Sacraments of Fire Read online

  “It is difficult to know the minds of the Prophets,” Cenn said. “I would simply counsel you that it is enough to trust Them.”

  Cenn could see the difficulty the captain—a nonbeliever, despite her protestations otherwise—would have with such a perspective. “Desca, the Bajoran man carried a weapon similar to the one used to kill President Bacco.”

  “How similar?”

  “Similar enough to get Jeff’s attention, and my own,” Ro said. “It’s a projectile weapon.”

  Cenn understood why the captain would be slow to accept Altek’s possession of such a firearm as a coincidence. Before long, she would be charged with the responsibility for nearly thirteen thousand lives—ten thousand civilian residents and twenty-five hundred crew members. Not only that, but the president of the Federation had been assassinated on a starbase under Captain Ro’s command.

  “If Altek is from Bajor’s past,” Cenn said quietly, “then it might make sense that he’d be carrying that type of weapon.”

  “It might,” Ro said, though she sounded less than convinced. “It is imperative that we find out before we have to release him.”

  “How are you holding him now?” Cenn asked.

  “I took him into custody for illegally bringing a weapon onto the starbase,” Ro said. “It’s the thinnest of pretexts, considering that he didn’t actually board Deep Space Nine of his own volition.”

  “Which means that, since we can’t actually charge him with a crime, we can’t hold him for more than three days.” Federation law prescribed such procedures quite clearly.

  “No, we can’t,” Ro said. “Desca, I want you to coordinate with Jeff on this. He’ll interrogate—”

  The tones of the ship’s comm system interrupted the captain. “Viss to Captain Ro,” said the voice of DS9’s communications officer.

  “Ro here. Go ahead.”

  “Captain, Admiral Akaar will be available to speak with you in forty minutes,” Viss said.

  “Very good,” Ro acknowledged. “Confirm the meeting and open a comm channel at the appropriate time.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Ro out.” To Cenn, she said, “Jeff will interrogate the man, as well as oversee a thorough search of all available records to see if we can confirm or establish his true identity. I know you have significant knowledge about Bajor’s historical past, so do what you can to help.”

  “Yes, sir.” Understanding that the discussion had come to an end, Cenn stood up from his chair. As he started toward the door, the captain called after him.

  “Desca, be broad in interpreting whatever information you find,” she said. “If there’s even the slightest possibility that this man poses a threat to this starbase or the people on it, I can’t let him go.”

  Commander Gregory Desjardins of the Judge Advocate General’s office would have something to say about that, Cenn knew, but he took the captain’s point. “I’ll do my best,” he told her. Then he continued on through the doors and back out into the Hub.

  2

  Odo wore his quasi-Bajoran guise as he padded purposefully through the dimly lighted corridor, following the Starfleet security officer through the starship’s simulated evening environment. The humanoid form he’d first created decades prior, and that he’d honed over time, felt both foreign and familiar to him. Since departing Deep Space 9 nearly ten years earlier and heading for the Dominion, he had spent more than half his time in some other shape, or in no shape at all. But he had shifted to his approximate Bajoran appearance on a daily basis for such a long period—during his many years aboard Terok Nor and DS9—that it had eventually become almost effortless for him to assume and maintain.

  Too effortless, according to Laas, Odo thought. A fellow member of the Hundred, Laas relished his shape-shifting abilities, rarely holding one form for very long or repeating it too often. He also preferred not to take on humanoid contours unless absolutely necessary. Many of the Founders felt the same way, favoring their base, amorphous state over any other, principally so that they could unite with each other in the Great Link.

  The Great Link. Just thinking about the communal nature of his people evoked a complex mix of emotions within Odo. For most of his conscious existence, he had set himself the mission of finding them, and when he finally had, their distrustful, insular attitudes and their violent, controlling ways had been difficult for him to accept. Through the inexpressible joys and wonders of linking with them, of becoming one with them, he came to better understand them, and to yearn almost desperately for the time when he could join them for good.

  Even through the Dominion War, Odo’s dream of reuniting with his people had endured, despite that he’d chosen to oppose them in the conflict. It satisfied him not only that he assisted in stopping them from completely laying waste to the Alpha Quadrant, but also that he helped to cure them of the terrible disease that threatened to end their existence entirely. For a time, he also harbored the fantasy that he would be able to improve their relationships in the universe beyond themselves, but he didn’t realize until too late that such a transformation would have to begin within them.

  The Starfleet lieutenant guiding Odo through the starship approached the end of the corridor, where a set of doors parted and slid open before them. Odo entered the turbolift after the officer, who ordered the cab to take them to Deck 9. The lift immediately began to ascend. Without thinking about it, Odo adjusted the fluidic dispersion throughout his body to compensate for the effects of acceleration.

  After the end of the Dominion War, it had been wrenching for Odo to leave Kira Nerys, but his choice to return to the Founders had been the only one he could reasonably make. He loved Nerys, but he believed that his people needed him, and he knew without doubt that he needed them. Although he left Deep Space 9 with heavy emotions, he did so in expectation of a fuller life ahead of him.

  When Odo had reunited with the Founders, he’d learned a great deal more about them, and also about himself. Even as he basked in the abiding sense of community and the incomparable feeling of completeness that the Great Link provided, he discovered himself wanting more. It seemed gluttonous, hungering for something beyond the fulfillment of his deepest, lifelong wishes, but the existence he had lived among “solids” had helped to define him as much as the truth of his Changeling character. For the Cardassians, for the Bajorans, and for the Federation, he had functioned as an officer of the law, but he had done so in order to serve a greater purpose—justice—and the desire to continue filling that purpose remained within him.

  The turbolift eased to a stop, and the lieutenant exited the cab into another corridor. Odo followed along after him. He mused to himself that he didn’t require an escort, but he also understood the need for security, especially after the recent tragic events aboard Deep Space 9. Odo had heard a report earlier that day that the Bajoran woman accused of President Bacco’s murder had been absolved, and so he wondered who, if anybody, would face justice for the crime.

  Back in the Dominion, Odo’s ideas of justice had extended to the everyday lives of its citizens. Under the rule of the Founders, the empire’s constituent members amounted to little more than slaves. In some cases, as with Rindamil III and Overne III, the Changeling leaders seized worlds and populations to serve the needs of the Dominion. The Rindamil provided food to sustain important members of the empire, such as the Overne, who manufactured starships and weaponry. In other cases, the Founders bred species to satisfy particular needs. They had genetically engineered the Vorta from lesser, ape-like creatures, elevating their abilities so that they could manage many of the day-to-day affairs of the Dominion. That included overseeing the Jem’Hadar, the powerful, determined race that the Founders had made dependent on an enzyme called ketracel-white, and then sharpened to operate as the empire’s frontline soldiers. Both species had also been implanted with the compulsion to worship the Changelings as gods.

/>   Even before leaving DS9 and rejoining the Great Link, Odo had observed the narrow, empty lives led by the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar. Still, he had seen potential in them. When an infant Jem’Hadar ended up on the station amid a horde of salvage, Odo essentially tried to raise it, to nurture it, to demonstrate that an individual Jem’Hadar could reach beyond its manipulated genetic blueprint. He failed in the attempt, but years later, when a Vorta clone sought asylum in the Federation because he opposed the Dominion War, Odo felt vindicated in his belief that even members of such programmed species could still achieve more than they had been designed to do.

  When he had arrived in the Dominion after the war, Odo had sent a single Jem’Hadar—an elder named Taran’atar aberrantly not dependent on ketracel-white—to act as a cultural observer on Deep Space 9. His intent had been threefold: to sow greater peace and understanding between the Federation and the Dominion, to wean people in the Alpha Quadrant from their distrust and fear of the Jem’Hadar, and to advance Taran’atar’s personal development. Odo hoped that witnessing the everyday existence of others, as well as living in a different environment, one in which he was not relegated to the role of expendable soldier, would help him expand his worldview and perhaps even generate within Taran’atar new interests, or even aspirations.

  Back in the Dominion, Odo had selected Rotan’talag, another Jem’Hadar free of ketracel-white, one much younger than Taran’atar. He also chose a Vorta, the latest of the Weyoun clones. Odo worked with those two individuals more than any others, attempting to guide them to something more than the protection and management of the empire. By degrees, he tried to expose them to new experiences, to new ways of thinking, to new ways of feeling.

  And I failed miserably, Odo thought. I was a fool to think that I could have any real impact on the Jem’Hadar and the Vorta. Just as the fledgling Jem’Hadar on DS9 all those years before had quickly gravitated to the nature bred into him, so too did Rotan’talag and Weyoun frequently revert to form. At times, Odo thought his influence might be fostering progress, but at others, he perceived some sort of course-correcting mechanism within each of them that did not allow them to stray too far from the original purpose for which the Founders had created them.

  But what about Taran’atar? he asked himself, not for the first time. Odo could not deny that something fundamental had changed within the Jem’Hadar. By all accounts, he had endured a great deal during his tenure on Deep Space 9 and in the Alpha Quadrant. According to reports he received from Kira Nerys, Taran’atar struggled with the freedoms granted him, both by Odo and by the crew of the station. He evidently fought a battle within himself, his genetic encoding at odds with the mission Odo had set him. On top of that, a mad Cardassian woman, a failed Obsidian Order operative, managed to brainwash Taran’atar to do her bidding, although he eventually escaped her clutches. He also visited the imprisoned Founder leader, held as a war criminal by the Federation, where she told the Jem’Hadar more about his gods than he could possibly accept.

  In the end, the sum total of all those experiences had set Taran’atar on his own path. He violated his fealty to the Founders by defying Odo’s orders, absconding from Deep Space 9, but not returning to the Dominion. Instead, he created a new function for himself—a function that, although it made use of his military skills, nevertheless fell outside his genetic programming. He apparently behaved in those last few hundred days as his own being, as somebody who not only controlled his own destiny, but knew that he did.

  Because of that, his final act demonstrated just how far he had come. The report of his death disappointed Odo, but the reason behind Taran’atar’s demise, the how and why of it, gave Odo cause for hope. It heartened him, and made him believe that he should continue his work with Rotan’talag and Weyoun.

  But Odo hadn’t seen either of them for two years, since he’d ended up in the Alpha Quadrant with his route back to the Dominion—the Bajoran wormhole—collapsed behind him. Except that’s not the only way I could have returned to the Gamma Quadrant, he told himself. The Federation had offered to employ one of Starfleet’s new slipstream-equipped starships to deliver him back to the Dominion, a distance of seventy thousand light-years, in a matter of days.

  But Odo had demurred. He chose to relinquish, at least temporarily, his responsibilities to Rotan’talag and Weyoun and the rest of the Dominion—including Laas and the few remaining Founders—and stay in the Alpha Quadrant. His decision weighed on him, but it also seemed right.

  Focused on his thoughts, Odo almost walked into the security officer when he stopped before a door on the left-hand side of the corridor. The lieutenant reached up and tapped a small signal pad set into the bulkhead. A moment later, the door panels split and glided open to reveal Captain Sisko. Dressed not in his Starfleet uniform but in civilian clothes, he wore dark slacks and a patterned, brightly colored tunic.

  “Odo, welcome aboard,” he said. Then, to the security officer, “Thank you, Mister Stannis.”

  The lieutenant acknowledged the order and set himself at attention beside the door. Sisko invited Odo in and stepped aside as the Changeling entered the large cabin. Directly ahead, along the outer bulkhead, stretched a series of tall ports, below which sat a sofa and several overstuffed chairs arrayed around a low table. Single-paneled doors on both sides of the compartment obviously led to sleeping quarters, one for the captain and his wife, and the other for their young daughter. A blank glowpane hung on one of the doors. A desk sat against the inner bulkhead to the right, and a dining table filled the near corner to the left. Odo saw two used place settings on the table. The rich scent of cooking filled the air.

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” Odo said, gesturing toward the table.

  “Not at all,” Sisko said. “I was just finishing dinner with Rebecca when you contacted me.” The captain did not mention his wife, Kasidy Yates, and Odo didn’t ask, but he knew that she had taken on new responsibilities aboard the Galaxy-class Robinson.

  “I did not mean to interrupt.”

  “And you haven’t,” Sisko insisted. “As I said, we were just finishing when you asked to see me.” He motioned toward the sitting area. “Why don’t we have a seat and you can tell me what you wanted to discuss.” Sisko sat down on the sofa, and Odo chose one of the chairs. Behind the captain, the imposing main sphere of the new Deep Space 9 filled several of the ports.

  “Thank you, Captain. I—”

  The sound of a door easing open interrupted Odo, and he looked around to see Sisko’s daughter entering through one of the side doors—the one on which hung an empty glowpane. “Hi, Mister Odo,” she said, bounding into the compartment, wearing a red jumper over a white blouse. She looked like an amalgam, in miniature, of her parents. Like her mother’s, Rebecca’s dark hair reached down to her shoulders and framed her face, which featured Yates’ slim nose and high cheekbones, and Sisko’s rich, dark skin tone and arresting eyes. Though no expert in such matters, Odo thought her small for her age. She had been born on Bajor nine years ago that month, but she probably had yet to reach a hundred and twenty-five centimeters.

  “Hello, Rebecca,” Odo said.

  “I thought I told you that Mister Odo and I needed some privacy to talk,” Sisko said, though his words lacked any harshness.

  “I know,” Rebecca said, coming to a stop beside Odo. “I just wanted to ask a question and then I’ll go back to my room.” Without waiting for permission from her father, she said, “Mister Odo, what have you turned into lately?”

  “Rebecca,” the captain snapped. “I think that may be a rude question.” During the seven years he had served with Sisko aboard DS9, Odo had made no secret of his desire to maintain his privacy, particularly with respect to his shape-shifting nature. “Mister Odo may not want to discuss such matters.”

  “Why not?” The girl looked at her father with a confused expression. Then, of Odo, she asked, “You like changing into other things
, don’t you?”

  “It’s all right, Captain,” Odo said. “Yes, I do enjoy taking on different forms.” He actually liked Rebecca. Although he often found it hard to understand the motivations of children, he appreciated their directness. While he had heard similar questions from children during his years on DS9, they typically asked out of a sense of wonder or momentary curiosity. Rebecca seemed different. Her questions carried a weight with them, as though she did not seek the answer simply to one question, but strived to put the knowledge she learned into a broader context. Her intellect seemed advanced for her young age.

  “So what have you been lately?” she persisted.

  “Over the last few days, while I’ve been on Deep Space Nine, I have only made myself into this humanoid form,” Odo said, putting a splayed hand to his chest.

  Rebecca scowled slightly, as though the answer did not satisfy her. “What about before that? What was the last other thing you became?”

  Odo thought back. A week earlier, he had been contacted on Bajor by Captain Sisko, who delivered an invitation from the Federation president for a meeting before the new DS9’s dedication ceremony. Prior to that, Odo had spent two months traveling alone throughout Alpha Quadrant space, searching for any signs either of the Hundred or of the Founders, just as he had done on a regular basis during the two years since he’d arrived from the Dominion.

  The Hundred had been a group of unformed Changelings shipped out into the galaxy by the Founders. For a long time, his people had led Odo to believe that they had sent out the Hundred for them to learn about the galaxy and then return that knowledge to the Link, but that had been a deception. The Hundred had been dispatched into space, alone and unaware, not to gather knowledge, but to act as living beacons for the Founders’ god. They believed that a massive, powerful shape-shifting entity they called the Progenitor had created the entirety of the universe, and then, in the final stages of that creation, had infused an unchanging population of solids with its own essence, thereby creating the Great Link. As far as Odo knew, only seven of the Hundred had ever been accounted for: himself; an unformed one who had been brought to DS9, but who died shortly thereafter, though it had integrated its morphogenic matrix into Odo; Laas; two others located by Laas and brought back to join the Link; the ashy remains of a sixth; and a Changeling who called herself Moon. Sixteen months after his arrival in the Alpha Quadrant, Odo found Moon, who in the first moments of their meeting seemed to him like a kindred spirit. The joy of his discovery did not last, though, for Moon had been mortally wounded by the time he found her; within days, she died.