by Judith
time with its rapid breathing, the hairless flaps of its bat-like ears
flattening close to its skull, its glittering, bulbous eyes focusing on each
move the Romulans made as they tapped out their individual security codes.
The engineering doors slid open.
In the same instant, the vole released the opposable
claws of its two front pairs of legs and dropped from the conduit, straight for
the Romulans—
—who didn't even bother to look up as the annoying buzz of a Klingon glob fly
swerved around them, then vanished into the cavernous upper levels of the
largest open area on the Boreth.
Seconds later, before the Engineering doors could close, the Cardassian vole
gripped the edge of a second-level safety rail with its claws, then vaulted to
engineering's upper deck and slipped through the narrow gap between two heavily
shielded quantum-wave decouplers, both aglow with flickering status lights.
Just then, an exhausted Romulan technician who had been working all shift to
trace the source of an intermittent photon leak near the decouplers glanced away
from her padd toward the gap. And saw a dim orange blur streak by.
A momentary frown creased the technician's face. The Boreth, however, was a vast
ship and contained a veritable secondary ecosystem of parasites and vermin, so
the sighting of the occasional pest was not worth reporting. Thus duty won out
over curiosity. The photon leak was real. The technician dismissed the fleeting
sighting.
And far back in the twisted labyrinth of barely passable access paths that ran
behind the wall of power relays that supplied the ship's Romulan-designed
singularity inhibitor, the vole stopped, and after looking all around took a
deep, squeaky breath and began to expand....
In the shadows of engineering, Odo watched carefully as his humanoid hands
sprouted from the sleeves of his Bajoran constable's uniform. Unlike the other,
more common shapeshifting creatures in the galaxy, changelings such as he had
the ability to alter their
mass as well as their form. Though it was a completely instinctive process,
Odo's first mentor in the world of solids, Dr. Mora Pol, had theorized that
Odo's ability to alter the shape of his molecular structure actually enabled
him to form four-dimensional lattices in the shape of hyperspheres and
tesseracts—geometric shapes that could not exist in only three dimensions.
In effect, this allowed Odo to shunt some of his mass into another dimension,
depending on the requirements of the form he assumed. Odo acknowledged that as a
scientific problem his innate ability was interesting, and that Pol's theory, if
true, made some sort of sense. Yet because of Dr. Pol's belief that changelings
faced the risk of inadvertently pushing too much of themselves into that other
dimension and disappearing altogether, Odo still experienced unease when
attempting to reduce his mass to a matter of micrograms. As a result he had
seldom dared push his shape-changing ability to the extremes of becoming
anything as small as a Klingon glob fly, a creature only hah7 the size of a
Terran mosquito.
Since learning more about his true nature from his fellow changelings hi the
Great Link, Odo had learned that Dr. Pol's fear resulted from his
misunderstanding the shapeshifting process; still, old habits died hard, and Odo
still felt uncomfortable transforming himself into anything smaller than voles
or creatures of similar size.
Relieved at his uneventful reversion to normal hu-manoid mass and size, Odo now
turned to the one or two details still requiring his attention.
On his reconnaissance mission he had observed that almost all crew members of
the Boreth wore uniforms apparently modified from something similar to the one
he had customarily worn on Deep Space 9. Except that
the Boreth crew uniforms featured slightly different shades of brown-and-tan
fabric and had a single swath of a contrasting color running across the chest
from shoulder to shoulder, instead of the two seemingly separate shoulder
pieces his own uniform displayed. Also for some reason, Odo recalled, the Boreth
crew uniforms were an invariably sloppy fit, as if the ship's clothing
replicators no longer had accurate measuring capabilities.
Still the changes were simple, and as he now formed a mental picture of himself
wearing a new uniform, Odo sensed the familiar rippling and shifting of his
outer self as his external uniform updated itself to the new standard
appearance, its surface even sagging and bunching to suggest a bad fit. Then,
just to further the illusion should he be seen in engineering, Odo gave his head
a shake, and his sleek, brushed-back hair—a near duplicate of Dr. Pol's own
style and color—slithered forward to become black Romulan bangs. At the same
time his simply shaped ears elongated slightly to form Vulcanoid points, and his
brow became more pronounced. Odo knew that under normal lighting conditions
there would still be an unfinished look to his features (despite his ability to
duplicate every vane of every feather on an avian species, the far less
demanding details of a humanoid face had always remained such a difficult
challenge for him he sometimes wondered if his people had engineered a sort of
facial inhibition into nun when they'd adjusted his genetic code, to make him
long to return to his home-world). At least, he reasoned, his new Romulan form
would offer some protection during his passage through engineering, while he
committed the acts of sabotage so painstakingly planned by O'Brien and Rom.
Captain Sisko, of course, had given his express approval for the operation.
From the briefing the survivors from the Defiant had received only a few hours
ago, it had become obvious to all that despite the Starfleet emblems that
adorned this vessel, the institution served by the crew of the Boreth bore no
allegiance nor resemblance to the Starfleet of twenty-five years past. The
emblems, in the captain's judgment, were a lie. Odo and the other survivors
suspected the briefing was also.
Odo directed his attention to an exposed bulkhead between two large and
unidentifiable cylindrical housings, where he found a power-relay switching box
surrounded by a nest of conduits. The box itself was a meter tall, no more than
a half-meter wide, and labeled with a Bajoran identification plate that had been
haphazardly attached over a Klingon sign. From what Chief O'Brien had seen of
the Boreth's power-distribution system as he was led through the corridors, he
had told Odo he was confident that the switching mechanisms in the ship would
not have changed significantly since their own time. Odo studied the Bajoran
plate more closely, confirming for himself that it did use the same terminology
with which he was familiar. Still, when he swung open the access panel, he was
relieved to see that the layout of the box's interior was indeed very close to
what Rom had described.
At any given time, Odo was aware from experience, a starship generated a
constant amount of power for internal use, though the demands on that power
varied ac
cording to what subsystems—from replicators to sonic showers—were
operating from second to second. Thus, a ship's power-distribution system was
constantly adjusting the amount of power, available as either basic
electricity or the more complex wave-forms
of translator current, that moved through specific sections of the ship's power
grid and prevented localized surges, brownouts, and overloads. Odo knew that
interfering with that system would, as a matter of course, make such
interruptions in the flow of power more likely. And a properly timed
interruption that affected engineering could have the desired result of forcing
the Boreth to drop from warp. That, in fact, was Odo's goal.
Sisko had admitted that it was a risky plan, but the captain had also thought it
likely that, given the speed with which the vessels of the other Starfleet had
attacked the Opaka, if the Boreth were to lose warp propulsion in deep space,
it would also come under swift attack.
Odo concentrated on transforming his fingers into right-angled wiring grippers
in order to disconnect an inline series of transpolar compensators. He trusted
that Kira would be as successful with her half of the mission: obtaining a
Bajoran combadge from one of the guards watching over the Defiant's rescued crew
and passengers. His Deep Space 9 colleague had taken the challenge because,
whatever the truth of this future, as Bajorans Kira and Commander Aria were not
subject to the same level of scrutiny as the other survivors. Consequently,
Kira and Aria had each been given separate staterooms, while the remaining
sixteen... prisoners, Odo decided was the best term for them... had been grouped
into four main barracks-type rooms, each room featuring enough tiered bunks for
twenty-one crew. O'Brien had identified the holding areas as enlisted men's
communal quarters—a living area typical of some Klingon warships.
Whatever the barracks' original purpose, Odo had been pleased enough to have
been placed in so large a confinement chamber. It had made it easier to move to
the back of the room nearest the sanitary facilities and discreetly transform
himself into the Klingon insect capable of escaping through the door with the
departing guards. While he had originally planned to reach engineering through
the ventilation shafts, the Chief had been quick to point out to him that
various environmental systems on the ship employed charged grids specifically
designed to incinerate unwanted pests.
Odo gave a final twist to the secondary connector ring, and the status lights of
the compensators winked out. One down, five to go. By O'Brien's calculations, if
he could compromise at least six relay switches within engineering, and then
short-circuit a seventh, he'd be able to cause a surge that would interrupt
power to the ship's warp generators long enough to trigger an automatic safety
shutdown. Although the chief engineer had doubted it would take the crew of the
Boreth more than ten minutes to bring their ship back into warp, if Kira had her
communicator and Rom was able to reconfigure it and there were real Starfleet
vessels nearby, Odo reckoned that ten minutes might be just long enough to bring
the Boreth under attack.
Whether that attack would result in the rescue of the Defiant's survivors now
held prisoner on the Boreth was a risk everyone had accepted. Action, in Odo's
experience, was always preferable to imprisonment.
First changing the right-angled grippers at the end of his arm back into a hand,
he carefully shut the access panel and glanced around his cramped work area. In
the dim light, there appeared to be another power-relay
switching box four meters along the bulkhead, mounted between two large vertical
pipes. Odo approached the switching box, located the release latch for its cover
and, just as he was about to open it, heard a soft voice in his ear murmur,
"Odo. You can stop now."
Startled, Odo stepped back, unsuccessfully scanning the shadows and darkness for
the source of the voice. He couldn't be sure, but it had sounded like Weyoun.
Either Weyoun himself was here, or his voice had been relayed through an
overhead communications speaker. It was unclear which.
Odo quickly decided against staying long enough to find out. He took a breath,
formed a mental image of a vole, and—
—nothing.
Odo tried again.
And again. But his shape appeared to be locked hi his half-formed Romulan
disguise.
"Such a useful precaution," Weyoun's voice said breathily, from nowhere and from
everywhere, "the inhibitor."
Odo simultaneously blinked and stepped back, as a small cylindrical device
suddenly appeared to be hovering a few meters in front of him. One end was
segmented like a series of stacked golden rings, the other bore a black panel
dotted with sequentially flashing lights.
"The original was developed by the Obsidian Order." To Odo, it was as if Weyoun
were speaking from the unsupported device, and he wondered if antigravs had
actually been miniaturized to such an extent. "A very long and arduous process,
as I'm sure you know. Then Damar had it further refined. I believe he was
planning
on betraying the Founder... once the Dominion-Cardassian alliance had proved
victorious over the Federation, of course."
And suddenly Weyoun's pale face appeared in midair, smiling with a distracted
expression, near the floating inhibitor. Then, with a series of jerky
movements, the rest of Weyoun's body came into view.
Odo stared in amazement, as a flurry of small energy discharges revealed the
Vorta before him in his entirety, half-dressed in a vedek's robes, half in what
could only be an isolation suit with its cloaking field switched off.
"Also a most useful device, wouldn't you agree?" Weyoun said as he stepped
neatly out of the bulky red suit and let it fall to the deck. "I'm surprised you
people forgot about it. It was a Starfleet invention, after all. Apparently,
something called Section 31 reverse-engineered the Romulan cloaking device on
the Defiant. Quite illegal. It's fascinating what the passage of time brings to
the release of secret documents."
Odo had no idea what Weyoun was talking about, and didn't care to know. "Turn
off the inhibitor," he said.
Weyoun looked at the device in his hand, shrugged. "I don't think so."
Odo regarded him sternly. "I gave you an order."
"So you did."
Odo was uncomfortable with what he had to say next, but in this one limited
case, surely the end justified the means. "Weyoun, I am your god. Do as I say."
Unexpectedly, Weyoun moved toward him, holding out the device as if making an
offering of it. "Odo, do you realize you've never spoken to me like that
before," the Vorta said as if concerned for his welfare. "I don't believe you
know how much it has always troubled me
to see you so conflicted, refusing to admit what you are, what you have meant to
me."
"Well, I don't refuse to admit it any longer. Turn off the—"
The cylinder struck Odo's face like a club, knocking him to the deck.
Odo held a hand to his all-too-solid face. The pain was intense, and he looked
up at Weyoun in shock. The Vorta appeared to be trembling in the throes of
nervous excitement
"I can't tell you how many times in the past twenty-five years I've wondered if
I could do that. Did it hurt?"
Slowly, Odo got to his feet, only now recalling Sisko's warning that Weyoun had
somehow overcome his genetic imperative to regard changelings as gods. "Yes."
"And that was just a simple blow. Imagine what it must feel like... to die."
Odo braced himself. Not only did Weyoun's attack confirm that the Vorta was
capable of striking one of the beings he used to worship, it seemed he was
preparing himself to kill. Only one explanation was possible. Weyoun was a
clone and this one was defective.
"I'm not defective," the Vorta said before Odo could state his conclusion. "I
prefer to regard myself as restored. Cured. Freed?" The Vorta shrugged. "The
important thing is, I can finally think for myself."
"Perhaps," Odo growled, "you've just been more effectively programmed."
Weyoun merely grinned. "I wondered that myself, Odo, after I returned from the
True Temple. After all, if some minor realignment of my amino acids were
responsible for my former belief that you and your people were gods, I
realized I really couldn't rule out the
possibility that some other agency might have made a further modification in my
program."
"And what answer did you find?" As if I don't know, Odo thought sourly.
As if delighted to share a confidence with one who would truly understand,
Weyoun favored him with an intimate smile. "First, I returned to my own
home-world, as it were. To the Dominion cloning facilities on Rondac III. I
awoke one of the other Weyouns. And you know, the most sophisticated medical
scans showed that there was absolutely no difference between myself and him.
Except in our thoughts and beliefs."
"Weyoun Eight believed the Founders were gods."
The Vorta sighed. 'To the end, sadly."
Odo snorted. "You mean, you killed him."
Weyoun pursed his mouth, pious. "He was defective, Odo. It was a mercy."
"And what happens when the next Weyoun tracks you down and decides you're
defective?"
"There is, there will be, no next Weyoun," Weyoun said firmly. "I am the last.
