by Olivia Woods
Intellectually, I’ve always known that Bajorans won’t hesitate to kill their own kind if they believe it will advance their cause, and this incident isn’t the first evidence of that savage propensity. But I don’t think I ever really understood it, not the way I do now. Not after what they did to Oluvas.
I heard one of my men, Gil Suru, express the opinion that the Bajorans are animals; and when an animal steps out of line, the only safe option is to shoot it. I must confess to you, Iliana…I’m finding it increasingly hard to disagree.
From my heart to yours,Ataan
Ataan
My Betrothed Iliana,
It’s been relatively peaceful for a change. I’d like to be able to tell you it’s because the Bajorans have come to their senses, but the truth is we’ve had to exert much tighter controls over the population of this region. It’s exhausting and aggravating work, but it seems to be paying off. There hasn’t been a single bombing, skirmish, or even a thrown rock, in over a week.
Gul Pirak sees this sudden calm as validation of his approach, and the beginning of a new chapter in the annexation. I’m not as sure. I hope he’s right. He’s invited several of the Cardassian regional administrators throughout Dahkur to come to Hathon so they can see our “good work,” and perhaps model their own districts on it. They arrive tomorrow. I’m in charge of security, of course.
As an extra touch, he’s issued a directive to all the local townships: In honor of the occasion, the Bajorans will display the Galor Banner outside their homes in a show of allegiance. It should be quite a sight to behold.
I’m glad to know your schooling continues to go so well. You always sound so excited when you talk about it, I regret not being able to share this part of your life.
I miss you.
From my heart to yours,Ataan
Ataan
My Betrothed Iliana,
I thought that after two years, nothing that happens here could surprise me anymore. But I was wrong.
These people are insane. Their need to challenge the annexation at every opportunity and provoke us flies in the face of reason. They’re all stiff-necked fools who’d prefer to die than show the slightest acceptance of Cardassian rule, and they proved that today.
The visit by Dahkur’s other regional administrators began well enough; there was a reception at Gul Pirak’s home, followed by a tour of the local townships in the gul’s personal skimmer. There were few Bajorans on the streets, but those we saw were subdued and inoffensive. Cardassian banners could be seen everywhere…until we reached Ivassi township, where fifteen farmers had apparently conspired to defy Gul Pirak’s directive.
The gul was furious. He felt humiliated in front of his peers, and by a group of farmers! I was ordered to round them up and make an example of them. Attendance by everyone in the township was mandatory-men, women, and children, all standing by and watching as I gave the order. The farmers were shot at midday, not three hours ago, for nothing except a pathetic display of passive resistance.
What’s the matter with these people? How can they not understand that they’re forcing us to make the annexation worse for them with every act of defiance? What else needs to happen before this madness finally stops?
From my heart to yours,Ataan
Ataan
My Betrothed Iliana,
It’s quiet again. Things seem to have settled down in the wake of the last week’s unpleasantness with the fifteen farmers. Perhaps that’s simply what the Bajorans need from time to time: a stern reminder that willful defiance simply won’t be tolerated.
I want you to know I’ve been giving serious consideration to your father’s offer to be transferred home early so that I can join his staff at Central Command. It’s certainly tempting, and not just because of the boost it would give my career. To be with you again, back on Cardassia…for us to be able to marry and start a family three years sooner than either of us had hoped…believe me, Iliana, I want all these things. I miss you so very much.
But much still needs to be done here. Please understand: it’s more than devotion to duty; I feel a moral obligation to keep doing my part to help fix this broken world, despite how futile that effort seems at times. The things I’m fighting for-our manifest destiny, the security of our future children, our very survival-I couldn’t call myself Cardassian if I turned my back now and allowed such a savage, backward people to threaten all of it. I hope you will understand, and know that when I do return to you, it’ll be when my rotation is done and I can hold my head high knowing that I did everything I could to make Bajor a better place…for all of us.
From my heart to yours,Ataan
Ataan
Try as she might to find it, her true face eluded her.
Almost from the day her teachers had discovered her aptitude for clay, Iliana had labored to fashion a bust of herself, a special project given her by one particularly sadistic professor whose opinion was that Iliana needed to challenge herself more. In truth, she did prefer abstract forms to realistic sculptures, though she felt she was more than capable of handling both. But for some reason, even after months of struggling with it, of numerous abortive efforts and failed experimentation with one approach after another, her fingers still couldn’t seem to call forth her own likeness from the soft, black material. Either her eyes would look too vacant, or her mouth too sad. Correct one of those, and her cheekbones seemed too pronounced. Deemphasize her cheekbones, and her nose seemed too upturned. Fix her nose, and the ridges looked wrong, giving her a comically puzzled expression. Working from a holo would make it easier, of course, but it was strictly prohibited; the professor had wanted the bust to be an expression of Iliana’s self-image. The problem was, the face that stared back at her from the porous stone pedestal in the corner of her dormitory room was no one she recognized.
The door chimed. With a scowl, Iliana sheathed the bust in a plastic sheet that would keep the clay from hardening, then rose from her squatting position on the floor. I told Nemra I needed to be alone today. Her classmate and neighbor was sweet, but exhaustingly needy. Of late she had been making it difficult for Iliana to schedule time just for herself.
“Yes?” Iliana called as she crossed the small room, carefully navigating the clutter that had built up over the two years she’d been at Pra Menkar. She reached the door and touched the keypad next to it. “What is it now, Nem-?” She froze as the portal slid into the adjoining wall, revealing her father standing in the corridor.
“Hello, Iliana,” Tekeny said warmly. “May I come in?”
“Father! Of course. It’s so good to see you!” Caught completely off guard by the visit, Iliana threw her arms around him before she remembered the clay-stained smock she wore. Tekeny’s uniform was now covered in black streaks. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Let me take care of that.” Iliana tore off her smock, ran to the ‘fresher to wash the clay off her hands, then grabbed a washcloth from a stack of clean laundry on her bed and soaked it before returning to her father. “This will come right off, I promise.”
“Iliana, it’s all right,” Tekeny said. “Really…”
“Please sit down,” Iliana said, guiding him toward the single chair in her room even as she continued to dab at his breastplate. “Sorry about the mess; I wasn’t expecting visitors today. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”
“Iliana…”
“Is Mother here with you?”
“She’s home. I came alone because I needed to speak with you.”
That’s when she knew. Her hands froze against his chest. Iliana looked into his eyes, saw the sadness there, and she understood the nature of Tekeny’s visit.
“Ataan’s dead,” she whispered-a statement, not a question.
Tekeny’s voice was soft as he took her shoulders. “Word came from Bajor this morning.”
Iliana stared dully into the middle distance. She felt strangely detached, as if she were observing herself from outside her body. Shock, she realized.
“Iliana
?” her father prompted.
She turned away, absently realizing she hadn’t received a letter from Ataan in six days. That alone should have told her something was wrong. “How did it happen?” she asked aloud.
“It was a bomb,” Tekeny said. “Preliminary indications are that terrorists somehow breached the compound’s security perimeter and planted a plasma charge outside Gul Pirak’s window as he slept. The entire east wing of the house was destroyed. There were many injuries, but Pirak and his family were all killed, along with seven members of his staff, including Ataan. I’m so sorry.”
And just like that, her life as she knew it ended.
Tekeny stayed with her for most of the day, trying to console her. She appreciated his efforts, but the truth was, she neither wanted nor required his condolences. At first she thought she would need his strength, his reassuring presence…but the crippling grief she kept expecting to overtake her never came. It troubled her to think that she was incapable of feeling the loss, until she realized she was feeling it. It simply wasn’t the feeling she’d expected.
She finally told her father she wished to be alone, but Tekeny was reluctant to leave her; his plan had been to take her back to the capital so she could be with her family while she mourned. She thanked him for that, but told him what she really needed right now was time to be with herself, to think. In the end, he honored her wish, but departed only after he had extracted her promise to return home in three days’ time.
She already knew it was a promise she would both keep and break.
That first night, she sat alone in her room, in the dark, sitting on the floor against the side of her bed, staring at nothing. Nem had come calling several times, but Iliana ignored her. Her room took on a strange quality; it was suddenly too small for her. It was a child’s room, filled with the trappings of a child’s life. As the night wore on, she realized she despised everything about it, and its occupant. Surrounded by the clutter of her paintings and sketches, her carvings and sculptures, she reflected on how utterly pointless it all seemed now. Vain self-indulgence, that’s all it was. Vacuous expressions of a vacuous mind.
Her clay bust was a dark silhouette beside her. Iliana reached out and unsheathed it. Her fingertips followed its contours, seeking something familiar. But it was all wrong. There was nothing real about it. No truth. No meaning. No life.
Her fingers curled into claws, ripping into the clay, gouging out an eye, a cheek, the ridge behind the jaw. She tore into it until any trace of a face was gone.
Calm and resolute, she gathered up her belongings-all of them. She emptied her room of everything that was not university property: clothes, bedding, datarods, art supplies, toiletries, gifts from Ataan, every sketch and every art project she had undertaken during her two years in Pra Menkar. She put it all in a tight pile in the campus courtyard and then, to the dismay of the few onlookers who were awakened by her predawn activities, she set fire to it, scattering every reminder of her wasted life on the wind.
She returned to the capital that very day, but not to her parents’ house. She went directly to Tarlak sector, the administrative hub of the city and headquarters to the agencies that oversaw the governance, the military might, and the security of the Union: the civilian Detapa Council, Central Command, and the Obsidian Order.
As Iliana crossed the Imperial Plaza toward her destination, she saw Corbin Entek watching her approach from the other side. He did not seem surprised to see her.
4
2359-2361
The Obsidian Order, Day 8
I liana paced her quarters like a trapped animal. It was an apt description, given her circumstances. One day after returning to the capital and reestablishing contact with Entek, she’d gone home to break the news of her decision to join the Obsidian Order to her parents, packed a small bag of personal items, and returned to Tarlak sector, where Entek was once again waiting for her. He led her into the secret bowels of the Assembly building where the Order was headquartered, and immediately took her to a private room that was locked from the outside. After eight days, her “training” had consisted solely of filling out a seemingly innocuous questionnaire and two sessions discussing her childhood with a psychologist. Meals were brought to her by silent functionaries who refused even to make eye contact with her. The rest of the time she was alone, sequestered in a room smaller than her dormitory at Pra Menkar and even more sparsely furnished: The refresher was a small open booth at the foot of her bed, which was pushed up against the wall opposite the door. A chair and a bare table with a built-in reader stood off to the side. She spent most of her time reading the books that were loaded into the table’s database: several historical texts; the collected writings of Tret Akleen; and the inevitable copy of The Never Ending Sacrifice.
She knew that she needed to impress upon Entek and his masters the sincerity of her desire to follow where they would lead her, even if it meant waiting interminably on their pleasure.
By the eighth day, however, she was at her wit’s end. She was pacing restlessly and fighting the impulse to smash something when Entek finally came to see her. He entered the room and pointed a small device toward the door, which closed automatically. “Hello, Iliana,” he began. “How are you today?”
“Bored,” she answered honestly.
He smiled. “Yes, I’d imagine so. But I’m afraid this isn’t going exactly as any of us expected.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you may be in this room for quite a while,” Entek told her. “There’s some disagreement about your fitness to join the Order, and the consensus is that we’ll need more time to make the correct determination. Therefore I’ll see what I can do to arrange a wider variety of reading mat-“
“I’ve been here eight days, Entek. Exactly how long must I continue to wait?”
“Until you’re ready to be honest with me.”
“Honest?” she repeated. “About what?”
Entek sighed and pulled the room’s single chair out to the center of the floor and straddled it, facing her. “Why are you really here, Iliana?”
Iliana stared at him. “You can’t be serious,” she said, unable to keep the anguish out of her voice. “How can you stand there and pretend not to know what I’ve endured, what drove me to this decision?”
“Oh, I know all about your young glinn’s violent demise, and you have my heartfelt sympathies. But what I want to know is in what way precisely has that event motivated you? Are you here because you’ve truly had a patriotic epiphany? Is it a desire for revenge? Or do you feel some misguided guilt for what happened to Ataan, and see joining the Order as a way of punishing yourself?”
She laughed bitterly, shaking her head. “This is unbelievable. I come to do my part to serve the State, and all we do is waste time!”
Entek tilted his head as he watched her. “You pretend to know patience, but you really don’t, do you? The hurt is still too raw, creating a need deep inside you that demands instant gratification. Perhaps I was mistaken about you.” He stood up and started to leave.
“Wait!”
Entek stopped.
“Ataan is dead,” Iliana said. “He’s dead, and I’ve come to you. What difference does it make why I’m here? We both know this is the right choice, the one you predicted I’d make, two years ago. If what you need is to hear me say you were right, very well: You were right, Entek.”
“This is not about which of us was right, Iliana,” Entek said.
“Then what do you want from me?”
“To know what you want,” he replied.
“I…” Iliana choked on the words. “I need to atone.”
“For what?”
“For my sloth. For my blindness. For my arrogance.” Tears streamed from her eyes for the first time since her father had come to see her at Pra Menkar. She knew now the fool she’d been; a naive child, sheltered by her parents, living a fantasy life in which she imagined herself unassailable by the events of the world
outside. Surrounded by those who devoted their lives to serving the State in its defense, she had ignored their example, even scorned it, thinking herself above the struggles that were defining the universe around her. She had been a detached witness to the troubles of her world, a mere spectator, and that was unforgivable.
Ataan had understood that it wasn’t enough to recognize what was wrong, or to simply imagine a just and brighter future. One had to act. To fight for it. Because the universe surely would never give it up without a struggle.
Without sacrifice.
“Don’t you see?” she whispered. “I need to atone for all of it, for letting others pay the price of keeping Cardassia safe while I did nothing.” She wiped the tears from her face, composed herself, and met his gaze. “You once promised me an opportunity to be part of the solution, Entek. To help me fulfill my true potential. Well, here I am, and I need a teacher. Is it to be you, or not?”
Entek regarded her in silence for a time. Then he said, “Corbin.”
“What?”
“Call me Corbin.”
Iliana swallowed. “Will you help me, Corbin?”
Entek’s response was to raise his remote device to the door again. It unlocked and opened. He walked out into the corridor, and for a moment she believed he would once again leave her alone in her tiny quarters to wallow in her uselessness. Instead, he stopped and looked back.
“Follow me,” he said.
The Obsidian Order, Day 22
“These raw emotions that drive you,” Entek said as he led Iliana down a wide blue corridor, “shame, guilt, anger-they empower you, but you must never allow them to dictate your actions, to shape your thinking, to cloud your judgment. Once you let that happen, you’re lost, and you may never find your way back.”
