Dread washed over Bashir as he listened to the Founder's rhetoric. This was the first sight of a Changeling anyone had had since the end of the war, omitting a few communiques passed between Kira and Odo, and it wasn't exactly filling Bashir with confidence in lasting peace between his people and theirs.
"Thank you Founder," Boudica said, she like all augments were fast learners and she'd picked up the kind of preening behaviour and tone the Founders expected very quickly. Then taking centre stage she continued; "I am very much intrigued by the Jem'Hadar breeding program. I think I could improve it no end." With that the transmission ended.
"Factories breeding armies of augmented Human beings," Bashir said, his voice distant, his mind doing some sort of Doomsday maths that he'd fortunately learned long ago to keep to himself.
"We've got to stop them," Bashir protested, his maths done, looking around the dumbfounded bridge.
"What do you propose we do?" Vaughn asked, he, Ezri, Nog and Ensign Long had been found by Ensign ch'Thane who had been spearheading the deck-by-deck search in Bowers' absence. Vaughn had waved away any attention from medical personnel and made haste to the bridge, but had left orders to the other three to report to Sickbay. He'd arrived on the bridge to find Bashir, Bowers and Prynn holding down the fort.
"My first duty is to the safety of this crew. And the second duty is to the success of this mission. Neither can be achieved by firing upon a Dominion vessel."
Bashir knew the Commander was right, but he didn't have to like it. "If you'll excuse me I'll be in sickbay."
Outside the cocoon of safety the Defiant represented the Jem'Hadar vessel reactivated its cloak and slipped away into the night. Vaughn, out of any alternate options and thankful at least none of his crew had been permanently hurt, ordered them back on their original course and immediately excused himself to his ready room.
The terminal on his deck winked into life as he sat down. After doing a quick bit of mental maths to work out what time it was back on the station he said; "Computer, open a channel to Deep Space 9. Priority One for Colonel Kira Nerys."
Ezri had been discharged from Sickbay and had originally planned to wait for Julian to return. But after a few quiet minutes waiting she found her eyelids were heavy. Her day was reaching its 19th hour now and the after effects of adrenaline come down were proving insurmountable. She'd excused herself from Nurse Richter's company and was making her way back to her quarters. Guided by the voice of her bed calling her she made her way along the corridor, one blessing of a small crew was even on such a small vessel alone time was more than achievable.
She paused outside her quarters taking note of a small indent on the lip of her door that she'd never noticed before. Making a note to herself to mention this to Nog in the morning to get a repair crew to take a look she tapped in her entry code and stepped over the threshold. And then, everything went black.
Odo had felt an upset in the Great Link for some time. An exact determination of the time involved was impossible as the very concept became immaterial when inside the Link. The detective within him, however, still wanted an answer. You would have thought in a pool of connected thoughts and minds uncovering information would be a simple affair but alas this wasn't the case. Despite the calmly effect the tranquillity of the Link provided it was still only a sum of its parts. Joined Changelings were still capable of keeping information from one another inside the Link if they so chose, and the public conscience was so noisy that picking up any thought unless you knew exactly who or what you were listening for was nearly impossible.
Odo had expected his talent to filter the noise would improve the longer he spent in the Link, but as he quickly came to realise with time being immeasurable within the Link you always emerged the same as when you entered.
His peace and quiet on this day was, however, disturbed by the cooing of yet another Weyoun clone. He emerged from the Link, the recognisable face of the constable taking form as his silhouette strode to the small rocky outcropping the broke the endless sea of changeling goo.
"Weyoun," Odo said in greeting, his voice as raspy and laced with as much scepticism as it had been when he'd been the only one of his kind aboard the then Terok Nor.
"Founder," Weyoun said bowing graciously.
"To what do I owe this... dubious pleasure?" Odo asked, like an addict needing another hit Odo was eager to return to his kind.
"There is a recorded message for you," Weyoun was explaining; "It's from a Kira Nerys."
A prang of loss hit Odo all of a sudden, he missed Nerys... more and more every day.
"Put it through to the terminal," Odo instructed, he had little time for pleasantries with the Vorta... they always took any slight hint of graciousness as a sign of benevolence from the gods, and he thought, perhaps rightly so, most Vorta were arrogant enough to begin with. Especially Weyoun.
"And then DO NOT play it until you have beamed back aboard your ship," he commanded. Whilst he was happy to share every part of himself with the Link, in fact that was completely necessary in his mission to turn his people away from their path or subjugation and rule by terror, but it would be a cold day in B'Hala before he shared anything with Weyoun.
The Vorta nodded, and bowed again as his body disappeared into a billion pieces. The terminal, well hidden within the rocky wall at the rear of the outrcropping, changed to a spinning Federation logo, then a static Dominion one, and then finally a video of Kira began to play.
In it she relayed what had been communicated to her by Commander Vaughn; that a changeling had taken a Jem'Hadar vessel outside of Dominion space and interacted with the Defiant, which they had guaranteed not to do, and had taken two Humans away with them. She'd decided to omit that one Human was potentially a four hundred year old augment.
Odo was stunned. He'd sensed an imbalance in the Great Link, many of them had, but to have one of their own go rogue like this seemed preposterous.
He was deep in thought staring at a now blank screen, and didn't hear the female Changeling, the one responsible for so much death and destruction in the Alpha Quadrant during the war, emerged from the Link.
"Odo..." she said, her voice was recognizable but gone was its harsh edge. She'd left that behind on Cardassia, now she lived only to exist in the Link.
And at that moment Odo knew she was involved.
Hovering outside Ezri's quarters Julian's genetically advanced mind couldn't decide whether to knock or not. "She'll be asleep," he'd said to himself riding the turbolift, "But I guess it won't do any harm just to check."
Sure enough he'd made his way here, but now that it was actually time to knock he'd lost all his nerve. "It's been a long day," he said under his breath, narrating as he did his own life.
His hand inches from pressing the chime Bashir shook his head and walked away in the direction of his own quarters. Even HE needed some sleep.
He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. His dreams were usually forgettable, sometimes like reliving his awkward childhood, that was for the better, other times, like time spent with Ezri both memories and fantasy, that was for the worse. All in all though they never had had any bearing on his real physical life. Tonight was slightly different.
Julian was in a simple white room, the borders of which he was only vaguely aware. Sharing the room was Boudica, the impressively named former cylinder dweller who had wreaked so much havoc aboard the Defiant.
"Hello?" Julian said, realizing all of a sudden he was in civilian garb. Traditional civilian garb to boot, perhaps Earth pre-WW3 ?
Boudica came running up to him, she wore an elegant long dress baring the same green and teal pattern her tunic had been styled with.
"General," she said clasping Julian by the shoulders, "You must get me to the launch pad."
"Launch pad?" Julian hadn't quite got to grips with his role yet. He threw his arms outward, pushing Boudica's grip and closed his eyes for a second hoping that when he opened them he might wake up in his own bed.
When he opened his eyes, however, the landscape had gotten even more foreign to him. Now he was in an oak panelled room, behind him a dark mahogany table covered haphazardly with papers.
He realized now he and Boudica were sharing the room with a small spectacled man who was busying himself rifling through one in a series of filling cabinets. He was removing documents and immediately shredding them.
"Your shuttle awaits you Empress," Julian found himself saying. Perhaps it was the surroundings but like assuming a role in a holo-novel his character had found its voice.
"The enemies are at the Gates General!" Boudica exclaimed, "How did it ever come to this?"
"We under estimated our enemies Empress."
"In the next life," Boudica said wiping the tears from her eyes, "I shall not make the same mistake."
Julian took Boudica by the arm and walked her to the room's door. Turning back to the man shredding; "Pierre. Do not miss any files. Everything in this room must be destroyed, do you understand? The allies cannot be allowed to learn of our secret Hegemony over Europe."
The man, Pierre, pushed his spectacles back up his nose from where they had slipped and before turning back to his work simply say "Oui - Bonne chance General."
"Good luck to you as well old friend."
Julian didn't look back again, he knew he'd never see his brave second in command again. Their fortress was burning, allied soldiers had infiltrated deep inside its walls and the Empire he had helped create was in tatters.
"How could this happen? We are supposed to be superior!" Julian asked the heavens as he led Boudica down a flight of spiral stairs that descended into the deep caverns beneath their alpine fortress.
"We are gods," Boudica said, "And these people are unworthy of us."
They made the rest of the trip in silence. Underneath the fortress lay hundreds of miles of tunnels that connected any number of different locations throughout the Alps. They'd been build half a century before by another European tyrant. That one had been defeated as well, the General thought bitterly, as he guided his Empress by torchlight to a small wheel transport that was waiting for them.
The pilot had long since abandoned his post so the General jumped into the driver's seat. Fortunately the General, who had seldom left the Fortress or this series of tunnels in the last six months, knew the maze-like system very well. Right, left, left, right, right, left. Or something like that took them to where the tunnel terminated. Above their heads was a mission silo, originally built by the United States to potentially house Nuclear Warheads close to the Iron Curtain had been retrofitted under Boudica's orders, using the vast wealth the augmented Humans seemed capable of accumulating, into a launching pad for a rocket capable of reaching orbit.
The General helped Boudica out of the transport and knowing atop the rocket was a capsule capable of holding only one, he directed her the way and made no effort to follow.
He'd served his Empress loyally since the beginning. Their origins were as one, and where most of the augments; the Khans of the world had surrounded themselves with a dozen or more "Super Humans" Boudica had only ever needed him. Now with everything they had built literally crumbling around them he knew he'd sacrifice himself for her. All he wanted was some acknowledgement of his sacrifice from her, some thanks, some goodbye.
But Boudica was not obliging. The General was just another cog in her Empire's machine. Without pretence or any look back Boudica exited the transporter and made her way inside the lift that lay open and waiting for her.
As the doors closed behind her, separating her forever from the man she'd made General, she didn't even meet his eyes.
General Richard Cartwright, born in a laboratory in London 1970, died when the tunnel he was in took a direct hit from an allied short range missile that was intended to hit the Saturn rocket as it lifted Boudica to the safety of orbit, and the waiting Sleeper Ship, in 1996.
His final thoughts were of the test tube baby he'd left in the care of an orphanage in Vienna days before the advancing allies had cut off all routes out of the Boudican Imperial power base in the Alps. How he wished he'd played the game a little differently.
