It had been a long time since Odo had stalked the halls of the Defiant, and his brief walk from the transporter room to sickbay to visit Dax and Bashir and to Vaughn's ready room brought back many memories most of them involved Nerys.

"Commander," Odo was saying as they crossed the bridge, "You've certainly got a lot of new faces." His assessment was accurate, but whether he'd meant it as a positive or a negative he wasn't telling. Vaughn simply confirmed it in the affirmative and decided to take it positively, seeing as how the man had just defused what was becoming a very sticky situation.

Vaughn offered Odo the ready room's only other seat and took his himself. Having already expressed his gratitude to the Changeling en-route it left their meeting now for an exchange of information.

"I want to establish first Commander," Odo said, "My loyalty lies now with my people."

"I understand," Vaughn conceded, it wasn't how he'd envisaged the conversation starting.

"But," Odo said sounding more promising, "That doesn't mean I follow blinding where the other's lead. My whole purpose for being here in the Gamma Quadrant is to try and - " Odo paused trying to decided the best word to describe his stewardship, finally settling on " - guide my people along a more righteous path."

"A noble endeavour."

"Indeed, one that is hindered when I discover, as I'm sure you now have, the Dominion still has operatives in the Alpha Quadrant."

Vaughn was nodding, glad to see Odo thought of this as much of an issue as he did.

"Whether or not those operatives were planted after the peace treaty was signed I cannot tell you, as the information exchange we share in the Link isn't as open as I was first led to believe."

The talk of the Great Link was lost on Vaughn, who had never seen it and likely never would. Mis-information and the withholding of facts however was his bread and butter.

"That information is being kept from you?"

"Not me exclusively," Odo said, "But held by a certain few from the rest of the Link."

Vaughn was nodding, he understood.

"The fact of the matter is I cannot confirm nor deny that there may be more operatives within the Federation, or any of the Alpha Quadrant powers."

Tell me something I don't know, Vaughn thought. But his mouth had already moved onto the next subject; "Why were your people so interested in Boudica? And why set up this elaborate series of infiltrations when she was floating around in YOUR neck of the woods. Couldn't you have had her picked up by a Jem'Hadar scout ship?"

Odo averted his eyes, obviously this was a source of embarrassment. "Her ship had been found by the Cardassians in the Alpha Quadrant, her lifepod was sent through the wormhole under cloak during the war. It's tiny size obviously meant it would bypass Deep Space Nine's sensors."

Odo's voice, always croaky, grew even more horse as he continued. "Picking her up had never been a priority but by the time she reappeared on our listening post's long range sensors it was already clear you'd reach the pod before we could. And..."

Odo looked sheepish, it wasn't a look his features seemed to suit. "There was another reason my people wished to get aboard the Defiant."

"You're talking about Dax," Vaughn said, the elephant in the room. Finding a frozen four hundred year old Human and risking interstellar war for their capture was one thing, taking Dax with the intention of invading her for her symbiote was quite another; much more personal.

"I am," Odo admitted. "The Vorta do not breed naturally as other humanoids do. They are simply cloned, generation after generation. This system is starting to break down. The clones are becoming unstable. One avenue for a potential solution our scientists came up with involved - "

Vaughn cut him off, he was unsure how into detail Odo was going to go but Vaughn had already read Dax's report and knew what Charles' intentions had been and he didn't want them gone over again. "The genetic memory patterns found in Trill symbiotes."

"Yes," Odo said simply, sensing Vaughn's unease at the subject matter.

"Will Dax be targeted again?"

"I will work tirelessly to prevent any new mission being undertaken with my knowledge."

Then reading Vaughn's dissatisfaction with this answer Odo added; "My influence only goes so far Commander."

Here the conversation seemed to stagnate, a bitter taste left in Vaughn's mouth.

"What of Boudica?"

"She will be released into your custody, after all, technically she's a Federation citizen. Therefore deserves Federation justice."

Vaughn thought that would be the case and had already readied a holding cell for her.

"What real value could she have added to your Empire?"

Odo stood at this, clearly the conversation was over. Vaughn matched the sign. "Thank you Commander," Odo said, showing quite plainly that what he'd said at the very top was true. His loyalty now stood firmly with his people.

"My people," Odo said stopping a foot from the door's open sensor and turning back around; "are good at a great many things. Scientific breakthroughs are not one of them."

Vaughn saw clearly now, the level of micro-management the Dominion employed did nothing to encourage competition nor creativity.

"It was hoped, that perhaps someone with an obviously advanced understanding of genetics would breed the next generation of Jem'Hadar - Faster, stronger, smarter."

"A scary thought," Vaughn admitted.

Odo crossed the room back to Vaughn now, leaning his weight on his closed fists he rested on the table. "Yes Commander, it is."

Julian had excused Ezri from sickbay, her bruisers healed. They walked together back to her quarters. They walked in silence for a time, Julian didn't want to push and Ezri was thankful for that but she needed to talk. She finally found the courage just as they reached the turbolift.

"Julian," she said stopping their progress. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again as an Ensign politely apologized and squeezed between the CMO and XO and entered the lift. "Bridge," they commanded on their way for some shift change.

Alone again she started over. "Julian. I've never felt so scared..."

He wanted to reach out, to hold her, to comfort her... to kiss her.

"... scared not for myself," she said her sentences fragmented as she tried to translate her thoughts into words. "Scared for Dax. The best way I can describe it is like a mother fearing for the safety of her child."

Always looking for humour to lighten a moment Julian threw in; "If that child were 500 years old."

For his effort she flashed him a short lived smile. "It's what he kept saying, he kept saying having the symbiote was like being a god." She shook her head, "That's not how I've ever felt. Sure there's a few on the symbiosis commission who think very highly of themselves, but Trill society would never tolerate the joined masquerading as gods."

Wanting to play down this scary analogy Julian reasoned "Maybe that's just the only way the Vorta can understand your relationship with the symbiotes. Remember they're bred to obey. Not to think."

"Maybe," Ezri conceded, the lift had arrived back and they both entered. They shared the lift ride in silence and walked the few feet to outside Ezri's quarters likewise.

She stopped them at her door and turned back to her former lover. "I don't think that was all."

"What else do you mean?" Bashir asked, in a rare moment of uncertainty.

"Maybe I'm reading too much into it," Ezri said, "The way he was talking about using the symbiote. It was as if... as if he thought it would somehow free the Vorta from their genetically inbred servitude."

Chewing on that food for thought for the longest of pauses Julian shrugged. "Get some sleep," he said putting his Doctor's tone back on. She smiled, glad in a way he dismissed the conversation. They'd both been through a lot and she wanted to rest.

He kissed her on the forehead, strictly in a friendly way, bid her goodnight and set off. Ezri waited half in, half out of her quarters watching him go. Waiting to see if he'd turn back. She had been the one to break off their relationship, but whether it had been the right call had been called into question by her inner voice many times over. When Bashir had gone out of sight without looking back she felt a small prang of disappointment. "Guess it's over for him as well," she said to herself and disappeared inside her quarters.

Bashir, having heard that Boudica had just been brought aboard in chains and that the Commander would be otherwise occupied for a little while debriefing with Starfleet Command in real-time using kindly borrowed Dominion relays, made his excuses and left Sickbay.

He found himself now stood starring through the forcefield at the green-clad Augment from centuries past. The very embodiment of Earth's self-destructive pre-first contact path, and quite possibly the oldest Human being in the galaxy.

She sat cross legged on the floor of her spartan cell her eyes closed.

"You think we are the same?" she asked breaking the silence and opening up her green eyes.

Bashir had known she was aware of his presence and that up until a point of her choosing he would remain unacknowledged. But even so when her words finally came he was still a little surprised.

"I'm sorry?" his play the fool act kicked in automatically when the subject of any conversation steered towards his true heritage.

"You might be a lightyear before them," she said, raising herself from the ground using her legs only in a fluid dance like motion. "But I," she was inches from the forcefield now. "Am a whole Quadrant beyond you." She'd known about his genetically modified past long before she'd read the Dominion records on him. She could smell it on him.

Bashir scoffed. She was right with her assessment, yes Bashir's mind had been altered to make him smarter, think faster, react quicker... but Boudica's entire DNA structure had been altered. She was super smart, super strong, super fast, a slow ager, a superb all rounder. She'd been bred to be the best, to usher in a new order for the world. To build a truly united European Empire that would stand not only the test of time, where so many others had failed, but also to stand against the rival power from the likes of Khan Noonien Singh.

"If you're so superior," he said, now his face was only inches from hers. "Then why I am the one out here. And you the one in there." His schoolyard logic held water on this occasion and it forced Boudica to break eye contact and retreat into her cell a short distance.

"I wouldn't be surprised if, one day, we found our roles reversed."

Bashir's prepared witty come back would have to save as their private conversation suddenly went three way when Vaughn appeared at the doorway.

"Commander," Bashir said, straightening his body to something resembling attention.

"Doctor," Vaughn said giving him a look that told him; Okay, you've had your fun. Now take off.

Bashir got the hint nodded to Vaughn and took his leave.

"Ah, Commander, it's your turn is it?" Boudica pronounced. "What do you intend to do with me?"

"You'll be tried in a court of law," Vaughn said simply as if there could never be an alternative.

"A public court?" she asked disbelieving, back in the 1990s people like her were tried, if they were tried at all, in private closed sessions where powerful men and women decided their fates without outside interference.

"There isn't any other kind."

At this Boudica laughed, "I would've thought a man of your seasoning would question THAT truth."

Vaughn had nothing else to add, he'd just wanted to come down here and look up her the same way Kirk would look upon Khan.

"Listen," Boudica said, her tone changing completely from arrogance to almost pleading. "I'm sure your Command doesn't want a reminder of Earth's dreadful past in the news. Why don't you just leave me in the Gamma Quadrant? Leave me on some lonely planet devoid of intelligent life where I can live out my days in peace."

Vaughn, ever a student of history, laughed at this. "Better men than I," he said picturing the legend that was Captain Kirk, "Have made similar mistakes... and lived to regret them."

Vaughn about faced and marched himself out of the brig, leaving Boudica to rule over all she surveyed. All ten feet square of it.