Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three Page 32

  “No, of course not,” Kira replied, still peering down at her hands. “The Prophets love me and guide me through life…offer a source of solace…provide a touchstone for prayer. But we all have freedom of will.”

  “The responsibilities for your actions are your own?” Odo asked.

  “Always,” Kira said.

  “And have you been proud of every action you’ve ever taken?” Odo asked.

  “What?” Kira said, her head snapping up, her hands parting and moving to her hips. “I don’t see what that has to do with this. If you’re going to compare what I did during the Occupation, what I had to do—”

  “I know that you fought hard to free your people from the tyranny of the Cardassians,” Odo interrupted her. “And I understand that. But I also know that you killed Vaatrick—”

  “He was a collaborator,” Kira roared, leaping to her feet.

  Odo stayed calm, and looked up at Kira from his seat on the storage bin. “He was also a Bajoran,” Odo said, “and I know that even though you felt you had to kill him, you didn’t want to.”

  “No,” Kira agreed. “I didn’t.”

  “No more than you wanted to kill innocent Cardassians during the raids and other attacks you participated in during the Occupation.”

  “No,” Kira said again, and she dropped back down onto the stool. “I’m not…I never wanted innocent people to die. But my people were at war. The Cardassians—”

  “Nerys,” Odo stopped her. “I’m not judging you. I was here during the Occupation. I understand what the Bajorans went through…what you went through.” She looked down again, and Odo waited until her head tilted upward and they made eye contact again. Only then did he continue. “More importantly,” he said, “I understand who you are, and what your values are. I could not be friends with you otherwise.”

  Kira seemed to think about this for a few seconds, and then slowly shook her head. “Yes,” she said. “I know that.”

  “But that’s why you’re no longer sure about our friendship,” Odo said. “You thought you understood who I was, and what my values were, but then I did something that contradicted that.”

  “That’s right,” Kira said.

  “But in a way, that’s our common ground,” Odo said. “We’ve both made choices in our lives, and we’ve both made mistakes for the good of our people.”

  “This situation seems different,” Kira said. “You didn’t join with the Founder and abandon Rom in order to try and free your people from oppression.”

  “No,” Odo admitted, “but we were each doing what we needed to do to make ourselves whole. For you, it involved doing whatever you had to do to help your people. And it was the same for me.” Kira opened her mouth, apparently to protest the characterization of his impetus, but Odo held up his hand, and she allowed him to go on. “I know I wasn’t attempting to save my people from the same horrible threat that yours faced, but I was trying to help them. And I still want to help them.”

  Kira’s features seemed to soften. “To save them from themselves?” she asked.

  “From themselves, from their history, yes,” Odo said. “They’re my people, and I want them to live in peace, not just for the sake of those they would oppose, but for their own sake. And in order to help them, I need to understand them.”

  Kira said nothing for a moment, but did not look away from him. “I can believe that,” she finally said. “But I still have a hard time accepting that you allowed Rom to be arrested and sentenced to die.”

  “I didn’t set out to do that,” Odo said, “any more than you ever set out to kill Cardassian children. But yes, it happened because of me, because I desperately wanted to understand my people, so that I could become a fuller part of them, and help them from within. I don’t want my people to wage war against anybody, but particularly not against my friends.”

  “Would that cause have been worth the sacrifice of Rom’s life?” Kira asked. Although clearly a pointed question, she spoke the words quietly, apparently looking for an actual answer and not an argument.

  “I don’t know,” Odo said honestly. “If I could have stopped the war…” He let his words trail off, realizing that he had gotten caught up in his own argument.

  “You had no expectation that you could put an end to the war by joining with the Founder then,” Kira accused him.

  “No, you’re right,” Odo said. “That was a longer-term goal. But I also did not expect that my actions would result in Rom’s death. And in the end, they didn’t.”

  “No,” Kira said, and she actually smiled again, a slight, anxious expression. “I was so happy to see you walk into the cargo hold.”

  “I think I was even more happy to see you,” Odo said. He remembered that day vividly, first learning from the Founder that Kira had been arrested and would be executed, later hearing that she and Rom and the others had escaped from their holding cells. He’d quickly assembled a team of his deputies and tracked the group’s movements. Jake and Leeta had gone to hide, but Kira and Rom had already been discovered and pursued by Dominion forces. Outside cargo bay thirteen, Odo and his cadre had engaged the Jem’Hadar, ultimately dispatching them.

  “You never did tell me why, though,” Kira said to him. Just after Odo and his deputies had rescued Kira and Rom, she’d posed that very question. He’d told her there wasn’t time, but also that she probably already knew.

  “When I’d heard that you’d been arrested,” he explained, “and that you would be put to death…” Again, he let his voice fade to silence. He knew that his decision to retreat from the Founder and his desire to assist Kira had begun to form even before he’d learned of Kira’s incarceration. Although revealing that now would be difficult, he felt that he needed to be as open and honest as he could be. “Actually, when I—” He searched for delicate language, and again settled on employing Kira’s equivoque. “—slept with the Founder, trying to teach her about solids, trying to demonstrate to her an important way in which they shared their love for one another…she didn’t understand.”

  “I’m not sure of the point you’re trying to make,” Kira said slowly, not sounding comfortable with the subject.

  “We…performed…the act,” Odo said haltingly, “but I could not make the Founder feel or understand the sharing involved. I felt no warmth myself, and I realized that I never would be able to share with the Founder what I’d shared with Arissa.” And though he did not say it, it seemed to Odo that his next thought—that he could never share with the Founder what he one day hoped to share with Nerys—hung in the air between them. If he had truly been a Bajoran, he knew that his face would have flushed red. Hurrying past the awkward moment, he said, “As much as I wanted to learn about my people, to help them, and become a part of them, I came to understand that those things would not make my life whole.” He did not think it necessary to spell out for Kira what he believed would complete his life: her love.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Kira told him.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Odo said. “I just hope that you understand better why I took the actions I did. I never wanted to turn my back on you, and I don’t want to turn my back on my own people now. I still hope that the war will end peacefully, and that maybe someday I can return to them. But I want you to know that you can trust me, Nerys.”

  Kira looked away, turning her head toward the storage area of Dax’s closet. “That might take some time,” she said.

  “I understand,” Odo said. He peered down at his hands resting on his knees, and tried to hide his disappointment.

  But then Kira’s hands moved over his, her touch both intimate and electric. “It will take time,” she said, “but it will happen. You’ve been a part of my life for a long time now, Odo, and I don’t want that to change.”

  He looked up at her. “I don’t want it to change either.”

  Stillness settled around them, comfortable and sweet. They sat that way for a few minutes, not moving or talking, but simply
being together. It might still take some time, as Kira had said, but Odo believed at that moment that they had saved their friendship.

  Finally, Kira withdrew her hands, and at the same time said, “Of course, just being a part of my life isn’t enough. I mean, Quark’s been in my life for a long time too, and I wouldn’t mind if that changed.”

  Odo returned her smile with one of his own, even though he knew she was only joking about Quark. Difficult as it was to believe, the scoundrel had actually been largely responsible for breaking Kira and the others from their holding cells. But the jest signaled a change in the direction of their conversation, in the tone of this time with each other.

  They talked through the night and through much of the next morning like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. They reminisced, laughed, and cemented in reality the reconciliation they’d just fashioned.

  And at ten hundred hours, after Dax had found them still chatting away in her closet, and after they’d hastily left, parted, and rushed to their duty stations, Odo discovered that he’d fallen even deeper in love with Kira Nerys.

  7

  Taran’atar sat at the forward console in Rio Grande, piloting the runabout toward Deep Space 9. Beyond the station resided the Anomaly, he knew, and at a distance beyond that, the Dominion. Looking down at his hands resting beside the controls, he considered how physically easy it would be for him to reprogram the navigational computer and set a course back to the place he’d spent most of his life—and where he might finally reclaim that life from the consistently baffling mission on which Odo had sent him.

  But as much as he wanted to do that, he could not. Taran’atar could not disobey the will of a Founder, even if he did not understand or agree with the orders he’d been given. In retrospect, his visit to Ananke Alpha had been ill conceived. He could justify seeking the Founder’s guidance about his need to sleep, and he could even justify his pathetic desire to alleviate, if only briefly, her isolation. But he had also attempted to secure her permission—even her orders—for him to return to the Dominion. That hadn’t happened, and he now felt relieved that it hadn’t; had he succeeded in obtaining those orders, he would then have been forced to defy one Founder or another. As underutilized a soldier as he’d become in the Alpha Quadrant, he still did not wish to fail Odo.

  In addition to all of that, the events that had transpired at the prison disturbed Taran’atar, and he knew that they would continue to do so. He could envision all too clearly his flight through the facility, putting the Founder at grave risk, dispatching the security officers, and then firing upon and killing Captain Kira. He felt no reservations about conceiving any of those actions, but it troubled him greatly to know that his body and mind had betrayed him further, delivering to him yet another new enemy, another new failing: dreams.

  After his visit with the Founder in her cell, he’d returned without incident to Rio Grande, escorted by Matheson and Jenek, changing back into his black coverall on the way. While Kira had prepared for their return flight to Deep Space 9, and they’d awaited clearance from the prison personnel to depart, Taran’atar had sought refuge in the aft section of the runabout, wanting time to himself to consider the erratic behavior of the Founder. Unexpectedly, he’d fallen asleep.

  He’d awoken confused, not only because of the initial moment of dislocation, but also because he’d quickly discovered memories of his own actions—the escape from Ananke Alpha, killing Kira—that he could not recall deciding to take, actions that he did not believe he would take. He’d also remembered impossible events; Jem’Hadar could not use their shrouding capabilities to project remote figures or disguise their appearance in anything but invisibility. On the heels of all those suspicious recollections came the contradictory images of his uneventful return through the prison to the runabout. He’d quickly risen and made his way to the forward section of Rio Grande, where he’d confirmed Kira’s presence at the main console.

  “Are you all right?” she’d asked him. He’d realized that there must have been something in his appearance that reflected his discomfiture, and he’d immediately reset his posture, his facial expression, wanting to dispel Kira’s curiosity and preclude any additional questions.

  “I am adequate,” he’d told her, again seeing in his mind the phaser beam slamming into her body and dropping her lifeless to the deck. “I wanted to tell you that if you wished to rest, I would pilot the ship back to Deep Space 9.”

  Kira had demurred at first, but during the long flight, she had eventually grown fatigued. She’d retreated to the aft section to sleep, leaving Taran’atar alone at the main console. He sat there now, thinking again about the ease with which he could adjust the runabout’s course and take it through the Anomaly, and then on to Dominion space.

  And what reason do I have—what reason could there possibly be—for violating the command of a Founder? Self-interest hardly constituted sufficient justification, nor could he think of anything that would. He considered the merits of informing Odo about the seemingly aberrant behavior of the imprisoned Founder, but felt even that cause inadequate motivation for him to act in contravention of Odo’s orders.

  As he thought about his visit to the Founder in her cell, though, he also recalled her declaration that her people were not gods. Before he’d left her, he’d asked her to contradict what he thought she’d earlier said, believing—hoping—that the mistake had been his. “Founder,” he’d said, turning back to her. “You are a god to the Jem’Hadar, are you not?”

  “I am not,” she’d said. “There is but one God: the Progenitor.”

  He’d left, thinking her assertion just another manifestation of the strange manner in which she’d acted. But did not her odd conduct actually support her blasphemous claim? For gods did not go mad.

  Taran’atar reviewed the readouts on the control panel, automatically confirming the runabout’s course, velocity, and nominal performance. Then he looked up and peered through a forward viewport. The panoply of stars recalled to him the sparkling lights the Founder had shapeshifted above him.

  A tremendous sense of loss suddenly settled around Taran’atar, like water rising above his head, threatening to drown him. If his gods were not gods, then what did he have? And if they were, then had he not, by his attempt to circumvent Odo’s wishes, thrown away the trust and responsibility that a god had commended to him? In either case, the very meaning of his existence seemed lost to him.

  Taran’atar felt himself moving through his life without direction, more so now than at any other time since he had arrived in the Alpha Quadrant. His hatred for Bajorans and humans and all the other species here burned hotly within him, almost like a beacon he could use to illuminate and guide the course of his rudderless life. He had never wanted to live among these weak, ridiculous beings, and he resented all that had happened to him during the past year—his independence from the white, his forced role as observer, his need to sleep, his mind’s conjuring dreams—all of which seemed to make him more like these species he abhorred.

  Turning in his seat, he looked astern, as though he could peer through the bulkheads and espy Kira sleeping in the aft section. Whatever his regard for the captain, if his gods had abandoned him, or he them, he had no desire to continue following her orders. If he no longer had a relationship to the Founders, though, then neither could he return to the Dominion.

  Perhaps I’ve lived too long, he thought. At nearly twenty-three years of age, he had outlasted every Jem’Hadar he’d ever known who’d been hatched before him. Although he could not be certain, he also thought that he might be the oldest Jem’Hadar who had ever lived. It occurred to him now that maybe a reason existed for that: maybe the Jem’Hadar brain had not been engineered to last much beyond two decades. Maybe he should be questioning not the godhood of the Founders, or his relationship to them, but his own sanity.

  Taran’atar swung his chair back around to the console, and again checked the status of the runabout. Up ahead, unseen i
n its place in the Bajoran star system, hung Deep Space 9. Not knowing what else to do right now, he decided that he would return there with Kira.

  But after that, he did not know what he would do.

  Odo, in his Bajoran form, noted movement across the bridge of the Jem’Hadar vessel, and looked over in time to catch Weyoun glancing over his shoulder. Standing between Seventh Rotan’talag and another Jem’Hadar soldier, Weyoun immediately turned back to the console at which he worked, but not quickly enough to conceal the expression of anxiety on his face. Odo recognized the dismay of a Vorta failing a Founder—or in this case, half a dozen Founders.

  Beside Odo, Laas and Indurane and the three other changelings stood in a circle, their roughly humanoid figures glowing orange-gold. The group had followed Odo to the bridge, where he’d overseen the investigation of space surrounding the nova. As time had passed without result, the five changelings had faced each other and joined hands, re-forming their small link. The details of their humanoid forms had blurred, their bodies connected together via appendages that had earlier been arms.

  Occasionally, Odo himself shapeshifted into their link. He wanted not only to update the Founders on the progress of their exploration of the region centered on the nova, but also to monitor their collective emotional state. The intensity of the group’s anticipation and excitement remained extremely high. Even Laas had grown enthusiastic about the search, although his level of expectation paled in comparison to that of the others.

  Now, seeing Weyoun’s look of concern, Odo walked along the perimeter of the bridge, past numerous Jem’Hadar working at various stations. “Anything to report?” he asked as he stepped past Rotan’talag to stand behind Weyoun. Odo knew that there would be nothing to learn—if there had been, Weyoun already would have told him—but he asked the question in order to engage the Vorta in conversation.

  “The radiation from the nova is interfering with some of our scans,” said Weyoun, not looking up from his console. He paused, and then added, “It might help us to have some idea of what it is we’re searching for.” His demeanor and tone admitted traces of both frustration and impertinence. The latter surprised Odo, but also pleased him. In the months since he’d begun having regular contact with this Weyoun, the ninth in the line of clones, the Vorta had shown few character traits besides the expected efficiency, loyalty, and servility encoded into his genes and historically demanded of his position. Even this small display of mild disrespect heartened Odo, signaling at least the possibility that Weyoun and his fellow Vorta could escape their longtime mindset as ingratiating servants to the Founders.