If this had been a scene in Corac, or from one of the hundreds of action-based holodramas that he and Arric had consumed while waiting for Tela to fall asleep, Rugal would have single-handedly stormed the nearest Romulan base, seized their flagship, and made a knife-edge escape. Everyone he shot would have died slightly beyond his line of sight, and nobody’s shots would ever have reached him. Then the story would cut to the Hall of Honor in Cardassia City, where he would be receiving a medal from a sleek and portly legate. Penelya would be there, a tear glittering in the corner of her eye. Kotan too, preening with pride.
In the end, Rugal’s escape from Ogyas took little in the way of heroics. Instead, it needed patience, the nerve to remain close to the Romulans, and the skill not to attract their attention. Most of all it required a constant act of will to keep desperation at bay. He was tired, terrified, and hungry, and nobody was going to come and help. If he gave in, he was dead, and he didn’t want to die on Ogyas, not alone, with the white snow gathering on his body and no one to stand witness and say good-bye.
Scouting out the nearby base, he spied a ship with a threadbare look to it, which he thought stood a good chance of being abandoned rather than dragged further up the line. Getting to it meant entering the compound, but security was lax, and Rugal found that if he walked with purpose—and kept his visor down—people didn’t bother him. They were exhausted too, and busy with the mop-up. He slipped inside the ship, sealing the hatch behind him and hurrying fore to the flight controls. Hands shaking, hardly able to believe that he was at last going to escape the tomb this planet had become, Rugal lifted the ship off the ground and coaxed it slowly, carefully, up through the atmosphere.
A voice came up through the comm—a bored voice, someone else who wanted to get away from Ogyas, asking for authorization codes. Close to panic, Rugal fumbled around for Selik’s identity rod. They had taken it with the intention of informing the Romulan authorities of her death at some point. He punched in the numbers, and then sat and waited in a cold sweat. By some miracle, or administrative bungle—the two were not easily distinguished—Selik’s clearances still worked. The ship was given permission to leave. When finally it broke away from the pull of Ogyas’s gravity, Rugal heard himself sob. He kept himself under control for a while longer, enough to stab in a course out of the system, and then he let himself fall back into his chair. He had made it. He had got away. He had survived. He sat like this for a while. As soon as he had calmed down enough, he began to listen in to some of the subspace chatter. And he began to grasp for the first time the vastness of the revenge carried out upon the Cardassians by their former allies.
At this point, lying on his bunk on the Lotos, Rugal realized he had lost count of the gaps in the mesh. He couldn’t be bothered to start counting again, which meant there was no point lying here any longer. He certainly wasn’t going to fall asleep. He got up and went to make a start on cataloguing the ship’s medical supplies. Joseph found him there about four hours later, when he came looking for something to kill a headache. Rugal handed him a couple of small white pills and said, automatically, what he had said to patients a thousand times before, “Don’t rely on them. They only cover over the cracks.”
The situation on Mesquad was stable, but that was because the Jem’Hadar had wiped out the entire Cardassian population. At least, that was what the transitional governor told Ellen when they met, and he didn’t seem overly displeased by the outcome. Ellen liked people to get along, and this depressed her. Was this the way it would have to be from now on? Was it only possible for there to be peace if an entire population had been eradicated? She didn’t tell her newest crew member what had happened, but she was fairly sure he knew anyway. The few Cardassians on Mesquad weren’t local: four refugee ships had arrived during the past month. Their occupants were being held in a couple of warehouses at the edge of the spaceport. Rugal ran a clinic there, spotted two cases of yatik fever, and to top that he knew how to go about synthesizing a vaccine. As far as Ellen was concerned, that had earned him passage all the way to Earth if he wanted it. Even Roche had to admit he was impressed.
A day out from Hewe, very late ship time, Ellen found Rugal sitting on the couch in the kitchen poring over news reports. It was the first sign of excitement—no, scratch that, the first sign of emotion—that she had seen since he had come on board. She pulled up a chair, twisted it round, and sat with her arms resting on the back of it. “You’re up late. What’s going on?”
“Alon Ghemor has been elected leader of the Cardassian Union. I can’t believe it! Castellan Ghemor!”
Ellen had never heard the name in her life. “Is that good? Bad? Both?”
“It’s good to hear elections have happened at all. But, yes, it’s absolutely the right result. His uncle should have been chief executor, but he died in exile. And then of course Corat Damar died...” His eyes went sad. Ellen had noticed that happened when Cardassians talked about Damar, like a golden opportunity had been lost. “But Alon’s a good man, a decent man. It’s probably the best piece of news about Cardassian politics I’ve ever had.” He frowned. “And it gives you hope, doesn’t it? If one person you knew made it, perhaps others have made it too...”
His voice drifted off. He stared down at his padd. Ellen collected up the bits of information she had just been given and tried to draw some conclusions. She was fairly certain that Rugal had just said that he had, at some point in the past, known the current Cardassian head of state. “You’re not everything you seem, are you, Rugal?”
He smiled up at her. It was good to see him smile, although it brought home how infrequently he did it, and it wasn’t unmixed with regret. “Somebody else said that to me once.”
“The same person that you’re looking for on Ithic?”
He looked away. “No, not her. Somebody who hated my guts, actually. I wonder if she made it. She was probably offworld too when the fire happened.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“Just a friend.” He wasn’t going to say any more, obviously. He had opened up briefly, but now he had disappeared back into himself again. Ellen stood up and got herself a glass of water. “Don’t stay up too late,” she said. “I’m going to need you in the morning.”
The first images that Rugal saw from Cardassia Prime he simply didn’t believe. He thought they had to be Dominion propaganda, intended to whip their unruly Cardassian underlings back into line. A threat, not a fact. It took him a few days to accept that everything he was seeing was true. And why should he doubt it? They had killed everyone in Lakarian City; they had killed everyone at Keralek. They had shot everyone in sight and the rest they had tried to gas. What made him think that they would hold back from murdering every single Cardassian on Prime?
At first, it was easier to think about buildings rather than people. The scale of that destruction alone shocked him. It was as if it hadn’t been enough for the Dominion simply to wipe out his species. All their works had to be obliterated too. An attic in Torr where he had lived for two years. The whole tenement below. A hospital where he had spent most of his waking hours. The burnished dome of the Assembly Hall. Fifty ramshackle houses in the township of Metella in Anaret. A gallery containing a holo-mosaic by Lim Prekeny of disputed beauty but undoubted courage. Only after he had grieved for these places and things that he had known could he begin to contemplate the people. Arric, Serna, Tela. Nelita, who had made his life a misery and had turned out to know exactly what she was doing. Maleta, who had never entirely approved of him. Kotan...
All that he could not bear. People were good at surviving, he told himself; they were good at finding places to hide and at coming through. What about that boy on Ogyas—what was his name?—Lok, that was it. Martis Lok. He had found a hole to hide in while the slaughter had been happening, and he had stayed alive. Perhaps people would help a young couple and their little girl. Perhaps Kotan had hidden in the cellar and been missed... Sixty years had not eradicated the people of Bajor. A few
days could not possibly have destroyed the people of Cardassia. Above all, they were survivors... But Rugal knew he was deluding himself. If the people he loved in the capital had not died in the fire on that final day, they would be dying in the aftermath, from hunger, thirst, disease. It made no difference that he wanted them to be alive. He had wanted Tret to stay alive too.
He held out no hope for the capital, nor for any of Prime’s urban centers. But what about on the edges? What about the distant worlds, where supply lines had been overstretched and Jem’Hadar less plentiful? What about Ithic? It was true that the Jem’Hadar had been sent there to take it back from the Maquis. But it was a rural world. Most people didn’t live in urban centers; they weren’t so easy to kill all at once. Could they possibly have murdered all the Cardassians living there? Would they have had time, before the order had come to stop? Could they have missed Penelya? There was only one way to find out. He had to get to Ithic.
• • •
Hewe was a disaster. Strongly Maquis, the Dominion invasion had been met with open resistance. The human population had been butchered; the Cardassian population too, when their time came. Then the Jem’Hadar had left, as suddenly as they had arrived. When the Lotos landed, the crew was met by twenty armed partisans who were not happy to see a Cardassian again on their world. Ellen had to send Rugal back on board. Only then would the welcoming committee put down their weapons and talk. They told Ellen to leave. The people of Hewe—a few thousand traumatized survivors, about a seventh of the original population—were sealing themselves off. They wanted no contact with the wider quadrant ever again.
On the Lotos, they were all badly shaken. Ellen felt she had failed, although as Jen pointed out, the people of Hewe hadn’t really seemed ready to talk through their issues yet. They all brooded for days after. So it was no surprise that when they heard that Bajor’s negotiations to join the Federation were getting ever closer to completion, they all fell on the news with delight. It was by far the best way of getting a rise out of Roche, and getting a rise out of Roche was one their favorite bonding activities. At first he took it all in good part, aware it was more to do with shaking off the bad taste left from Hewe than anything else. But on reflection, Ellen thought, perhaps Joseph should have known better than to ask Rugal his opinion. The thing was, none of them really thought of Rugal as Cardassian by now.
“I think,” Rugal said carefully, “that I can see both sides.”
Joseph booed.
“That’s not an answer!” Jen cried.
“It’s the only one I have. Of course it’s obvious how it will be good for Bajor. But I think Roche is onto something when he says that it’s still too soon after the Occupation. Bajoran society hasn’t had a good enough chance to regenerate itself yet.”
“You don’t agree with that though, do you?” Roche said. His voice was a touch cooler now. With hindsight, this was probably where Ellen should have stopped it. But she was interested in what Rugal had to say. “You think Bajor should join?”
“Go on, Rugal,” Jen said. “You can say what you think. It’s a free ship.”
Rugal rubbed a fingertip along his eye ridge. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Bajor should join the Federation. Because, maybe, it will make Bajorans think more deeply about exactly what it is they are bringing to the Federation. What being Bajoran means, now there are no Cardassians there any longer. Bajorans have defined themselves as not-Cardassian for far too long. It’s not good for them.”
There was a brief silence, which was thoughtful rather than hostile, until Roche said, “And what in the name of the Prophets makes you think you’re entitled to an opinion?”
Ellen watched Rugal take a deep breath. “I was born on Bajor,” he said, with the patient air of one who has said these words many times. “I was adopted by a Bajoran couple and brought up by them. I used to pray to the Prophets, although I haven’t for a long time. I have this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an earring. They all leaned in for a closer look. It was somewhat beaten up and tarnished, but its origin was unmistakable.
“Where did you get that?” Roche said bitterly. “Off a corpse?”
Now things certainly weren’t funny anymore. “You should probably apologize for that, Roche,” Joseph began, but Rugal pushed back his chair and stood up.
“It’s all right, Joseph. I don’t want an apology. I don’t need it. I know what the truth of the matter is. Besides—a Bajoran apologizing to a spoonhead? The universe is mad enough already.”
He slipped off back to his cabin and he kept to himself for days afterwards. If five people on one small ship had to segregate themselves, Ellen thought, what hope was there for a whole quadrant?
The Romulan ship got Rugal as far as Destiny before giving out. It had given good service, particularly for an enemy ship, and it served him well right up to the last. He would never have got permission to land on Destiny if people on the ground had known he was Cardassian. The local provisional administration had been rounding up its remaining Cardassians and was deporting them as quickly as could be managed. It wasn’t that difficult a task—there weren’t many Cardassians left—although Rugal doubted they had the authority. It seemed unlikely that Starfleet would condone it, even though he knew from experience they were certainly prepared to repatriate people. Cardassian people.
He spent a couple of weeks on Destiny, held with the other remaining Cardassians in the camp where the Dominion had interned the human population. Conditions were basic and deteriorating. It was a great relief when a ship finally came past that was willing to take some of them. The Cardassians that had been selected were herded on board at gunpoint. Since Rugal didn’t want to stay on Destiny, and had no other means of leaving, he accepted what was happening without argument. But the others around him were being forced from their homes. “Where are we supposed to go?” someone asked one of the guards, but he shrugged, said, “Who cares?” and gestured with his weapon that they should carry on toward the ship.
There were more than fifty of them in a space meant for thirty. People were frightened, shell-shocked: only a few weeks ago they had been living comfortably in their compounds, defended by Jem’Hadar from attacks or reprisals from the remaining partisans. Then, without warning, the Jem’Hadar had gone berserk. Rugal found himself stuck next to an agitated young man who couldn’t get the horrors he’d seen out of his head, and had to tell them to every new person he met. “They didn’t even stop to round people up,” he said. “They walked into buildings and started firing. People couldn’t get away. They’d run off, but the Jem’Hadar would disappear and then appear again in front of them.” One of the young man’s eyes was bright blue, the other bright green. Rugal was transfixed by them. “It all came from nowhere. It all happened so suddenly, and then it stopped, as quickly as it started. I don’t understand what happened. Do you know what happened? What made them do it?”
Wasn’t that obvious? They had hated Cardassians, like everyone else. As soon as they had no further use for them, as soon as they became more trouble than they were worth, it was easier to wipe them out than to let them live. Rugal looked at his cabinmate, who was trembling as he spoke, and decided not to tell him the whole truth. “We were lied to,” Rugal said. “Dukat lied to us.”
The young man nodded, clearly comforted. But could the Cardassian people really absolve themselves so easily? Should they? Distinctly, Rugal remembered sitting with his friends—his dead friends, who had not wanted this war—watching fireworks over in the Paldar sector to celebrate Cardassia’s joining the Dominion. Dukat’s words had fallen on receptive ground. They had welcomed him back with excitement and delight. They had wanted not to starve and not to be sick. There had to be a reckoning—but this? The woman sitting opposite Rugal rocked to and fro and muttered to herself all the time. This retribution was not just.
The lack of food and space, the fact that nobody was clearly in charge, all of this meant that tempers ran high. Rugal closed his eyes and left
them to their arguments, but when they started to threaten the safety of the ship, he had to intervene. He could have told them that he was military—that would have snapped them into line—but he didn’t want to have to answer questions about what he was doing so far away from his Order. Instead he told them he was a medic. Suddenly the whole ship was at his command—and he was at their disposal. He became public property. Those who didn’t need treatment came to him because they needed a shoulder to cry on. “I’m sure everything will be fine,” he said to one, as he gently disentangled himself. The next thing he knew, the word had been passed around that the young doctor had said there were homes waiting for them all on Prime. How did these stories get around? Why did Cardassians do this? Why did they tell themselves lies, delude themselves in this way? Prime was a basket case. Nobody would have a real home there for years.
He tried to keep his distance, but it was hard in a space this small. Eventually, they limped into Weibak local space, where they were given permission to land, but not to disembark. A doctor—a fully qualified doctor, not a medic like him—came on board to look them over. It was chaos for a few hours as everyone jockeyed for her attention, and Rugal took the opportunity to jump ship. He slipped through the spaceport and hid in a storeroom until the freighter had gone. He told himself he should not feel guilty for abandoning them. They were not his responsibility. They would cope. All that mattered was to get to Ithic as quickly as possible, find Penelya, make sure she was alive. If Rugal thought to himself that perhaps he was filling his head with delusions of his own, he didn’t let it trouble him too much.
Relations on the Lotos were slightly improved by the time it got to Slokat. Not harmonious—hardly that—but less fraught. The situation on Slokat helped. The human population there had kept its head down under Dominion occupation. Remarkably, too, many people had hidden Cardassians away while the massacre was happening. The two populations were living side-by-side, although there was a distinctly Cardassian half of town, and a distinctly human one. They stayed about a week. Rugal spent every waking hour with the doctors there, getting a crash course in human physiology and first aid. Ellen wasn’t sure when he’d get the chance to use it on this voyage. Their next stop was Ithic.
Star Trek: DS9: The Never-Ending Sacrifice Page 23
