by Olivia Woods
Shakaar kept his eyes on the map. “This isn’t the time, Nerys.”
“Somebody needed to lure the Cardassians away from the caves. I was the fastest. I stood the best chance of keeping them busy so Furel and Lupaza could get back and warn you.”
“And we still had to go out there and save your ass, didn’t we?”
“I didn’t ask to be saved,” Kira fired back, throwing the crate down onto the rubbish pile. “I was ready to give my life for this team.”
“A little too ready.”
Kira gaped. “What the kosst is that supposed to mean? Wait, you know what? Don’t even answer. I made the right call under the circumstances. How you can take me to task for that, especially when my ‘stunt’ was the only reason your ambush succeeded-after we’d already managed to take down the sensor toweris beyond me.”
“You gotta admit,” Lupaza told Shakaar gently, “it worked out pretty well.”
Shakaar shot her the look he used when he expected people to shut up; Lupaza held up her hands and walked away. For his part, Furel kept frowning at the map, seeming oblivious to the argument. Shakaar tapped his arm. “Give us a moment, would you?”
“What?” Furel looked up at Shakaar, then at Kira, then back at Shakaar. “Oh. Sure thing. You two take your time. I’ll be checking the proximity scanners if you need me. Just do me a favor and aim away from the rations if you decide to start shooting each other.” That earned him two stern glances as he folded up the map, handed it to Shakaar, and got out of the line of fire.
“Look,” Shakaar began, turning back to Kira. “You did good out there today, I’m not denying that. But you seem to be taking a lot of risks lately. More than usual, even for this outfit. This group has been together a long time, and we’ve lost too many good people along the way to put up with anyone’s recklessness.”
Kira shook her head in disbelief. “This is about Dakahna, isn’t it?”
Shakaar folded his arms. “I never mentioned Dakahna. But isn’t it interesting that she came to mind?”
“If you’re gonna blame me for what happened to her, then just say it!”
“Kosst it, Nerys, nobody blames you for what happened to Dakahna-except you! It wasn’t your fault. We were damn lucky more of us didn’t die on that raid, and I don’t want to lose anyone else if it can be avoided.”
Kira’s mind went back to the day that still haunted her nights: Four armored skimmers and ten times that number of footsoldiers had surged over the rise before the cell even realized that they’d walked into a trap-the “survey station” they’d gone out to hit was a fake-bait to draw some too-cocky resistance fighters into an ambush. It had been one of the Cardassians’ earliest tests of the security grid.
Latha was the first to react, lobbing two of his homemade plasma charges toward the advancing strikeforce even as Shakaar shouted for the cell to fall back. The Cardassians broke formation as one bomb exploded in their midst, and then fell into complete disarray when the second explosive landed in the path of one of the skimmers. The underside of the guncraft erupted into flames as the charge went off, and the skimmer went spinning out of control into more than a dozen soldiers.
Kira and Dakahna had taken cover behind some rocks to return fire, but it wasn’t until after Nerys had started running again that she realized Vaas was no longer with her.
Kira forced the memory down, blinking back tears. “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying we’re in this fight for a cause more important than our lives?”
“That doesn’t mean I expect us to throw those lives away,” Shakaar told her.
“That’s not what I was doing!”
“Are you sure?”
Kira resisted the urge to slug him, but only just. “How can you even ask me that?”
Shakaar glanced over his shoulder. Some of the others were staring at them, reacting to the raised voices. “Get back to work,” he snapped. “Mobara, that skimmer had damn well better be ready for the move. If we have to leave it behind, I’m leaving you with it.” As Mobara hastily put his goggles back on and turned his attention back to the skimmer’s open engine compartment, Shakaar gestured Kira toward a more secluded section of the caves.
“All right, let me ask you something else,” he said softly. “Where do you see yourself after the Cardassians are gone?”
“What’s that got to do with-?”
“Hey, humor me. It’s a simple question.”
Kira scoffed. “I don’t know. I’m more worried right now about kicking the Cardassians out. I don’t exactly have time to think beyond that.”
“That’s my point,” Shakaar said. “You’re living for the fight. That’s it. That’s as far as your imagination takes you. You’ve forgotten why you joined the cause in the first place. For you the fight has become an end unto itself. You don’t see yourself existing beyond it.”
Kira started to turn away. “I don’t have to put up with this.”
“Actually, Nerys, you do,” Shakaar said, his tone stopping her in her tracks. “All of us talk about what we’ll do once the Cardassians are gone. Mobara sees himself working on spacecraft. Gantt wants to travel. Bre’yel wants to help orphans find new families. I want a farm of my own. Lupaza-well, she seems to change her mind every week, and Furel’s just happy to do whatever Lupaza does. But the point is, every one of us is living for a time when this war will be over. Except you.”
“Oh, please. You think because I don’t daydream of someday tilling soil like you, there’s something wrong with me? That I have a death wish?”
“Maybe not yet,” said Shakaar. “But that’s the direction you’re headed, and I won’t stand for it. Bajor has already produced more than its share of martyrs. If that’s what’s in your heart, you’re with the wrong cell. We’re fighting to live, not fighting to die.”
Kira held his gaze for a long moment before responding, hardly daring to consider that what he was saying might be true. She thought about her most recent missions, the decisions she had made, the risks she had taken, the close calls she had survived only by luck or the will of the Prophets. After all the years she’d followed Shakaar in the long, hard struggle for Bajor’s freedom, had she really lost sight of the reason that struggle was so important? Fighting for the end of Cardassian rule was one thing, planning for the time after it was something else entirely. Kira lived by the belief that the occupation was evil, and that evil could not be allowed to stand, to go unchallenged. But when she thought about all the things she’d done in the name of that ideal-when the image of Vaas falling to enemy fire haunted her nightmares, the sound of her voice screaming Kira’s name as the Cardassians stepped up their attack, forcing Kira and the others to withdraw-she wondered how she could ever move beyond them. The truth was, she didn’t think about the future, ever, because part of her believed she didn’t deserve one. Not after so many moral compromises, so many terrible choices…so much death at her own hands.
How could the Prophets ever forgive that?
“That’s not what’s in my heart, Edon,” she told Shakaar, wishing it were true.
“I hope not,” he said quietly. “We need you.” He turned away, suddenly looking embarrassed. “Just think about what I said, okay?”
“All right…. I will.”
Shakaar nodded curtly but seemed to have a hard time making eye contact with her now.
Kira smirked. “And since I didn’t say it before…Thanks for saving my ass. Again. I owe you one.”
Shakaar finally met her eyes and shrugged. “I’ll add it to the list.”
The following morning, Kira’s ankle felt much better, and Shakaar called a group meeting to hand out assignments. Lupaza felt sure she knew someone in Hathon who could discreetly procure a decent supply of power cells and volunteered to go seek him out. Furel naturally insisted that he accompany her. It fell to Gantt, Chavin, and Bre’yel to make their way into the valley, slip into Jinara township, and convince their contacts there to load them up with as much in th
e way of dried foodstuffs and medical supplies as they could carry back into the hills.
Shakaar tasked Kira, Klin, Ornak, and Latha to scout out a new base of operations in one of the neighboring hills. They split up to cover more territory, and because their biosignatures would be harder to detect individually than if they stayed together. Shakaar and the remaining members of the cell continued preparations for their relocation, and arranged a warm reception if the Cardassians got too close to the caves. He said he wanted everyone back to base and ready to move in seven days’ time.
On her third day out, and with little to show for it, Kira was two hills east of the caves, her search bringing her just within the perimeter of the Bestri woods. Her reconnaissance had yielded nothing promising in the way of new base sites, leading her to hope that at least one of the others was having better luck.
She paused to check the Cardassian comm unit on her wrist. Weapons had not been the only equipment Latha had recovered from the corpses near the ridge; the Cardassians’ communicator cuffs made excellent proximity detectors in autoscan mode, as long as their transponders were disabled. Any military communications within half a kellipate of her position would come through loud and clear, letting her know she needed to get moving. For the past three days, however, the unit had remained gratifyingly silent.
Satisfied that it was still cycling through the most common frequencies used by the Union’s infantry, Kira decided she could afford a short break from her recon to fuel up with a few bites of dried meat from her ration pack and a gulp of water. Sitting on the ground against a large rock, she considered her situation while she chewed. These woods weren’t an obvious place to look for a new hideout; the terrain lacked the dramatic unevenness and deep cracks that defined the upper hills. But if she recalled correctly, Bestri was also home to a pair of ravines, half a kellipate apart, that were linked by a long subterranean cave. It would be a problematic site for a base, to be sure; it might not be a place the Cardassians would think to look for them, but it was relatively easy to blunder across and readily accessible. It probably had plenty of room, but also twice the usual number of entrances to defend. The potential for flooding also couldn’t be ignored. Kira held little hope that it would suit their needs but thought she should check it out anyway, just to be sure.
She brought her canteen to her lips for a final sip before setting out once more, when she suddenly got the sense that she wasn’t alone. Whether it was a flicker of motion in her peripheral vision or a faint vibration in the air that she registered only subconsciously, she could never be sure. She knew only that the fine hairs on her skin were suddenly standing on end. She froze and listened, her eyes alertly panning the dense forest until she caught a glimpse of gray in the distance.
The lone Cardassian was partially obscured by the trees but seemed to be lying flat on his stomach, as if he had just stopped in the act of crawling. Had he spotted her? She forced herself to remain still, grateful she still held her phaser but knowing that it might not make any difference; she might already be in his sights. But if she wasn’tHis arm moved.
Kira dived to the right and fired. The Cardassian screamed, but not in a way she had ever heard before. Pieces of him jerked back from his central mass and yelped as they disappeared into the brush.
What the kosst…?
Kira stared, unable at first to wrap her mind around what she thought she was seeing. Then the scene resolved itself, and with a sick feeling in her gut she crept forward to survey her handiwork.
It was no Cardassian soldier she had slain. Lying dead at Kira’s feet on the forest floor was an adult hara cat, its gray fur burned black where the phaser beam had struck it. The kittens it had been nursing had scattered in terror when Kira shot it, probably hiding in the underbrush somewhere nearby, waiting until they felt safe again and could return to their mother.
Prophets, what have I done…?
Tears were streaming down Kira’s cheeks. She wiped at them angrily, cursing herself for becoming emotional, for the sorrow she felt toward a dumb beast and its orphaned young when her people continued to be oppressed, and abused, and killed like—
Like animals.
How many Bajorans had died thus far under the occupation? The Cardassians kept a count somewhere, she was certain-some obscene ledger where every interrogation victim, every combat fatality, every death from starvation, sickness, and slave labor, every murder, and every suicide was duly noted, indexed, and cross-referenced in exacting detail. It was a point of pride to them, after all. But they also kept such information to themselves. Their official public statements on occupation-related mortality were few and far between. Those they did release emphasized the Cardassian loss of life, as if the killing fields of Bajorans they’d cultivated for the last thirty years were irrelevant, as if they weren’t turning her world into a single mass grave. Kira had heard estimates well into the millions, but who knew how high the death toll would ultimately go?
And me? Where’s my ledger of victims? And not just Cardassians, oh no, but Bajorans too-collaborators, innocent bystanders, the young and the old…the friends I had to leave behind. Friends like Vaas.
What accounting will you give the Prophets, Nerys?
Racked with sobs, Kira doubled over, pressing the heels of her hands against her forehead and gritting her teeth against the grief and rage that shook her body.
“-nverge on sector blue-one-four. Weapons fire detected. All units respond. Repeat-“
The voice from the comcuff squawked in her ears, but Kira didn’t move. She imagined rooting herself where she now stood, letting the Cardassians come to her, waiting as they came into view and opening fire on each of them in turn, until one of them finally, mercifully, ended the life she had come to despise so completely.
“Squad leader, this is unit four in sector blue-one-six. Estimate ten metrics to reach rendezvous point…”
Kira stared into the hara cat’s dead eyes, envying its state of peace, longing not to feel anything, wishing the Prophets would simply call to her, would free her pagh, would let her rest.
“Unit three here. I’ve found footprints. Bioscan shows traces of Bajoran DNA on some of the foliage…”
She saw Shakaar’s face, heard his voice: “We’re fighting to live.”
“This is unit two. I have visual contact. One Bajoran female directly south of my position. She’s armed-“
Without conscious thought, Kira raised her weapon and fired north: once, twice, and then a third time, each shot burning into the soldier who had gotten within twenty paces of her position. He fell back, dead before he hit the ground.
She ran.
“Unit two, report! Unit two!”
“Unit three here, squad leader. Unit two is dead. I’m in pursuit of the target…”
“Shoot to disable, three. Repeat, shoot to disable. I want that Bajoran bitch alive…”
“This is unit five. I see unit two and am moving in to follow…”
Kira leapt over a fallen tree and slid down a bare earth slope. She continued on through the dense forest, hoping her memories hadn’t misled her, cursing herself for not staying higher up in the hills.
There!
The ravine opened up ahead of her and she ran toward it. If she could make it to the cave, she’d have a chance. Phaser shots burned the air around her as she neared the ravine’s edge. She returned fire—
A final blast slammed into her chest, enveloping her in the numbing effect of a Cardassian disruptor on heavy stun. Her legs gave out and she hit the ground, her momentum carrying her over the edge of the ravine and sending her rolling down the slope into its muddy bottom.
Her vision blurred, then darkened. The sounds of the forest receded until only a voice remained.
“This is unit four. I got her.”
The world was still dark when she came to. Her eyes adjusted to it slowly, recognizing the dim blue indoor lighting the Cardassians preferred, and she realized that she was lying on the floor of a
holding cell, caged with three other Bajorans.
The place smelled like a sewer. The air was thick and hot, the stone floor slick with grime. The cell itself was large, and took up one half of a long stone room that was divided by a metal latticework partition complete with a sliding gate-the same variety that had sprung up all over Bajor in the past thirty-odd years, surrounding labor camps, ghettos, and anywhere else the Cardassians felt they needed to keep Bajorans penned. A heavy-looking metal door on the other end of the room, far beyond the lattice, stood closed.
All of the prisoners, including Kira, were wearing tattered clothing. Her own belongings were of course nowhere to be seen. She sat up unsteadily.
“Easy there,” said her nearest cellmate, a man with small eyes and dark hair. He was gaunt and filthy. “They banged you up pretty good.”
Understatement of the year. Her entire body felt sore, her head was pounding, and her tongue was a dry lump of muscle.
“Take this,” the man said. He was holding what looked to be a damp rag in his hands. “Go on, take it. I know you’re thirsty. You’ve been out cold since you got here.”
Kira did as instructed and wrung the rag over her open mouth, letting water drip onto her parched tongue. It had a metallic taste, but it helped. “Thank you,” she said, handing him back the rag. “Where am I?”
“Elemspur Detention Center,” a woman said, walking over from the far end of the cell. Both her voice and the man’s had a weary quality to them that Kira recognized: hunger. No, much more than that: starvation.
“Elemspur,” Kira repeated. “Hedrikspool Province. How long…?”
“They dumped you in here yesterday,” the man told her. “Like I said, you’ve been out the entire time. My guess is they gave you a sedative. I’m Yeln. This is Alu.” Yeln nodded toward the fourth prisoner, a pitifully thin man who sat on the floor against the bars of the cage, hands buried in his armpits while he rocked back and forth muttering nonsensically to himself. “That’s Bakka.”
