Jasminder bowed her head to him respectfully. “And if you and the Devotionalists are willing to put your lives on the line to change the minds of those in power, then I, for one, cannot deny you that act of courage.”
Vranien smiled. “Courage is merely the recognition of what needs to be done and the concentration to do it.”
“Yes,” she breathed, seeing what was in his eyes. “You intend to stage another march, don’t you?”
“We all stand together now,” Vranien replied, “joined in blood. Yes, we will march with the Devotionalists.”
“You can’t!” T’Ryssa cried. “The Breen won’t care about your principles or your courage. They’ll just burn you down.”
Vranien met her gaze evenly. “Then we will win. Because the people will see the injustice of it and their own consciences will be stirred. They will see that we did not give way in the face of tyranny, and their own fires of resistance will be stirred.
“Ykredna’s regime and her Breen enforcers can only inspire fear—a narrow, selfish urge, fleeting in its effect. Nonviolent resistance can inspire hope, courage, and determination—inspirations that can grow and spread throughout an entire populace. By making a statement that justice is stronger than fear, by having the boldness to make that statement with our lives, we will plant the seeds of victory for our cause.”
Jasminder drank in his words, his calm assurance, and she began to sense something within herself that she thought she’d lost. That inner certainty, that unshaken core of commitment, unswayed by ephemeralities like fear and anger and desire. It was there, almost within reach. But only if she truly, fully committed herself. Her orders from Starfleet Intelligence were to stay behind the scenes, to observe, not to interfere except very subtly and indirectly if it became necessary. But Vranien was right: she had become a part of this. She had to act according to her conscience, unstintingly and without compromise, or she would be no use to Starfleet or anyone else. “Then I can do no less than to stand with you,” she told him.
T’Ryssa’s dark eyes went wide, gazing at her for a long moment, then at Vranien . . . then within herself for a moment. “If you’re going to do that,” she said softly, “it won’t do much good unless . . . unless the people can really see the truth. No government lies, no censorship. Everything that happens will have to be documented, broadcast, so people will know.” She took a shuddering breath. “If someone can get me access to a communications center, I can try to—I can override the state’s uploading restrictions. Make sure everyone sees . . . what happens.”
Vranien thanked her, as did Jasminder with a wordless look. Lorrav took Trys’s hands to ease their trembling, and they went off together, talking earnestly. Jasminder knew this night with Lorrav would mean far more to T’Ryssa than the last one.
Tepesor, Vicar General of Janalwa, jerked her elaborately tattooed wings outward in alarm at the sheer size of the gathering in Niamlar Circle. Where before there had been under a thousand protesters, now nearly twenty thousand had converged within the plaza before the Inquisitors had been able to blockade the entry points. “How can this be?” she asked. “The first demonstration should have deterred further troublemaking.”
“ ’Aya, Vicar,” replied Grand Inquisitor Rasec, whose own tattoos marked him as a bishop a grade above her in caste, though of course the male held no authority over her except in matters of enforcement. “The preacher Yeffir has a strange hold over them. Some demonic enchantment, I wager. But worry not. The leaders are still pacifists—cowards. They’ll break soon enough, and the rabble will follow.” He stepped forward, activated the amplifier around his throat, and addressed the crowd. “ ’Aya! This gathering is heretical! You are ordered to disperse at once!”
As he spoke, the contingent of Breen shock troops under Ghoc Reyd’s command emerged from the Inquisitorial Palace at the western compass point of the circle and from within the Cathedral of State behind Tepesor and Rasec. The massive, faceless bipeds loomed over the crowd, taking up positions on the steps of both edifices and brandishing their disruptor rifles. Reyd himself came forth to stand beside Rasec, nodding wordlessly at him. “ ’Aya,” said Rasec. “That should put the fear of divine justice in them.”
Tepesor shuddered. “It certainly does for me.”
“ ’Aya?” Rasec asked, peering at her. “Do you have cause to fear justice, Vicar?”
“You know I could not hold my post were I not pure, Bishop.”
“ ’Aya—but you still owe me sixty-four noreg, Vicar. Yeffir has not yet broken. You had late last night in the pool.” Reyd’s snouted helmet turned to stare at her.
She ignored the Breen, refusing to let herself be judged by a heretic, even a tolerated one. “And would you care to wager on whether this crowd will break? ’Aya—I see more anger than fear in their stances.”
“Even better,” the Grand Inquisitor said. “If we goad the rabble into another riot, it will justify whatever action we take in the name of order—and expose the Devotionalists’ talk of peace for the lie it is.”
But no riot seemed forthcoming. The lead orators, including Yeffir’s second, a bronze-furred male named Hycneb (shameful, the way the lower classes commingled with no regard for gender or creche origin), and the shaven-headed leader of the Romulan delegation, now openly displaying his collusion, spoke calmingly to the crowd, urging them to stand their ground. “We are here to deliver a message,” Hycneb proclaimed. “We will stand with our brethren in the Episcopate if they will stand with us. We have the right on our side, and we cannot budge from it if we wish to persuade them to join us there!”
Tepesor had heard the same rhetoric from Yeffir, the same calm certainty sustaining her in her cause despite hour after hour of torture. She had felt some degree of admiration for Yeffir’s unwavering commitment to her beliefs—and perhaps a degree of envy as well. But she had striven to persuade herself it was a mere aberration, the convincing façade of a lunatic. Now, though, seeing that same conviction resonate from others, inspiring them to stand calm and unarmed in the face of both Inquisitors and Breen, Tepesor had to wonder if there could truly be some solid core of strength underlying their heresy of peace.
Rasec, though, would have none of it. “ ’Aya, they will lose their courage soon enough. Ghoc Reyd?”
The brigadier issued a command to his troops in that chattering static that passed for Breen communication. The troops stepped forward, brandishing their weapons and aiming into the crowd. “ ’ Aya, a feint,” Rasec told her. “The crowd is on edge. It will not take much to panic them and give us our riot.” He activated his amplifier again. “ ’Aya! Heresy will not be tolerated! Disperse at once or you will be fired upon!”
But Hycneb, the Romulan, and the others continued rallying the crowd to stand their ground. Even Nagrom stood in support of them, though members of his faction had clashed violently with the Inquisitors more than once since the previous rally. They led a chant calling for the Pontifex to step down, and soon the entire crowd was joining in.
Rasec nodded to Ghoc Reyd again, authorizing him to ramp up the provocation to the next level. The Breen fired at the feet of the crowd. Still they held their ground and continued the chant. “ ’Aya! This is your final warning, heretics!”
Tepesor stared at him. “You won’t really go through with it? Fire without provocation?”
Reyd chattered, and Tepesor’s translator interpreted it in an impersonal, mechanical voice: “Their defiance is provocation enough. An example must be made.”
“ ’Aya, wait for my order!” Rasec told him. The crowd continued to hold firm, only chanting louder. Finally he sighed, bowing his wings at the weighty burden of his next order. “Fire at the leaders.”
Reyd gave the order, and the Breen opened fire. Lethal beams arrowed toward the rebellious preachers, but the sea of bodies had closed around them, shielding them. Maybe a dozen Kinshaya fell dead.
“Ineffectual,” Reyd buzzed.
Rasec’s muzzle pulled back
in anger now, anger at what the heretics were forcing him to do. “ ’Aya. Resume fire until they get the message and disperse.” Tepesor folded her wings and breathed a prayer for strength.
• • •
“No!” T’Ryssa screamed as the Breen began firing indiscriminately into the heart of the crowd. Many of the protesters broke and ran, but the exits were still blockaded; even if the Inquisitorial troops there were trying to remove the blockades, they were too slow and the entrances were soon jammed with bodies. Some tried leaping into the air, hoping to clear the fences, but with little room to run or spread their wings, they could get no lift.
But the core group, Devotionalists and Unificationists, stood their ground and called to the crowd for calm, hoping to prevent a stampede. “Show no fear!” Vranien cried. “Let them look us in the eyes! Let them face what they are doing!”
The Breen, however, didn’t seem to care whose eyes they looked into. The fire continued unabated, mowing down protesters, those who stood and those who ran alike. “It’s not fair!” T’Ryssa screamed, sobbing like a child. “They didn’t do anything! They just stood there and talked! How can we let this happen, Jazz? How can we not fight back?”
Choudhury pulled the young lieutenant into her arms. “We are fighting back the way the others wish us to, my friend. Your anger is just. I feel it too. But there are more constructive ways to channel it than violence. Thanks to your computer skills, the people will see this injustice. The state won’t be able to hide it from them. All Kinshaya will see that Ykredna’s regime does not stand for righteousness and truth. They’ll see that their bishops are so corrupt that they would slaughter unarmed civilians. They will share our anger, our righteous anger, and they will stand with our cause. The state will no longer have power over them. And the bishops . . . well, maybe many of them will begin to ask if they can truly live with what they have become.”
She held on to T’Ryssa as the disruptor bolts drew closer. She took her anger and her fear and she channeled them into stillness, used them as motivation to stand her ground. She accepted what was, and knew peace within herself. No matter what the universe threw at her, she would not be moved from that place of stillness. Nobody can hurt me without my permission, she thought once more, and this time she truly knew it.
Beside her, T’Ryssa gathered herself, straightened, and resumed standing on her own, though her hand still clung to Jasminder’s. Together, they faced the onslaught with calm acceptance.
• • •
“That’s enough!” Vicar Tepesor cried as more and more unresisting bodies fell before the Breen bombardment. The death toll was surely in the hundreds now, not only from disruptor fire but from trampling by the panicked members of the crowd. It was as if the tales of damnation from the holy writ were coming to life before her eyes. “ ’Aya, stop it, Rasec! The point has been made!”
But the Grand Inquisitor was listening to a report by a subordinate. “Oh, no,” Rasec moaned. “Somehow our upload restrictions have been subverted. This is being broadcast live across the Holy Order!” He bounded forward to intercept Ghoc Reyd. “Cease fire! ’Aya, cease fire!” It appalled Tepesor that he seemed more concerned about bad publicity than the lives of so many Kinshaya. Even heretics did not deserve this. But she would accept his petty motivations so long as the bloodshed ended.
Reyd’s cold visor turned toward Rasec. “The order was to fire until the crowd dispersed,” the Breen brigadier droned.
“Until they began to disperse!”
“Half-measures were not effective last time. They would simply gather again as they did before. We must end this resistance once and for all.” Reyd turned back to his troops. “Continue fire until your energy cells are exhausted!”
Tepesor leapt forward to confront him. “No! That is not acceptable! Rasec, order him to stop!”
Rasec started to bristle at the presumption of a female issuing a military order, but he recognized that the situation had gone beyond that into matters of policy. He turned to Reyd. “Ghoc Reyd, I command you to stand down your troops!” He made a semaphore gesture to his own Inquisitorial forces with his colorful wings, and in moments, dozens of Kinshaya had their weapons brought to bear upon the Breen troops.
“You would turn against your allies in the Typhon Pact?” Reyd challenged.
“ ’Aya! You have perpetrated a massacre against your allies!” Rasec cried. “I think it is the Breen who will have to answer to the Pact. Stand. Down.”
Reyd simply stared at him for a moment more, but then Rasec raised his wings again and the Inquisitors cocked their weapons. Finally, making an untranslatable gurgle, Reyd gestured to his troops and the deadly barrage ceased.
“ ’Aya, take them into custody,” Rasec ordered his Inquisitors. “We must save face while we can,” he went on to Tepesor as his subordinates complied. “With the right image presentation, we can salvage this, pin all the blame on the offworlders and make the Inquisitors the heroes. We’ll have to soften our rhetoric toward the Devotionalists, but they’re probably too decimated to constitute a real threat anymore . . .”
Tepesor doubted he was right. Hundreds of these protesters were dead, but she knew that many thousands more had just been created. The state had been faced by people who did nothing more than stand and talk, and had felt so threatened that it had responded with mass murder. But the protesters had been so firm in their conviction, so devout in their faith, that nothing could budge them, not even death. It was suddenly clear to Tepesor who the true cowards were. And she no longer wished to be one of them.
• • •
Jasminder Choudhury made her way through the plaza looking for survivors, tending to the wounded where she could. The scene in Niamlar Circle was ghastly, and she would mourn later, but now she had a duty to those who lived, just as she did after a battle on the Enterprise. She took comfort knowing that, despite the losses, the protesters had emerged victorious. They had convinced the Kinshaya leaders to see the wrongness of their actions and renounce them. All right, so the leaders had still used the threat of force against the Breen, but it was a start. Choudhury certainly had no objection in principle to the judicious use of force for the greater good. She admired those with the courage to use nonviolence as their weapon, but sadly it was not always the right or the only weapon to use.
The people of the Holy Order had seen the current Episcopate—and the Breen—for what they truly were. The state’s legitimacy was lost. Moreover, it had been Yeffir’s nonviolence that had won the day, and even Nagrom had followed her lead. It did not guarantee that the more militant voices of protest would continue to be outvoted in the future, but it was a good sign.
Most of all, Jasminder had been victorious within herself. She had found her center again, and her anger and fears, though still a part of her, would no longer master her.
But then Jasminder saw T’Ryssa Chen. The young contact specialist was crumpled across the tiles of the plaza . . . weeping inconsolably as she clutched Lorrav’s burned and lifeless body in her arms. In that key moment, Trys had been willing to stand firm and do nothing to save her own life—but this was different. She had stood by and watched while Lorrav was mowed down. Even knowing it was his choice, it would be hard for her to live with that. The sight was a reminder for Choudhury that this victory had come at a great cost.
T’Ryssa saw her and held her gaze. “I want to hate them,” she said. “I want to damn them all to Hell with a side trip through Gre’thor. But he wouldn’t have wanted that.” She sniffled. “And he wouldn’t have wanted me to hate myself either. So what’s left for me to do?”
Jasminder clasped her shoulder. “Hate is only fear turned outward. You mastered your fear today. You knew, when it counted, that your fear was meaningless. And you let it go, because you had something better to fill your heart with. Hate is no different.
“Don’t dwell on the harm that others did. Dwell on the good that you can do.”
After a long moment gazing down
at Lorrav’s remains, T’Ryssa nodded and rose to her feet. “Let’s go,” she said. “There are still wounded who need our help.”
6
TALAR SYSTEM
STARDATE 59910.1
Dezinor Nen Fel-A was growing concerned as she monitored the activity of the Talarian females. This had been a delicate operation from the start, convincing the protesters to accept Tzenkethi assistance when one of their primary issues with the government was its dealings with offworlders. Luckily she had been able to appeal to them by using the same logic that had led the Tzenkethi to cooperate in the Typhon Pact in the first place: that they shared a common interest in countering Federation imperialism. The Federation used its rhetoric of unity and cooperation to justify pressuring and bribing other civilizations to submit to its might and its irrational democratic values, so what better response than to foment a more genuine, decentralized cooperation among those who had not yet been assimilated and thereby give them the strength to resist?
So long as that “ decentralized” coalition is ultimately managed from Ab-Tzenketh, Dezinor added. That was where Fel-echelon problem-solvers like herself came in, acting to ensure that the decisions made on other worlds, while appearing to originate from within and serve those worlds’ interests, nonetheless accorded with the needs of the Tzenkethi Coalition. Too many times over the past millennium, Tzenkethi had been taken screaming from their ancestral caverns and burrows by aliens who sought to exploit and possess them because of their superior beauty as a race. Of necessity, the Tzenkethi had learned two things: to ensure they controlled their environment and maintained a protective territorial buffer around it, and to keep a low profile while they did so. They had learned the offworlders’ arts and tools of warfare and never hesitated to wield them when necessary, for that was the only language the barbarians truly understood. But the subtler, more surgical methods of the Fel were far preferable.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: The Struggle Within Page 7
