Cerulean Stars - Chapter 100

Chapter 100

Stardate 48362.6 - May 13, 2371 - 08:22:33

“You put him in a holding cell?” Raine said, her eye ridge twitching as she looked from Odo to the now roughly teenaged Jem'Hadar that all but growling at her from behind a force field.

“He attacked one of my deputies while I was regenerating.” Odo defended as he stared down at her.

Of course he did, the boy was a teenaged Jem'Hadar, and they were probably as bad as teenaged Klingons when it came to a lack of aggressive impulse control.

Sighing in annoyance, Raine walked over to the cell and matched glares with the Jem'Hadar youth inside. “You attacked the person Odo had watching you, why?”

“I wanted to fight him.” He answered in a defiant tone.

Raine glanced over to Odo with a raised eyeridge, and the Changeling gave her a very clear ‘you see’ look in return.

“Did you win?” She inquired as she turned back to the Jem’Hadar, ignoring the disapproving glare she could all but feel Odo staring into her back.

“Brooks.” Odo growled in warning.

“Do you or do you not want my help with this?” Raine shot back. “Because experience had taught me just telling a kid no and expecting them to follow it is a good way to end up having to spend a week hunting through the jefferies tubes for the captain's missing parrot.”

Given Saya's other parent Raine had been extraordinarily relieved when he daughter had mostly moved past her 'I want to be a pirate’ phase.

“So how about it…”

Raine turned a questioning glance to Odo with the realization that she still didn't know what they two had decided to name him. “What did you go with for a name?”

The way the changeling refused to meet Raine's eyes at the question was annoyingly telling, and she let out an annoyed sigh.

“I’ll say this to both of you.” She said looking from the Jem’Hadar that was back to glaring at her and the Changeling that was now pretending to study an old security update on one of the wall panels. “Names are important, they make most humanoids look at you as someone other than something. And given certain parts of Starfleet still want to stick him in a lab, you really need all the help you can get on that front.”

“Now that that’s said.” She continued, focusing back on the Jem’Hadar. “You want to fight me, don’t you?”

“Brooks.” Odo repeated tiredly.

“Some species have predatory or aggressive instincts.” Raine explained in annoyance. “You can either ignore them, and then act shocked when that inevitably backfires. Or you can channel it in a generally constructive way, like the Kromsapiod’s. One of the more pleasant species I’ve met, with an undeniable predatory urge that they satisfy through ritualized non-lethal hunting.”

That had been a fun assignment to accept, it had taken Tur’ok nearly three days to corner her in a location where she couldn’t just let loose. After which they’d had an epic ten minute long mele battle that had ended with him stabbing her through the shoulder with a photon spear.

“So if he wants to fight so badly, regulations say I can choose to oblige him since for some species that’s just what’s needed.”

“As a female you will be very little challenge.” The teenaged Jem’Hadar said cockily from behind the forcefield.

That was moderately odd to hear from someone who was only a few days old, though Raine supposed it was possible the Founders had pre-programed the species with some sort of instinctual knowledge that set males higher on the threat response meter than females. Or she supposed Bashir might have given him a rundown on the general biological differences between men and women and he had integrated that into his forming psyche in a weird way.

“My species is mono-gendered.” Raine corrected with mild amusement at the one sided beatdown she knew was going to come. “We just look female for aesthetic reasons.”

By which she meant someone, somewhere, had wanted a race of blue female space babes.

“Lower the forcefield Odo.” She told the chief of security. “I’ll wear him out and then we can see just how deep the aggression problem goes.”

“Trust me.” She added in when it became clear from Odo’s hesitation that the Changeling had doubts.

His eyes flicked down to the empty phaser holster on her belt before giving a tired sigh and walking over to enter the release code into the panel next to the cell.

“Okay.” She told the Jem’Hadar as the forcefield flickered off. “Come at me kid.”

Clamping down on her instinctual barrier reaction, she let the Jem'Hadar rush her, grabbing his arm she used a combination of a leg sweep and his own momentum to send him crashing to the floor.

“I should probably warn you though.” She continued, completely nonplussed as he pulled himself back to his feat and glared at her. “My species is from a higher gravity world then the standard and I’m trained in several complimentary martial arts styles.”

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Stardate 48365.5 - May 14, 2371 - 09:46:48

“The problem is the drug.” Bashir told them as he held up one of the vials containing powdery white material that had been recovered from the wreckage over the briefing room table.

“And you can't just replicate more?” Sisko inquired as he stared at the vial with a frown in his face.

“The replicators weren't capable of duplicating the primary isogenic enzyme.” Bashir answered with a sad shake of his head as he set the vial down. “I tried forwarding the pattern to Starbase 310 to see if their new genetronic replicator might have better luck, but they didn't have any better luck than I did.”

“I don't normally like to speculate about such things.” He continued as he shot the vial on the table and annoyed glare. “But given the circumstances, I'd say it was purposefully designed to be nearly impossible to replicate.”

“What about genetic engineering?” Raine asked the doctor. “Could you use it to remove the dependency?”

“What?” Raine asked as Sisko, Dax, and O'Brien shot her a disapproving stare. “This might as well be the very definition of a medical necessity.”

“Maybe if I had ten years and a team of researchers I could figure something out on that end.” Bashir confessed with a grimace. “But right now we just don't know nearly enough about the Jem'Hadar genome to even attempt it.”

“We'll put that on the back burner till I've had a chance to discuss the issue with Odo then.” Sisko said with a sigh before focusing on O'Brien. “How's the analysis of the wreckage coming Chief? Anything new? Or can I inform Quark he's finally welcome to ship it off somewhere.”

The last Raine had heard that somewhere was likely to be Romulas, their nominal allies having used their on-station contingent to preempt the bidding Quark had been planning with an offer the Ferengi hadn't wanted to refuse.

O'Brien gave an apologetic shake of his head. “Nothing we didn't already have from the wreckage recovered around the planet the Odyssey went down on.”

“And I've had no luck tracking down Rionoj.” Jadzia added in. “So we won't be finding out where in the Gamma Quadrant she happened upon it until her ship swings back around here.”

“Not much point in even asking then.” Raine put forward, knowing the Boslic captain was very much the type that was in it for the thrill of being a rogue trader type instead of an actual desire for profit. “Salvaging unclaimed wreckage is standard enough we wouldn't even have much to pressure her with outside of maybe getting the Bajorans to issue a small fine for filing a faulty flight plan.”

“Agreed.” Sisko said as picked up the padd in front of him and quickly flipped through the information on it before grimacing. “Next up would be the Bajoran government's invitation to Kai Bareil's inauguration next week.”

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Stardate 48371.5 - May 16, 2371 - 14:20:24

Given there had been functionally no way for them to produce their own Ketracel White it had been more or less a foregone conclusion that they would end up taking the Jem'Hadar back to the Dominion. Of course, like many things there was somewhat of a disconnect between saying it, and doing it, at least for one very specific person.

“You're over thinking things Odo.” Raine told the man as he paced back and forth in front of the Defiant's mess hall viewports.

“How am I over-thinking things?” Odo snapped as he turned a brief glare to her. “He wants to go back, the only way to save his life is going back, but I know if he does, the Dominion will just send him out to oppress people and fight their wars.”

Raine rolled her eyes. “You're overthinking things because you're ignoring your own leverage in this.”

“Rex is a single Jem'Hadar, you are a Founder, if you want Rex stationed somewhere he won't be oppressing people or fighting wars, tell the Vorta of whatever Dominion ship we find that.”

The Asari was moderately sure the Great Link would sacrifice a hundred thousand Jem'Hadar in a heartbeat if it meant Odo would think even slightly more favorably about them.

“Heck.” She continued as she swirled the steaming hot tea in her teacup. “I'd give it better than even odds that if you asked for Rex to be your personal bodyguard, the Vorta in charge would contact the closest Founder about it and come back with an offer to give you as much of that drug as you need to keep Rex going.”

Honestly she suspected they would jump at the chance if Odo actually asked for the last, given it would mean he wouldn't be completely at the mercy of 'untrustworthy’ solids.

“I couldn't do that.” Odo refused in a tone that suggested the statement was more to convince himself of it than her. “I'd be no better than them.”

“Oh for the love of.” Raine muttered in exasperation as she let her head drop onto the table.

Lifting her head back up she glared at the Changeling. “The damage was done long before you were born, or budded off, or however baby Changelings come about. All you can do now is ignore it, or try and fix what you can of it.”

“And I know that’s not exactly heartening to hear from a Starfleet officer given our prime directive directly tells us we should choose the ‘ignore it’ option in most cases.” She continued, fidgeting a tiny bit with her combadge at the reminder. “But there's a good reason captain’s are given a lot of latitude when it comes to that particular directive. Because there are circumstances where ‘try and fix what you can’ is the acceptable option to take.”

“And you think this is one of those circumstances?” Odo inquired skeptically as he stared down at her.

“Why not at least put the question to Rex?” Raine returned as she met his eyes and raised a single eyeridge in challenge. “Worst case scenario he decides he wants the normal Jem’Hadar treatment. In which case you’ll at least know that’s really what he wants.”

Odo gave a grumble which she suspected meant he was at least going to consider it, so with a sigh Raine returned to her late lunch and left him to his sulking.

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Author’s Notes: No Darkened Stars today because of the Christmas rush, so enjoy this instead.