by S. D. Perry
“Annexation?” He laughed, a bitter sound. “You Cardassians are so skilled in the art of the euphemism.”
“What would you know about it?” Natima snapped.
“I have accessed your comnet before—I’ve read the reports you deliver back to your homeworld. Reports of happy Bajoran subjects, much-revered Cardassian leaders, Dukat’s favorable reputation among the Bajorans. No mention of the resistance, except perhaps to report exaggerated victories against them—victories which have been few and far between, I might add.”
Natima did not have time to answer, as they had reached Veja. She knelt beside her friend, the weak light showing them her mud-streaked face, tight with pain and fear.
Natima reached for her. “It’s all right, Veja. We’re trying to find a way out. I’m so sorry to have left you alone in the dark, but we have only one light.”
Veja struggled to speak.
“Don’t waste your energy. You need to rest.” It was the Bajoran.
“Get…leave…I’m…okay. Go…”
“No, Veja. He’s right—don’t try to speak.”
Veja shook her head and gasped weakly, gesturing back down the tunnel, the way Natima and Seefa had come.
“I think she’s trying to tell us to get back to work,” the Bajoran said, and Veja nodded before closing her eyes again, the tension in her face lessening as she drifted back into unconsciousness.
Natima looked up at the Bajoran, who would not return her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I never meant for anything like this to happen.”
Natima stood up and tried to brush dirt off her dress before realizing how utterly futile it was—she was covered in grime and muck from head to toe, and she would be getting a lot dirtier before this day was done. She could not accept his apology, not with Veja so badly hurt, but she felt a need to at least acknowledge its sincerity.
“A lot of things happen that have unintended consequences,” she said stiffly, and started back to the blocked entrance. The Bajoran followed, carefully lighting their way.
Lenaris and Taryl landed their respective ships less than a kellipate from the prison camp. It was as close as they could get, considering the complicated web of defense arrays surrounding the camp. The atmosphere was breathable, but thin, and Lenaris’s head started to throb almost as soon as he left his raider. The air smelled strange—not bad, exactly, just a smell that Lenaris had never known. The very unfamiliarity of it made his stomach clench.
Lenaris and Delle met up with Taryl, who had ridden with Tiven, as the third raider thudded down. Sten and his cousin Crea leaped out first, followed by two brothers by the name of Legan, recent additions to the Ornathia cell. They were standing just beyond a patch of the strangest-looking vegetation Lenaris had ever seen—low trees with rounded leaves that appeared almost black in color, likely to compensate for the excessive distance of their sun. They provided good cover. If Pullock V had been a desert world, the operation would already be over.
“I read life signs,” Taryl whispered, looking at her handheld scanner. “But I can’t tell if they’re Bajoran. It’s the shield—blocks out most of the signal.”
Lenaris nodded. “Can you tell how many people are here?”
Taryl shook her head.
“Well, let’s do it,” Tiven said, and unslung his phaser rifle. Lenaris nodded, unslinging his own. The Legans both carried handheld phasers, while Taryl and her cousins were carrying pouches full of improvised explosive devices: slap packs and shrapnel grenades—unsophisticated, but they did the job.
Lenaris could see that the others were nervous, never having faced Cardassians in combat before. But he was too anxious and excited for his own sake to worry much about his companions’ lack of experience. He felt that he was better at ground combat than just about anything else; he’d had a lot of practice when he had been in the Halpas cell with Darin. The two of them were so confident, they could have taken out an entire outfit of Cardassian soldiers from the ground. Once, they’d destroyed a massive bunker—just the two of them—and had done such a thorough job, the spoonheads hadn’t even bothered to rebuild it. It was memories like this that Lenaris drew upon, scaffolding his courage, as the eight of them crept to the place where they expected the camp to be. They were always undermanned and outgunned—it was a fact of the occupation—but it was still possible to prevail.
As they edged closer to the Cardassian facility, a large, modern-looking operation surrounded by a low wall, they could see no guards, and they could hear no sounds of movement. It appeared completely deserted. Lenaris’s tension went up a few notches.
“Are those life signs any clearer?” Tiven asked.
Taryl shook her head. “No,” she said slowly. “There’s no way to know what kind of opposition we’re facing.”
“Does it matter?” Sten asked.
Taryl shook her head. “No,” she whispered. She edged a little closer, hesitant, looking at her scanner again.
“Maybe—” Tiven didn’t have time to finish his thought, for a tight line of gray-armored soldiers had abruptly sprung up behind the wall, less than thirty paces from where they now stood, and each soldier carried a massive rifle. The volley of simultaneous fire erupted in a single, terrible, impenetrable barrier.
Lenaris’s rifle was in his hands and he was spraying fire before he even had time to register what had just happened. His ears roared with his own heartbeat. He was only partially aware of the shots that originated somewhere at his side; presumably Tiven, but Lenaris only saw the ugly, reptilian faces in front of him, watched as they staggered and fell, one by one. He fired, fired again, and retreated, crouching back into the alien bushes.
The soldiers who had not fallen returned fire, though they did not advance beyond the low walls of the facility, only continuing to shoot like a single unwavering, mechanical entity, the same formation that Lenaris recalled they had often taken when on Bajor; if they were not advancing, it meant there were probably more of them, to replace those who fell. The shrieks from their phasers tore up the ground in blasts of cloudy, choking black dust, the blasts of fire erupting in perfectly timed staccato. It did not take long to confirm to Lenaris that there were indeed more soldiers coming; he heard their phasers before he saw them, marching forward from somewhere beyond the gates of the facility to fill in for their fallen comrades.
Lenaris took the briefest second to survey their own casualties. Delle was nowhere in sight. Sten’s foot was visible a short distance away, poking out from beneath the brush ahead of him, but Lenaris could not gauge if he was alive or dead. Crea was dead, crumpled in the dirt. The Legan brothers were firing wildly in tandem. Tiven also continued to fire, and Taryl, ducking behind insufficient cover, clutched her bag anxiously, her expression wide-eyed with the fear of first combat.
“Go, do it!” Lenaris shouted to her, and she quickly snapped into action. She chucked the palm-sized slap packs with all her might, one after another as he continued to fire, covering her. More soldiers fell, but it was not enough.
“Tiven!” he shouted, risking a look in the old engineer’s direction—and he saw that Tiven was on the ground, the upper part of his body a blackened mass, still smoking from the impact of Cardassian disruptor fire. Lenaris changed his position, continuing to fire. He still could not see Delle, and Sten appeared to be frozen behind the patch of bushes where he hid. One of the Legans had used up his power cell and was retreating, his brother continuing to fire methodically.
Lenaris made his way to Sten. “Go go go!” he screamed, firing over the other man’s shoulder, and Sten jerked into action, dashing forward just far enough to pluck the phaser rifle from Tiven’s corpse. With a cry, Sten discharged Tiven’s phaser at the line of spoonheads, until there were no more standing. At least, none that they could see.
“Delle!” Lenaris cried out, but Taryl stopped him, her expression tortured as she shook her head. Sten had fallen to his knees next to his cousin’s unmoving body. It had all happened too f
ast, was still happening. There was only a beat of ringing silence before they were made aware of more fire heading their way. Another line of identically dressed soldiers had just emerged from somewhere unseen, and there was no way of knowing how many more were waiting to replace these.
“Sten, your pack!” Lenaris shouted. The other man looked down at the satchel still slung around his shoulder as if he had forgotten it was there, and without wasting another second he pitched the explosive devices back at the camp—larger than those Taryl had used, meant to finish off the camp once they were done here—and it seemed to Lenaris that they were indeed done here.
The Legans had already retreated, both their phasers having run dry. “Let’s get the kosst out of here,” Lenaris ordered, and Taryl and Sten followed his lead, stumbling back through the squat trees, gasping, running for the shuttles. Lenaris sidestepped, firing back at the camp, hoping to the Prophets that they hadn’t been flanked.
Powdery dirt and alien vegetation flew up beneath their boots. Taryl tripped and Lenaris snatched at her arm, yanked her after him, his head pounding as the first of the explosions tore through the thin air. Behind them, soldiers shouted, but they hadn’t broken formation to give chase until it was too late. Sten and the Legans reached their raider first, and Lenaris pushed Taryl to hers before scrambling toward his own, blood thundering in his ears, expecting to feel the fatal blast to his back as he climbed into his vessel, his skin and muscles trembling in anticipation of it.
There were more explosions from the camp, one so big that it could only be the power station, a lucky hit. He fired up the raider, talking to himself, his voice a thready whisper as he frantically studied the sensors.
“Go, go, move…”
The instant he saw that Taryl was off the ground, he tapped himself into the air, imagining he could feel blasts of heat from the burning camp, pushing him toward the stars as he slammed on his comm.
“Halpas! We’re running! Get ready to go to warp!”
If the Cardassians had flyers, they were too preoccupied with their camp to come after the Bajorans. The brief fly time seemed like an eternity, Lenaris trying to catch his breath, sure that each second would be his last. A bright-hot blast of light, a single pulse from a patrol ship’s disruptors, and he’d be so much debris, blowing silently through icy space…
The carrier was waiting. Lenaris came in right behind Taryl, with Sten and the Legan brothers bringing up the rear. The bay’s hatch clamped shut behind them, and Lenaris felt a quick jerk just before the inertial dampers kicked in and the old Bajoran ship went to warp. He clambered out of his raider, huddling against the cold, stumbling toward Taryl’s craft. Taryl was still sitting in her cockpit, crammed in beside the Legans, who both looked to be in a state of shock. Taryl’s head was down on the instrument panel.
Lenaris lifted the hatch, the fear finally hitting him.
“Taryl, are you all right? Are you hit?”
Taryl gasped once, twice—and started to cry, deep, rending cries of heartbreak that echoed through the dim, cavernous bay.
“Lac,” she wailed, and Lenaris tried to hold her, but it was as though he wasn’t even there.
11
Dukat was fuming as he tapped off the comm. The facility in the Pullock system had been badly damaged, and a good many Union troops were dead. He’d thought he’d been sufficiently cautious, sending soldiers to the work camp on Pullock V to oversee the execution of the prisoners there, which included the terrorist who had been apprehended at Derna—the man had given up plenty in the interrogation, confirmed that he’d tried to send word back to his friends. But even with that lead, Dukat had underestimated the Bajorans once again.
He sat back in his chair, his mood black. The average Bajoran’s quality of life had improved dramatically since his rise to the office. He had promoted better health care, encouraged work-training programs, allowed them religious freedoms that they had no right to expect, and this is what they gave in return.
He started to call for Damar, but then remembered that the gil had gone to the surface; his betrothed had gotten herself into trouble, another hostile incident with a Bajoran terrorist.
Dukat templed his fingers, considering his next move. He did not particularly care to admit when he had made a mistake, but he knew that on very rare occasions, it was the best course to take. A change in tactics was required. He summoned Basso Tromac to operations, deciding how best to tighten the reins as he waited for the Bajoran to appear.
“You called for me, sir?” Basso stepped into his office not five minutes after being called. One thing to be said for Basso, he was punctual.
“I need you to deliver a message to Kubus Oak,” Dukat said.
“Right away, sir.” Basso slid a padd from his belt, fingers poised to record. “What message?”
“Inform Kubus that I am instituting new policies on Bajor, effective immediately. It will be up to him to be sure that the word is spread across his world. My men will be on hand to enforce these directives.”
“Yes, sir,” Basso said, suddenly sounding a little uneasy.
“Chief among them: no more religious counsel allowed in the work camps. In fact, we need to even the playing field for religious officials in general. I’ve allowed your priests a certain amount of leniency up to now, but I feel it is time for them to earn their keep, just like everyone else. All religious officials will receive work code numbers. And I believe we will be dismantling some of the monasteries. It is common knowledge that resistance members hide in them.”
Basso was tapping away at his padd, his expression revealing nothing, but Dukat could see him swallow, hard. He was as superstitious as the rest of them, of course.
“Additionally, I am lowering per-month food allowances. And I am tightening restriction boundaries in Relliketh and Dahkur. I will post the specifics on the comnet.”
“Yes, sir,” Basso said. “Will that be all?”
Dukat nodded. “For now,” he said.
Basso left him, and Dukat looked over transmission reports, trying to find the record from the patrol ship that had reported the balon shuttles in the Pullock system. He was having trouble locating it and became frustrated, considering that this was the type of thing for which he usually relied on Damar. Dukat muttered a curse at Damar’s fiancée. Women could be so troublesome.
Dukat gave up on the transmissions and spent a few moments drafting his new directives, then uploading them to the Bajoran and Cardassian comnets. He then sent copies to the appropriate parties of interest—Legate Kell’s office, the guls who oversaw surface operations. Dukat didn’t bother himself overmuch with the details; what mattered were the bold, broad strokes. This would stir the rebels, make them reckless. His soldiers on the ground would make quick work of them, some small justice for the tragedy of Pullock V.
Hours later, he began to feel the intense solitude of command taking its toll. There was one other person who was adept at listening to his troubles, who might be able to ease his mind.
As he entered her quarters, he was immediately aware of Meru’s posture. She sat on the bed with her back to the door, her head bent as she gazed down at her hands, her fingers twisting in her lap.
“Meru,” Dukat said, wondering if she had already heard about the new directives. He looked to her companel. The screen was dark, but she had probably been at it, where she pored over the comnet reports on those days when she wasn’t painting pictures or reading what passed for literature among Bajorans. The holosuites had never interested her, though Dukat had done his best to try and encourage her to use them.
“Hello, Skrain,” she said, her voice hollow.
Dukat frowned. It was unusual for Meru to act this way. Even though Dukat knew she wasn’t always entirely happy, she almost always managed to put on a convincing smile for her lover—it was one of the reasons Dukat had kept her around this long.
Dukat sat down on the bed behind his mistress, touching the back of her bare neck. He nudged away th
e few tendrils of hair that grazed her skin, having worked themselves loose from the arrangement on top of her head—similar to how a Cardassian would wear her hair, but especially striking on the delicate-featured Bajoran. “Is something troubling you, my dear?”
She shook her head, but she continued to avoid his gaze, and Dukat began to feel annoyed. She was acting a bit like a petulant child. He would find no solace from his worries here.
“I must go,” he said irritably. “Gil Damar is not on the station. My duties will keep me busy for the next few days.”
Meru finally looked up, and Dukat saw that her eyes were quite red, the edges of her nose laced with pink. A strange effect that Bajorans often experienced when upset, it did not flatter her.
Dukat turned away in disgust. “I won’t be back tonight,” he announced, and left the room.
Rain had come to the Kendra Valley, and a heavy downpour was soaking the muddy terrain that surrounded the old cottage once occupied by the Opaka family, the cottage where Gar Osen now resided. The same cottage that had been built in the time of Kai Dava.
Opaka Fasil pulled his oilcloth cloak over the top of his head to keep the fine spray of misty rain from his head and shoulders. Despite his best efforts, rivulets of water ran down the tip of his nose, and his fingers were cold and slippery where they clutched at the little shovel he was using to poke around the foundation of the little stone house.
“Quiet,” whispered the older man who had come from his mother’s camp—the artist, Ketauna. “The vedek will hear you!”
“He won’t hear me,” Fasil assured him. “I lived in this cottage for most of my childhood. It’s very well insulated.”
“But you’re tapping the shovel right up against the house!”
“Let him work,” the other man said, the younger one with the phaser pistol. His name was Shev. “If you’re worried about it, go round to the front and watch the door. You can warn us if they come out.”
