“My First is dead,” the Founder said, and pointed at a body across the bridge. Her look turned almost melancholy. “I miss First.” Incredible to think anyone could actually miss a Jem’Hadar.At various points throughout the mission, Nog had found he missed everyone he knew on board the station—with one exception.
“I’m, uh, sorry for your loss,” Bowers said into the sudden silence.
“I miss Second, I miss Fourth…” As though aware of how that sounded, she stopped. “I do not miss Third,” she said decisively.
“Good riddance,” Nog agreed under his breath. Bowers elbowed him in the ribs.
“Do you have a name?” Bowers asked the girl.
“What use would I have for a name?” she replied. “I am but a drop in the ocean.”
“Aren’t we all?” Bowers muttered.
“Why did you come back?” the Founder asked.
“We came to invite you up to our ship. When we leave, we can take you with us.”
“To your quadrant.”
“For a short while, yes,” Bowers said. “From our station, we’ll send a message to the Dominion, let them know we found you. You’ll be able to go home. That is, if you want to.”
“Your station…where you have your Jem’Hadar.”
“Absolutely,” said Nog, who could see her waving goodbye from the platform already, Taran’atar packed and at her side. He tried to look so sincere that it hurt.
She regarded him carefully for a moment, then turned back to Bowers. “I was taught to believe that solids can never be trusted.” Before Bowers could respond, she added, “But I trusted my own kind to come for me, and here I have been these two years. I’m ready to leave this place. I accept your offer.”
* * *
Vaughn marched into science lab one and looked into the faces of the officers awaiting him. Their guest, the young changeling, was studying the corpse of a Borg drone stretched out on a lab table. “Report,” he said.
“Sir,” Shar began, “we’ve decrypted the data encoded into the neuroprocessor and have been able to verify the Valkyrie’s mission to the Gamma Quadrant. Apparently since its assimilation seven years ago, the ship and its crew have been used by the Borg for reconnaissance, as a prelude to larger-scale incursions by the Borg if new species are detected and determined to be desirable for assimilation.
“Three years ago, during the Borg’s most recent incursion into Federation space, the Borg ship that attacked Earth apparently updated its Federation database from the ships it destroyed and transmitted that knowledge to the collective. Two items in particular that caught the collective’s attention were the Dominionand changelings.The Borg spent the next year erecting a transwarp conduit that would open into the Gamma Quadrant, and eventually deployed the Valkyrieas their advanced scout for the express purpose of finding a changeling and attempting its assimilation for the continued ‘perfection’ of the collective. The encounter with the Jem’Hadar ship two years ago was the result, in which both ships were destroyed.”
“Do we know if the collective ever learned what happened to the Valkyrie?”Vaughn asked.
“We can’t be certain,” Bowers said. “But we know the Jem’Hadar managed to do considerable damage to the Valkyrievery early in the battle. As far as we can tell, the drones aboard were cut off from the collective almost immediately. It’s very possible that the Borg decided they weren’t prepared to deal with that much resistance. Or it may be that circumstances forced them to deprioritize the Gamma Quadrant—according to the Pathfinder database, the Valkyrie’s mission to the Gamma Quadrant coincided with the Borg first contact with Species 8472.”
Vaughn nodded thoughtfully, recalling that the extradimensional alien civilization the Borg had encountered had very nearly destroyed the collective, and might have become an even worse scourge than the Borg had it not been for intervention of the U.S.S. Voyager.Small wonder that the Dominion became a lower priority to them. “Excellent work, gentlemen. We need to make this data available to the Dominion as well as Starfleet Command.”
“The Dominion, sir?” Bowers asked.
“Think about it, Sam,” Vaughn said. “Preparing the Dominion for the possible return of the Borg can only help us in the long run, and I can think of no better way to demonstrate our own peaceful intentions than by returning a marooned Founder to their keeping, along with the information you’ve obtained. This isn’t just a tactical opportunity, it’s a diplomatic one.”
“I hope Command agrees with you, sir.”
Vaughn smiled. “That makes two of us.”
A scream suddenly cut through the lab. Vaughn turned and almost refused to believe what he saw.
The Borg corpse had come to life. Assimilation tubules had launched themselves from its inanimate hands and into the nearby changeling, whose form was morphing wildly before his eyes.
Bowers drew his phaser, ready to fire.
“No,” Vaughn shouted. “Not yet.”
The child’s terrifying howls continued. Black streams of nanoprobes snaked through the Founder’s undulating mass of metaplasm. Pseudopods reached out blindly across the room as it convulsed in apparent agony, lashing out in every direction. The Defiantofficers narrowly missed being struck by a pseudopod that smashed into the bulkhead behind them.
Then all at once the morphing mass contracted, straining violently to compress itself into a tight opaque sphere. It vibrated madly on the deck as it continued to shrink, becoming Borg-black as it condensed.
“Prepare to fire,” Vaughn said.
Suddenly the sphere morphed again, expanding and elongating into the changeling’s humanoid form. She seemed to be struggling to maintain her shape before finally stablizing.
Shar took out his tricorder and began scanning.
“Are you all right?” Vaughn asked.
The changeling nodded, flexing her hands.
“You resisted the assimilation,” Bowers said. “How?”
A third arm grew out of the center of the Founder’s narrow chest and opened its slender, symmetrical, two-thumbed hand. The arm lengthened until the hand was only inches away from Bowers’s face. In the center of its palm, Vaughn saw, was what looked like a black pebble.
“The nanoprobes?” Bowers guessed.
“They were trying to overwhelm me,” she said. “They were quite painful. They kept twisting me inside out. I knew I had to make them stop. So I did the only thing I could think of. I squeezed them together until they stopped.”
“Mr. ch’Thane,” Vaughn said. “Explain, please.”
Shar shook his head. “She’s fine. She really was able to withstand the assimilation.”
“How?” Bowers asked.
Shar continued studying his tricorder. “Borg nanoprobes are designed to assimilate life-forms on a cellular level. But a changeling’s morphogenic matrix has no cellular structure in its natural state. In essence, it was as if the nanoprobes were trying to assimilate a body of water.”
“More good news for the Dominion, I guess,” Bowers said. “And for us.”
“Wait a minute,” Vaughn said, peering at the Borg corpse across the room. “That drone is dead. How is it possible that the assimilation tubules are still functional?”
“The Borg are proving to be increasingly difficult to understand,” Shar said, “but apparently, even without a living humanoid to act as host for the technology, the Borg imperative to assimilate other life-forms can survive the death of a drone under certain circumstances, lying dormant until the right opportunity presents itself.”
“My God,” Bowers said, looking at Vaughn. “That means—”
“Prynn,” Vaughn said, drawing his phaser as he ran from the science lab. The medical bay was just down the corridor….
Vaughn’s phaser was up and aimed as he stormed into the room. But all was peaceful. Prynn was exactly as he left her, still at Ruriko’s side, softly reading to her mother from The Silmarillion,Ruriko’s favorite book. Ruriko herself seemed peaceful, even serene, her eyes almost tender as they regarded Prynn, never leaving her.