Inspection

Aron'Son examined the security layout of the cargo bay and turned to Ensign Kyle whom he had pulled from another duty to assist him in inspecting the ship's security status.

"The protocols here are the same as the others?"

"Yes Sir," Kyle replied "doors are coded the same and two guards around the clock."

"With the colonists coming aboard we will double the guard," Aron'Son stated "I want you to make the necessary adjustments in the duty roster."

"Me Sir? but shouldn't Lieutenant Tyvya-"

"No," Aron'Son said forcefully cutting him off "I am ordering you to make the assignment Ensign."

"Aye Sir."

Kyle tapped notes into the PADD he was using to document the inspection and Aron'Son nodded approvingly. There was something about this human that he liked. The man didn't ask too many questions, and didn't stare at him the way some others did. To Aron'Son that made him the perfect candidate to be his Third as the Andorian woman was technically already his Second.

"Now, what is next?"

"Science labs Sir, Deck 5."

"Very well, let us proceed."

The pair of security officers exited the cargo bay and moved down the corridor to the turbolift. Aron'Son had stopped by his office and equipped his personal armaments prior to beginning the inspection. Now that he was officially in charge of security it made sense to him that he should be armed. So, on his right hip was the Type II phaser in its holster and on his left the combat blade in its sheath. Aron'Son believed the knife to be inadequate and had decided he would look into producing a weapon more fitting a Jem'Hadar soldier. The turbolift ride was silent as the pair emerged onto Deck 5 and Aron'Son stopped in front of the main science lab.

"There is no guard here yet?"

"No Sir," Kyle answered "there will be once we leave port."

"Unacceptable, we are implementing the Yellow Alert protocol prior to departure with the boarding of the colonists, these spaces should be guarded."

"Aye Sir, I'll see to it."

Aron'Son nodded and entered the science lab. While the Dominion had scientists none of them were Jem'Hadar and so Aron'Son did not have much experience with them though in attending Starfleet Academy he had seen the value of scientific experimentation. As the doors closed behind him Aron'Son scanned the space and saw it had one occupant, and dark skinnned, white haired humanoid woman in what appeared to be a Starfleet uniform but the coloring was not what it should have been for a science officer. Her rank pips denoted her as a full commander, and Aron'Son realized this was likely the ship's science officer. If that was the case it was one of the people he had been very interested in meeting since he found out where he was being assigned. Aron'Son turned to Ensign Kyle,

"We will continue the inspection in two standard hours Ensign, I wish to speak with the commander. You are dismissed."

Kyle was puzzled but answered with and affirmative "Aye Sir," turned and departed the space.

Aron'Son walked toward where the woman was sitting and said "Commander, I am Aron'Son, I have been assigned as the chief of security for this ship."

Snowfire had been deep in communication with others of the Circle when the door slid open, and she barely registered the entrance beyond the eyeblink required to confirm a Starfleet uniform. Two in fact, both security, but it was a small thing compared to the whirling discussion flashing between multiple members of the Circle as they began to establish the Horizon'ssafety net. It was incredibly to watch them work, even with the mistakes they made so frequently, for they had learnt so much in the time since she had begun her teachings. She'd given them the basics, and was watching to ensure that they didn't run over any of the lesser known ethical boundaries by accident, but on the whole she was simply having fun watching her students prove themselves. There was no finer reward for a teacher than that.

The voice, clearly directed at her, startled her, and she blinked up at the officer before her in surprise. Lieutenant...security...Jem'Hadar? Oh, of course! She'd seen that posting notification. She held up one hand to forestall any question, bid a swift farewell to the Circle with the promise that she would be back soon to check their design, and let herself drift back into full reality. Her hand dropped back onto her lap, and the faraway look in her eyes faded.

"I saw the posting order, Lieutenant." She said pleasantly, coming to her feet with practised grace and a faint smile. "I will admit to having been surprised by it, but then this ship seems to attract the...less traditional members of Starfleet." She held out her hand in greeting, keeping the motion loose so that it could be taken as simply a greeting in itself if Aron'Son did not recognise the gesture. "Snowfire K'Leysha. It's a pleasure to meet you." There was something there in the room with the officer, a curiosity perhaps, that she could sense was directed at her. And she herself was curious as to what it might be. "Can I help you at all?"

Aron'Son looked the woman up and down briefly and then said "I wanted to make myself known as we will be working together, and I also wanted to see for myself that which even the Founders were afraid of."

Snowfire blinked, surprise flashing across her features at the second statement as she tried to place it. But then memories sprang across her mind, memories of her time in Starfleet Academy first, reading of the Dominion and the vast war that had been waged against them, and then further back, deeper, into strategic meetings she'd attended as a member of her Clan delegation and also as part of the IDF ticket punching required for battlegroup command. Planning sessions in response to the discovery of a vast power to the galactic west - the reason, she'd been told then, for the total cessation of continued colonisation beyond what the Federation had been found to call the Delta Quadrant. Planned responses of the time, the vast strategic construction project - still ongoing - named simply The Line. Estimates of resources that boggled the mind, planet numbers, defensive and offensive capabilities, projections of the outcome of a conflict under the current situation - fully possible given Fasset Drive technology. And the eventual decision to let sleeping dragons lie, at least until you'd forged a sword strong enough to pierce its hide. It all hurtled through her mind in a mess of realisations, pieces dropping into place with the words from the new Security Chief.

"Oh." Was her first response. Not particularly eloquent. But then it was a surprise. "I...had no idea that the Founders saw us as such a threat to them." Yet she smiled again even as she said it, and there was an edge to that smile. It wasn't, quite, arrogant. More a level of unconscious pride in her people, and the service that she was still a part of - regardless of her views on some of their ethics. "But, if you will not look askance, I will thank you for the compliment - for to me, even now a member of the IDF, it truly is one." She cocked her head at Aron'Son. "I hope I am a suitable specimen, if that was your only reason for coming. Or are there questions beyond the desire for sight?"

Aron'Son looked at her again "Initially I was conducting a security inspection, but when I saw you here I wanted to speak with you. Before I was....exiled...I was a First, with my own squad and as a First I had access to the scouting reports, contact simulations, and battle plans. Your species was not named specifically, they did not tell us who your people were, and of course they did not admit they were afraid, but I saw the plans, and when I saw Starfleet's briefing on your people I made the connection. The battle plans presented by the Vorta called for massive numbers of starships and Jem"Hadar, casualty projections in the hundreds of thousands.  There were restrictive orders for scouts in that area of space: "do not approach, and if contact is made withdraw to Dominion territory at once." I want to know why, why would beings that proclaimed themselves gods show such caution? They attacked the combined races of the Alpha Quadrant, even the Borg did not give the Founders much pause, but yet when it came to your people these so-called gods wanted no part of any conflict." 

Aron'Son was not agitated, or angry, as Jem'Hadar did not display such emotions. He was simply a soldier who wondered what would cause his all powerful commanders to draw such a line. He had dismissed the "gods" of the Dominion long ago, but even he could not dismiss the rumored power of the Founders though he had never actually seen one in person and that was the basis for his question to the Horizon's science officer. 

"Ah." Snowfire paused for a long moment, thoughts flickering behind her violet eyes as she tried to work out exactly what she could say without violating her current oaths of service. It was only curiosity, she knew that. But Starfleet Intelligence still didn't trust all of her people...and exposing parts of this to them would be wrong. With that in mind, she took a few steps back and to the side, tapping a few buttons on her workstation that onlined the mirror box she had hidden inside it. Privacy rights applied to this, so it wasn't a violation. Then she looked across at Aron'Son again.

"It's....complicated, I expect, but I believe it would be a combination of two things." Her hand flashed across the panel, bringing up the files on her people's stardrive. "This would be reason number one." She gestured as a holo of the schematics appeared in the air above the workstation. "As your Starfleet briefings will have told you, in less elaboratory terms at least, my people's technological bias is skewed vastly towards gravitational manipulation and control. Given what I know of the Dominion now thanks to Starfleet, I suspect that your Founders know far better than Starfleet how advanced our understanding of that technology is, and how it lends itself to system defence." She paused for a moment, unsure as to if she should spell it out, then went ahead anyway. "Not even the Borg were capable of adapting to a cage of singularities dropped on top of their attack fleets whenever they crossed the heliopause." A tap on the panel and the holo flickered out of existence and her other hand rose to tap her head.

"The second reason lies here, in my people's Gifts. We're far but the only race in the galaxy to have such abilities, but I've gone over the records Starfleet holds since I arrived and from those I can say that we seem to be one of the only peoples who have pushed the boundaries of what it's possible to do with psionic abilities, even the weakest ones. This ship has benefited from that expertise, in the creation of what my people would call a Circle - an organisation of the ship's psionically capable  - and my training of the group to create additional layers of defence for it from mental attacks." Here she was on solid legal ground in passing this along, the Federation already knew - even if it didn't know that yet. "Even the weakest among our Gifted are able to channel their power to others, and on ships and planets both this power can be pooled for use by the stronger Gifted, with a Circle of the strongest - we call them Adepts - capable of tapping the combined psionic ability of an entire planet's Gifted." She shrugged. "On average one in four Ilythiiri are born with access to at least one Gift, and the training required to control and - in certain circumstances - channel is mandatory."

She tapped her head again. "I'm above average on the Gifted scale, although I'm quite sure I get that from my parents. I manifested Mindspeech - what you would call telepathy - and Empathy at Adept level when I was only twenty five, and when admitted to the Academy on our homeworld I was found to possess low-to-mid level Fetching. That's what you'd call telekinesis. Although Master or higher Fetching is extremely rare, the capabilities of someone with it are...extreme." Again that little shrug. "Whilst there were likely other factors - the size of our vessels being another possibility - those two I believe would have been the primary ones in the threat level we were ascribed."

"With that said, however, we had no desire to engage in combat with the Dominion either, for our own projections showed that even with our technology and the strength of our navy, the IDF would take huge losses in breaking the Founders will to continue the war. Losses that we could have sustained, but terrible ones nonetheless, and with that in mind we ceased colonial expansion in the direction of the Gamma Quadrant almost a hundred and fifty years ago and focused on the construction of a defensive strategy along the Western border of our space in the event that war became inevitable."

Aron'Son thought about Snowfire's response to his question, the Dominion had encountered telepaths, empaths before in both the Vulcans and Betazoids and had swept them aside. He didn't exactly understand why the Founders would have hesitated here, but the gravitational manipulation was of interest to him. The species briefing he had read was heavily truncated he now realized. He would have to see what his new security clearance allowed him to see regarding the Illythiri. 

"Mind powers were not of consequence," he replied dismissively "Vulcans and Betazoids posess such things and Jem'Hadar faced them and won. It is wise that you did not incur the Founders wrath though it seems their caution was justified as well. Make no mistake Commander, I no longer hold any loyalty to the Dominion or hold the Founders in any esteem. I simply wished to understand the nature of their motivations."

"Not like these, Lieutenant." Snowfire replied,  her eyes narrowing in sudden concentration, and a whirlwind of shining metal erupted from her desk, knifing out across the space between her and the Jem'Hadar before stopping just short of his skin whilst more formed a wall of shimmering reflections between her and her guest. She made a gesture, and the needles retreated back towards her. "I have read the Starfleet files on the subject. Vulcans and Betazoids are not trained like we are, they have little knowledge and far less practice in combining their mental strengths. My people have spent over forty thousand years honing the weapons that are our minds, and though much of what we learnt has been forbidden, more has been refined." She gestured, and the needles returned to her, spinning back into her hand to settle there in a heap, and she lifted one up so that Aron'Son could see it more clearly now. "These are simple Sar, metal needles and nothing more. But this is only a practice set, not one made for performance - or for war. And when one who can cast their mind across the void between the very stars focuses the strength of their voice on minds close to them...the result is not pretty. Believe me, Aron'Son, for you do not know. The telepaths of the Federation, for all that some on their own are more powerful, do not know even the beginnings of how to match ours together."

She laid the Sar aside with gentle reverence. "A war between the Dominion and the Council would bring no victory, only death. That was the belief of the Talya, and Fleet Intelligence." She added the second organisation almost as an afterthought. "Upon our systems the fleets of the Founders would break like waves upon a mountainside, yet equally would our attacks eventually grind to a halt amidst a space set alight by burning starships. Yet in the end, as easily as we could tell, the war would end, but with neither our people nor the Dominion victorious. That was the reasoning behind the creation of the Line, and of all other preparations we have made since then, as surely the Founders must had prepared." She nodded at Aron'Son. "What you say confirms that assumption of preparation, yet if their only plan was ships and soldiers - which I sorely doubt - they would have suffered for it."

Aron'Son was astounded by the woman's demonstration of her power. He would not have believed such things were possible had he not seen it with his own eyes. His facial features remained stoic as was the case with all Jem'Hadar, but his mind was not like all other Jem'Hadar. It was free of the blind loyalty and programming ingrained in his people for years, and it could see that Snowfire's people were far more powerful than the Dominion had admitted. 

"I would not have believed your statements had I not seen your demonstration with my own eyes. I now have no doubt the Founders were afraid, or at least knew the same things your people knew. The plans I saw were preliminary battle estimates, and material casualty projections. I suspect that if conflict had come, the Founders would have gotten directly involved, but I believe you are correct. Had that war come, the space between the Dominion and your people would have burned. Such a needless war is not honorable and no way for a soldier to die. Commander, I do not feel as other species do, yet I know that I would not want to be involved in such a battle for as you say there would be no victory and victory is life."

"If that is the creed you would define it by, then you are quite correct." Snowfire answered finally, her fine fingers sliding her practice Sar back into their holder. A routine action and also a calming one, clear from her manner. "The Dominion has been likened to a dark reflection of the Federation, a possible way in which it could have evolved given the victory of certain human instincts over the ones that currently hold sway. My people, the Council, are more of a twisting puzzle composed of pieces of each, yet where it comes to war we are far more of the Dominion than of the Federation, although the price of our skill was horrific." If Aron'Son wanted to find out what she mean, the records involving the Fall and the times around it were almost fully indexed again, and they would be able to explain. She...didn't really want to. "Yet, there is opportunity and possibility within us, like any other race, but...ah, it is of little consequence." She shook her head, then her eyes brightened with a renewed interest.

"You know, for all that we know of each other's nominal polities, I don't think that either side has ever met each other before now." She smiled slowly. "Would you be amenable to a spar on an off-shift? I've read about the skill of the Jem'Hadar, and I would greatly value a chance to test myself against it." Her words were light, with no deceit behind them. "I promise that, whatever the outcome, the results shall remain aboard this ship."