by S. D. Perry
So now that he lived out a simple life in Kendra Province, with a beautiful new wife and many friends, he could simply resign himself to having been plucked from that uncomfortable seat of responsibility and deposited here, to a time and place where a former politician’s roles were much less complicated than before. He still had money and resources; though they had dwindled significantly, there was enough to keep him in relative comfort—relative to the suffering elsewhere on his world. He still had residual influence among the people here, as much for his role in quieting citizens in the aftermath of the first attacks as for his former minister’s seat.
But he could not accept his lot in life. He would not. He recognized now how much he had taken his position for granted in the past—he could have done more, so much more to prevent his world’s current circumstances. But there was nothing to be gained from regret; the only thing to do now was to plan the next step. Because, despite the pessimism of many, Kalem had to believe there would be a next step. It was the only thing that kept him moving.
People greeted him as he passed through the marketplace; a few even stopped to shake his hand. He met the eyes of a man about his own age, a man with a taut, malnourished visage and a pleading expression in his eyes. Please, Minister, his expression read, please assure me it’s going to get better. Kalem smiled at the man, saying nothing, but his expression telling him what he wanted to hear. Just wait. Things will be different someday. Did any of them truly believe it? Kalem knew they couldn’t possibly—they simply repeated it to themselves to shut out the roaring insistence of defeat.
Passing through the marketplace, he found his way to the residence of Jaro Essa, who had been a major in Bajor’s Militia before it had been disbanded. A great many were slaughtered in the early days of the Cardassian attacks, and the handful that were left put in a very quick surrender—much to the chagrin of those like Jaro, who had been in favor of a military coup since long before the Cardassians had announced their formal annexation. If only Kalem and the others would have supported his position! But there was that regret again. Nothing to achieve from it now. The Militia was a distant memory, as was any semblance of real Bajoran government; Kubus Oak and the others were a mere panel of Cardassian pawns.
Kalem represented one of dozens of former politicians and leaders who had sunk into informal law-keeping positions, men and women who had simply taken charge of things at the right time to have fallen into permanent ad hoc positions that seemed to carry lifelong terms, for who else would fill their shoes? There were no elections, no formal designations—only secret town meetings with the few Bajorans who weren’t too despondent, who still saw the point in trying to maintain government at the provincial level. Time and again, the people of Kendra agreed that Kalem, Jaro, and a handful of other volunteers continued to do what they had always done—which was to prevent complete chaos from taking over in the wreckage of their cities.
He stepped to the door of a small adobe home, which opened to his knock.
“Hello, Major,” Kalem said.
“Minister,” Jaro replied. It was foolish, perhaps, that they kept to their old titles when they spoke to each other, but some shared grain of stubbornness would not allow either to acknowledge for a moment that it wasn’t entirely appropriate to do so. Kalem entered the house, and Jaro shut the heavy wooden door behind him, first peering outside as if it would truly ensure they were safe from the prying of collaborators.
“I received the communiqué from Jas Holza,” Kalem informed Jaro as the old militia leader gestured for him to sit in a cracked leather chair coated in a thin layer of dust. Jaro was a bachelor, too busy with his informal adjutant position to keep his home especially tidy.
Jaro was taken aback. “Already? I thought he wasn’t due to contact us until—”
“A discrepancy with the calendar on Valo III. We still haven’t adjusted it satisfactorily to coincide correctly with Bajor’s. I suppose we’ve been too…preoccupied here to bother with such trivialities concerning the outlying colonies.”
Jaro never bothered to acknowledge Kalem’s acid sarcasm anymore. He sat down himself, in a chair nearly identical to Kalem’s except that the seat was split open along lacy cracks, the stuffing coming out in tufts. Jaro’s things had once been sturdy and expensive, but time took its toll. “What news did he have?”
Kalem frowned, feeling disgust as he related the information. “News we should have expected. Jas has managed to make himself out to be some kind of goodwill ambassador to the Federation. They have no idea what our real situation here is, and it doesn’t sound as though Jas has any intention of clearing matters up for them. He’s enjoying his status far too much to make waves.”
Jaro nodded. “As I’ve been saying, Minister—we can’t rely on the Federation to help us. Perhaps it’s better that we forge our plans without the consideration of fickle outsiders.”
Kalem shook his head. “But if the Federation truly knew—if we could make it plain to them what the Cardassians’ presence here has become…”
“They won’t listen,” Jaro said firmly. “It’s possible that Jas did try to tell them, Apren, but there simply wasn’t anything they could do to stop it—not within the realm of their own rigid code of sanctimonious laws. We must not pin our hopes on the Federation, or anyone else. There is only us.”
Kalem resisted the urge to argue; it would get him nowhere—they had been over this many times. “What about Keeve Falor?”
Jaro sighed heavily. “What about him?” he said. “My own attempts to reach him have still been mostly unsuccessful, and you tell me that you have had a similar experience.”
Kalem nodded in reluctant acknowledgment. Jas Holza was easy to reach, just as long as he wanted to be reached. He still had money, still had influence in alien trade partnerships. He still had a few warp vessels that he somehow managed to keep under the Cardassians’ notice—the Union paid little attention to what went on in the Valo system, too far away to disrupt their own business ventures. But it was another matter for Keeve. Valo II had fallen into dire poverty—the people there were struggling just to stay alive, to maintain a few strained trade relationships. If it hadn’t been for Jas Holza, probably the Valo II settlers would have perished decades ago. A reliable comm system was the least of Keeve Falor’s worries.
“We should keep trying,” Kalem said. “We should tell Jas to connect us. Bajor needs strong voices, strong leaders who will be ready to do what it takes when the time comes. Keeve is someone I know we can count on.”
“If the time comes,” Jaro said.
Kalem shook his head. “Major,” he said, “we cannot think that way.”
Jaro’s mouth tightened. “You’re right, of course, Minister,” he said faintly, but Kalem could clearly detect the brittleness in his tone. They had discussed such things often, but still, the years passed and so little had changed.
It will change, though, Kalem told himself. And we’ll have to be ready.
They talked over a few local matters—rationing their allotment of winter crops early this year, a minor boundary dispute between neighboring farms that they needed to resolve before the Cardassian “peacekeepers” got involved. After a time, Kalem rose to go, shaking the old Militia officer’s hand as he left, considering the wisdom of his own dogged optimism as he stepped out into the gathering twilight. Of course, his beliefs were not far removed from Jaro’s, but he could not bring himself to speak them aloud, even if Jaro could. Even if everyone else on Bajor could. There was logic in making preparations to guide Bajor in the aftermath of a Cardassian withdrawal, and even if he didn’t quite believe that the Union would ever leave them, Kalem would keep moving, keep working to have everything ready. To stop, to hold still, was to welcome defeat.
The services at the would-be shrine had concluded some time ago, but Astraea remained behind, as she always did—sometimes to speak to individual followers about their concerns, but just as often for her own contemplations.
She
had fashioned a small chamber in the cellar of this old storehouse, in the heart of Lakarian City, to be a sort of office for herself. As the guide of her faith, she needed a place where she could counsel her followers, though it had been difficult for her to accept the authority of guide from the very beginning. She had known almost nothing of the Way when she had taken on this persona, the name Astraea and everything that went with it.
The Oralian Way performed their rites now in secret, the once great faith having been reduced to the indignity of meeting in basements and back alleys, forced to communicate in codes and over scrambled contact lines as though they were common criminals. Anyone who could be associated with the Oralian Way in any capacity was immediately categorized as a wanted fugitive. Their crimes were no more serious than peaceful congregation, but Central Command had managed to paint the Oralians as dangerous dissenters whose ideals sought to destroy the very fiber of the Cardassian Union—and of course, no member of the military had any inkling of what those ideals truly were. They remembered only the threats of civil wars, and the angry public demonstrations of yesteryear, all conflicts that had been borne of misunderstanding. Modern Cardassians did not care to attribute their people’s achievements to anything beyond perseverance, hard work, and superiority. But Astraea and her followers believed it was not so simple as that, and for that belief, they were pariahs.
Alone in her chamber, seated at a desk before a small computer, her monitor chimed to indicate an incoming communiqué. She started at the sound; she had not been expecting to receive a transmission so late. The followers of her faith generally came to her in person if they had a query or concern, and there were very few of those who even knew her transmission code. She knew where the call was coming from with near certainty, but still her eyes lit up with anticipation when she confirmed that the message had indeed come from Terok Nor.
The call was scrambled, as it always was, and necessitated a code to access; but once the correct sequence was tapped in, the blank density of her screen broke with a horizontal snapping of blue light that settled into the image of her most cherished friend.
The soldier’s black hair was pushed back over a wide forehead that housed a pair of deeply scrutinizing eyes. His gaze flicked up and instantly softened as her countenance appeared on the screen in his office, far away on the space station that orbited Bajor.
“Astraea,” he said, the timbre of his voice almost turning it into a pet name—but the name carried much more weight than just this man’s affection.
“Is it safe to speak my name, Glinn Sa’kat?” she asked him, though she instantly regretted the question—he would not have spoken it aloud if it was not safe.
“I have full control over who reviews these transmissions,” he assured her.
“Even over the Order?”
His lips thinned in demonstrative impatience. “I have told you, we have nothing to fear from the Obsidian Order.”
She shook her head. “I know you think I’m being foolish, but lately I’ve had these feelings that I can’t shake…”
He leaned closer to his transmission cam. “Feelings?” he repeated. “Do you mean…like those you had before?”
A vision, he meant. Astraea shook her head; she was not talking about the kinds of feelings she’d had just after she’d come in contact with the Bajoran artifact at the Ministry of Science. The Orb. In those days, she had still been the Cardassian scientist who bore the name Miras Vara, but that name—that identity—was no more. Miras Vara had disappeared from the Union, from her family, from her job at the ministry. She had become the Guide for the Oralian Way, and had taken on the name used by her forebears as much a title as a designation.
The guide was supposed to be a vessel for Oralius, the noncorporeal being who was said to have dictated the tenets of the faith both in ancient and modern times, before the faith was forced to go underground. Astraea did not know if Cardassian officials were familiar with the title, but she thought it best not to take any chances. It was a well-known secret that the Oralians of past generations had been systematically exterminated by Central Command. The Way was still popularly perceived as a threat to modern Cardassian sensibilities, but Astraea knew better. She believed that the Way would be essential in rebuilding Cardassian civilization someday, for she had foreseen it—she could still see it, and often did, in her dreams. The near-total destruction of Cardassia Prime.
“Not a vision,” she told him. “At least, not about the Order.”
The soldier nodded, looked grave for a moment. “The Order can’t decipher the encryption that I have used. Our friend has assured me of that.”
She knew that he was sure of his “friend’s” loyalty, and she didn’t doubt that there was at least one Obsidian Order shadow who walked the Way, whose allegiance to Oralius was greater than his allegiance to Enabran Tain, even though the aging head of the Obsidian Order inspired a fierce loyalty in many of his agents. Still, the Order troubled her—all Cardassians had a healthy respect for the Obsidian Order, and a person in Astraea’s position would naturally fear them more than the average citizen.
“But you have seen something, then,” the soldier deduced.
“Yes,” she confirmed, thinking upon her recent dreams. “A Bajoran. A religious man. I don’t know his name, but I have a picture of where he might be. It is not far from the place where I experienced my first visions of Bajor…”
“Kendra,” the soldier said.
“As you say.” Astraea knew nothing of Bajoran geography, only what she saw in her visions.
“What have you foreseen regarding this man?”
She paused, trying to put into words the things she had sensed about the Bajoran. She was often frustrated by the cryptic “awarenesses” she experienced; even after years of working to cultivate the ability, her impressions were regularly less than enlightening. But then, the Way was a path, not a goal; Oralius taught that many truths were subjective. It was a lesson she continued to struggle with.
“Cardassia needs him. He will bring peace between the two worlds someday, though I don’t know when it will happen.” He seemed to be waiting for more, and she pursed her lips. “That is all,” she told him. “I’m sorry.”
The soldier nodded, patiently accepting the fragmentary nature of her prophecies. “You must tell me if you see anything more.”
“Of course,” she said. “Now. What do you have to tell me, Glinn Sa’kat?” It was clear from his expression that he had information. More often than not, his transmissions bore news that frightened her. While the two shared a mutual affection that sometimes seemed to border on intimate, at least for her, he did not call her without serious motive. Her pleasure at seeing him was always tarnished by what he had to say.
“Our friend tells me that the agent who has been assigned to seek out the Oralians has finally found the object that you hid at the Ministry of Science.”
Astraea felt her heart sink. While she believed that the so-called Orb would remain silent for anyone who was unworthy, she also feared that whoever wielded it would undeniably have access to a great source of power, a means of controlling others who sought it. If the Obsidian Order took hold, the Orb would be impossible to recover.
“It will reveal nothing for them,” she said with flickering certainty.
“Nothing…except perhaps your whereabouts,” the soldier said softly. “The object’s shipping container had a digital log, a log that clearly recorded the identification numbers of all who came in contact with it during its stay at the Ministry of Science. Miras Vara was the last person known to have handled that object. The Order has not yet connected the item to us, but it is only a matter of time. Our friend has very emphatically suggested that you change your location.”
Astraea took a moment to catch her breath. She had just begun to grow fond of the makeshift shrine where she was currently holding services, and leaving it behind would be an unwelcome upheaval. “Where should I go?” she asked him, without rhetoric.
“You must go to Cardassia City.”
“But—”
“It is the only way. The best means to stay out of the sight of the Order is to be right under their nose. Our friend is going to arrange a place in the Torr sector where you will be safe.”
“But the Walkers here…”
“It is the only way,” he replied firmly, and then he stopped speaking as his comcuff signaled. “I must go.”
“May you walk with Oralius,” she said to him, but he had already signed off.
Dukat was agitated, going over the daily output reports in his office alone. There had been a significant drop in productivity in the last few years, and it was getting markedly worse with each service quartile. The reports in front of him painted a bleak picture of whether his tenure here was going to be regarded as a success or failure; he feared it had long been edging toward the latter, through no fault of his own.
He knew that back on his homeworld, many people were beginning to wag their tongues about diminishing resources in and around B’hava’el, the star system that was home to Bajor. But it wasn’t for lack of resources that the output had begun to wane. It was because the civilian government had pressured Central Command into withholding funds for numerous ventures here, ventures begun and then abandoned when the stores of minerals were not immediately as abundant as they had been decades ago, at the annexation’s very start. The Detapa Council had once been nothing but a figurehead, but they were steadily gaining power, thanks in part to the family of Kotan Pa’Dar, a political rival of Dukat’s for many years now. Pa’Dar was the exarch of Tozhat, a Cardassian settlement on the surface of Bajor, and he made no secret of his opinion that the Bajoran “project,” as he called it, should be retired. The prefect could not disagree more, and the reports he saw in front of him were clearly illustrative of why it would be an expensive mistake to think otherwise. Pa’Dar was a shortsighted fool.
