“Yes, Raiq,” Vannis said, guessing that to be the name of the Ascendant. “Is Raiq here?” she asked, knowing from the Founder that the Ascendant had already departed.

“No, she left a while ago, right after she healed,” Misja said.

“Healed?” Vannis asked, feigning concern. “Was she injured?”

“She wasn’t well, but Tadia and Sulan didn’t know whether she was sick or got hurt when her ship crashed,” Misja said.

“Her ship crashed? Oh no.” Vannis asked. “Is it still here?”

“No,” Misja said. “I guess it wasn’t too badly damaged when she crashed.” Then he pointed down along the hills, and provided Vannis the information she’d been hoping to glean from him. “She landed right over there. I saw it, and I told everybody about it.”

“Would you show me?” she asked.

“Sure,” Misja said, and he led her along the hillside. When finally he stopped, he said, “Right here,” and pointed down at the ground. Vannis walked around him, peering downward, but she saw nothing to indicate that a ship might have even landed here, let alone crashed here. She bent down and surveyed the ground from that angle, and noticed only a slight depression in one spot, and several long, thin indentations in a couple of other places. If a ship had been responsible for these, its footprint must have been quite narrow, almost bladelike.

She was not convinced.

“Would you mind if I took some readings?” Vannis asked, standing back up. “I just want to make sure this was my friend’s ship.”

Misja shrugged. “Sure,” he said.

Vannis operated the scanner. To her surprise, the boy’s claims appeared to be accurate. She read a warp signature in the area, and while the Ascendant likely would not have utilized such propulsion to land or launch on the moon, the readings might indicate an active warp drive that simply hadn’t been taken offline before the crash. She also discovered small pieces of refined metal buried all about, just below the surface.

To Misja, she said, “Yes, this is Raiq’s ship.” She smiled at the boy. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Misja beamed. “Will you visit our tribe?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Vannis said. “I have to go. I need to find my friend.”

“Okay,” Misja said, though he seemed disappointed by her response.

“Well, if you go tell your tribe right now,” Vannis said, wanting time alone here to continue her investigation, “people from your tribe can come visit me here before I leave.”

“All right,” the boy said with childish enthusiasm. “I’ll go tell them right away.”

“Good,” she said. “Hurry.”

Misja turned and darted for the cave. Once he’d entered it, Vannis waited a few seconds, then worked the scanner to ensure that he had actually gone. Once she’d verified that fact, she returned her attention to the surrounding area, where the Ascendant had apparently crashed.

Her scans revealed nothing more, but just as she had decided to recall the Jem’Hadar and return to the ship, she noted what seemed to be several metal fragments visible on the ground. Circular and a cloudy gray in color, they looked to her like bits of superheated metal that had dripped to the ground. Remembering the description of the Ascendants themselves, though, she switched the scanner to examine biological material. The device immediately identified the drops as containing organic substances from a living being.

Quickly, before Misja could return with members of his tribe, Vannis recorded all the information she could, including DNA-related data. She also dug around one of the spatters of what she believed to be Ascendant blood, and secured the entire specimen into a compartment in the scanner.

Then she stood up, smiling. She enjoyed nothing more than satisfying the needs of the Founders, not only to the best of her own abilities, but to the best of any Vorta’s. She knew the members of the Great Link would be pleased with the information she had recovered here regarding the Ascendants.

This task at an end, she touched a control wrapped around her wrist, summoning the three Jem’Hadar to head back to her position. Once they had returned, she would transport with them off of this moon. She would order the ship back to Dominion space, where she would then work to fulfill the other purpose that the Founder had set her: the Overne had to eat, and the Rindamil had enough food to allow that to happen.

Odo felt the swirl of his cells as he willed each of his hands to sprout two additional fingers. He wanted to examine with all possible haste the data that Weyoun had just amassed, and the extra digits would allow him to work the companel with greater dexterity and swiftness. He could shapeshift more than seven fingers onto each hand, or even fashion himself a third arm, but he’d found through experimentation over the years that with this particular combination he operated most deftly.

Studying the readouts and panel configuration, Odo sent his hands marching across the controls. He checked the new file in which Weyoun had aggregated all of the data, then modified the privileges on it so that it could be accessed only by a Founder. Then he opened the file and began to peruse its contents. Laas stood at his side, peering intently at the screen.

After Odo had informed Laas of what had been revealed to him about the Great Link, the Hundred, and the Progenitor, the two had transported up to Jem’Hadar Attack Vessel 971. According to Indurane, the intention of the Founders in sending out the Hundred had been to have them function essentially as lures and guideposts, attracting the attention of the Progenitor and pointing the way back to the Link. The ancient Founder had also claimed that the changeling god now had returned. Laas’s ensuing question—To where had the Progenitor returned?—had raised other issues in Odo’s mind, and had also hinted at a possible answer.

By Indurane’s account, the Progenitor had abandoned the Great Link long ago, before the changeling population had settled on a world hidden in the interstellar gas and dust of the Omarion Nebula. The Founders had sent out the Hundred from that planet, though, a location they had wanted to remain secret. If the unformed changelings dispersed throughout the galaxy formed a map to a specific place, then surely the Great Link would have wanted that place to be somewhere other than their own world. For if the Progenitor could follow the directions they had set out, then so too could others. Laas’s question of where the Progenitor had returned therefore became a matter of determining the location to which the Hundred had pointed.

Once aboard the Jem’Hadar ship, Odo and Laas had found Weyoun in his quarters. That had suited Odo, as he’d wanted to enlist the Vorta’s aid in private. He’d asked Weyoun to scour the Dominion databases to find out whether or not the Founders had kept any records of the Hundred, and the locations to which they had been dispersed. Weyoun had found numerous such files, scattered across the Dominion computer network, their data veiled by various encryption methodologies. It had taken some time, but Weyoun had eventually been able to decipher the data and collect it in a single file.

Now Odo set out to study that information. He sent his seven-fingered hands skittering across the companel. On the monitor, he brought up an image of the galaxy, the great disk comprising its spiral arms appearing edgewise and bulging at its center. “Here is Dominion space,” he said to Laas as he continued to work the panel. The picture on the screen shifted, the point of view drawing in close on one section, where an irregularly shaped volume of space became highlighted in blue. “And here are all of the locations to which the Hundred were sent,” he went on as he touched another series of controls. Small red circles began to appear beyond the borders of the Dominion, one after another, in a manner that looked haphaz-ard. Odo noted several markers in the galaxy’s other three quadrants, and one at the coordinates of the wormhole’s Gamma terminus, obviously denoting the place to where he himself had been sent.

“They’re not symmetrical,” Laas observed. “They don’t seem to be distributed in any pattern at all.”

“No,” Odo agreed.

“Where’s the Omarion Nebula?” Laas asked. Odo knew that Laas had no memory of the area from which he and the rest of the Hundred had been sent away, but had learned about it from other Founders.

Odo tapped again at the panel, which accompanied his movements with quick, flat tones. Around a patch of blue on the screen, a yellow line appeared, demarcating the Omarion borders. “Here,” Odo said, raising a hand and pointing at it. “And here’s the planet formerly occupied by the Great Link.” In response to his manual commands, a small yellow circle materialized within the confines of the nebula.

“It’s not at the center of the distribution,” Laas said.

“But Indurane told me that the Founders hoped that the Hundred would attract the attention of the Progenitor and draw it back to the Great Link,” Odo said. “There must be some central locus here.” Odo called up a mathematical catalogue from the ship’s computer, and searched a list of numerical methods. He selected an interpolation subroutine, then executed it against the set of data points identifying the locations to which the Hundred had been sent. A series of equations scrolled up the right side of the screen, at the same time that thin red lines emerged from each of the red circles. As values adjusted rapidly in the formulae, the lines moved, shifting their direction, but remaining anchored to the original data points.

For several minutes, Odo and Laas watched in silence as the mathematical process unfolded. Some lines would intersect each other, while others traced a path nowhere near them. Finally, though, more and more of the lines began to converge, until at last they all passed through a condensed region. The values in the equations stabilized and then froze, as did the lines. The volume of space through which the lines all passed sat near to, but outside of, the Omarion Nebula.

“Are there planets there?” Laas asked, obviously assuming, as Odo did, that the Founders would have chosen a specific place to reunite with their Creator.

Odo keyed in a request for information about that area of space. “There’s one star system there,” he said, reading from the monitor. “Eleven planets around a—” Odo stopped, not sure what to make of what he saw.

Laas must have sensed his confusion, because he said, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“The only star in the area that the Hundred point to has been the brightest object in the Great Link’s sky for weeks now,” Odo said. “It went nova.”

Taran’atar was surprised when he found himself unable to answer the Founder. Just recently, he had spent a great deal of time with Odo, and throughout his life, he had interacted with a number of changelings. He had given all of them nothing but his obedience. Now, though, something more than his instinctive drive to serve took hold of him. The Founder that peered up at him from an expressionless face carried herself, more noticeably than any other changeling he had ever met, with a mien of power. He knew that she had led the Dominion war against the Alpha Quadrant, and if not for the traitorous Cardassians and cowardly Breen, would have bested all foes. Even at the end, when she had chosen to cease fighting and save the Great Link, she could have debilitated the Federation and its allies even in a Dominion defeat, had she chosen to do so. As she regarded him coldly, he sensed that she had lost none of that strength.

“I asked you a question,” she said, and even though she spoke with an even tone, her words sounded to Taran’atar as if they held within them disapproval and an implicit threat. “Why are you here?” she asked again, and Taran’atar imagined that she had rarely had to repeat herself to subordinates. “Why are you in the Alpha Quadrant?”

Taran’atar blinked, hesitating still. He had thought that the Founder had wanted to know why he had chosen to come to visit her on Ananke Alpha, and not why he had left the Dominion. “I am in the Alpha Quadrant,” he finally responded, “because three-quarters of a year ago, I was sent by a Founder to reside on Deep Space 9.”

“Another Founder,” she said, her inscrutable features seeming to tighten. “Odo?” she asked, although the single-word question conveyed the Founder’s certainty about what the answer would be.

“Yes,” Taran’atar confirmed. “Odo.”

The Founder appeared to settle herself, then took a step backward and studied him. Taran’atar thought that he provided little to see: dressed in the simple Starfleet coverall, he carried no weapons or devices of any kind. Perhaps for that reason, since the Founder could focus on nothing but Taran’atar himself, her gaze felt penetrating to him. Finally, her scrutiny stopped at the left side of his neck. He felt the urge to reach up and cover the small slit in his flesh that marked where a delivery tube had for two decades entered his body. “You are free of the white,” the Founder observed.

“I am,” Taran’atar said carefully, uncomfortable admitting his difference from other Jem’Hadar. “My body synthesizes the enzyme it needs.”

The Founder appeared to consider this for a moment, moving away from him and pacing deeper into the room. At the far end, near a tall, thin geometric sculpture with a rough-hewn surface, she stopped and turned back to face him. “Is your lack of dependence on ketracel-white a result of your advanced age?” she asked, obviously recognizing him as a Jem’Hadar elder.

“I do not know,” Taran’atar said. “I do not think so. I believe that other, younger Jem’Hadar have been found with the same—” He had been about to utter the word deficiency, but did not want to show weakness to the Founder. “—the same characteristic,” he finished.

“Others have been found?” she asked from across the room. “By whom?” Again, her appearance seemed to harden.

“By several Vorta,” Taran’atar replied, “acting under the direction of Odo.”

“Odo,” she echoed. “He explicitly searched for Jem’Hadar without a dependence on ketracel-white? And then from that group selected you to live in the Alpha Quadrant?”

“Yes,” Taran’atar said. Despite the fact that it had been Odo who had ordered both the identification of his defect and his assignment to the Alpha Quadrant, Taran’atar felt right now as though he had himself failed this Founder.

She walked back over and stared up at him with a piercing gaze. “Why did he take those actions?” she asked.

“I—I do not know,” Taran’atar responded haltingly, unnerved at being asked to speak about a Founder’s motives—even though he had fought such doubts and concerns himself during his months on DS9.

“He did not tell you?” she questioned him. “When Odo sent you from the Dominion, he did not tell you what he wanted you to accomplish?”

“He did, but I do not entirely understand,” Taran’atar admitted. “I am to experience living among the species of the Alpha Quadrant. I would never question the wisdom of a Founder, but I do not understand why this is necessary, or why I—or any Jem’Hadar—would be selected for such a mission. We were bred for war.”

“Yes, you were,” she agreed. “Did Odo tell you for what period of time he would require you to stay in the Alpha Quadrant?”

“He did not,” Taran’atar said. “But during his recent visit to Deep Space—”

“His recent visit?” the Founder asked, her voice rising to emphasize the middle word.

“Odo spent nearly four weeks on Deep Space 9 and Bajor,” Taran’atar explained, “until he left to go back to the Great Link almost three months ago.”

“Why was he there?” she asked.

“Odo told me that he wanted to check on my progress,” Taran’atar said. “He also accepted an invitation from the Bajorans to attend a ceremony in which they entered the Federation. I believe that he also wanted to see Kira.”

“Of course,” the Founder said. “His loyalties are still divided.”

The assertion startled Taran’atar. Although he did not understand the reasons why he had been sent to live in the Alpha Quadrant, and although he wished to return to the Dominion, he had never mistrusted Odo. “I would not presume to evaluate the loyalties of a Founder,” he said. Except…he thought. Except had he not come here to have this Founder give him new orders—orders that would supersede Odo’s?

“Of course you wouldn’t,” the Founder said. “You are not capable of doing so. But I am.” Again, she turned and strode away from him. “Odo lived for decades in the Alpha Quadrant, among solids,” she said, although Taran’atar could not tell whether she meant her words for him or only for herself. “He developed feelings for one of them, for Kira, and that emotion, born in a life warped by exposure to solids and isolation from his own kind, still drives him.”

She stopped walking beside a small, potted tree, its short branches adorned with pentagonal leaves of various colors, from blue and violet on the lower branches, to red and yellow on the upper. Large thorns decorated its narrow trunk in parallel lines that swirled around it. As the Founder continued talking, she reached out and took hold of the trunk three-quarters of the way up.

“Odo seeks to change the Dominion, to change the Great Link itself, to alter the natural order of things.” As she spoke, her hand began to display a flickering orange glow, and her fingers elongated, encircling the tree as her newly formed tendrils climbed upward and descended downward. “He foolishly wants to engender some sort of direct relationship between our people and the solids, so that he can unite his places in both worlds, and keep both the Great Link and Kira in his life.”

The shining extensions of her hand now wrapping around the branches of the tree, the Founder looked back over her shoulder at Taran’atar. “But such efforts will never work,” she said. “Even Odo, with his inexperience, will come to understand that one day.”

Captured by her stare, Taran’atar felt compelled to respond. “As you say,” he told her.

“And when he fails,” she went on, as though Taran’atar had not spoken, “he will abandon the Great Link, and he will return to Kira. Not just for weeks, but for as long as Kira lives.” A branch snapped beneath the entwining grip of the Founder’s form, and then a second snapped as well. Taran’atar watched as the shimmering tendrils constricted, solidifying into milky white tentacles. Suddenly, the tree splintered, its trunk and limbs flying fragmented to the floor, its leaves fluttering down in a rainbow of movement. “Odo will flout the sacrifice I have made for our people,” the Founder ended.

Taran’atar did not know how to react to what he took to be her show of anger. “Your sacrifice saved the Great Link,” he said, understanding that her establishment of peace with the powers of the Alpha Quadrant had allowed Odo to bring a cure to the Founders when they had been assaulted by disease.

“It did,” she said, raising her voice as she turned fully toward him. The pale appendages extending from her arm had fallen to the floor when the tree had broken beneath their clutches, and they remained there now, unmoving. “I agreed to end the war, to give myself over to my enemies…” She began walking toward Taran’atar, the extensions of her fingers trailing behind her, as though being dragged like something not a part of her own body. “…to relinquish my freedom at the hands of the lowly solids, all in order to save the Great Link…and to save Odo.”

“To save Odo?” Taran’atar said, confused. The Founder’s demeanor seemed odd to him, and he wondered if her isolation had affected her.

“He was one of the Hundred,” she said. She abruptly stopped, looked upward, and threw her arms into the air. The tendrils contracted in an instant back into her hand, but then both of her arms wavered and separated into scores of slender filaments. They reached up toward the ceiling and curved back down at their tips, which ended in sparkling silver lights. The effect put Taran’atar in mind of a field of stars, somehow brought down from the sky to twinkle just a couple of meters overhead. “And I was one of those who decided to send him and the others away. But I wanted our people to survive and to be whole again. I had no choice but to send the Hundred away.”

Taran’atar knew of the hundred changelings that had been seeded throughout space by the Great Link, but he did not understand the points the Founder appeared to be trying to make. He did not see how dividing the Great Link and sending individual changelings away could possibly help the Founders survive, or paradoxically, be whole. But he said nothing.

The Founder looked at him. “You know of the disease that struck my people,” she said. She dropped her arms, and the filaments she had sent into the air fell to the floor with a strange, whispering sound, as though dozens of inaudible voices had spoken at once, combining to be heard. “My sacrifice in agreeing to come here, to be kept as a prisoner…my sacrifice saved Odo by seeing to it that he returned to the Great Link.”

Taran’atar continued to say nothing, his muscles rigid as he stood motionless before the Founder.

“The Great Link,” she said, repeating her own words, but acting as though responding to somebody else. “Do you bring word of the Great Link?” she asked.

“I do not, Founder,” he said, unable to ignore a direct question. “I can tell you that before Odo sent me to the Alpha Quadrant, he spoke of the Great Link being in turmoil, of having to deal with the loss in the war, and with rebellions that had arisen within the Dominion after that. But on his recent trip, Odo talked about the Link having calmed in recent months, and of the insurgencies quieting.”

The Founder nodded absently, her eyes focusing past Taran’atar. With no warning, she raised her arms again, and the willowy strands projecting from them retracted. A moment later, they had formed into hands again. The Founder looked at him once more.

“Why are you here?” she asked, her tone reverting to its formerly measured tenor. “Why have you come to see me in this prison?”

“I am here—” he began, and thought, because I am lost, because I do not belong in the Alpha Quadrant, because I want to go back to the Dominion, and to being a soldier. But instead, he said, “—because I wish to be of whatever service I can be to you.”

“I see,” she said as she retreated back across the room, hands clasped behind her back. “And of what service do you expect to be?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought that, since you’ve been away from the Dominion and the Great Link for so long now, I hoped that I might be able to offer some…relief…of that circumstance.”

She spun sharply on her heel. “And you suppose that your presence here would do that for me, would allay the misery of my seclusion?”

“I don’t know,” Taran’atar said again, and he realized that what he had told Kira, what he had told himself, about wanting to ease the isolation of the Founder, had been nothing but a cover. He had kept from Kira his true motivation for wanting to come here, but he had lied to himself as well, professing a desire to help the Founder when he had known that he would be unable to do so. What sort of impact could a Jem’Hadar have on a Founder separated from the Great Link? No, the only reasons he had come here had been to get help for himself.

And now he would seek that help.

“I need your assistance, Founder,” he said. “I am a Jem’Hadar soldier. I do not belong in the Alpha Quadrant. I do not belong without ketracel-white being fed into my body. I need guidance, but I have no means of contacting Odo.”

“And so you thought to visit the only other Founder you could,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You seek my permission to leave the post to which Odo assigned you,” she said.

“I would not defy the will of a god,” Taran’atar said, “but Odo is not the only god.”

“Nor am I,” she said, her voice rising almost to a yell. “I am no god at all.” Again, Taran’atar wondered if her captivity had impacted her emotional state, or even her mind. He dismissed the thought, even as he recalled the Jem’Hadar first on Sindorin, who had maintained that the Founders were not gods, and that the Jem’Hadar of the Dominion were no more than slaves. Taran’atar had denied both allegations because he’d believed them false, and he still did. This had been his life, and he had always known that until the day he died in battle defending the Founders, this would continue to be his life.

Except that Odo had changed all of that. And now this Founder stood before him and threatened to change it even more.

“Founder,” he began, but she spoke before he could go on.

“The Founders are not gods,” she said. “We developed the Jem’Hadar and the Vorta into what they are now, we are powerful and superior to all solids. But the one, true God—the Progenitor—created the Founders.”

Taran’atar said nothing at first. The Founder needed his help, he realized, but he did not know what to do. As he’d told Kira, attempting to break the Founder out of this facility would put her life at risk. At the same time, her imprisonment had clearly had a deleterious effect on her.

“Let me serve you, Founder,” he said at last, hoping that she would know what he could do to help her.

“Your servitude means nothing to me,” she said. “You lost the war.” Taran’atar immediately wanted to tell her that he had not fought for the Dominion against the forces of the Alpha Quadrant, but also understood that such information would likely not matter to her. “If you had been strong enough,” she went on, “if the Jem’Hadar and the Vorta had been able to properly control the Cardassians and the Breen, then the Dominion would have conquered the Federation and the Klingons and the Romulans. And victory would have rendered my sacrifice unnecessary.”

Taran’atar waited to see if she would say more. When it became clear that she would not, he quietly asked, “Founder, please, how can I serve you?”

“Leave me,” she said.

Taran’atar stared at the Founder, feeling paralyzed. He did not wish to disobey her, nor did he wish to abandon her to this fate. He longed for the life he had once known, where he knew his place as a soldier and his responsibilities to the Founders, and where he understood how to fulfill his duties. Since Odo had sent him here to the Alpha Quadrant, though, he’d lost his way.

Taran’atar turned toward the inner door, preparing to go, but then he paused. How long would he have to live his life like this, he wondered, his soldier’s duties past, his value to his gods incomprehensibly low? Perhaps the Jem’Hadar on Sindorin had been right after all: perhaps Taran’atar was only a slave, of no more worth to his creators than a cog in a machine.

He turned back around. “Founder,” he said.

Odo’s pliable cells spun as he joined hands with Laas. After studying aboard the Jem’Hadar vessel the records concerning the Hundred, they had transported back down to the Founders’ world, intending to seek out Indurane to tell him what they’d learned. Now, to that end, they melded together and twisted up from the surface of the islet. Odo felt the familiar rush of his link with another changeling, the reactive unity defined by the marriage of idea—at the moment, the search for the ancient Founder—and sensation—the circular velocity of their entangled bodies as they spiraled upward. Pushing counter to gravity, they slowed and turned, arcing to the side and then down. As one, they plunged into the living sea formed by the union of their people.

Even before Odo reached out into the Great Link, he discerned the change in it. What he had sensed for the past month as a mixture of disquiet and enthusiasm had exploded into unrestrained excitement. More than he had ever experienced, the community of Founders seethed, its currents swirling into a massive maelstrom, a cauldron veritably boiling with movement. Figures took shape at a dizzying rate, solid forms blooming in the golden changeling deep like insects in amber, and then just as quickly dissolving back into the metamorphic essence from which they’d been sculpted. Odo perceived the untold shapes around him, along with a flood of thoughts, an effect not unlike the indistinguishable gesticulations and voices of a mob. He tried to attune his own mind to the scuttle of form and contemplation surrounding and inundating him, and could make out only one consistent concept: the Progenitor.

Odo quickly concluded that locating Indurane amid the turbulence of the Great Link would not be a simple matter. Still joined with him, Laas shared this thought and concurred with it. In the next moment, Odo felt the emptiness he always felt at the dissipation of a link with another Founder, as Laas separated from him. Odo reached out—first to Laas, and then to the rest of the changeling mass—sending his body scattering, but still intact, in all directions, like a pool of water dropped into an ocean. His perceptions expanded as his senses joined with those around him, and then spread again as his connections with those changelings extended through their own swarm of connections.

Laas, he thought, even as he identified his fellow member of the Hundred rocketing through the Great Link, a sleek, streamlined projectile slicing horizontally along, like a waterborne torpedo. His rapid motion meshed with the environment of elation all about them. Laas, initially troubled by the notion of a Founder god, had grown exhilarated as he and Odo had discussed the subject, and had wanted to urge Indurane and the Link to determine whether or not the Progenitor had indeed returned. Odo, intrigued but skeptical, had questions for Indurane.

Beneath the surface of the Link, Laas suddenly changed direction. His projectile form veered upward and broke through the top of the changeling sea, surging into the air. Through the communal senses of his people, Odo watched without eyes as Laas’s flesh glistened, altering its contours. Thin, broad appendages appeared, stretching outward in a flash. The wings flapped once, twice, a third time, carrying Laas higher into the sky. Then he transformed again, rolling into a glowing sphere, almost too brilliant to view. The miniature sun hovered, and Odo marveled at Laas’s abilities, wondering precisely how he had constituted his body to emulate a burning star and at the same time remain suspended in the air. Gradually, the fiery orb increased in brightness, until it became clear that Laas intended the faux nova to mimic the real thing that still dominated the sky of the Founders’ world.

Around Odo, the Link grew more animated. He hunted for Indurane, and found his sensory pursuit directed back to the dual-peaked islet he frequented. There, a changeling climbed from the Great Link and onto land. It rose to a humanoid height, then shifted, most of its glowing orange facade darkening to the brown of the militia uniform Odo still simulated when he took Bajoran form, the rest of it lightening into the pale skin tones of a face and hands. When the alteration had completed, Odo saw a replica of himself standing there. He recognized the invitation to him, and knew Indurane to be the one offering it.

Odo drew his body into itself and hied toward the islet, until he lifted himself up onto land to face his own image. “You wanted to see me,” Odo said, not asking a question, but stating a fact. “Laas and I wanted to see you.”

As if in response, the changeling adjusted its form once more, the manifestation of Odo blurring momentarily, then clarifying into that of a male Bajoran, the same one that Indurane had previously taken. Beyond him, in the distance, the brilliant sphere Laas had become continued to increase in intensity. “You have information,” Indurane said, also not phrasing his words as a question.

“I do,” Odo said, and told him of the study of the Hundred that he and Laas had made, and their determination that if the placement of the array of unformed changelings throughout the galaxy had been intended as both a lure and a return map for the Progenitor, then it pointed directly to the region now containing the nova.

“We are aware of this,” Indurane said, clearly speaking for all of the Great Link. “We have kept that area under observation, and we knew of the nova’s existence when it first occurred, but it meant little to us until it appeared here, in our own sky. Since that moment, we have been drawn to it.”

Odo suddenly remembered what he had felt when he’d first spied the nova seemingly looming above the Founders’ world. His initial dread, motivated by a concern for his people, had given way to hopefulness once he’d transported down to the planet and viewed the star from that perspective. Apparently like Indurane and the rest of the Link, he’d also felt its pull on his awareness.

“We believe that the image of the starburst was implanted by the Progenitor in the minds of the Founders,” Indurane said, as though explaining Odo’s feelings, “just as we who sent out the Hundred implanted the image of the Omarion Nebula in their minds.” The notion bolstered the belief that the changeling god had created the Great Link in its own image. Past Indurane, Laas’s radiant form faded, then dropped back into the Link.

“And you believe that the Progenitor has returned there?” Odo asked, though the answer seemed clear.

“I do,” Indurane said. “We do.” He looked to the side, his gaze taking in the changeling deep surrounding the islet.

“What does the Link intend to do?” Odo wanted to know.

“We have contemplated that question for some time now,” Indurane said. “At the first appearance of the nova, some of us—and soon many of us—believed that the Progenitor had returned. We anticipated it making the final leg of Its journey back to us, but as time passed and that did not happen, some of us proposed that we consider another action besides waiting.”

Odo turned from Indurane and looked up into the twilight. The bright star stood out like an omen, and Odo wondered how much truth he faced here, and how much myth. Did the Progenitor exist in reality—had it ever?—or only as a figment in the history of the Founders? Odo didn’t know, but the feelings of Indurane and the rest of the Great Link could not have been more plain. Their weeks of restlessness, building to the crescendo of excitement and activity he’d just witnessed moments ago, revealed genuine belief not only in a Creator, but in Its impending return to them.

To one side, Odo saw movement, and he looked in that direction to see another Founder reaching out of the Link and onto land. Quickly, it morphed into the Varalan form of Laas. He stood partway around the islet, between Odo and Indurane.

Odo waited for Laas to look his way, and then said, “They already know,” explaining what Indurane had just told him.

Laas peered at Indurane. “What is the Great Link going to do?” he asked of the old Founder.

“We will travel to the region of the nova,” Indurane said. “We will find the Progenitor.”

Taran’atar disregarded the Founder’s seemingly aberrant behavior, including most especially her claims that her people were not gods. If necessary, he would revisit all of that later. But for right now, he had no choice but to push all of that aside and execute the duty for which he—for which all Jem’Hadar—had been created.

As he exited the cell, Taran’atar concentrated deeply. He visualized the Founder reverting to her natural state behind him, her humanoid figure liquefying into a nebulous pool of biomimetic ichor. Vaguely aware of the inner door of the antechamber closing after him, he focused his thoughts intensely. In the facility’s main control room, he presumed, at least one of the prison personnel would be surveying the monitors that allowed the cell to be kept under continuous surveillance. A picture of the Vulcan commander rose in his mind, and he quickly shifted his viewpoint in that mental scene to the image T’Kren saw on the security screen, namely that of the amorphous Founder.

Through the transparent outer door of the antechamber, Taran’atar saw Lieutenant Commander Matheson approaching. Lieutenant Jenek, the Orion, maintained a position behind her, fifteen meters away. Taran’atar noted the presence of the two Starfleet officers in a cursory way, at the periphery of his perceptions, but worked to ignore what his eyes witnessed, what his ears heard, what his skin felt, instead paying strict attention to the perfectly defined representation in his thoughts of the Founder’s shapeless mass spread out on the floor of the cell. Even as the outer door wound open and Matheson invited him to follow her, and even as he did so, he continued to keep the Founder’s gleaming form at the forefront of his consciousness.

Taran’atar took only passing notice as Matheson led him left at the T-shaped intersection, back down the corridor they’d taken when they’d walked here. As Jenek’s footsteps began to fall behind him, the lieutenant obviously following just as he had earlier, Taran’atar listened reflexively to the rhythmic pace of his own boots marching along the deck. He let his legs carry him forward mechanically, tracking along after Matheson. He followed her back through Ananke Alpha’s maze of corridors, his movements unthinking as he continued to envision the unformed changeling. He tramped back through two of the prison’s defensive emplacements—the one armed with phasers, and the one with heat—until they neared the third line of defense.

As Taran’atar stopped at Matheson’s order, he felt his mental grip on the image of the Founder begin to slip. Dimly aware of the door up ahead blocking the way, and of the lieutenant commander pushing a key into a slot in the bulkhead, he struggled to preserve his clear visualization of the Founder. He did not know how much longer he could sustain his efforts. Shrouding normally required a significant exertion of will, but far less, it turned out, than the task at hand. Taran’atar had never attempted what he did now, had not even known it possible until a few moments ago, having heard only unconfirmed rumors of Jem’Hadar who had utilized their shrouding capabilities for remote generation of images.

Activity up ahead penetrated his awareness. He plainly heard Matheson identify herself and request access to the defensive emplacement, distinctly felt vibrations through the decking as the door began to slide slowly into the bulkhead. Too far, he thought, intuitively understanding that his capacity to project a realistic image relied not only on his ability to concentrate, but also on his distance from the location to which he projected that image.

“Let’s continue,” Matheson called back to him, and she strode through the now-open doorway.

Taran’atar had almost reached the same point himself when a knot of pain tightened behind his forehead. Given the level of focus needed at his ever-increasing remove from the cell, the sensation became impossible to ignore. At the same time, he realized that he had moved beyond his range. Elsewhere in the prison, he knew, one or more security officers would see the glistering form of the Founder vanish from her cell. The instant before the red alert sliced through the corridor—and doubtless through the entire complex—Taran’atar knew that it would. It provided him just enough time to act.

He sprang forward, toward the doorway and, beyond it, Matheson. Then, as the klaxon sounded, he redirected his thoughts and shrouded, rendering himself invisible. He lunged to his right, to the side of the corridor, just in time to avoid the phaser blast that seared the air where he had just stood. He whirled around and sprinted along the bulkhead toward Jenek, while the security officer continued discharging his weapon, sweeping it left and right. Taran’atar had closed to within a couple of meters of his objective when the yellow-red beam swung toward him, chest high.

Desperate not only to break the Founder from captivity, but to protect her from harm in doing so—she currently blanketed the front his coverall, matching its texture and hue—he dove onto the deck. The powerful shaft of light streaked centimeters above him, its whine audible even over the sound of the red alert. Knowing that his shroud had dropped, he drove his boots against the decking and hurled himself forward. He struck Jenek below the knees, and the security officer toppled forward, his phaser shooting wildly for a second before his finger lost contact with its firing pad.

Taran’atar spun around and reached for the lieutenant’s hand, pulling the phaser from his grasp. Then he sent an arm around the security officer’s throat and quickly stood, dragging him upward. “Move,” Taran’atar growled into Jenek’s ear, “and I’ll snap your neck.” Towering over the stocky Orion, Taran’atar pulled him up off his feet, providing himself cover for his own upper body and head, and more importantly, for the Founder.

Almost at once, two phaser strikes surged past from behind him. Both narrowly missed Taran’atar, but Jenek cried out in obvious pain as one of them grazed his shoulder. Taran’atar looked back and immediately spotted some of the many weapons ports he’d seen on his way to the Founder’s cell. He held Jenek up as a shield before those ports situated ahead of him, and fired at those situated behind him. In swift succession, one emitter after another erupted in a hail of sparks. Taran’atar then turned his phaser on all the rest, quickly disabling the weapons, as well as the surveillance and sensor ports.

When he’d finished, he glanced around Jenek, and saw Matheson racing back into the corridor from within the defensive emplacement. He’d hoped that she might have been caught in the lieutenant’s phaser fire, but they had surely trained for events such as this, and that hadn’t happened. Matheson fired her weapon twice, both shots high and to the left of Taran’atar and his captive. As he had so many times since coming to the Alpha Quadrant, he felt contempt for the weakness he continually observed here; Matheson had clearly targeted away from her colleague, unwilling to chance hitting Jenek, but at the risk of failing to fulfill her duties.

After firing, she turned to the control panel in the bulkhead beside the door. At the same time, Jenek launched an attack, kicking backward with both boots at Taran’atar’s shins, sending an elbow into his gut, and biting down hard on the arm tightly circling his neck. Taran’atar felt the air rush from his lungs as the lieutenant reached backward and tried to wrestle the phaser from his hand. Gasping for air, Taran’atar let the weapon drop to the deck, then reached around Jenek’s face with his empty hand, took hold of his ear, and pulled sharply. Even with the blare of the alarm klaxon, he could hear the Orion’s neck break, the sound like wood crackling in a fire.

Taran’atar threw the inert body of the lieutenant to the side, where it struck the bulkhead. Unencumbered, he shrouded, took a deep breath, retrieved the phaser, then sped toward Matheson, who still worked at the panel. When the door beside her began to close, Taran’atar raised his weapon and fired, his shroud dropping in the process. The phaser shot struck Matheson squarely in the rib cage, and she crumpled.

Hurrying ahead, Taran’atar stepped over the body of the dead security officer, wisps of smoke rising from her blackened uniform. He examined the control panel. The indicator light there glowed amber, and the key that Matheson had used still sat in its slot. He reached for the key and turned it, producing a click, but the indicator light remained amber, and the door continued to glide closed. Taran’atar could still pass through this door, but he would never make it to the far side of the line of defense before the door there closed.

Quickly, he reached down, took hold of Matheson’s arm, and pulled it toward the plate next to the control panel. He felt her shoulder give way beneath his efforts, her humerus ripping free of her scapula. As he thrust her hand down on the plate, her arm articulated in an unnatural way, her muscles and flesh seeming to hold her arm barely connected to her body.

The light flashed from amber to green. Beside Taran’atar, the door stopped moving, then reversed direction and began to open again. He let go of Matheson’s arm, which flopped to the deck with a thud. Then he darted sidelong through the doorway.

Taran’atar looked to the other side of the defensive emplacement, his gaze following the blue forcefield lines on either side of the walkway that led there. Seeing the far door sliding open, he started forward, and felt again the slight give in the nonmetallic surface of the decking here. He ran with his head down, intent on reaching the next corridor. The alert klaxon echoed loudly here, though with a slightly tinny effect in the large space.

A third of the way across the span, Taran’atar saw the parallel lines of blue lighting darken, the forcefields obviously deactivated. A mechanical hum rose, a vibration more felt than heard. Ahead of him, a fissure seemed to carve through the walkway, and it split in two, the halves beginning to retract toward each of the doorways.

Taran’atar did not break stride. By the time he reached the gap, the sections of the walkway had moved apart more than twelve meters. Timing his gait, he brought one foot down just short of the open space, then leaped. He knew immediately that he would not come down on the other section of walkway. Spreading his arms wide, he dropped the phaser and braced himself. His chest struck the edge of the other section, and he clamped his hands down onto its sides.

As he swung his legs up and around onto the bridge, he heard the phaser clattering somewhere below him. He gave brief thought to the Founder’s safety—she still adhered to the fabric covering his torso—but knew that such a physical impact would have no effect on her. He clambered back up onto the walkway. The far door had begun to close, he saw, but he knew that he could cover the distance between here and there in time to make it through and into the corridor.

That was when the radiation emitters powered up.

The area brightened, and a heavy drone filled the air. Taran’atar crossed his arms over his chest, which slowed his pace, but he had to do whatever he could to protect the Founder. While a physical blow would not harm her, radiation certainly would.

Fifteen meters from the door, his body began to tingle, as though he had been enveloped by insects. Ten meters away, the sensation intensified, rapidly becoming painful, as though the insects had begun to devour his flesh. He soldiered forward, attempting to ignore the agony. At five meters, feeling as though he’d been set ablaze, he stopped, needing a moment to collect himself for the final part of his flight, even as he knew that his cells had begun to deteriorate, attacked without mercy by the radiation. But he’d lost Jenek’s phaser, and he had to conclude that the Founder had not shapeshifted because she could not; Taran’atar had heard of fields that could prevent a changeling from altering form, and he reasoned that such a field had been activated within the prison once the Founder’s escape had become known.

Pushing away the pain and refocusing his thoughts, Taran’atar shrouded once more, although not in invisibility. He took one more moment to assure himself of his concentration, then dashed forward. He flung himself through the almost-closed doorway and landed on the rigid decking of the corridor.

He waited for phaser blasts to slam into him. None came.

Slowly, he got to his feet, veiled in the likeness of Lieutenant Commander Matheson. He’d imagined her badly injured: one arm hanging limply at her side, a hand gripping the damaged shoulder, a wounded leg unable to carry her along without a limp, a charred, bloody hole in her side from an energy weapon. He mimicked the movements attendant with such injuries, leaning heavily against a bulkhead as he staggered along. His own pain simplified his efforts, making it easier for him to keep up the charade.

Lurching ahead, he let the clamor of the red-alert signal carry his concentration. At the end of the corridor, he stumbled around the corner and turned right. Just a few meters away, two doors stood closed in the left-hand bulkhead. The first led to the room where he’d donned the bright-red coverall, and the second, he felt certain, to the control room.

Aware that he’d likely been under observation since exiting the radiation emplacement, he continued to limp along. He passed the first door, and stopped at the second. A panel, similar to those that Matheson had operated on the way to and from the Founder’s cell, sat in the bulkhead next to the door. Taran’atar reached for it, brushed his hand against one corner, then let his legs buckle. He tumbled heavily to the deck, and lay there, unmoving, his back against the bulkhead.

Only seconds passed before the door to the control room retracted. “Jackie,” said the female Tellarite he’d seen earlier. She crouched down beside him, a phaser in one hand, and reached with two fingers of her empty hand toward what she clearly saw as Matheson’s neck, evidently wanting to measure the security officer’s pulse. When she’d come close enough, Taran’atar sent his arm flying upward, his shroud falling as his fingers wrapped around the Tellarite’s thick, soft neck. He squeezed, and felt the cartilage of her larynx give way beneath his grip. She coughed once, feebly, spitting out mucus tinged with the lavender color of her blood. The phaser dropped from her hand.

In the control room, barely audible beneath the alarm, Taran’atar heard commotion—voices and movements—and isolated the sounds to determine the presence of at least two other officers. His hand still around the neck of the sputtering Tellarite, Taran’atar swiped the phaser from the deck and jumped to his feet.

As soon as he stepped into the doorway, a phaser blast screamed in his direction, but struck the back of the dying security officer he held up before him. The scent of burning flesh filled the air. Taran’atar leveled his own weapon past the now-motionless Tellarite and returned fire. Across the room, the beam landed on a console, which exploded. The red-alert klaxon abruptly ceased here, though he could still here it in the distance. A flame reached almost to the overhead as smoke billowed upward.

Another shot rang out, seemingly louder now that the alarm had silenced within the room. A streak of phased energy scorched the air beside Taran’atar, then moved toward him. The beam caught him in the side before he could block it with the body of the Tellarite, and it felt as though a hole had been cut open along his rib cage. He ignored the pain, concerned only for the protection of the Founder and making good her flight from imprisonment. He fired his phaser again, and another console blew up beneath the assault. Thick smoke filled the room.

Taran’atar waited for the next phaser blast, then flung the body of the Tellarite hard in that direction. He threw himself to the side and onto the deck, his eyes and ears seeking a target through the murky, pungent smoke. He tried to shroud but could not; coupled with the damage done to his body by the radiation, the throbbing ache in his side would not allow him to concentrate enough to project his veil of invisibility.

Another phaser fired. The beam passed well above Taran’atar, but he tracked the yellow-red ray back to its source and discharged his own weapon. He heard the dull sound of a body as it thumped onto the deck.

A sudden calm seemed to overtake the scene, the only sounds that of his labored breathing and the occasional spark from one of the destroyed consoles, underscored by the far-off cry of the alarm. Although it was possible that his shots had incapacitated both of the officers here, he believed that one still opposed him. He waited, alert for any noise, any movement, and when none came, he tried again to shroud. As he did so, a blur flashed toward him from the side, and he felt something collide with his hand. The phaser he’d taken from the Tellarite flew from his grasp before he could act. He watched it land several meters away, then turned toward his enemy, who had already stepped back away from him.

“Where is the Founder?” the Vulcan woman, T’Kren, asked. She spoke with a level voice, even amid the chaos that had erupted in the control room. She carried her phaser in her left hand, its emitter trained on him.

Taran’atar did not bother to respond, instead calculating his best chance to overcome the Vulcan and depart Ananke Alpha. Any assault he launched now would easily be beaten back, particularly in his wounded condition. He peered down at his body, and saw that large patches of his rough, gray hide had blackened, some oozing a viscous, amber fluid, all doubtless a result of his exposure to the radiation. One of the shoulder straps of his coverall hung down loosely. Pieces of the garment had been torn away in places, and a hole opened where the phaser shot had punched into his side. He feared for the Founder, unsure if she remained spread across the fabric of the coverall, or if she had fallen away during the fight.

“I will ask you only once more,” the Vulcan declared, and Taran’atar looked up at her. “Where is—”

Sudden movement interrupted her. She turned quickly, bringing her weapon around, but too late. The malleable, orange-gold strip, meters long and only centimeters wide, streaked from a place on the floor straight up to the Vulcan’s phaser. The changeling twisted speedily around the fingers holding the weapon, preventing them from firing it.

Taran’atar scrambled up and across the room, to where T’Kren had knocked the phaser from his own hand. He picked it up, turned, and fired at the Vulcan. The beam struck her in the head and sent her reeling backward, out of the Founder’s grasp, dead even before her body hit the bulkhead and crashed to the deck.

A moment later, the Founder stood before him, wearing the guise of the smooth-faced humanoid he’d seen in her cell. “You’re hurt,” she said, the words seeming a statement more of fact than of concern. “Can you go on?” she asked.

“Victory is life,” he told her. “I serve you for as long as I stand, and I will stand at least as long as it takes to return you to the Dominion.”

“Then let us depart,” she said.

“Yes, Founder,” he replied, then hastened over to the consoles. Two had been completely destroyed, one of which had obviously controlled the field that had until now prevented the Founder from shapeshifting during their escape. Taran’atar made a fast study of the controls and readouts on the intact consoles, identifying all internal and external weapons systems, as well as Ananke Alpha’s deflector screens. He deactivated all of them, then checked a map of the corridors, and worked to open the three doors between here and the shuttlebay, including the one opposite the door through which he’d entered the control room. When he finished, he turned back to the Founder. “I have a spacecraft waiting,” he said.

“Lead the way,” she ordered.

Taran’atar raced from the control room into a short corridor, which angled left to an open door and intersected with the first corridor he’d entered in the facility. He retraced his steps, noting in the center of the deck the red line he’d followed earlier. Finally, phaser drawn, he marched through another doorway and into the shuttlebay, the Founder right behind him.

Rio Grande sat in the same location and position as when it had landed, its forward port hatch open. Kira stood outside the runabout, clearly having just disembarked the ship. She carried no weapon.

Taran’atar stopped and looked at her, feeling the presence of the Founder beside him. Kira stared at him for a moment, then glanced at the Founder, and finally back at him again.

“Taran’atar,” she said, her utterance of his name easily conveying her disappointment.

He did not respond.

“I’m ordering you to stand down,” she continued, “and to return the Founder to her cell.” She said nothing about Odo’s directive to do as Kira commanded, but Taran’atar recalled well the parameters of the mission on which Odo had sent him. Disobeying Kira now would be the same as disobeying Odo—the same as disobeying a Founder. He had never done such a thing during the twenty-two years of his life.

“Kill her,” said the Founder at his side. “Kill her, and let’s get out of here.”

Taran’atar’s resolve wavered. He’d now essentially been giving conflicting orders by two different Founders, and he felt unsure how to proceed. He attempted to cover his indecision by examining the power level of the phaser, which he saw had been set to kill. He did not change it.

Hadn’t he come here for this? he asked himself. Hadn’t he wanted this Founder to issue him orders to return to the Dominion, orders that would contradict Odo’s? And hadn’t he intended to follow such orders? He had not thought that he would have to kill Captain Kira, but did that matter? He had believed that he would simply be able to leave her behind, but now he’d been given a different order.

“Kill her,” the Founder said again.

Taran’atar raised the phaser—still set to kill—and aimed it at Kira. He looked at her face—that face—and finally found the sense of duty he needed to take action. He would do what he had to do, and then escape on the runabout with the Founder and return to the Dominion.

Taran’atar applied pressure to the triggering pad, and his weapon roared to life, its lethal beam springing from the emitter. The captain had no time to move. The shot struck her directly in the chest.

As Taran’atar watched, Kira collapsed to the deck of the shuttlebay, dead.

One of the changelings—not Laas or Indurane, but one of the three others in the small link with Odo—conveyed the impression of a pit. Flattening itself in a curved, irregular shape, it depressed the majority of its planar surface a few centimeters down from its raised outer border. From a macroscopic perspective, it would have taken on little meaning in terms of scale, but when observed from within, from a viewpoint of the infinitesimal, it took on grand proportions: soaring walls impossible to ascend, its floor vast, desolate, and inescapable.

Surveying the gaping cavity, Odo wondered about its intended meaning. As he watched, something began to rise from the center of the barren plane, something changeable and strong, growing sizable enough to dominate its surroundings. Odo recognized the imagery even before the burning star formed beside it, and even before the star flared into a nova: the Progenitor, rising high to look beneficently down on the Founders, ready to save the Great Link from the abyss of their future extinction.

Most of the changelings present responded with movement, their unstructured bodies swaying frantically in jubilation. Odo himself shifted, but not as the others did. He seeped through them, until finally he rolled clear, his body curled into a tight golden sphere. He then weaved around the writhing mass toward a far corner of the large, empty cabin, settling near the intersection of two bulkheads. Exhausted by the frenzied expectancy exhibited constantly by all of the Founders here—all of them but for Laas—he retained his round shape for a while, resting quietly as he attempted to distance himself from the tumult of their potent emotions.

Beside him, the gathering of changelings continued to undulate. Indurane and the three others had been selected by the Great Link to travel to the region of the nova, in search of the Progenitor, and Odo and Laas had chosen to accompany them. Once the decision had been made, Odo had suggested Jem’Hadar Attack Vessel 971, based upon his familiarity with its personnel, and there had been no objection. He’d transported up to the ship first and prepared for the journey, informing Weyoun of their destination, but keeping from him and the Jem’Hadar crew the reason for the undertaking. Odo had also secured individual quarters for himself and for Laas, since they both still broke from the Link on a recurrent basis, and would likely do so during their travels, even with the smaller link. Additionally, Odo had arranged this roomy cabin for the other four changelings, knowing that they would neither require nor want separate accommodations.

To this point, the voyage had been uneventful, though hardly restful. Indurane and the other three Founders had joined together immediately upon arriving here, and none of them had since parted from the others. Laas had spent most of his time with them as well, Odo less so. Besides needing to keep his own counsel in his own manner, he had never before experienced such an arduous, draining connection with his people. The vigor and endurance with which Indurane and the others communed about the Progenitor—characteristics that echoed the current state of the Great Link—had driven Odo from them several times now. He found their manic, obsessive behavior difficult to deal with, and fundamentally incomprehensible.

Realizing that he would find no further respite, Odo reached upward, fracturing the perfect shape of the globe he had become. He adjusted his variable body, remaking himself into the imprecise Bajoran form he’d worn for decades. He peered down at the Founders joined together—the metaphorical gulf, the nova, and the Progenitor all lost now to their physical fluctuations—and felt very far from them, and from the rest of his people. Since his return to the Founders after the war, he’d frequently been at odds with them. He’d sought answers, presented arguments, and propounded suggestions about the future of the Great Link and its relationships with the rest of the galaxy, and often, he’d found himself a minority of one, his ideas disregarded and disdained, his motivations questioned. And yet despite that, he’d still felt united to them. Now, though, he did not. In this strange and unexpected circumstance, he felt far more at variance with them than ever he had before, felt…distinct…from them in a way he never had.

Odo had never favored the Dominion’s war with the denizens of the Alpha Quadrant, of course, had never agreed with the Founders’ opinion of their superiority over humanoids, but he’d at least understood the justifications for their isolationist and xenophobic practices. After all, throughout their history, they had been persecuted, hunted, and murdered by solids. But this conviction, not only that the Progenitor had returned, but that It even existed at all…that the Founders believed in a Creator, Whom they now also looked upon as their Savior…Odo had trouble crediting such a situation. He would have thought it all a lie, some sort of elaborate ruse meant to mislead him in order to fulfill some hidden agenda, if not for his own experience with the Link. Alongside their fervent hopes that the Progenitor had returned, Odo had felt their passionate certainty in Its existence. They had no doubts, and that concerned him.

As he gazed down again at the moving, twisting pool before him, a bitter emptiness seemed to imbue his body, as though he had shapeshifted himself into merely a shell. He had not yet really coped with the revelation that the Founders could not reproduce, and would therefore one day die out. Though he knew that individual changelings lived long lives—very long lives, by humanoid standards—it grieved him to know that his people would face not only each of their own deaths, but that of their entire species. It made more sense now than ever that the Great Link took so very seriously the death of even a single Founder. It also seemed quite reasonable that such an extreme and final reality could have given rise to the concept of the Progenitor, both as the beginning of the Great Link, and as its rescue from oblivion.

And yet the very rationalization for the belief in a Creator undermined the reality of a Creator. For while the fear of death—both individual and communal death—provided an easily understandable motivation for theism, it did not provide any evidence to reasonably justify it. Quite the opposite, it suggested that belief resulted from need and desire, and not from truth—that the Founders believed in a Creator because they wanted to believe, not because of any strong evidence. Even the Bajorans, staunch in their faith in the divinity of the Prophets, did not hold that their deities had created the universe or their people. Nor did they look upon the Prophets to save them, but simply to help and guide them through their lives. Given the intellect and strength of the Founders, and even considering their eventual extinction, it seemed inexplicable to Odo that they actually believed in a Deity—particularly their version of It. For what kind of a God abandons Its people for thousands of years, or longer?

More worrisome to him, though, was what the reaction of the Great Link would be when Indurane and the others did not locate the Progenitor. The Founders would doubtless continue the search for some time, but it would in due course become clear that they would find nothing. Would they conclude that they had been wrong about the Progenitor’s return, or about Its existence? And how would they react in either case, whether to the notion that their God continued to disregard them, or to the realization that It did not really exist? With their current level of assurance and excitement, Odo could not imagine a positive outcome.

For the third time in recent days, he thought of his conversation with Nerys in Dax’s closet. What he asked himself now about the Founders, he had essentially asked of Nerys that night. And while her response—denial—did not have repercussions for her people, he worried that the same would not be true of the Great Link.

Odo gazed down at Laas, Indurane, and the other three Founders moving together on the floor of the cabin, their shining bodies moving as one. Quick to draw conclusions, and even quicker to extreme action, they caused Odo to fear what might soon happen. With the promise of the Progenitor taken from them, how would they react? Would they withdraw even more from the rest of the galaxy, or would they choose to preemptively rid themselves of any threats to their existence, once more sending armies of Jem’Hadar out to eliminate any who could conceivably cause harm to the Great Link, and thereby hasten its demise? And how, Odo asked himself, could he act to prevent either course, or any other terrible turn of events that might occur?

“Weyoun to Odo,” came the Vorta’s voice over the comm system, interrupting Odo’s thoughts.

“I’m here, Weyoun,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“You asked me to inform you when we approached the nova, Founder,” Weyoun said. “We have just closed to within sensor range of the system.”

“Thank you,” Odo said. “I’ll join you on the bridge.” He started past the linked changelings and toward the door. As he did so, though, the pool of biomimetic cells quickly separated into five segments, like identically charged particles repelling each other. At different rates, the individual Founders expanded upward, each taking humanoid shape. Indurane and two of the others took on inexact Bajoran forms, while Laas and the remaining changling approximated Varalans.

“I’ll keep you informed,” Odo told the group as the door opened before him. But they paid him no heed, and as he stepped into the corridor on his way to the bridge, all five changelings followed. Soon enough, Odo thought, he would find out how they would react to not finding the Progenitor.

He dreaded what that reaction would be.