Star Trek: The Fall: Revelation and Dust Page 9

  When they’d come back into each other’s lives, Kasidy and Rebecca had been residing on Bajor, but she had been seriously considering relocating—possibly back to Earth, or to Cestus III, where her youngest brother lived. She’d even thought about the colony on Allamegras, with its “rainbow moon” effect. When she and Sisko reconciled, though, she wanted them both to think through what would be best for all of them, as a family. They’d been fortunate that Robinson had been assigned to the Bajoran system during the construction of the new Deep Space 9; as they decided the most propitious course to take, that had allowed Kasidy and Rebecca to stay in the house in Kendra Province, and for Sisko to spend a great deal of time with them, even as he continued as a starship captain.

  That also helped ease the awkwardness for Kas and me, Sisko thought. They’d been able to resume their relationship at their own pace, and in a way that permitted Rebecca to become accustomed to having her father around much more often. It took a year, but Kasidy eventually told Sisko that if he truly wanted to continue his career in Starfleet, she and Rebecca would join him aboard Robinson. They chose to keep the house and land on Bajor, possibly for Jake and Korena once they returned from New Zealand, and maybe even for themselves at some point. For the time being, Jasmine Tey stayed there.

  Sisko also knew that it helped both of them that, since recommitting to Kasidy, he’d had no contact of any kind with the Prophets—no visits to the Celestial Temple, no visions, not even any intuitions. And even though he’d had no such contact in the years prior to his leaving Kasidy, their absence since his reunion with her felt convincingly permanent. He’d had dreams of the Prophets during that time—filled with confused, impenetrable images—but he believed them nothing more than the normal imaginings of a sleeping mind. He had struggled with whether or not he should tell Kasidy about them, mindful of the need to be completely open with her, but also concerned about worrying her for no reason. In the end, he’d kept his dreams to himself. Fortunately, over time, even those had stopped.

  Once Sisko’s family had moved to Robinson, Kasidy had become interested in finding a new career for herself. With her wealth of experience dealing with members of myriad alien species during her many years as a freighter captain, she chose to apply for service in the Federation Diplomatic Corps. She underwent training both aboard ship and on Bajor.

  “Are you excited about the dedication ceremony?” Sisko asked as they ate. With so many dignitaries from so many different worlds visiting the starbase for its “launch,” the Federation would be sending a swarm of diplomats to deal with them all. Officially assigned to Robinson as an envoy, Kasidy would mark her first mission in that role with her service around the DS9 dedication.

  “I’m excited about it,” Kasidy said, “but I’m also a little nervous.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do a wonderful job,” Sisko said, and he meant it. “You might be new to the diplomatic service, but you spent years taking your freighter all over the quadrant. You know how to deal with people from a lot of different species. I can’t really think of better preparation for your new position.”

  “Oh, I’m not really worried about doing the job,” Kasidy said. “I think it’s more that I haven’t been doing much of anything lately other than training. It’s going to take an effort to get used to reporting for duty.”

  “Speaking of duty, do you know what you’ll be doing yet?” Sisko asked.

  “Actually, I received my marching orders this afternoon,” Kasidy said. “I meant to tell you. I’ve been assigned to accompany the Gorn delegation.”

  Sisko nodded. “Because of your time on Cestus Three.” Because her brother lived there, Kasidy had spent a considerable amount of time on the planet. Cestus III bordered the Gorn Hegemony, and so she’d had her share of interactions with its citizens.

  “I’m sure that’s why,” Kasidy said. “Actually, I’m more excited about what comes after that.”

  Sisko smiled. “So am I.” After Deep Space 9 became fully operational, with Defiant still assigned there, it would no longer be necessary for other starships to patrol around Bajor to compensate for the lack of a space station in the system. The next assignment for Robinson’s crew would be to take the ship into uncharted territory for an extended mission of exploration.

  Throughout much of his career in Starfleet—as an occasional intelligence operative, as a shipboard engineer and then exec, as an officer at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards, and finally as the commander of a space station—Sisko had never been drawn toward the unknown. But while serving aboard Deep Space 9, he had built a replica of an ancient solar sail and had taken Jake on a voyage intended only to prove the design spaceworthy. Instead, they discovered unknown tachyon eddies that accelerated the vessel to warp speed and swept it all the way to Cardassia. Looking back, Sisko thought that he could trace the first real embers of wanderlust within him to that experience—embers that had surely been stoked by his friendship with Elias Vaughn.

  When Sisko had initially taken command of Robinson, he had been running from his fear that something awful would happen to Kasidy and Rebecca if he stayed with them. Even if he hadn’t been, though, he and his crew had for some time been assigned to patrol duty. Later, after he resumed his parental relationship with Rebecca and accepted his situation with Kasidy, Starfleet Command sent the Robinson crew on a six-month journey to explore the Gamma Quadrant. He found that experience remarkably compelling, and since then, he longed to return to a mission of discovery. He couldn’t wait until after Deep Space 9’s dedication, when he would take his ship and crew back out into the unknown—and he would get to share that experience with his wife and daughter.

  Sisko and Kasidy talked about the upcoming mission as they continued their dinner, and about how exciting they both found the prospect of being explorers, traveling into the unknown in the simple pursuit of knowledge. They discussed Rebecca, how smart she was and how happy she seemed, and how well and how quickly she’d adjusted to life aboard a starship. Sisko poured them each a second glass of springwine partway through their meal.

  Afterward, they carried their dishes to the replicator and recycled them. Once the plates had vanished, Sisko asked, “So what do we want for dessert?”

  Kasidy looked at him for a moment as though he’d suddenly revealed himself to be a Tzenkethi agent. “The Dorsons are bringing Rebecca back at twenty-one hundred hours,” she said, a seeming non sequitur. “I don’t know what you want for dessert, Ben . . .” She left her sentence hanging as she picked up one of the lighted candles from the table and walked over to the near door in the side bulkhead. The panel glided open and Kasidy glanced back at Sisko over her shoulder. “I don’t know what you want for dessert,” she said again, “but I was thinking I’d like something sweet.” She headed toward their bedroom.

  Sisko smiled, and then followed.

  • • •

  He spun his ridged, conical body and curled lithely down toward the orbiting sensor platform. His two long, parallel tentacles trailed out behind him and rippled in the gravitational eddies about the planet, his flanged tail undulating as he propelled himself through the void. The dual barbed antennae that emerged like pincers from the forward part of his elongated body measured the forces of gravity influencing the points around him, allowing him to adjust his mass and dimensions so that he could ride the curvature of space-time.

  The sensor platform—a runabout-size cube inset in the center of each side with a pyramid—floated in geosynchronous orbit above the green-and-blue planet. As prescribed, he circled the satellite quickly, once, twice, a third time. He could not see the platform in the traditional way that humanoids did, but he detected the pressure of the light reflecting or emanating from its surfaces. He “felt” the dark circle on one section, and when it glowed brightly three times in succession, those flashes pushed against his senses. He had arranged for the signal himself, confirmation that the people in charge of defending the population below recognized him and would allow him
safe passage to the surface along a preset path.

  Breaking away from the sensor platform, he swung briefly upward before lunging toward the atmosphere. The upper reaches of the gaseous planetary envelope slowed him, but only minutely. Each moment brought him closer to the world below, and deeper into its gravity well. His body withstood the increasingly strong pull but could not do so indefinitely. Still, he hurtled down, waiting for the proper moment to change. He could not feel friction heating his body, but he knew that it did.

  At the appropriate altitude and velocity, the time came. He peered into himself, into the writhing currents, not of gravity, but of possibility. He saw how he existed in his purest form, as a sea of infinite realities always in motion. Whorls of potential spun within him, promised all that he had ever known, and more: imagination offered yet more channels through which his life could flow. He saw what he wanted to become, what he could become, and his body melted within, broke in tides of alteration, deconstructing one form in favor of no form at all—but only for an instant. For in the next, he joined his intention with his elemental being, transforming himself from what he could be into what he would be.

  In almost no time, his body had gone, and his tentacles and tail, his gravity-sensing organs, the flesh that covered him. One side of his outer physical self swirled into a spherical, blunt-nosed metal cone, while he thrust wings out from his new frame, then crooked them partway along their length at right angles. He no longer flew, but fell, plummeting through the thickening atmosphere. The shield portion of his new reality heated, but his bent wings sent him into a stable spin, the higher drag limiting his acceleration and thus the temperature of his forward surface.

  Down he plunged, through the layers of gases surrounding the planet. When finally he neared the surface, change once more beckoned him. Again he envisioned his metamorphosis, his mind burrowing into the essence of his pliable nature. His wings drew inward, and then his entire body expanded and thinned. Metal became fabric. Closer to the world below, the denser air caught him, filled him, slowed him. He sailed lower.

  When he had come far enough down from space, through layers of various gases, bands of radiation, temperature zones, and the broken cover of clouds, he willed his air-filled expanse to fold in on itself. Compact fibers rushed together, liquefied, surged to and fro, and solidified into muscle and bone, flesh and feathers. He stopped falling: as a Tarkalean hawk, he flew.

  Exhausted, not just from his descent but also from the long journey that had preceded it, he rode the currents of wind. He glided over a rich, green landscape suffused with the orange hues of sunset. He headed toward a familiar range of mountains and the serpentine river that wound past them. When a small clearing appeared among the trees, Odo at last alit on the surface of Bajor.

  He had not yet arrived at his ultimate destination, but the Changeling chose to transform again. From the figure of a Tarkalean hawk, Odo rose into the humanoid appearance he had long ago cultivated, with a brown outfit reminiscent of his old Militia uniform, and his strangely smooth, unfinished face. Although not his natural, amorphous form, the faux Bajoran constable into which Odo made himself felt comfortably authentic; Odo had shaped himself into that physical persona regularly for decades—and for a short time, when the Great Link had deprived him of his shape-shifting abilities, it had become a hard, unchangeable reality.

  Odo spied a fallen tree at the edge of the clearing, and he took a seat on its downed trunk. He could not tell whether he did so in order to rest, or simply in service to his long-practiced impersonation of humanoid life. For so long after he had begun to live among the Bajorans, he had sought to emulate their appearance and behavior. At some point, the ways he taught himself to move, the mannerisms he affected, all became second nature to him.

  But it’s literally my second nature, Odo thought. My first nature, my true nature, is really something quite different.

  Long ago, before Odo had ever known anything about his origin, he had yearned to discover where he’d come from, to locate his people, to live as he’d been meant to live. Once he did find the Founders, though, it hardly proved the panacea for which he’d hoped. War and attempted genocide rocked the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Quadrants. Only after years of widespread destruction and death did he finally join his people in the Great Link.

  But that didn’t last long, did it? he asked himself. He scoffed aloud. Even after returning to link with the Founders, Odo had remained interested in the rest of the Dominion—the Vorta, the Jem’Hadar, and all the other species the empire comprised. Often enough, he parted from his fellow Changelings and assumed his humanoid form so that he could interact with Weyoun and Rotan’talag and others. His goal had been difficult and far-reaching: he wanted to bring a just existence to all the denizens of the Dominion, whether shape-shifter or humanoid. He worked hard to set those changes in motion, but even though he spent considerable amounts of time away from the Founders, he had no wish to desert them.

  Instead, they had deserted him. The dissolution of the Great Link shocked and saddened Odo, but it also left him rededicated to re-forming the subsequently leaderless Dominion. He spent years working toward that goal, and even met with some degree of success.

  Yet the loss of the Great Link had continued to haunt him. Laas stayed behind with him, and some other Founders eventually returned, but the greater population of their community remained apart. Odo blamed himself, at least in part: he knew that he had never fully given himself over to the Great Link. He wanted to believe that, given another opportunity to do so, he would, but he also didn’t want to lie to himself. Yes, he craved the vital oneness of his people when they joined together, but something within him clearly clung to his individuality.

  Something within me? Odo thought. It vexed him that, even in his own mind, he did not always confess the truth. Whether or not he could consciously admit it, he knew that he had never stopped loving Kira Nerys. He understood that his reasons for not utterly surrendering himself to the Great Link involved more than that, but it would not help to continue denying his emotions.

  As Odo sat on the fallen tree trunk in the clearing, the strong scent of nerak blossoms reached him. Although he neither liked nor disliked the smell, he felt grateful that he had learned to cultivate an olfactory sense, since the aroma of the native Bajoran flower—of any Bajoran flower—always put him in mind of Nerys. He wondered if the fragrance had led his thoughts to her, or if his thoughts of her had made him aware of the fragrance.

  When the Bajoran wormhole had collapsed and Odo had ended up in the Alpha Quadrant, it had been a bitter irony for him that Nerys had been lost within the great subspace bridge. The news devastated him. Never more had he needed the comfort of communing with his people, of slipping into the Great Link and losing himself within its unique coalescence. Even if he had traveled back to the Dominion, though, most of the Founders remained dispersed.

  After the closure of the wormhole, Odo had at first believed himself stranded seventy thousand light-years from the Dominion. He soon discovered, though, that Starfleet’s quantum slipstream drive would allow a starship so equipped to deliver him back into the Gamma Quadrant in a matter of days. Eventually, during meetings with Starfleet and the Federation in which they had sought information about the Dominion, they had offered to bring him home.

  But what would have I gone back to? Odo asked himself. The Great Link had scattered. He could continue attempting to lead the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar and the others to find their own truths, to seek new purposes and new lives, but could he really accomplish that alone? Might it not be better simply to leave the citizens of the Dominion to find their own ways?

  Odo had finally decided to remain in the Alpha Quadrant, at least for a short while. Captain Sisko offered him a position aboard Robinson, but that did not appeal to him. Instead, Odo opted to return to his roots.

  Early in his existence, he had been one of a hundred Changelings separated from the Great Link and sent out into the universe. He
had never attempted to locate another of the Hundred, but another Founder who numbered among them had: Laas had set out to find other shape-shifters, and had succeeded when he’d encountered Odo. With the Great Link no longer extant, and with Kira Nerys lost and probably dead, such a quest seemed to Odo like the best possible use of his time—as well as an apposite outlet for the emotions roiling within him.

  And so he had gone to space, though not immediately. First he spoke with Captain Sisko to learn all he could about Nerys’s life since last Odo had seen her. After that, with the permission of First Minister Asarem and Kai Pralon, he visited her modest quarters at the Vanadwan Monastery, an act that served as both memorial and pilgrimage. Unexpectedly, he also found a place to reside while on Bajor, and he stayed there for a time. Looking back, he realized that, like the majority of Bajorans, he’d been waiting for the wormhole to reopen; more than that, he understood that he’d still hoped, unrealistic though it might have been, that Nerys would ultimately emerge unharmed from what she thought of as the Celestial Temple.

  When finally he had gone into space, he’d cleared his departure and eventual return with the Bajoran Planetary Operations Center. He hoped to find more of the Hundred, or even some of the Founders who had forsaken the Great Link. He reasoned that if both he and Laas had ended up in the Alpha Quadrant, then other Changelings might have as well. Though such a search seemed to him onerous and unlikely to yield positive results, he reminded himself that Laas had once successfully mounted a similar pursuit.

  Feeling rested enough, Odo stood from the toppled tree, ready to complete the final leg of his journey. He paced toward the center of the clearing, throwing his arms out to his sides as he did so. Without halting his stride, he turned his mind toward his malleable body. His legs and torso contracted, and his nose lengthened and hardened into a beak. His arms became wings, his flesh covered with feathers. Once more a Tarkalean hawk, he took to the air.