* *

*When the first course arrived, Rugal eyed it nervously, remembering the
appalling dish of /zabu/ stew that Chief O’Brien’s wife had concocted
for him.*



Fortunately, this was recognizably food, some kind of thick broth that
smelled of fish. Out of habit, he bent his head to thank the
Prophets—then he remembered where he was and stopped. He glanced at
Kotan to see if he’d noticed, but the big man had already started
eating. Geleth, however, had seen. She smiled at him with cool malice.
That—and residual anger about the earring—did it. Rugal bowed his head,
clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and cleared his throat.

For Migdal’s sake Rugal had attended temple and studied the prophecies.
He had thought the effort was only right—some kind of reparation for the
damage his kind had done to Bajor’s heritage. As a result, Rugal was
able to dredge up a thanksgiving chant of considerable length and
splendor. It began with a soft deep murmur, went up at a steady
crescendo, to climax with one final, bell-like call of gratitude to the
Prophets for their gifts and goodness. When the sound of that died down,
the quiet around the table was thicker than the soup. Rugal opened his
eyes, reached for his cutlery, and blithely began to eat.

Kotan was sitting in shocked silence, while the maid had her mouth
hanging open. Then Geleth began to laugh, a half-demented cackle like a
rusty nail being scraped across barbed wire. Rugal didn’t know whether
to be pleased or furious. It was the start of a long war of attrition
between grandmother and grandson.


 



*THE NEW ADVENTURES OF STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE®*

 

/The Lives of Dax/ by various authors

/A Stitch in Time/ by Andrew J. Robinson

/Avatar, Book One/ & /Book Two/ by S. D. Perry

/Section 31: Abyss/ by David Weddle & Jeffrey Lang

/Gateways: Demons of Air and Darkness/ by Keith R.A. DeCandido

“Horn and Ivory” by Keith R.A. DeCandido

(from /Gateways: What Lay Beyond/)

/Mission: Gamma, Book One—Twilight/ by David R. George III

/Mission: Gamma, Book Two—This Gray Spirit/ by Heather Jarman

/Mission: Gamma, Book Three—Cathedral/
by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels

/Mission: Gamma, Book Four—Lesser Evil/ by Robert Simpson

/Rising Son/ by S. D. Perry

/The Left Hand of Destiny, Book One/ & /Book Two/
by J. G. Hertzler & Jeffrey Lang

/Unity/ by S. D. Perry

/Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume One/
by various authors

/Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume Two/
by various authors

/Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume Three/
by various authors

/Warpath/ by David Mack

/Fearful Symmetry/ by Olivia Woods

/The Soul Key/ by Olivia Woods

 

*COLLECTIONS*

/Twist of Faith/ by S. D. Perry;
David Weddle & Jeffrey Lang; Keith R.A. DeCandido

/These Haunted Seas/
by David R. George III; Heather Jarman


*STAR TREK DEEP SPACE NINE**®*

*THE NEVER - ENDING**
*SACRIFICE**

*UNA McCORMACK*

 

Based upon /Star Trek/®
created by Gene Roddenberry

and

/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/
created by Rick Berman & Michael Piller

 

 

















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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-4391-0961-8
eISBN-13:978-1-4391-2346-1


 





For Marco,

with gratitude




*HISTORIAN’S NOTE*





The events in this book take place from 2370 to 2378 (ACE). From the
second year, 2370, that Starfleet ran the space station Deep Space 9 for
the Bajoran government (“Cardassians” /DS9/), to the end of the Dominion
War (“What You Leave Behind” /DS9/), and just after the admission of
Bajor to the United Federation of Planets (/Star Trek: Unity/).









*PART ONE **

*END OF A JOURNEY (2370–2371)**





“Where shall a man find sweetness to surpass his own home and his parents?
In far lands he shall not, though he find a house of gold.”

—Homer, /The Odyssey/











*One*





While he was still a young man, Rugal Pa’Dar experienced loss,
separation, a brutal frontier war, and the attempted destruction of his
species. Yet, if asked, he would say without hesitation that the worst
moment of his life was when he realized he would not be returning to
Bajor with his father. All the rest of it, that was simply the
Cardassian experience. The Cardassian lot. Practically everyone else he
knew had gone through it too, and at least Rugal was one of the
survivors. But being taken away—not wanting it, but being unable to do
anything to prevent it—that was the defining moment of his life. He was
sixteen when it happened. The shock of it propelled him forward for the
best part of a decade, before he came to rest.

Rugal and Proka Migdal had come to Deep Space 9 for the same reason that
many people go on a journey: they were hoping to make a fresh start.
Migdal—Rugal would always think of him first as /Father/—had, as a young
man, been a policeman in a city that the Cardassians had chosen to
obliterate. In the years that followed, oppression, poverty, and a
regrettable tendency to end up in the middle of whatever fistfight was
going on around him had left their mark on Migdal. He had lost his only
child when Korto City had been destroyed, and he had lost his most
recent job when a fellow construction worker had made a sly comment
about his adopted son. Migdal had thumped him. The other man thumped him
back, very hard, and Migdal, who was not a young man, fell
unceremoniously to the floor. After he had been patched up, he was shown
the door.

Neither his wife, Etra, nor his son was greatly surprised to see him
back home so early. In all the burgeoning city of Ashalla, which seemed
daily to be expanding as the Bajoran people woke up to their freedom and
the opportunities it was bringing them, it seemed that only Proka Migdal
regularly found himself out of work. His problem, Etra said, was that
there was no going home for him. Some people were like that about a
place. They could never settle down anywhere else. But Korto was gone
for good. So they’d have to make the best of all that Ashalla had to offer.

“I’ve finished with this city,” Migdal said.

Etra and Rugal exchanged long-suffering looks.

“It’s turning into a bad place. Everybody’s on the make. Nobody has time
for anyone else. It’s nothing like it used to be on Bajor. I blame the
Circle, setting us all against each other like that.”

Proka Etra was a sensible woman who had humored her husband’s diffuse
and not always well-informed monologues for many years. She was a
seamstress—properly talented, Migdal liked to say; her grandparents had
all been /Ih’valla/ caste, although that was something else that had
changed on Bajor now, and not necessarily for the better—and she made
good money from piece work. All these new arrivals in the city needed
something to wear. Right now, Etra was barely on schedule and her mouth
was full of pins. She made a soothing noise and carried on with her work.

“I was talking to Reco outside the temple last night,” Migdal went on,
“and he was saying that the place to be these days is that big space
station the spoonheads put up... Prophets, what are they calling it
these days?” He snapped his fingers, trying to recall the new name. “Why
do they have to keep on changing everything?”

“Deep Space 9,” Rugal offered, without looking up from his lessonpadd.
He rubbed the ridge above his right eye and tried to concentrate again.
He was studying for a school test on the causes of the Occupation and he
did not find the subject easy reading.

“That’s it! Deep Space 9! That’s the place to be! More and more people
passing through there every day, Reco said. I bet they could do with a
good seamstress up there, Etra. What do you think? We’ve never lived on
a space station.”

Etra made what Migdal took to be an encouraging sound.

“I could go up, take a look round, see whether we’d like it. Rugal could
come too, it’d get us both out of your way while you get all that
finished.” He was as excited as a boy with a /jumja/ stick the size of
his head. “What do you think, Rugal? A fresh start? Isn’t that what we
need?”

Rugal had reached a section in the text that was supposed to detail the
role played by the Obsidian Order in the conquest of Bajor, but was in
fact a series of lurid vignettes. “What we really need, Father,” he
replied, “is for you not to lose your temper once we’ve made it.”

Migdal frowned. Etra stopped her work and gave her husband a fierce
look. And since nothing was ever done in that small household that would
make Etra truly unhappy, Migdal relaxed and laughed. Rugal put aside his
books—truth be told, he wasn’t all that enthusiastic about school
work—and he and Migdal cooked supper while Etra worked.

Father and son were in high spirits when they went over to the spaceport
the next day. Migdal was upbeat and optimistic, as he always was at the
start of a new chapter. Rugal was glad to be getting out of school and
grateful his father was so cheerful. Whenever they ended up moving on,
Migdal always made it seem like an adventure rather than Rugal’s fault.
They enjoyed the journey out to Deep Space 9, and if anyone remarked
upon a Bajoran man traveling with a Cardassian boy, they managed not to
hear it.

Both Migdal and Rugal took to the station immediately. True, Bajorans
were in the majority here, and Cardassians a very marked minority, but
with all the other strange people passing through, it did seem that this
was the kind of place where their odd little family could live in peace
and without the constant comment about Migdal’s Cardassian son that
tended to result in his losing first his temper and then his job. Within
a couple of hours, father and son were sure they would come to Deep
Space 9. They went into the Ferengi’s bar to celebrate their decision.
It was a measure of Migdal’s cosmically appalling luck, Rugal would
later reflect, that almost the first person they ran into was Elim Garak.



Rugal did not find it difficult to explain why he bit Elim Garak’s hand.
Because it was on his shoulder. A Cardassian’s hand, on his shoulder.
From childhood observation, Rugal knew how this was usually the prelude
to a beating, if you were lucky, or an arrest if you weren’t (arrest
generally being an invitation to disappear). Rugal would be the first to
admit that biting the Cardassian’s hand wasn’t the smartest thing he had
ever done, but it certainly wasn’t inexplicable.

There was another reason for biting him too, but Rugal didn’t mention
that to anybody else because it wasn’t anybody else’s business. When the
stranger’s gray hand had taken hold of him, Rugal looked down at it and,
suddenly, he had a flash of memory—of another gray hand there, pushing
him forward, making him walk away from... from where? As a little boy,
Rugal had sometimes had nightmares that ended at this point. The image
came to him very rarely these days, and he preferred it that way
because, in his heart, he had a feeling that it wasn’t simply a dream,
but a memory. He was afraid that this memory might be older than all the
other, more important ones—of Migdal and Etra and of being their
child—and he didn’t want to know any more about it.

Rugal was prepared to apologize to the man he’d bitten at once, if it
would stop the whole business going any further, but things moved very
quickly after that. Someone going by the name of Zolan claimed to know
the family, and he said that Proka was cruel to his son. (Migdal did
know Zolan, in fact, from way back in Korto; Zolan had been selling
medical supplies on the black market, not all of which had been properly
labeled as unsafe for Bajoran physiology. Not that anybody /asked/
Migdal.) Once the accusation had been made, a group of terrifyingly
earnest Starfleet personnel appeared out of nowhere and took Rugal away
from his father. They seemed to be under the ludicrous impression that
Migdal—his elderly, occasionally grumpy, perennially optimistic, and
always very dear father—had terrorized Rugal so much that he now hated
Cardassians enough to bite the first one he saw. That was nonsense, but
Migdal didn’t seem to be able to make the Starfleet people hear him.
Like many ordinary folk, he was frightened by these serious-looking
people with their weapons and their uniforms, and he had no reason to
trust them. The Cardassians had also said they were only trying to do
what was best for Bajor.

Rugal did despise Cardassians, but it hadn’t taken Proka Migdal or even
his history lessons to make him do so. Rugal only had to look round
Bajor to find a reason to loathe Cardassians. They had destroyed cities
that people loved, so that they could never go home again. They had
murdered people’s children. And they had abandoned their own children,
who then had to grow up knowing they embodied everything that the people
around them most despised. Life had not always been easy for Migdal and
Etra, because Rugal was Cardassian, and there were plenty of Bajoran
orphans they could have adopted instead. Migdal and Etra had done a good
thing, taking in Rugal and calling him their son. He tried to explain
some of this, but nobody was listening.

By now, more people, with their own agendas, had crawled out of the
bulkheads. Chief among these was a Cardassian gul who seemed very
concerned about the plight of the Cardassian orphans who had been
abandoned on Bajor. Rugal didn’t believe a word of this. If this gul
cared so much, where had he been all these years? There was a friendly
Starfleet engineer called O’Brien who was the only person who took Rugal
seriously when he said—again and again—that he just wanted to go back to
his father. But O’Brien didn’t have the authority to do much about it.
Most alarmingly, there was the big Cardassian man, tall and stooping and
anxious, who came clutching a handful of holopics and claiming that
Rugal was his son.

It took Rugal a while to work out exactly what was going on, partly
because most people were talking over him and not to him. He was not
sure Migdal ever entirely understood what had happened on Deep Space 9
other than that, between them, the Cardassians and the Federation had
taken away his boy. In the end, O’Brien and his wife, Keiko, explained
to Rugal what was going on. The big nervous Cardassian—Pa’Dar—was a
prominent politician and, according to the tests they’d done, was
certainly Rugal’s biological father. Pa’Dar had thought Rugal had died
years ago in a bombing on Bajor, and that’s why he had never come
looking for him. In fact, what had actually happened was that the oily,
sentimental gul—Dukat—had kidnapped Rugal so that, in some possible
future political battle, he could use the fact of Rugal’s existence
against Pa’Dar. Just in case. By the time the Starfleet
commander—Sisko—decided that the best thing all round was for the boy to
go with Pa’Dar, Rugal had discovered yet another reason to hate
Cardassians. They used each other’s children casually, as pieces in
political games.

He didn’t think much of Starfleet either. Except its engineers.



When Kotan Pa’Dar received the message that his lost boy had been found,
he had been working through depositions related to his investigation
into the Central Command’s involvement in a recent attempted coup on
Bajor. He was Cardassian enough that his first thought was that this was
a trap. His second thought was to close all his files, walk slowly
around his office at the Ministry of Science, and turn off all six of
the surveillance devices that he knew about. Only then did he sit back
behind his desk, put his head in his hands, and weep. He knew that the
Obsidian Order would still be watching somehow, but he didn’t care. His
tears were not for their benefit.

As soon as he was calm again, Kotan switched on the viewscreen and put a
call through to his mother. His hands shook as he operated the controls.
Partly this was due to shock; partly it was because he knew what his
mother would say when he told her his boy was not dead after all. He put
his hand on the frame of the picture of his dead wife, for courage, and
waited for his mother to take his call.

Geleth Pa’Dar was very old, and had always been either too poor or too
rich to bother with pity. She received her son’s news with the distaste
that usually met anything he brought before her. His talent for science,
for example, or the young woman he intended to make his wife. /“Of
course,”/ Geleth sighed, when Kotan finished his explanation, /“it would
be better if the child had never turned up. The scandal will almost
certainly finish you. You’ve not endeared yourself to the Central
Command in recent months.”/ She glanced down at the control panel next
to the screen, and began to tap at it. /“We could always arrange for an
accident on the way home.”/

“Mother!”

“/Don’t be childish, Kotan. That sort of thing is to be admired—or it
was in my day. Cardassia isn’t what it used to be.”/



“Mother—”

/“Your father had two of his bastards killed for our wedding—or was it
three? I forget now, it was a long time ago. Frankly, I would rather
he’d dealt with the mistress herself, but then bastards are one thing,
aren’t they, and citizens are another, and I suppose one can hardly go
about murdering those without expecting some kind of reprisal—”/

/“Mother!”/

Geleth barely moved, but disapproval radiated out from the screen. Kotan
pressed the corner of the picture frame into his palm. He reminded
himself of Geleth’s age and the fact that—until moments ago—she had been
his sole surviving relative. “There will be no unfortunate accidents,”
he said, clearly and steadily, “no sudden disappearances, and certainly
no murders. If this boy is—” /Rugal,/ he thought, but he had not said
the name in years, and he did not trust himself to say it out loud, not
yet, “—my child, then he will be coming back with me, and he will be
living with me. In my house.”

Geleth’s eye ridges twitched. The house was Kotan’s winning move. It was
his, through his father, not hers: Geleth had married money, bringing
none with her. He watched her make her eyes go sad—a very fine imitation
of frailty. /“Of course, you’ll do whatever you want. It’s not as if
anything I say ever makes any difference.”/ She sharpened her tone
again. /“But you’ll regret this. I give your seat in the Assembly three
months at the outside.”/

Kotan was no longer paying attention. Variations on this theme had
accompanied him throughout his life, and despite every attempt he had
made to please her. For Geleth’s sake, he had abandoned his beloved
laboratories for what had been an unfulfilling political career—a career
that had taken him to Bajor and cost him his wife and his child. Geleth
would not have her own way on this. Family might be all, and Geleth was
all he had left (/until now.../), but if you only listened to family,
you would surely end up strangling somebody. Kotan left Cardassia Prime
in haste, to take possession of a bewildered and angry young man of sixteen.



When the time came to say good-bye to Migdal, Rugal made one last
attempt to explain what had happened. “This man Pa’Dar is my father—my
biological father, I mean. And now he’s found me, he wants to take me
back with him to Cardassia. Commander Sisko has decided that he should
be allowed to do that.” Rugal looked at his father anxiously. Migdal
seemed to have aged in the past few days.

“But he left you /behind,/” Migdal said in a plaintive voice. “He didn’t
/want/ you—”

Rugal glanced back over his shoulder bitterly. The big Cardassian was
waiting by the door, staring down at his boots. At least he had the
decency not to watch. “He didn’t know I was still alive. It’s
complicated, but... someone took me away so that when they found me
again, it would embarrass him.”

The intricacies of Cardassian politics were well beyond Migdal’s
comprehension. “But what am I going to tell Etra when I turn up without
you?” he asked, plucking at his son’s sleeve. “She’s expecting us back,
we were going to go down to the temple and light candles to bless the
journey and then go and have /alva/ ices to celebrate...” He was close
to tears.

Rugal swallowed. By tomorrow, he would be on his way to Cardassia Prime.
No temples, no candles, no mother or father, no fresh start... Only the
enemy. He put his arms around his father so that Migdal couldn’t see his
face. “It doesn’t have to be forever. It won’t be forever. I’ll come
back. We’ll find a way for me to get back.”

“Yes,” said Migdal, comforted. “We’ll find a way. Etra will know what to
do.”

Rugal was now of an age where he no longer believed his mother was
likely to be a match for Starfleet and the Cardassians combined, but he
said nothing, only hugged Migdal hard, and then stood up. The big
Cardassian—Kotan—took a step forward. He looked eager and pleased, as if
he was glad to have devastated their family. Of course, that was what
Cardassians did. He reached out to put his hand on Rugal’s arm, and
Rugal pulled back as if the man were carrying a deadly weapon, or a
plague. “Don’t touch me,” he whispered savagely. “Don’t ever touch me.”

Kotan, shocked, withdrew. They walked down to the docking bay in
silence, Rugal lagging a marked distance behind. Commander Sisko and
Chief O’Brien were waiting to see them on their way. “Well, good luck,”
O’Brien said, putting his hand on Rugal’s shoulder. He didn’t look
entirely happy either. For a moment Rugal had a wild hope that O’Brien
might speak up and stop all this from happening, but he didn’t. He gave
Kotan and his commanding officer a quick look, and Rugal a worried one,
and he leaned in to whisper, “If you need any help, need anything at
all, let me know. Yes? Let me know.”

It was hardly the last-minute reprieve Rugal had been hoping for, but it
did make him feel as if somebody was on his side, and for that he
remained forever grateful. He nodded his thanks to O’Brien, and then
followed the man who was calling himself his father onto the shuttle and
away from home.



It was a long journey home, and during it Kotan suffered the fullest
range of emotions possible. Sadly, he soon discovered that the happiest
emotions were associated with memories.

Kotan remembered everything about Rugal’s life that the boy himself
could not. He could picture as if it was happening now the quiet Bajoran
evening with his wife when Arys had told him that at last they were
going to have a child together. He could recall being told that he had a
son, and weeping from delight and exhaustion so mingled together that he
could not tell where one ended and the other began. He remembered first
steps, and first words, and—because he had had so little time to know
his son before he had been taken away—each memory had been pored over
and preserved, as precious as gemstones and as sharp as black glass.

Kotan had brought some of his treasures with him: pictures of his dead
wife Arys, and of Rugal himself as a baby, and of the family group as
they had been in the settlement at Tozhat. A snapshot of their happiness
together before the Bajoran Resistance had blown their lives apart.
Kotan offered his son these gifts, this inheritance, but Rugal refused
it all. He sat glowering at space, a young man boiling with rage. But as
the distance between him and Bajor became greater, he seemed to dampen
down. He looked younger, and more and more forlorn. Kotan kept close by,
wanting to be near his child, stealing occasional hungry looks at him.
He was sure that he could see Arys there, in the shape of the boy’s
face, in the sudden upsurges of emotion that in her had been so
fascinating, so exhilarating. He fancied he saw a little of himself, but
suspected this was wishful thinking. He was mortally afraid he had
caught a glimpse of Geleth.

As the journey progressed, and no overture came from Rugal, Kotan began
to contemplate the possibility that the boy was lost to him for good.
Bitterly, more than ever before, he regretted that Cardassia had ever
become entangled with Bajor. Bajor had taken his wife and child, and
seemed to be stealing the boy from him all over again. But Bajor was
rapidly eclipsed as a focus for his anger. Like all of his generation,
Kotan deplored their savagery, but when he thought about his own ravaged
family, he almost understood the fury of that fierce, alien people. But
Dukat? Dukat was Cardassian. He knew about family. He should have known
better. Dukat had stolen his son; he was the one who had created this
unnatural distance between them, cold as space but unbridgeable. Dukat
was the one who should pay for it.

Their ship docked. Kotan picked up his bag of unwelcome treasures, and
father and son made their way to the elite passengers’ transporters.
Rugal walked a few paces ahead, as if to say: /Let’s get this over and
done with quickly./ Kotan cleared his throat and took the plunge. “Rugal.”

No reply.

“Rugal, I need to talk to you before we arrive.”

The boy looked back over his shoulder at him, and Kotan trembled
slightly at the sight. Geleth. No doubt. Something tenacious, not easily
turned away from its purpose. “I need to talk to you about your
grandmother.” Then the transporter captured them both, and they were
delivered to Cardassia Prime. End of the line.

• • •





They walked out of the public transporter station into the heart of the
capital city, the heart of the Union. Rugal stopped dead in his tracks.
Everything was gray. The sky, the buildings, the faces... And it was
hot. Not unpleasantly so, but hot nonetheless. Rugal felt a hand upon
his shoulder. He shook it off, blinked, and saw Cardassia come into
focus. He began to make out detail, see nuance. The evening sky,
darkening from slate gray to obsidian, had a purplish hue, like the
petals of /indika/ flowers, or a bruise. The buildings, at first sight
ramrod straight and steely, in fact curved with unexpected elegance, and
the setting sun burnished them bronze, silver, and gold. There was
nothing green, as far as Rugal could see; none of the lush unconquerable
life that blessed Ashalla, but lining the wide street ahead there were
tall trees with black branches and long copper leaves, and, jarringly,
he could hear birdsong.

And then there were the people. Hundreds upon hundreds, streaming past
him in quick but orderly fashion, all of them Cardassian, more than
Rugal had ever imagined possible. He stared at them in disbelief—these
strange, alien people—and then he realized that many of them were
staring back. When they saw him, they turned their heads to carry on
looking as they walked past. Rugal put his hand up to his face, partly
to comfort himself, partly in defense. How could they tell? He didn’t
look Bajoran! Kotan tapped his shoulder. “You might want to take off
that earring.”

Quickly, awkwardly, Rugal reached up and unclasped it. He regretted
doing so at once, and he felt angry, as if Kotan had tricked him into a
betrayal. He wrapped his hand around it, until the links of the chain
dug into his palm, and shoved his hand deep into his pocket. Would it
ever be safe to put it back on? Those looks had been curious, judging,
but not outright hostile. Did any of these people know what it meant?
Did they even think of Bajor at all?

“There’s our ride. About time, too.” Kotan pointed across the road at a
sleek black skimmer. It seemed there would be no waiting around,
space-lagged and weary, for a tram into the city, as there would have
been in Ashalla with Migdal. Kotan Pa’Dar—Deputy Commissioner for Public
Health and a three-term member of the Civilian Assembly—had long since
earned the perk of private transport from the Ministry of Science.

The skimmer was a beautiful machine, a contemporary reworking of a
classic design, and the uniformed driver held open the doors for them.
Inside, it was finished in leather and polished wood—lunatic
extravagance on this resource-poor world—and crisply, cleanly scented.
Under other circumstances, Rugal would have been in awe. But he had
decided to hate Cardassia, so he had to dislike the skimmer, and he
fumbled around for reasons why. Eventually, he settled on its
ostentation and the unfairness of their comfortable journey while
ordinary Cardassians were crowding onto the shuttles. The sharp edges of
his earring had started hurting his hand.

Kotan switched on the viewer in the arm of his seat. “Won’t be a
moment,” he said apologetically. “Have to catch up.” /Ministry
business/, Rugal guessed. Whatever it was, Kotan was quickly absorbed.
Rugal stared out the window at the foreign city. Meaningless buildings
went by. Rugal pressed a few of the controls on his own viewer, but
nothing worked. He sighed and fell back into his seat. A few moments
later, the viewer came on of its own accord, displaying a map of the
city. Rugal looked up in surprise. He caught the eye of the driver,
looking back at him in the rearview mirror, smiling at him. /Thanks,/
Rugal mouthed. He found the little black dot that showed their skimmer,
moving along the map, and began to pick out roads and buildings.
Offices, monuments, parade grounds. Few parks or gardens; no temples. He
didn’t have long to get the lie of the land. After ten metrics, the
skimmer entered the Coranum tunnel, the fastest route out to the north
of the city for those wealthy or important enough to hold the permits
required to use it.

Everything went dark, then the skimmer was suffused with pale blue
light. Kotan switched off his viewer. “So,” he said. “Your grandmother.”

Rugal shifted uneasily. He had not given thought to the possibility of
grandparents before. Migdal and Etra had been middle-aged when they had
adopted him; their own parents had long since been lost to the various
hardships of Occupation. He wondered how many other new relatives were
lurking around. Weren’t Cardassians supposed to be obsessed with family?
There would be aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, fourth cousins
twice removed; every wall would be covered with holopics and
extravagantly detailed family trees going back generations.... Rugal was
so caught up imagining the horror of even more unwanted relations that
he almost missed hearing how Kotan was afraid of his own mother.

“She has a way,” Kotan said, “and it’s not always kindly put or kindly
meant.... But she does love family. Well. /Family is all,/ as the saying
goes.”

“I’ve heard that.” Rugal ignored Kotan’s eager, involuntary movement at
his voice. “But I don’t understand how it can be true. If family really
is all to you Cardassians, then why would you have forced me to leave my
mother and father? Don’t Bajoran families count in the same way as
Cardassian ones?”

Kotan recoiled. /It was almost too easy,/ Rugal thought. He was pleased
for a few seconds, and then he found there was a strange taste in his
mouth, sour and metallic. Sometimes he had been sharp with Migdal, a
habit picked up from Etra, but he had never been vicious. He made a
rough apology. “So you want me to impress this person?”

“Your grandmother, Rugal. My mother. It would be a minor miracle if you
impressed her, but she is our only other living relative.”

So there weren’t hordes of cousins to be met—that was a relief, and
another Cardassian lie had been unmasked: that they all lived together
in huge happy families. It explained some of Kotan’s desperation too.
The man might be materially wealthy, but if he lacked blood relatives,
then by Cardassian standards he was poor. “What’s her name?”

Kotan leaned forward, pleased that Rugal was taking an interest.
“Geleth. She can be hard work, but she’s everything we have.”

Rugal shrugged. He wouldn’t be here long and, in the meantime, it
wouldn’t do any harm to be polite to one old woman. Kotan was still
talking, not wasting the opening that had been given. “I know it won’t
be easy, coming to Cardassia after all this time, but I’ll do whatever I
can. Whatever you need—ask, and I’ll do it. I promise.”

/You could send me home,/ Rugal thought. Instead he said, “Really?”

“Really.”

“There is one thing...”



“What is it? What can I do?”

“I want to speak to my mother and father and let them know that I’m safe.”

There was a pause. Kotan frowned. Rugal, following a gut instinct, came
up with the most petulant tone he could manage. “You /said/ whatever I
/needed/.” He had tried that voice with Etra once and once only.

Kotan bit his lip, clearly troubled by the request but unwilling to
refuse outright.

“Didn’t you /mean/ it?” Rugal persisted. “That you’d do anything?”

Kotan’s shoulders slumped in defeat. Rugal’s instinct had been right.
Kotan had a guilty streak that stretched all the way back to Bajor, and
he had never learned how to say no to children. He had never had the chance.

“All right,” Kotan said. “I’ll do my best. But you must
understand—communicating with Bajor has been a sensitive matter since
the Occupation ended, and it’s become even more delicate since that
fiasco over the Circle and the gunrunning...” Rugal looked at him
innocently, and Kotan’s mouth twisted into a smile, as if he realized he
had been played. “I suspect you don’t quite understand what you’re
asking me to do, but, since I promised, I’ll try to keep my word. It
might take some time to arrange. Will that do?”

Rugal considered this. So far as he knew, Kotan had not told him any
lies, not yet. The only reason not to trust him was that he was
Cardassian. “Yes. But I want to speak to them as soon as I can.”

“I’ll do my best.” Kotan turned to stare out of his window, a frown
etched around the ridges of his face. What did this all mean? Kotan was
a powerful man on Cardassia Prime, a member of the Civilian Assembly, a
scientific adviser to their civilian ruling body, the Detapa Council.
What could make someone like that afraid? Apart from his mother.

Suddenly, they shot out of the tunnel. Night had fallen, and the sky was
black as glass. There were strange stars above that Rugal could not
decipher and, behind them, an orange haze had gathered above the hollow
containing the city. Suddenly Rugal understood what made Kotan afraid.
Everyone on Bajor knew about the Obsidian Order, but they knew it mainly
as a force brought down upon Bajorans. Could it be possible that
Cardassians treated each other as badly as they had once treated their
slaves? He thought about this for a while and then, because Etra’s
training was deeply ingrained, he remembered his manners and said,
“Thank you.”

Kotan sighed. “You are most welcome, Rugal.”



The Pa’Dar house lay, long and low, in extensive grounds on the side of
a hill in the north of the city. It was bigger than any building that
Rugal had ever been inside, including the temple that he and Migdal had
recently been attending, and it was surrounded by greenery. They went
into a large hallway, two stories high and tinted yellow and gold by the
colored lamps set into the walls. Standing waiting to meet them were
three Cardassian women—two young, the other an older woman whom Rugal
realized just in time was the housekeeper and not his grandmother. She
was delighted to meet him, however, grasping his hand and holding it
tightly to her chest. The other two—they constituted the rest of the
household staff—looked faintly bored. Rugal suspected they had been
pulled away from something more pressing than welcoming back their
employer’s long-lost son.



When this uncomfortable greeting was over, Kotan took Rugal upstairs.
“Your rooms are on the east side of the house. They have a good view
down into the city.”

Rooms? How many were there? How many did you need? On the landing, they
went past four small, exquisite paintings of a young woman laughing,
each entitled /Arys/. They had turned the corner into another corridor
before Rugal remembered that this was the name of his mother. His other
mother.

“Freshen up,” Kotan said, when they reached his bedroom door. “Get
changed—there should be clothes out for you. Then we’ll go and see Geleth.”

Rugal nodded and went inside. He sighed with relief when the door closed
between them. Kotan’s constant attention, his anxiety to please, had
been exhausting. Rugal leaned back against the door, looked round, and
then gave a gasp.

Kotan had misrepresented the view. It was outstanding. The far wall of
the room, floor to ceiling, was made of glass and given over to it. The
whole city was set out before him like an offering, richly lit and
stretching out farther than he could see. Rugal took a few steps
forward, captivated. He cast his mind back to the map he had looked at
in the skimmer, and he picked out a few areas—there was Torr to the
southeast, densely populated and intensely lit. Some of the buildings
were recognizable too: the dome of the Assembly, the curves of the
Akleen Memorial. A string of lamps marked the line of the river, itself
covered in darkness. There was a striking silver pyramid that he could
not identify. He would have to ask. No, not ask. He would look it up.

The lights on the pyramid suddenly changed its color from silver to
blue. With a start, Rugal remembered that he was supposed to be meeting
his grandmother. He dragged himself away to investigate the room
further. Two doors in the wall opposite the bed opened to reveal a
bathroom and a walk-in cupboard. In this he found several sets of
clothes, in unfamiliar Cardassian styles—tunics rather than shirts,
slip-on boots instead of lace-up shoes. They would have to do. He had
brought hardly anything from Bajor. He had not planned on being away
from home for long.

Quickly, Rugal washed and changed out of his traveling clothes. There
was a long mirror on the back of the door of the cupboard, and he was
dismayed to see how Cardassian he looked. Shutting away the sight, Rugal
smoothed his tunic straight, then he grabbed his earring, shoved it in
his pocket, and left the room.

Kotan was waiting for him on the landing. He took Rugal back downstairs
and round the far side of the house to Geleth’s sitting room. Outside,
Kotan hesitated, his hand resting near the door panel. He had an odd,
furtive expression, like a child anticipating a scolding. In such a big
man, it was almost comical. “Remember, she’s very old, and very
old-fashioned. She may say things that seem... well, odd. Try to
understand. Cardassia was a hard place in Geleth’s youth. It wasn’t easy
to live, to survive.”

“Like under the Occupation.”

Kotan closed his eyes, tensed. “Please—try to understand.” He opened the
door. “Mother?” He had lifted his voice in the clear way people did when
speaking to someone whose hearing was not always reliable. “I’ve brought
the boy to see you. I’ve brought Rugal.”

The room was dark. The only source of light was a dim orange lamp set in
the far left corner. Beside this stood a long low couch, its back to the
room. A gray hand, ring-encrusted, lifted and waved them forward. “By
all means, bring him round so I can take a look at him.”

Kotan, an odd smile on his face, gestured to Rugal to go round. Rugal
walked across the room and came face-to-face with his grandmother.

She was old and very thin, the bones and ridges on her face standing out
prominently against her papery flesh. She had on a dark red dress with a
high collar and subtle patterns that waved and changed as she moved. Her
hair was long, white, and elaborately constructed. Her blue eyes were
bright and sharp. She stared at Rugal and ran the tip of her tongue
around her lips. “He doesn’t look much like you. Are you certain he’s
yours?”

Rugal, horrified, looked at Kotan, but the man was unperturbed. He had
brought round a couple of chairs, and had sat down comfortably, slinging
one arm casually across the back. “Quite certain. We had tests done.
Rugal’s my son, no doubt of that.”

“Still, he’s not much like you.” Geleth leaned in for a closer look, as
if Rugal were a specimen. Her perfume was sharp and not unpleasant. She
sniffed and leaned back. “I can see something of that wisp you married.
So we know he’s hers, at least.”

Kotan drummed his fingers against the back of his chair. “Rugal. Why
don’t you sit down?”

Conscious of the old woman’s eyes upon him, Rugal straightened his back,
raised his chin, and sat down. Geleth watched his performance with
unholy glee. “You may not know this, Rugal, but this is the first time
that we have met. You were born on Bajor, and nothing was ever going to
induce me to visit that place.” She paused, as if waiting for a
reaction. None came, so she carried on. “I suppose we should be glad
that no more Cardassian lives are being wasted trying to educate those
backward ingrates.”

Rugal stiffened. Kotan cut in. “Yes, well, that’s all over now. Bajor is
no longer Cardassia’s problem, thankfully.”

“No? Have you explained to the boy what ramifications his reappearance
might have for the family name? An abandoned child? Better men than you
have been ruined for less.”

Rugal looked uncertainly at Kotan. His posture had altered subtly; he
was still sitting as if at ease, but his hands were clenched into fists.
“Under normal circumstances, perhaps. But Dukat has overstretched
himself. He personally arranged for Rugal’s kidnapping. If he tries to
make political capital from this affair, he risks opening himself up to
censure. Not to mention the fact that I am well placed to implicate him
in this guns-to-Bajor business. I have plenty to hold over Dukat. He
won’t risk starting a war with me. Not this time.”

“Dukat!” Geleth all but spat out the name. So the three remaining
members of the Pa’Dar family were united in one thing, at least—a
profound loathing for the former prefect of Bajor. Still, Rugal thought,
watching his grandmother’s coiled fury and his father’s taut anger, it
was sobering to think that only an uneasy standoff with this gul was
keeping him safe on Cardassia. What if Dukat decided to make a move? How
long would it be before the abandoned son became a liability for Kotan?
And what advice would Geleth offer then? He shivered slightly, despite
the heavy heat of the old woman’s room.

Kotan relaxed his hands. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. Even if it meant
the end for me, I would not have Rugal any place other than where he is
now. Back home, with me.”

Rugal swallowed. He felt he ought to say “thank you,” but that was
wrong. He didn’t want to be here. If it meant trouble for Kotan, why
ever had he brought him back, against Rugal’s wishes? It was perverse.
It was typically Cardassian. Geleth gave her son an odd look, a mixture
of contempt and affection. “Sentimental. This is why you’ve never been
much of a politician.”

“Mother, the reason I’ve never been much of a politician is that I am a
scientist. If you’d wanted me to excel, you’d have left me in my
laboratory.”

“Duty is its own reward, Kotan,” the old woman said piously.

Kotan snorted. Contempt and affection again, this time from him. Rugal
felt as if his head was spinning. Was this how Cardassian families
behaved? Bickering and scheming, lurching from mutual recrimination to
deadly loyalty at any mention of their enemies? Migdal’s idea of
scheming had been to punch first and talk later.

Geleth yawned and stretched, each joint in her body seeming to crack.
Then, with a swish of her long full skirt, she stood up. “Surely it’s
time for dinner? Let me go and put on my /reta/ beads, and then the two
of you can escort me down.” She went through a little door into the next
room. Kotan leaned over to whisper to Rugal. “When I was your age, I
used to wonder what she did in here all day. Plotted against my enemies,
I hoped, although there’ve been occasions when I’ve suspected her of
plotting against me.”

“So which is it?” Rugal whispered back.

Kotan smiled broadly. He almost winked. He reached over to his mother’s
couch, slipped his hand down the side of the cushion, and brought out a
data padd. He thumbed it on, and then handed it over to Rugal, who
looked down at a page of text infested by exclamation marks.

“Enigma tales,” Kotan explained. “Really bad ones. She’s addicted to them.”

They just had time to shove the padd back down into its hiding place
before Geleth came back in. Both smiled brightly at her. She gave them a
suspicious look but said nothing, taking her son’s arm and allowing him
to lead her down the stairs. Rugal followed behind.

In the dining room—a study in crimson and gold—Kotan pulled out a chair
for his mother at one end of the table, and then took the seat at the
other end. He gestured for Rugal to take the seat at his right hand.
Rugal stopped himself staring around—it was amusing Geleth for one
thing, and he wasn’t going to give her any satisfaction—and did what he
was told.

When the first course arrived, Rugal eyed it nervously, remembering the
appalling dish of /zabu/ stew that Chief O’Brien’s wife had concocted
for him. Fortunately, this was recognizably food, some kind of thick
broth that smelled of fish. Out of habit, he bent his head to thank the
Prophets—then he remembered where he was and stopped. He glanced at
Kotan to see if he’d noticed, but the big man had already started
eating. Geleth, however, had seen. She smiled at him with cool malice.
That—and residual anger about the earring—did it. Rugal bowed his head,
clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and cleared his throat.

Etra wasn’t really one for the Prophets, and Rugal wasn’t either, but
Migdal was, so for the old man’s sake Rugal had attended temple and
studied the prophecies hard. He had thought the effort was only
right—some kind of reparation for the damage his kind had done to
Bajor’s heritage. As a result, Rugal was able to dredge up a
thanksgiving chant of considerable length and splendor. It began with a
soft deep murmur, went up at a steady crescendo, to climax with one
final, bell-like call of gratitude to the Prophets for their gifts and
goodness. When the sound of that died down, the quiet around the table
was thicker than the soup. Rugal opened his eyes, reached for his
cutlery, and blithely began to eat.

Kotan was sitting in shocked silence, while the maid had her mouth
hanging open. Then Geleth began to laugh, a half-demented cackle like a
rusty nail being scraped across barbed wire. “Marvelous!” she cried.
“Magnificent!” She fell upon her dinner with renewed appetite. Rugal
didn’t know whether to be pleased or furious. It was the start of a long
war of attrition between grandmother and grandson. Rugal was never sure
which of them was ultimately the winner, even taking into account the
fact that he outlived her.



It took slightly over a week, but Kotan made good on his promise. Early
one evening, when Rugal was sitting outside in the stone garden and a
warm wind was lifting the coppery leaves of the /ithian/ trees, Kotan
came and took the chair next to him. “I /think,/” he said, in a low
voice, “that I’ve found a way for you to speak to your friends on Bajor.
But, please, exercise some discretion.” He looked around anxiously.
“I’ve gone through back channels, but still, the communication will
certainly be monitored.”

Rugal shifted impatiently in his seat. This was paranoia. “Who in the
name of the Prophets—” Kotan winced, so he lowered his voice. “—who
would want to listen to me talk to my mother and father?”

“It’s the simple fact that the conversation is taking place. Bajor is
hardly a friendly foreign power!” Kotan gave that long sigh that
punctuated much of what he said. “It would be so much easier if you had
grown up here! But we’ve no time to teach you more than the basics. The
best rule is—if you think what you’re about to say is subversive, it
almost certainly is. So don’t say it. Rephrase it, or drop it. And
please, /try/ not to get us all shot. Or worse.”

Kotan led him into his study, an earnestly overfurnished room at the
back of the house with a fine view out across the meticulous flower beds
of the west garden. This time, Kotan had the courtesy not to hang around
in the background. Once he was sure that the transmission was going
through, he quietly absented himself. “You might not have long,” he
said, from the doorway. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything about that.”

It was not the easiest of conversations. When their lined, familiar
faces appeared on the screen, Rugal was overcome with homesickness. More
than anything he wanted to be away from this strange place and back with
them, at home, on Bajor. Etra, brisk and sensible as ever, behaved as if
this was nothing more than a temporary interruption, and that soon
everything would be back to normal. Migdal, however, was not so able to
hide his distress.

/“Well, Rugal,”/ Etra said brightly. /“I didn’t think when I saw you off
at the spaceport that you’d be gone for so long! I let you out of my
sight for a few days, and you run away from home!”/

It almost broke his heart. “Mother! Don’t say that! I don’t want to be
here!”



She waved her hands to calm him. /“Shh... Of course I know that, of
course I do. Poor boy! Don’t get upset. I want you to listen, because
your father has some news and we’re hoping that you’ll think it’s good
news.”/

Rugal leaned forward eagerly in his seat. Had they found a way to bring
him home? His father cleared his throat and glanced past him; he looked
uneasy, as if he too thought that there might be unfriendly ears
listening to their conversation. /“We think that Starfleet commander
didn’t have the right to take you away from us. We’re trying to find out
if there’s any way that we can get his decision overruled.”/ He gave
Etra a quick look. /“That’s right, isn’t it?”/

She nodded. Migdal carried on. /“So I spoke to an old friend of mine,
back from Korto, when I was in the watch there. Darrah Mace. You never
met him, Rugal, he spent most of the Occupation in exile, out on Valo
II, but he was my boss and my friend. Anyway, he was on Valo with
someone who was on the Council of Ministers before the spoonheads took
over, and he’s going to have a word with him about what’s happened, and
what we’re hoping is that we can go and speak to this man, Keeve Falor,
about all this and perhaps he’ll be able to pull some strings...”/

His voice faded. Rugal’s heart sank. So this was their good news. Migdal
had spoken to a man who thought he might be able to speak to a man who
might—perhaps—be willing to meet his parents and let them tell him about
what had happened to them. Was this Keeve Falor even important any longer?

/“I know it doesn’t sound like much,”/ Migdal said, tentatively, /“but
Keeve is very well respected, the kind of man that important people
listen to.”/

/“It’s hard, you see, Rugal,”/ Etra said. /“I’m not going to lie to you.
People won’t want to reverse the Emissary’s decision, it looks bad. And,
well, many people think that there are more important things to be
worried about than—”/

“Than a spoonhead who’s been sent home,” Rugal said, bitterly. “Good
riddance, I bet most people would say. Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps
you’re better off without me. Dad won’t get in as many fights now, I bet.”

/“Don’t say that,”/ Migdal said. /“Don’t say things that aren’t true.”/

/“We chose you, Rugal,”/ Etra said. /“We wanted you to be our son. And
nobody—not the Cardassians, not the Council of Ministers, not the
Emissary to the Prophets himself, will stop us from getting you back
home to us. We’re going to find a way. We won’t give up, and you’re not
to give up either. Promise me.”/

She had put her hand up to the screen. /“Do you promise me?”/

Rugal raised his hand so that their fingertips seemed to be touching. “I
promise.”

/“Good boy! Now, what’s Cardassia like?”/

Rugal glanced around the room. “Dark. Depressing.”

/“How about on a bad day?”/ Migdal said, and the three of them laughed.

“And it turns out that I have a grandmother,” Rugal said. He caught the
quick look that his parents exchanged, and he felt wretched, as if he
had been a traitor by saying it.

Etra gave a small smile. /“I’m sure she was very pleased to meet you at
last.”/

“Mm. She didn’t much like me praying before dinner.”

Etra suppressed a smile. Migdal didn’t bother and laughed out loud.
/“For the sake of your/ pagh,/”/ Etra said, in pious tones, /“you should
make sure you keep on doing that.”/

“Oh, don’t worry—I will!”

/“Good boy!”/ The image of them began to break up. /“We’re doing
everything we can, Rugal—we promise,”/ Etra said. /“Don’t give up. We
love you. You’ll come home again, we promise.”/

And then they were gone. Everything seemed very quiet all of a sudden.
Very empty. He could see nothing familiar around him, only heavy
furniture, in the somber colors Cardassians seemed to favor, and, beyond
the window, a dull sky and a fussy garden made for show and not for
pleasure. Rugal felt a weight on his shoulders, in his stomach, at the
back of his throat. He sat for a while with his chin on his hand,
staring at the blank screen and the afterimage, and then there was a
quiet knock on the door. He sat up straight and frowned, trying not to
look upset.

Kotan was wearing that small, rather anxious smile that irritated so
much. “Did you speak to them?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good! Good! Were they well?”

Exactly how well did he expect them to be, given that one child had been
murdered and the other stolen? Rugal kicked back the chair and stalked
over to the door.

Kotan’s stoop became more pronounced, as if he was also carrying a
weight around with him. Rugal stopped with his hand on the door panel
and tried to rein himself back. “Yes, they were. Thank you. And thank
you for arranging for me to speak to them. I know it was difficult, and
I appreciate that you went to so much trouble.”

Kotan opened his hands, as if to say that he was willing to give
anything. “I only want you to be happy.”

/But I can’t ever be/. /I won’t ever be,/ Rugal thought as he made his
way upstairs and past the pictures of his other mother. In his room, he
lay on the bed on his stomach, staring out the big window, watching the
stark sky fade into darkness. Cardassia, he decided, was a world of
contradictions. There were grandmothers who claimed to care for nothing
but family, but who would rather you were dead. There were conversations
you had to pretend were held in secret, when everyone knew they were
spied upon. And then there were fathers who said they loved you, but had
taken you away from all that you loved.

With a sigh, Rugal rolled over onto his back. Next to the bed there was
a bookshelf, lined with real books, not padds or datarods. He pulled one
at random off the shelf, picking it chiefly because he liked the dark
cover. /“For Cardassia!”/ it began, unpromisingly. He ploughed on
grimly, but after a couple of pages, the combination of the evening’s
exhausting events and the book’s leaden prose sent him to sleep. Rugal
tried on several occasions over the next few years to get to the end of
Ulan Corac’s /The Never-Ending Sacrifice,/ but he failed to make it past
the first chapter.









*Two*





The Pa’Dar family home was situated in the Coranum sector of Cardassia
City, a fact that seemed of some significance, since Kotan had mentioned
it several times with studied carelessness. Rugal did not want to ask
questions that would expose his ignorance or incur any debt to Kotan, so
he found himself relying on whatever information he could glean from the
comnet, and from working out the subtext of the conversations between
Geleth and Kotan. Geleth frequently remarked how the house was too close
to the Paldar sector for her taste, and from further exchanges, Rugal
was able to work out that while they might live in the most exclusive
neighborhood in the entire Union, it was by no means the most
prestigious part of it, and that this in turn was—by some undefined but
well-recognized process—certainly Kotan’s fault.

As far as Rugal was concerned, the house was good enough for the kai. It
stood alone in its own grounds, and there were so many rooms and so few
of them living there you could not see anyone else for hours at a time,
if you wanted. There was nobody upstairs stomping around or whistling
while you were trying to get to sleep, and you didn’t have to spend time
and energy pretending you couldn’t hear the minute details of other
people’s lives. Still, Rugal missed it—the conversations, the fights,
the simple reassurance of knowing that there were others only a wall
away. He missed everything about Bajor, and Etra and Migdal most of all.

Kotan had enrolled him in an academy, but Rugal had arrived during a
long holiday, and it was several weeks before that would start. With
Kotan busy most of the day at the ministry and Geleth hidden away with
her enigma tales (he hoped), Rugal had a lot of free time on his hands.
Kotan suggested he study in advance of starting schooling, but since
Rugal didn’t plan to stay on Cardassia for long, he didn’t see the
point. The house couldn’t keep him occupied forever, so eventually he
ventured out into Coranum. If he had been only a little younger, he
could have treated it as a game—the sole brave Bajoran operative
undercover on the Cardassian homeworld—but Rugal was too old now for
that kind of play and, besides, the reality was more intimidating than
anything imagination could conjure up.

For one thing, although he was lonely, he couldn’t quite shake the
feeling that he wasn’t entirely alone. As he went about Coranum, he
could always hear the soft whir of security devices tracking his
progress, or he would hear faint voices and turn a corner to come
face-to-face with an oval public screen, burbling out news and opinion
that he mistrusted simply because a Cardassian was relaying it. It was
all very disconcerting, as if someone always knew where he was going and
what he was doing, and suggesting to him what he should be thinking.



Then there were the houses. Geleth had been right—the Pa’Dar residence
might as well have been a doll’s house compared to the homes farther up
the hill. Vast and spacious, they lay within elegantly manicured
grounds, presenting grand fronts to the long sweeping avenues that
curved through the sector. Rugal hardly ever saw any people: the
residents of Coranum moved seamlessly from their palaces to their
private skimmers to their businesses and offices in Barvonok and Tarlak,
largely untroubled by the wider world. Now and then, he spotted a
gardener or laborer at work, but they did not respond to his greetings,
and always hurried away. He wondered if Cardassia still had something
like the old /D’jarra/ system. It would not have surprised him if it
did, and that was another point in Bajor’s favor. The Bajorans had rid
themselves of an unjust caste system when it proved to be nothing more
than convention, an excuse for the powerful to stay powerful. Etra would
not have married Migdal if the old system had been in place.

Yet there were some things that, grudgingly, Rugal had to admit he
liked. The different sunlight meant he was getting fewer headaches, and
he appreciated the warmth. He kept a close eye on all this, and whenever
he caught himself enjoying his surroundings too much, he would press his
earring against his palm and let its sharp edges remind him of what and
who he really was. But sometimes it felt as if his body was trying to
betray him, make him believe it was natural for him to be here. Was it
natural? That was what the commander on Deep Space 9 had thought—and so
did Kotan, obviously—that it was right for him to be back among his own
kind. But Rugal knew these weren’t his kind—he only had to talk to
Geleth for a moment to know that. Cardassians were vicious and
heartless, and lacked whatever gene carried compassion. They were the
complete opposite of Bajorans. Bajorans were the kind of people who
would adopt children abandoned by those who had almost ruined their
beautiful, benevolent world.

That was what Rugal thought about most as he wandered around Coranum.
All this wealth, all this magnificence—it hadn’t come out of thin air.
It had come from somewhere else; it had been taken from somewhere else.
Rugal had studied hard in his history classes because he felt he owed it
to Bajor. All this grandeur, he guessed, had been built on the back of
Bajoran sweat and tears, Bajoran labor and loss. It was not right to
look at it for too long; you could become accustomed to it, you could
forget what you knew. The heart of an empire is often beautiful to
behold—and cruel to contemplate.



Three weeks after Rugal arrived on Cardassia Prime, he met Penelya. He
had spent the morning walking along one of the great arcs of road that
looped around the sector, stopping now and then to study a particularly
beautiful mansion, peering through green and scarlet foliage to glimpse
cool rich buildings beyond. After an hour or so, he came to a point
where another road struck off at a tangent. At the point where the two
avenues met, there was a garden tucked away behind a wall of dark green,
leafy shrubs which he was fairly certain were called /mekla/ bushes. He
would know for sure in the spring, if they flowered scarlet, if he was
still here. He had often stopped here on his walks. There was a bench
carved in an interesting swirling pattern with bright blue and red
stones embedded in it that played tricks with his eyes if he stared too
long but that also helped him think. There was also a small oval
newsscreen in the wall too, but the sound was set low and he could
easily pretend he couldn’t hear it, or he could listen if he had been
alone too long.

Rugal slipped through the gate, walked along the short path—and then saw
someone sitting on his bench. A Cardassian girl, about his own age, he
guessed, although he had not met nearly enough to judge for sure. She
was slightly built, all angles, and her dark brown hair was somewhat
shorter and arranged in a plainer fashion than Geleth’s. She was hunched
over a padd, frowning, and she obviously hadn’t heard him arrive. He
didn’t want to startle her, but he did want to sit down. Very politely,
he coughed.

She looked up in alarm. Her eyes—they were brown too—went wide, and she
jumped off the bench, holding the padd in front of her like a piece of
armor. Rugal held up both hands to show he was no threat. “Sorry. I
didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Her lips pursed; her eyes narrowed beneath their ridges. He gave her
what he hoped was an unthreatening smile. “I’m not frightened,” she
said. “I didn’t hear you, is all.”

“Do you mind if I sit down? I’ve been walking around all morning.”

Obviously she wanted to refuse, but couldn’t think of a way of doing it
that wouldn’t be outright rude. Instead she sighed, tutted, and sat down
again at the farthest end of the bench. “If you must.”

Rugal was used to Geleth by now and decided not to take it personally.
On this upside-down planet, insults almost counted as gestures of
affection. If any Cardassian ever took the trouble to be nice to him,
then he would worry. The girl made a show of returning to her reading,
but every so often she shot him sharp, angry glares over her padd. Was
this some kind of custom he knew nothing about? Did he have to speak
first? What did people make small talk about on Cardassia? On Bajor,
everyone talked about politics or religion or the grace-hound racing.
Since she was unlikely to know anything about the latter, and both the
former seemed provocative and possibly seditious, Rugal fell back on
something safe.

“It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

The girl abandoned any pretence of reading. She threw her padd on the
bench and looked at him as if he were foaming at the mouth. “Are you
some kind of idiot?”

So much for playing it safe.

“I mean,” she said furiously, “who in all the Union talks about the
weather?”

“/I/ talk about the weather!”

“You could have asked me my name, you could have asked me what I was
reading, you could have told me you owned this garden and that I should
get out—”

“But I don’t own it! Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you to get out—”

“But, oh no! Instead you sit there and ask me what I think about the
weather. There’s not much I can do with that, is there? I have to have
something to work with.”

Rugal leaned back into the bench. “We can quarrel if you like,” he said
peaceably, “but it’s still a nice day.”

Suddenly, she relaxed. She put the padd down, tucked one leg beneath
her, and smiled. “Yes, it is, it’s absolutely glorious. I love being out
in late summer, and I love this garden—although it’s prettier in the
spring when the /mekla/ is in flower.”

“Oh! So it is called /mekla/!”



“Of course it’s called /mekla,/ what did you think it was called?”

“I wasn’t sure. I’ve only seen pictures. They didn’t have it where I
grew up.”

That grabbed her attention. She leaned in eagerly. “Didn’t you grow up
on Prime?”

“No.”

“I didn’t either. I grew up on Ithic—my name’s Penelya, by the way—where
did you grow up?”

“On Bajor.” He was pleased when she looked interested and not horrified.
“And my name’s Rugal.”



Quickly, they gave each other their stories. Penelya was almost as new
to Cardassia Prime as Rugal. Until early the previous year, she had been
living on Ithic II, a colony in the DMZ. Her parents had been farmers;
Ithic was an agricultural world of the kind that Cardassia Prime
depended on for food. Penelya had come to Prime to study agronomy, a
well-respected and necessary science. She was extremely anxious that
Rugal was clear about that, so he nodded vigorously that he understood.
She was now living with her father’s brother and his large family in
Coranum. Her uncle, Mikor, had inherited the family home and was
something significant at the Ministry of Justice. Her studies had been
progressing well, and then, disaster—or, more accurately, the Maquis—had
struck Ithic II. Penelya’s parents had been among the dead.

“It was lucky I was here, I suppose.” She ran her fingertip around one
of the blue stones in the bench. “Although sometimes I wonder if it
wouldn’t have been better if I’d been killed as well. It’s difficult,
sometimes, being... well, you know.”



Being an orphan. “It’s always better to be alive,” Rugal said gently.

“Mm.” Penelya picked up her padd and played with the controls. “What’s
your story?”

He gave her a quick sketch: how he had been born on Bajor, adopted by
Bajorans, and brought up to think of himself as Bajoran. Then his
Cardassian father discovered he was alive and came to collect him.
Penelya’s eyes shone at this resolution to his narrative. “It’s like a
children’s story!” she said in delight. “He came and found you! Oh, but
wasn’t it a scandal? That you’d been left behind?”

Rugal thought better of explaining Dukat’s part in his disappearance and
the uneasy standoff between him and Kotan. It might be dangerous for
Penelya to be in possession of that kind of information. “Kotan—my
biological father—is pretty important too,” he said as a general
explanation. “At the Ministry of Science. And he’s a member of the
Civilian Assembly too. I think that’s what it’s called. Something in
politics, anyway.”

“Everyone around here is something in politics,” Penelya said, with the
deep wisdom of fifteen years. “Unless they’re military. Not that there’s
much difference sometimes. Is that what you’re going to do? Something in
politics?”

Rugal blinked. He hadn’t given the matter any thought. He was going back
to Bajor as soon as it could be arranged.

“You don’t look too sure,” Penelya said. “Have you got other plans?”

“Yes...” He chewed at his lip. She was encouraging and warm, and by far
the friendliest person he had met on Cardassia Prime. Could he trust
her? “I want to go back home.” Seeing her confusion, he explained. “Back
to Bajor. That’s my home, where my mother and father are—my /real/
mother and father.”

He watched her struggle with these new ideas. “I suppose...” she said,
at last, “that’s how I feel about Ithic. It’s my home, rather than
Prime. I mean, it’s where I’d most like to be. I suppose there’s no
reason not to feel the same about Bajor. It’s just that it’s, well...
it’s /Bajor/.” She thought a while longer. “Perhaps that shouldn’t make
any difference either. What was it like, being a Cardassian there?”

Rugal would defend his adopted planet to all questioners, but because
Penelya had gone to the trouble of trying to understand, he gave her
question a real answer. “Sometimes it was hard,” he admitted. “People
got angry at Mother and Father for adopting me.” They’d been spat at in
the street on numerous occasions, particularly in smaller provincial
towns, and he had been an easy target at school, until he became able
and willing to hit back. “It must have a lot in common with being an
orphan here. You don’t fit in with people’s expectations. You’re not
quite the same as they are, and because of that you make them feel
uncomfortable. But instead of trying to understand what you are, for
yourself, they dislike you for making them feel uncomfortable. That’s
what it was like, sometimes. But it’s still my home.”

He glanced at her nervously. Her smile had turned wry and knowing. She
did understand, he thought, with a rush of relief. They may have had
different journeys, but they were both in exile here.

Later, he walked her back to the gates of her uncle’s house. “Let’s meet
again,” Penelya said. “You’re much nicer than my cousins. They shout a
lot, and as for their friends...” She shuddered. “But I like you. You’re
nothing like a Cardassian male.”

“That’s because I’m Bajoran.”

She laughed at that and he didn’t mind. “Of course! I won’t forget,
Rugal. I promise.”



As a matter of courtesy, and because he didn’t want to cause Kotan
trouble while he was there, Rugal mentioned his meeting with Penelya
that evening over dinner. As expected, Kotan knew the family. “Mikor
Khevet’s niece—yes, I heard about her. Sad business about the parents.”

“We agreed to meet again. That’s not a problem, is it?”

“No, no, they’re a good family. Thank you for asking. You’re not
thinking of marrying her, are you?”

Rugal put down his spoon and gaped. “I’ve only met her once!”

“Nevertheless, it’s something to bear in mind. An orphan for a wife
would almost certainly bar you from some of the higher positions of state.”

“Based on our /single conversation,/ my impression was that she wouldn’t
be interested in coming back to Bajor with me, so—no, I’m not thinking
of marrying her.”

Kotan ignored the gibe. “A friendship, however, could be interpreted
favorably. It might even get you an invitation from Khevet. You ought to
meet his sons, they’re your cohort after all, and that’s likely to be
useful, given you’ve missed out on schooling with them for all this
time.... No, I can’t see any problems in cultivating a friendship—just
save yourself a world of trouble and don’t fall in love with the girl. I
imagine Khevet will be shipping her back out to the farm as soon as it’s
safe. Generous of him to take her in—not to mention pay for her
education—but I suppose he gets a farm manager out of it, and a grateful
relative is better than hiring a complete stranger.... Do you know how
much money those colony farms bring in? An absolute fortune. It’s true
what they say—nobody ever went poor selling food on Cardassia.” His
analysis complete, Kotan went back to removing a wing from his /petha/ fowl.

Rugal was speechless. Luckily, Geleth always had something to bring to
the conversation. “Thank goodness he did take her in. These stray
children, hanging around the streets at all hours, day and night—they’re
a disgrace. You should do something about it, Kotan.”

“Strange as it may seem, Mother, the regulation of orphans does not fall
under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science. It is, thankfully,
somebody else’s problem.”

“Then whoever that somebody is ought to get on with the business of
dealing with them. Lock them up, or make them join the military—I don’t
know! But they should be contributing somehow. They can’t expect to be
fed and housed for nothing. Cardassia doesn’t have enough to spare.” She
eyed Rugal. “It’s a pity more of them weren’t born on Bajor. Too late to
ship them all over there now, I suppose.”

“They’d like it better there,” Rugal shot back. “Bajorans would do a
better job of looking after them.”

“More fool them,” Geleth said. “Overemotional, sentimental—no wonder we
conquered them so easily.”

“You didn’t conquer us,” Rugal said. “We threw you off. Remember? It was
only three years ago. You can’t have forgotten it yet—”

“I suggest,” Kotan’s voice rose above the quarrel, “that we keep our
thoughts about the annexation of Bajor—successful or otherwise—to
ourselves. Airing them in public is unlikely to do any of us a great
service.”



Geleth peered down the length of her nose at her grandson. “It might be
difficult to bar all discussion of Bajor from this particular table.”

“Then we must exert ourselves,” Kotan said dryly, “out of the great
sense of love and duty we all feel toward the Cardassian state. As the
writer says, a harmonious family is the bedrock of a harmonious state.”

Geleth sniffed. “Never liked Corac. Too clever for his own good. And
nothing ever happens.”



Rugal saw Penelya whenever he could. They could not meet every day;
Penelya had her studies and also often found herself called on to look
after her three young cousins. Rugal, too, was supposed to be studying
in preparation for entering his academy, but since he didn’t intend to
be there for long, he didn’t exactly apply himself. He did rummage
through Kotan’s library, quickly swapping Corac’s long didactic
sentences for lighter reading. Enigma tales bewildered him at first;
then he saw the joke and got hooked. His favorites were the ones set in
massive decaying country houses during the dying days of the Second
Republic.

But it was Penelya’s friendship that really made life on Prime bearable.
Rugal might not be an orphan, but he had grown up Cardassian on Bajor,
and he knew what it was like to live on the margins. They understood
each other very well. The only thing he couldn’t grasp was the way she
spoke about her relatives. She said constantly how much they were doing
for her, how grateful she was to them. This puzzled him. Etra and Migdal
never talked about gratitude, or how much they sacrificed for him, even
though Rugal knew that it was because of him that their little family
faced so many difficulties. Now that he thought about it, Kotan didn’t
talk that way either—although Rugal didn’t like to think about that too
much.

Penelya was surprised when he mentioned it to her. “But of course I
should be grateful to them,” she said. “They didn’t have to let me carry
on living with them after my parents died. They could have asked me to
leave their house. What would I have done then?”

“You’d have got by.”

“Do you think so?”

“Lot of Bajorans lost parents, whole families, under the Occupation.
People looked after each other, took care of each other.”

She gave him a dry look. “You really don’t know Cardassia very well, do
you? Have you even gone outside Coranum yet? You should take your
father’s beautiful skimmer down to the river one evening when people are
trying to find somewhere to sleep for the night. Better still, do what
most people do, and take the shuttle. Then come and tell me whether or
not I should be grateful to my uncle.”

It wasn’t long before Rugal got the opportunity to observe Penelya’s
relatives up close. To Kotan’s evident pleasure, and Geleth’s frankly
stated disbelief, the desired invitation was received, and Rugal spent
an afternoon in the company of the Khevet family.

Rugal knew from Penelya that there were five children: two sons, Colat
and Tret, young men of roughly Rugal’s age, and three much younger
girls. The size of Cardassian families bewildered Rugal: if the world
was so poor that famine had been commonplace in living memory, why did
they have so many children? He had a couple of theories, neither
particularly appealing. It could be a display of wealth, like being able
to pay for the water for the trees and gardens that made Coranum so
lovely. Or else it was more calculating—Cardassians assumed that not all
of their children would reach adulthood, and had a lot of them just in
case. Either way, it was close to criminal.

Rugal arrived at the Khevet house nervous and frowning, carrying gifts
for Mikor and Elinas that Kotan had fussed over for days. He was
welcomed by Colat and Tret with charm and courtesy, and dragged straight
off to the family /rikot/ courts. Penelya was brought along to do the
scoring.

It was a good game—you had to chase a tiny hard ball around the court
and sometimes it got insanely fast—but the rules were impenetrable.
Colat, who captained the academy’s team, insisted that Rugal take a
guide back home with him. After that, sweating and muscle-sore, they
went to the sauna, a household innovation of which Rugal heartily
approved. Then they went and sat out in the stone garden drinking iced
/leya/ juice and watching the youngest girl’s tiny pet /keye/ stalk
lace-flies. Their mother, Elinas, elegantly dressed and sweetly
perfumed, came out to join them; their father, Mikor, stocky and
hospitable, took a moment away from his work ostensibly to welcome
Rugal, presumably to check that he was in fact suitable company. Mikor
engineered the conversation so as to be able to make an offhand
compliment about Kotan’s handling of the Circle inquiry. Rugal assumed
he was meant to pass this on, so he did, later, and in earshot of Geleth.

Altogether, it was a very pleasant afternoon. It would have been so much
easier if he could have hated them all outright. But they were friendly
and welcoming, and Colat and Tret went out of their way to pass on
useful information about the academy where Rugal would soon be joining
them. Both young men did have a tendency to talk over other people, as
if conversation was a competition rather than an exchange, but Rugal
knew they didn’t have to bother to talk to him at all, and he
appreciated their advice. One thing he disliked was how the whole family
used the word “Bajoran” as a synonym for “stupid,” but when Penelya
timidly reminded her cousins where Rugal had grown up, they didn’t do it
again. They didn’t apologize, though, and it seemed not to cross their
minds that they should.

Penelya was different in their company. When they were alone, she talked
constantly, changing direction midsentence, as if her head was
overflowing with ideas. Around her family, she said next to nothing, and
only when she was addressed directly. There was more that Rugal had not
liked, and he brought it up the next time they met in their garden.
“Elinas had you running up and down stairs all afternoon. If it wasn’t
her bag, it was her embroidery; if it wasn’t her embroidery, it was her
book. It was like you were one of the servants.”

“I don’t mind.”

“And the way the three girls sometimes speak to you! Elinas and Mikor
should stop that. But then I suppose if Elinas can’t be bothered to say
“please” and “thank you,” it’s no wonder her daughters have picked up
the habit. And couldn’t Tret and Colat have asked you to play a couple
of rounds at least? You were sitting on the side all that time except
when they wanted the water bottles—”

“All right,” Penelya said in a small savage voice, “you’ve made your
point. You can stop going on about it now.”

She had her arms wrapped around her. She often held something in front
of her—a padd or a book or a cushion—as if she preferred to go about
shielded. Rugal realized he was not telling her anything that she did
not already know.“Sorry,” he said awkwardly.

“The thing is,” she said, looking at him with suspiciously bright eyes,
“it isn’t for long. Once I’m trained, they won’t want me in the city
anymore. I’ll be more use to my uncle somewhere else. So I won’t be here
forever, and it’s better than my other options. Do you understand,
Rugal? I don’t have all the opportunities you have.”

He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. He did try to understand,
because she had listened and not judged when he told her about Bajor.
But he hated what it did to her, how it bent her out of shape with fear
and guilt and self-doubt. She was funny and clever and kind; she should
be racing ahead, like a grace-hound, not held back and on a leash. He
did not mention it again. But he puzzled over it often, sitting in his
room staring out at the light show of the city, as he puzzled over many
things on this complex and perplexing world. Why would Cardassians do
this to their children? Why not let them become everything they could
be? What were they afraid would happen, if they simply let them go?



The long summer ended and classes began. Rugal’s academy, which was
surely costing Kotan a lot of /leks,/ prepared students for entrance
into the Institute of State Policy. The lessons chiefly focused on
political theory, official history, rhetorical strategy, protocols for
debate, and a fairly punishing regime of physical education that acted
as a proxy for formal military training. The Cardassian political elite
maintained a careful and necessary distance from the military, but duty
demanded that their sons be prepared to serve as soldiers, should
Cardassia be in need.

Apart from the physical education, Rugal did not shine. Educating
Bajoran children had not been a priority to their Cardassian masters,
who became interested only when they were old enough to work. The school
system had all but collapsed. Bajoran teachers did their best, but it
was hard to teach a roomful of hungry children, and when the sensors had
been installed that prevented Bajoran adults from moving freely about
their own planet, many of the children had been too busy running errands
or scrounging up food to bother with school. It was rare, by the end of
the Occupation, to see anyone above the age of eight or nine in a
classroom. In the short time since, there had been a drive from both the
Council of Ministers and the Vedek Assembly to encourage older children
to resume their education, but classes were remedial, aimed at helping
them catch up on lost time. However dedicated the teachers, however
committed the policymakers, the poor Bajoran schools Rugal had attended
could not hope to compete with one of the most elite establishments the
Cardassian plutocracy had at its disposal. He felt like an idiot around
these slick and knowledgeable young men.

There was also the small matter of emphasis. The official history that
the academy taught was not one that Rugal recognized. He knew
Cardassians as all Bajorans knew them: ruthless aggressors who had
inveigled themselves into Bajoran territory, and then proceeded to rob,
murder, and all but destroy an ancient, complex culture. From his new
tutors, however, Rugal heard a very different story. In this version of
events, Cardassia had been benign in its dealings with Bajor. It had
come with its hand outstretched in friendship, to help Bajor take its
first tentative steps out into the quadrant. It had tried to show Bajor
that it did not need its childish superstitions anymore. But that
friendship, that desire to help, had been rejected in the most vicious
way. Cardassian settlers had been murdered. Cardassian children had been
orphaned. Reprisals, sadly, had been taken. It was heartbreaking, it was
tragic—yet what else could Cardassia do? Acts of terror could not go
unpunished. It was inevitable that Rugal would lose his temper.

Every morning, after the Oath, the students took a short test. There was
a series of standard questions with a set of memorized answers they were
supposed to put down word for word. The subject matter could be anything
from the past or present curriculum. The other students had been doing
this for years, of course, but Rugal was way behind and often regretted
his summer spent reading enigma tales. This particular morning, they
were being tested on the reasons for the advancement of Bajor. That was
what the books called it—Bajor’s Advancement. Ten dark heads bent
studiously over their lessonpadds, most of them anxious to get this
routine task finished as quickly as possible. It was hot and dull and
Rugal knew he had no chance of ever catching up. He reached /List the
five ways in which the advancement benefited Bajor/ and couldn’t stand
it any longer. He inputted: /It didn’t./ The padd underlined his answer
in red and responded: /You have given one answer. This answer is
incorrect. A point has been deducted from your attainment score. There
are five ways in which the advancement benefited Bajor. List the five
ways in which the advancement benefited Bajor/.

Angrily, he shoved the lessonpadd aside. “This is ridiculous!”

Nine students and one tutor looked at him with varying degrees of
interest. Metrek, the tutor, at first didn’t know what to do about this
unexpected interruption. He had chosen to teach an age cohort that was
meant to have outgrown this kind of behavior. In time-honored fashion,
he fell back on sarcasm. “Could it be possible that you haven’t entirely
understood the question, Pa’Dar?”

“I understood every word. It’s still rubbish. Friendship? Help? None of
that’s true! The Occupation was about resources—everyone knows that.
Cardassia is short on natural resources, Bajor is rich. The Cardassians
invaded in order to strip the place bare. You would have done it too, if
it hadn’t been for the Resistance.”

Metrek grayed markedly and didn’t reply. One of the other students,
Ferek, yawned. “We heard that version of events in elementary classes
and we were tested on its flaws last week. We all know you’re
struggling, Pa’Dar, but if you have to say something to make yourself
important, try coming up with something that isn’t out of the infant
classes.” A couple of the other students, scenting blood, laughed. “Only
Bajorans would tell a children’s story.”

Rugal was ready to fire off a fusillade of street slang, but before he
had a chance to speak, Tret Khevet intervened. “I imagine Rugal knows
more about Bajor than you do, Ferek,” he said lazily. “He was living
there until earlier this year. Still, Rugal—you of all people must know
that’s an exaggeration.”

“It isn’t an exaggeration!”

“But what you’re saying, basically, is that Cardassians are cold-blooded
murderers.” Tret gestured around him. “That’s us, Rugal. Not just the
people in this room, but my family, your father, my cousin, you. We’re
all Cardassian. Have we been cruel? Since you came back here, has anyone
been anything other than welcoming?”

Leaving aside Geleth, Tret had a point. “That doesn’t change Cardassian
behavior during the Occupation,” Rugal said doggedly. “They killed
millions of people—”

“The Resistance killed people too. You should know that, with your
family history.”

“But the Cardassians killed many more.”

They went on in this vein for some time, but Rugal quickly realized it
was almost impossible to argue with him. Tret, like everyone else in the
room, was unshakeable in his belief that if the Bajorans had only been
grateful for the opportunities they had been offered, none of the
trouble would have happened. And there was something else beneath it,
Rugal realized, something deeply troubling. Tret truly believed that
Bajoran society was inferior to his own; he truly believed that the
Cardassian way of life, its system of government, all its institutions,
were the best that existed. And why should he not? Life was good for
Tret Khevet. His family was rich, his home comfortable, and he never
went near those of his own kind who lived more precariously. Tret wasn’t
saying these things to provoke, Rugal realized, not the way that Geleth
did. He said them because he knew nothing outside of Cardassia, and he
had no reason to learn. It would take alien invasion or apocalypse to
change his mind.

“If we’re generalizing,” Tret said, “everyone knows what Bajorans are like.”

“Oh yes? And what are they like?”

“They’re lazy, they cheat... My mother’s youngest brother worked for a
mining consortium out there, and he said he couldn’t get a full day’s
work out of most of them. There’s something wrong with people who won’t
work.”

“Perhaps they hadn’t had enough to eat to be able to work,” Rugal said.

Tret looked at him as if he were mad. “But you said it yourself! Bajor
is agriculturally rich! If food distribution was being run on Cardassian
lines—run properly, I mean, not sabotaged—then there would have been
enough food to go around. If they didn’t have enough to eat, they were
probably stealing it off each other.”

It was hard to know where to start with that. “You don’t know the first
thing about it, Tret. You haven’t been there, you haven’t lived there.”

Tret smiled as if he couldn’t believe how easily his victory was being
delivered. He tapped his padd. “I don’t need to. It’s all in the lessons.”

There was a round of applause from the others. Rugal almost banged his
head against the desk in frustration. The argument had circled back upon
itself, like the whirls in the stone on the bench in the garden where he
and Penelya sat. At least Khevet’s money wasn’t going to waste. Tret was
going to make a first-rate politician. “The lessons,” Rugal said through
gritted teeth, “are a pack of lies.” He was about to start explaining
how, yet again, when he caught sight of their tutor.

Metrek was trembling. A grown man, clever and well-informed, and he was
shaking with fear. It was dreadful to watch. Rugal held up his hands in
defeat. “All right, Tret—have it your own way. Bajor was begging for
Cardassia to come in. And when it did, the Bajorans couldn’t see how
lucky they were.”

“Now that this little performance is finished,” Metrek said, his voice
getting steadier as he spoke, “perhaps we can return to the business at
hand? We’re now running ten metrics behind, so I’ll add that to the end
of the day and you can all thank Pa’Dar for that.”

There was plenty of muttering and complaints as everyone settled back
down to completing the test. Rugal stuck to his wrong answers, and when
the time was up, he had lost a total of sixteen points from his
attainment score. After the class ended, Tret leaned back in his seat to
speak to Rugal. “Everything all right between us, Pa’Dar?” He looked
genuinely concerned, as if he had belatedly realized that for his
sparring partner, this might not simply have been a demonstration of
rhetorical technique.

“Yes. Fine.”

“Good!” Tret gave him a sunny smile. “Don’t worry about the extra ten
metrics, you’re bound to claw it back during the afternoon run. Are you
free this evening? Colat has a new training program he thought you might
like.”

Rugal politely passed. Instead, he went for a long, angry walk around
Coranum, trying to simmer down before returning to the house. It was
much later than usual when he returned home. Maleta, the housekeeper,
met him in the hallway and, as she took his jacket, whispered, “Your
father has been waiting for you in his study for almost an hour! He has
a visitor, someone from the Office of Public Order.”

Rugal did not yet know this euphemism, but the moment he walked into
Kotan’s study and set eyes on the visitor, it was as if someone had
started sounding a klaxon. First of all, the man gave him a vastly
charming smile. Then he stood up, pressed his palm against Rugal’s, and
told him it was a pleasure to meet him at last. He could not have given
more warning about how serious—how dangerous—he was if he had been
carrying a nightstick. Besides, Kotan looked scared stiff.

The visitor gestured toward an empty chair. “Do join us. If that’s
acceptable to you, Pa’Dar?”

Kotan cleared his throat. “Of course. Rugal, sit down.”

They sat like three points on a triangle. “By way of introduction,
Rugal,” their visitor said, “I am from the Office of Public Order.” He
did not offer any other kind of introduction—a name, for example. “My
department looks after the interests of high-profile politicians such as
your father.”

Kotan had by now schooled his features to impassivity.

“I was delighted when you were found and I was delighted that your
return has meant nothing but joy for your father. Thus far.”

Was that a threat? Kotan was no help. He was staring past Rugal, out the
window.

“I’ve been making a study of your first few months on Cardassia
Prime—Penelya is a charming young acquaintance, if slightly outré for
someone of your status—and I’ve been fascinated to watch you come to
terms with living here, after so long among our natural enemies. It must
not be easy, at your age, having to learn rules that should have been
your birthright. Perhaps this explains your lapse of judgment earlier
today.”

“My lapse of judgment?”

“You certainly have a unique perspective on our state’s involvement in
Bajor. But does it not strike you as arrogant to assume that your
perspective is the most accurate? To assume that what your teachers
present to you is not a better informed account?”

There was a pattern to this exchange, Rugal realized, a protocol being
followed—a mode of appropriate interaction that they had been taught in
a class on legal procedure. He was being informed of the error of his
ways, and now he was expected to show remorse. Kotan, he saw, was still
offering no assistance. He was leaving this entirely to Rugal’s own
judgment. Trust? Or self-defense?

Rugal thought briefly of telling the visitor where he could stick
remorse, but he didn’t. It was a pleasant fantasy, but it would,
presumably, be the end of Kotan. And while Rugal would always be angry
that Kotan had forced him to come here, he didn’t want to see the man
harmed. Not in the way he would like to see Gul Dukat harmed.

“I think,” Rugal said carefully, “that I spoke out of turn today. I was
not born at the time the state began to express an interest in Bajor’s
Advancement, and for the sake of accuracy and fairness, I should listen
more to those who have studied the events in depth. I’m sure that they
know more about it than I do.”

Kotan relaxed visibly. The visitor glanced between them, and then gave a
pleasant smile. “Excellently put. It’s particularly gratifying that you
are at last exhibiting some deference toward authorities. You are
certainly on the path to wisdom. Stay on it.” His smile faded and he
glanced at Kotan. “You must be very proud.”

Kotan gave a stiff bow. “I do my best for the good of Cardassia.”

“As do we all, Deputy Minister, as do we all.” The visitor stood up, and
Kotan quickly followed suit. “Well, duty calls. I needn’t trouble you
any longer. Enjoy what remains of your evening.”

Kotan escorted him from the room. Rugal leaned back in his chair and
took a deep breath. His suspicions about their visitor were confirmed
when Kotan returned and started systematically checking the chair in
which the man had been sitting, the table next to it, the glass from
which he had been drinking.

“Was that—” Rugal started, but Kotan lifted a finger. His search went on
for a while and then he breathed out and sat down heavily.

“Do you understand who that was?” Kotan asked.

“I think... I think he was someone from the Obsidian Order.”

“I’m glad not everything I’ve said has fallen on stony ground. Do you
understand why he was here?”

Rugal frowned down at the carpet. It had a complex, spiraling pattern
that made his vision blur.

“You seem to have been expressing dissident opinions in class.”

Rugal’s head snapped up. “We were being told lies! I only told the truth!”

“Forget truth. I heard the recording. It was dangerously close to sedition.”

“They monitor our classes that much?” Rugal felt sorry for the poor
junior official stuck with that task.

“Rugal, they monitor everything. Not just one-off communications to
Bajor, everything. You are studying with a set of young people training
to become the next generation of political leaders. Do you think they
would not be watched for the slightest sign of unorthodoxy? What about
all the conversations in that garden with your little orphan friend? Do
you think they go unexamined too?”

Rugal went cold. “What about the house?”

“Here? I do my best. It takes a great deal of time, effort, and money.”

“But it was all lies! If Tret and Colat and the rest are going to be the
next generation of political leaders, why tell them lies? If they don’t
hear the truth, they’ll think that nothing wrong happened! Tret thinks
that nothing about Cardassia is wrong! He, his friends—they’ll make the
same mistakes over and over again. The Occupation will happen over and
over again!”

“I know. I know what the Occupation cost Cardassia, more than most. But
you must understand. When you say these things, it’s not only yourself
you are putting in danger—”

“So I should put up with lies to save your skin?”

Kotan gripped the arms of his chair. Calmly, he said, “I am sure that it
matters a great deal to you that the story you are being told does not
match the one your Bajoran carers told you. Unfortunately, you must
learn to live with the contradiction.” Rugal opened his mouth to reply,
but Kotan lifted one hand to stop him. “What I care about most is the
potential fallout from your folly. You don’t know it, but you are
playing fast and loose with the lives of many other people.”

“How?” Rugal was bewildered. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at!
Just tell me straight—I know it isn’t the Cardassian way, Kotan, but
please try!”

Kotan sat for a while deep in thought. “Very well. I’ll try. Have you
heard me—or any of your tutors—talk about the Detapa Council?”

“That’s the civilian governing body, isn’t it? Not the Central Command,
not the Obsidian Order, but something else.”

“You really have been listening! Good. Do you know how much power the
Detapa Council has?”

“It’s like the Bajoran Council of Ministers, isn’t it? Plenty, I suppose.”



“So you might think. In fact, it has practically none. According to the
terms of our constitution, the Detapa Council operates chiefly in an
advisory capacity. The Detapa Council and the Civilian Assembly
formulate policy and write legislation, but all of it has to be passed
before the Central Command in order to become law. Mostly, this is a
formality. On certain key issues—military appropriations, say, or
constitutional reform—it’s not. How happy do you think that makes the
current members of the Council? Having virtually no executive power?”

“Not very, I should think.”

“And you’d be right.” Kotan leaned forward in his chair, his hands
resting now on his knees. He had an eager look in his eyes. So he did
enjoy something about his political career. Perhaps it was the
skullduggery. It seemed to be the national pastime, like religion was on
Bajor. “So how happy do you think the current Council is to keep things
the way they are?”

“I’d guess not at all,” Rugal said, and frowned.

“Go on,” Kotan said encouragingly.

“But that’s how it’s always been, hasn’t it? If it’s part of the
Cardassian constitution. But you said the /current/ Council was unhappy.
So what’s changed?”

Kotan beamed. “Excellent question!” Despite himself, Rugal almost felt
pleased. “The difference is that the Central Command has badly
overstretched itself. Wars with the Federation, a disastrous end to its
Bajoran policy, all those skirmishes in the Demilitarized Zone that have
caused your poor friend so much distress... It’s not been a happy few
years for the Cardassian military, and the Cardassian military, Rugal,
derives its power from success. It thrives—the Obsidian Order allows it
to thrive—as long as it keeps Cardassia safe and fed. It’s managed the
second of those well in recent years, I’ll admit that. But on the first,
it’s running out of credit, and it’s running out of time. And when the
constitutional space that the Central Command currently occupies becomes
free, the Detapa Council will be waiting.”

Rugal stared at the carpet for a while, rearranging the shapes into a
pattern. “All this that you’re telling me—it’s sedition, isn’t it? Treason?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Kotan, aren’t you afraid?”

“Afraid?” Kotan gave a sad smile. “My beloved child, I’m absolutely
terrified. Every day, looking at the people around me, I think: Are they
like me? Are they someone I could trust? Or are they simply showing me
the right kind of face, so that I will tell them about myself and my
friends, and then they will pick us off, one by one, and put us on
trial, and shame us and our families in front of the whole Union. Do you
see now why your performance in the classroom is so dangerous? When you
speak out of turn, the eyes of the Obsidian Order fall upon me, your
father. And when their eyes fall upon me, they are close to seeing the
movement for change in Cardassia—that quiet set of patriots who are
slowly, carefully, cautiously trying to shift our country to a place of
greater safety. Rugal, when you speak out of turn in public, you are
endangering the lives of many good and brave people, who have worked
hard for longer than you have been alive.”

“I don’t know why you brought me back,” Rugal burst out bitterly. “This
place is poisonous! Even when Bajor was at its worst, people looked
after each other, they tried to help each other! My mother and
father—they took in a Cardassian child! But you’re all at each other’s
throats! I’ve no place here. Why did you bring me back?”

“Because I love you.”

“But you don’t know me! How can you love me? When I do the things that I
think are right—tell the truth, care for Penelya—you don’t like it. How
can you say that you love me?”

Kotan held up his hands—a helpless sort of gesture. “Because you are my
son. Because I remember you as a child, even if you can’t remember me.
Because I loved your mother.”

Rugal had no answer to that. It was too late, he thought; they had been
too long apart. He was not, and never could be, what he thought Kotan
wanted—Cardassian.

“I am aware,” Kotan said hesitantly, “that you are struggling to settle
here. Please believe me when I say that I am anxious for you to do well,
for you to be happy. You sounded, as we were talking, as if you might
like to know more about Cardassian politics, about how our great state
works. You certainly asked some good questions. Perhaps you should spend
some more time with me? As I go about my work, I mean. You could see
what my responsibilities are, how our institutions work...”

It was a tempting offer. Kotan presumably had access to much of what
went on behind the scenes at the highest levels of Cardassian politics.
More than that, however, Rugal wanted to learn more about Kotan’s
dissident friends: what they believed, what they did. He was about to
say yes when Kotan said, “It /is/ the career you are expected to follow...”

His voice faded away, as if he had realized at once that he had made a
mistake. Rugal shook his head. Learning from Kotan might be interesting,
but it would only give the man false hope. “I know you’re trying to
help. And I appreciate that—truly. But I don’t intend to stay here. I’m
going home.”

Kotan sighed. “Very well. Off you go. But please try not to get us all
killed.”

Later, lying on his bed, Rugal watched again all the display of the
capital city, that complex shimmering pattern of lights and lives. How
many more times would he have to sit through it? When would it all end?









*Three*





The next time Penelya dared Rugal to step outside Coranum, he took her
up on the challenge. “Show me everything,” he said. “Show me why I
should care.”

She did her best. She took him through galleries of brash conformist
art, to outdoor concerts of strident music, past gigantic memorials of
guls and legates whose names he did not bother to memorize, and up to
the top of the city’s tallest building, a monument to Collective
Endeavor that represented the unity of the people and gave an imperious
view out as far as the black mountains in the west. They walked down the
river to admire the Veterans’ Bridge, and he did not need her to point
out the undercity half-hidden below. They toured the main buildings of
state, saw the Assembly debate third-tier healthcare provisions, and he
could not discern any difference between the speakers. They did it all
at Kotan’s expense, as Geleth was at pains to point out. Rugal told her
to think of it as reparations.

For everything Penelya showed him, Rugal told her in return something
about Bajor: the fountains and gardens, the pale stone, the silver sound
of temple bells on a fresh spring morning. He described the spirited
guttering made by trams that miraculously still worked after years of
neglect, and the heated political arguments that took place in every
street-corner tavern. Everyone was poor, but it was out in the open, not
tucked out of sight below bridges.

For her own safety, Rugal had not told Penelya about the visitor from
the Order. True friendship on Cardassia, he was learning, depended less
on openness than on knowing when to keep secrets. He did tell her about
Kotan’s offer, though. They were on the shuttle at the time, heading
home. That morning they had taken a boat down the river to Ostek on the
coast, where they had watched the gray sea and eaten salty /litik/ fresh
from their shells and walked along the esplanade holding hands. He was
the happiest he had been since going to Deep Space 9. “Kotan said I
could go and see him at work. Find out what he does and how.”

It was near fourth bell and the shuttle was packed. Penelya had to twist
around to look at him. “How fascinating! When are you going?”

One of the passengers stood up, and they shuffled around to let her near
the door. “I’m not,” Rugal admitted. “I said no.” Penelya didn’t reply,
but he could feel disapproval radiating from her like the hot stones of
a sauna. “Go on! Say it!”

“Nothing...”

Rugal sighed. She did this all the time: hid what she was feeling rather
than risk confrontation. He knew why, but he wished he could make her
understand that she could be honest with him. “I know it’s something, Pen.”

“Honestly, it’s nothing. It’s none of my business.”

They stood in silence for a while, chest to chest, forced together by
necessity rather than familiarity. On the screen on the wall above the
seats, a bored district archon was sentencing vagrants to work centers
and expressing her strong hope that they would seize this opportunity,
granted by a generous state, to become productive citizens. The shuttle
lurched into a stop. Six or seven other passengers got off, and Rugal
and Penelya slipped into some free seats. At the far end of the
carriage, two young men in the gray and silver uniform of the city
constabulary got on and started checking identities. Rugal glanced
sideways at Penelya. She was glowering alarmingly by now. He waited for
the eruption.

“I used to dream that my parents would turn out to be alive!” she told
him in a hot whisper. “Every night I would go to bed, and I would close
my eyes and think, /Perhaps when I open them in the morning, they’ll be
there.../ Perhaps it would turn out to be a mistake, perhaps they’d got
lost or their memories had been affected, or they’d been unconscious for
ages and then woke up again and remembered me and came to get me. That’s
exactly what’s happened to you! And all you can do is wish that your
father had never turned up! It’s as if you hate him—”

“I don’t hate Kotan!” Rugal whispered back angrily. “But I already have
a father, one I love and want to be with. I didn’t ask to come back
here, you know, they made me! I didn’t want to leave Ba—” He glanced
around. “—to leave home.”

“But didn’t you wish for it too? Your mother and father coming to get you?”

“Migdal and Etra are my mother and father, the only ones I remember!”
Rugal thought briefly of that Cardassian hand on his shoulder, pushing
him away from a safe place that he didn’t want to leave, then shoved the
memory firmly aside in turn. “It’s not like I ever knew Kotan and Arys.
How you feel about your mother and father is exactly how I feel about
Etra and Migdal. Why is that so difficult for everyone to understand?”

“I can’t help thinking how lucky you are. Not just one father, but two.
I wish I had even one.” She looked very sad; very young and very sad. He
put his arm around her. “I’m sorry, Pen,” he said.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I wish we could swap. I wish Kotan had been your father and had come
for you.”

“We wouldn’t have met then,” she said. That was true. He squeezed her
arm, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. That was how they
were sitting when the two officers reached them. Rugal held out his
wrist for them to check his identity, and they passed on quickly to
Penelya. The senior of the two frowned at her. “You’re under the age of
emergence.”

She dropped her eyes and shrank down into her seat. “Yes, that’s right.”

“And your parents are listed as dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does your guardian know that you’re out?”

“Yes, sir, I have permission.”

“It doesn’t say so on your file.” There was a short, accusatory silence.
The rest of the carriage had gone silent. Glancing around, Rugal saw
that nobody was looking their way. People were staring at the floor, at
their padds, out the window. “You know that it’s an offense for an
unparented minor to travel without the permission of its guardian or
sponsor, don’t you?”

Penelya nodded. She had gone very white. “What’s going on?” Rugal said.
“We’re taking a shuttle home, what’s wrong with that—”

“Unfortunately, your companion shouldn’t be on this shuttle if her
guardian hasn’t given her permission.”

“My uncle has to confirm every month that I’m allowed to travel
unaccompanied,” Penelya whispered. “Sometimes he forgets, he’s so busy—”

“You’ll have to come with us,” the senior officer said. Rugal couldn’t
believe what he was hearing. “Check my file again,” he said angrily.
“Take a proper look at my father’s name.” There was a pause while the
officers did so. And then, smoothly, as if the whole prior exchange
hadn’t happened, the senior of the two said, “Apologies for disturbing
you, sir. Enjoy the rest of your journey.” Then they both moved on.

The rest of the carriage relaxed. Penelya turned away from him to the
window, and she shook him off when he tried to put his arm back around
her. They didn’t speak when they reached their stop, nor as they walked
along the curved avenue that led up toward the Khevet house. They stood
outside awkwardly for a while and then Penelya said, politely, “Thank
you for your help on the shuttle.”

Rugal took her hand, but it was limp and unresponsive. He almost
screamed. It was as if acid had been poured on their friendship. “I’m
sorry,” he said, stroking his thumb along her finger. “I didn’t
understand. I promise I’ll never do that again.”

She nodded. Cautiously, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “It
was a lovely day,” he said. “Thank you. I’m sorry I’m such an idiot.” He
felt her fingers curl round his hand and he sighed in relief.

“You’re not so bad,” she said softly. “You mean well.” She let go of his
hand and walked over to the gates. Before going inside, she said, “Go
and make friends with Kotan.”

“All right! I will! For you. But I’m still going home!”

She gave him a smile that sparkled with life and laughter. His heart
soared. That was the real Penelya. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.
Good night, Rugal. I’ll see you tomorrow.”



So when Kotan told him he was going away for a few days to visit friends
at their house in Perok district, and invited Rugal to join them, Rugal
kept his promise to Penelya and said he that would.

Kotan was delighted, which gave Rugal a pang of guilt. “I think you’ll
find these people interesting,” he said, nodding when Rugal tilted his
head in a silent question. These friends were, presumably, more dissidents.

The journey out to Perok took most of a day. Kotan worked steadily for
the first leg while Rugal sat and looked out across flat arid country.
This was Lorikal district, once farmland, now dusty from drought and
overuse. In the late afternoon, the red sun boiling in a slate sky, the
road began to rise, and they entered moorland, treeless and gray. Kotan
put aside his work and, as if a switch had been flicked, he opened up,
more than he had ever done before. It all poured out—his hopes, his
ambitions, his belief that the Cardassian military had become too
powerful and how it was the duty of the civilian political bodies
urgently to address this imbalance. The people they were going to meet
shared this belief, he said. They had worked tirelessly for years to
reach positions of power—across all parts of government, within the
judiciary, even in the military itself—in order to be able to bring
about reform.



“But they are not only colleagues and fellow travelers,” Kotan said.
“They are my friends. I’ve known Meya and Gerat Rejal”—it was their
house that they were visiting—“since I was a young man. Gerat introduced
me to your mother. I’m very glad that you were willing to come and meet
them. Thank you.”

Rugal gave a curt nod and looked away. Of course, it was Penelya he
should be grateful to, since it was only through her efforts that Rugal
was here. Would Kotan still be glad if he knew it was the orphan girl he
had to thank for his son’s being here?

The Rejals’ country house, spacious and comfortable, lay in a bowl
formed by two gray hills. As the skimmer drew to a halt in front, a man
and woman came out to greet them. They were accompanied by four huge
jetblack hounds. The couple waited by the big front doors; the hounds,
however, did not stand on ceremony. They leapt around the skimmer and
yelped as if this was the most exciting thing ever to have happened in
Perok. When Rugal got out, one of the hounds bounded up to him. He bent
to stroke its dark wiry hair, and it shoved its head within his hands
and looked up at him with unqualified love. It was beautiful.

Gerat Rejal watched on with amusement. “You didn’t say he liked hounds,
Kotan.” Kotan, pained, replied, “I didn’t know.”

A short silence followed. Rugal briskly rubbed the fur behind the
animal’s ears, thereby winning its neverending devotion and saving him
from having to look at Kotan. Then Meya Rejal came over to him. “This
beast’s called Leirt,” she said, patting its side, “after the hound in
the Hebitian legend. Don’t give your heart to him, Rugal, he falls in
love easily. But he loves the hunt, and he loves to be ridden. You’ll
see tomorrow. In the meantime—please, come inside!”

Rugal was grateful for both the welcome and the tact. So was Kotan, by
the look of him. He followed his hosts up into the house, Leirt padding
alongside him, to meet, one by one, Kotan’s friends and fellow
dissidents, all eager for a sight of the son who had come back from the
dead. As well as the Rejals, there were three others present: a cheerful
man called Erek Rhemet, who thumped his palm hard against Rugal’s; a
more reserved individual named Ithas Bamarek; and an elderly man whom
Kotan hurried to introduce to Rugal. As Kotan and the old man pressed
palms, Kotan said, “Is Alon not here yet?”

“He’ll be with us in the morning. Natima Lang’s due to join us then too.”

Kotan turned to his son. “Rugal, I’m very honored to introduce you to my
dear friend, and my mentor, Legate Tekeny Ghemor.”

Rugal held up his palm. Tekeny pressed his own palm against it and then,
unusually, he curled his fingers round so that he was clasping Rugal’s
hand within his own. The legate smiled, but his eyes were unspeakably
sad. “So this is the lost child that came back from Bajor,” he said.
“Welcome home, Rugal. Welcome home.”



After dinner, the party settled down in the sunroom to conversation and
/kanar,/ but Rugal went outside in search of quiet. He found it in a
particularly elegant stone garden, where he sat down in the night’s dry
heat to consider his impressions of the company. Leirt lay panting at
his feet.

The company had gone out of their way to make him feel at home, and
their delight on Kotan’s behalf had been genuine and unforced. There had
been plenty of palm pressing and back slapping, and over dinner they had
cheerfully slandered mutual and absent acquaintances from across the
whole of Cardassia’s political and intellectual elite. Only Tekeny
Ghemor had spoken as little as Rugal. Altogether, they reminded Rugal of
Tret and Colat Khevet: personable and intelligent, well-meaning, taking
evident pleasure in their wealth and status. On the whole, Rugal liked
them, but he did not believe for a moment that they would do anything
seriously to alter the nature of Cardassia. They were too invested in
the status quo. Perhaps tomorrow, when the missing members of the party
arrived, it would be different.

Rugal leaned down to rub the rough hair behind the hound’s ears. It gave
him that heart-stopping look of pure love. “Beautiful beast,” he told
it, and then he heard a quiet laugh behind him. He turned to see Tekeny
Ghemor leaning on the garden gate, watching him and smiling. “You like
hounds?” he said.

“Yes, although I’ve never owned one.”

“Perhaps your father could be persuaded,” Ghemor said. Rugal was certain
that Kotan could, but he wouldn’t ask. “May I join you?”

Rugal shifted along the bench. “Please do.”

Ghemor sat down beside him and studied Rugal openly and curiously. “So.
What do you think of our little group?”

“Do you want my honest answer?”

“By all means.”

“They’re hardly the Bajoran Resistance, are they?”

Ghemor laughed out loud. “Kotan said you were distressingly frank. Not a
quality much valued on Cardassia, I’m afraid. Obfuscation is more the
order of the day.”



“Perhaps that’s part of the problem.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” He gave Rugal a look that was sharp but not
hostile. “Wait till Natima arrives. I suspect you’ll like her more.” He
stretched out his legs. “Myself, I think all this scheming is a game for
the young. The older I get, the more I crave the truth. Tell me, Rugal,
are you glad to be back among your people?”

“My people are on Bajor, sir.” The honorific slipped out before he knew
he was going to say it. Ghemor seemed to deserve it. “I intend to go
back there one day.”

Ghemor showed no horror or dismay. “I understand. You were gone for a
long time. My daughter has been gone for a long time. She has been on
Bajor, like you. Stolen too, I’d say—although others claim she went of
her own free will. I think they stole her mind before they stole her
body. She went to Bajor, and she was lost.” His face darkened. “I wonder
if she’s been there too long...” He collected himself and leaned
forward, gently placing his hand against Rugal’s face. It was a
grandfatherly gesture, kind. “I was sorry for Kotan when I heard you
were gone. I’m glad you’ve returned, and not just for Kotan’s sake,
although he deserves some happiness. But I’m glad for my own sake too.
Because if you can return from the dead, Rugal, it’s not so hard to
convince myself the same could happen one day with my dear Iliana. She
might yet come back from Bajor. Come back from the dead.”

Rugal did not know what to say. Leirt, watching him, whined. Then Kotan
arrived, having come to look for them. He was carrying a bottle of
/kanar/ and was keen to join them. Rugal sat and listened to the two men
talk. He was not sure he had fully understood Ghemor’s story, but the
old man’s tender grief had touched him.

“What happened to his daughter?” he asked Kotan later, after Tekeny had
retired for the night. “Was she killed like—” He stopped himself. He had
nearly said: /like my mother./

Kotan sighed. “It’s a sad story. She was going to be married, but then
the boy was killed on Bajor. The Obsidian Order stepped into the
gap—they do that, find the hole in someone’s life and fill it. She went
undercover on Bajor—they altered her memories and her appearance—and she
hasn’t come back. Tekeny’s convinced she’s still there living under her
false identity.” Kotan shook his head. “It’s difficult to believe that’s
true. The conditioning would surely have broken down by now. But he
keeps on hoping that one day she’ll come home.” He gave his son a wry
look. “Stranger things have happened.”

Rugal lay awake for a long time that night, thinking about the girl,
Iliana, and her father, Tekeny. He did not know what to wish for. Tekeny
had been kind, and he was an old man wanting peace and resolution at the
end of his life. But surely Iliana ought to stay where she thought she
belonged? Perhaps she was married; perhaps she loved Bajor deeply and
even now was working to bring about its regeneration. Who could win, in
such a situation? There could only be victims.

Rugal turned and sighed. Leirt, lying at the foot of the bed, cracked
open an eye to check that all was well. The more he saw of Cardassia,
the more it seemed to Rugal that the Bajorans were not the only ones
damaged by that foolish, futile policy. True, the Bajoran people had
suffered more—that should never be forgotten. But Cardassians too had
been harmed, and many of those had played no part in the decision to
invade Bajor. Iliana Ghemor had been driven offworld by the death of her
mate and the loss of the children they might have had. Tret Khevet too
was a victim in a way, told lies that kept him narrow-minded and
unthinking. And then there was himself, caught between two worlds,
neither one thing nor the other, never at home.



The next day they went hunting and, for the first time, Rugal discovered
something about Cardassia that surpassed Bajor. At home, he had loved
watching the grace-hounds, admiring their lithe speed and beauty. But to
ride with the hounds on the hunt, to be part of the pursuit rather than
simply a spectator—it was better in every way. Leirt was magnificent:
dark and powerful, tolerant of his rider’s inexperience, pleased with
his readiness to take risks. Rugal fell off once and barely noticed the
thump. His hound glanced back at him as if to say, /Hurry up or you’ll
miss the good bit,/ and he scrambled straight back on. Even the kill at
the end thrilled him. He was still talking about it when the party
gathered for drinks before dinner, and he could even forgive Kotan for
being so pleased that the day had been such a success.

That night, too energized to be able to sleep, Rugal got up and explored
the house. He found the library, a large basement room where the
temperature was kept at a moderate level for the sake of the books. The
collection was a lot more heavy-going than Kotan’s; the volumes had
titles like: /Between Liberty and Security/; /Retooling Political
Discourse/; /Common Failures in Rhetorical Performance/. Rugal was
thinking of going back to bed when his eye fell on a series of books
written by Natima Lang. Tekeny had said he would like her. Rugal ran his
finger along the line of books, choosing the narrowest. Its title was:
/The Ending of “The Never-Ending Sacrifice.”/

That would do. With any luck, it would tell him what happened and he
would never have to wrestle with Corac’s deadly prose ever again. He
took the book with him to one of the armchairs, palmed on the reading
lamp, and read: /“‘For Cardassia!’ So begins what many would call our
greatest novel. In truth, it is our greatest lie.”/

It was very late when Rugal finished reading, by which time his whole
world had changed. Natima Lang saw what he saw when he looked at
Cardassia. She too had diagnosed its sickness, but more than that, she
had described a cure. Lang argued that for generations, Cardassians had
taught themselves that they had to take from others in order to live.
Cardassia devoured everything, but not only was it blind to these
tendencies, it even glamorized them. This was the lie Lang saw at the
heart of /The Never-Ending Sacrifice:/ Cardassians told themselves that
their history was one of glory, when in fact it was an uninterrupted
pattern of murder and destruction, passed down the generations, and
masquerading as a romantic ideal of duty to secure the survival of the
state.

In the second half of the book, Lang set out her political program. The
drive for expansion had taken on its own momentum, and that had to be
stopped. She argued for military retrenchment, for power sharing across
the whole of Cardassian society, for greater cooperation and openness
with Cardassia’s neighbors. Cardassians had to learn to curb themselves
if they wanted to survive. The book ended on a warning. Bajor was the
symbol of the old order, the old way, and Cardassia had been utterly
defeated there. If Cardassia could not control its appetites, but could
now no longer so casually take from others, then it would eventually
start to consume itself. That was the inevitable end of the never-ending
sacrifice. Was that the future that Cardassians wanted? Was it the best
they could imagine?

Lang’s was the first truthful voice Rugal had heard since coming here.
She had reflected his thoughts back to him, almost as if she had access
to them, and then she had taken them further than he had thought
possible. He had never had such an experience with a book before; he had
not known such a thing could happen. Rugal got up from the chair and
wandered around the room, his body processing all that his mind had just
encountered. What amazed him most was that Lang was—undeniably,
absolutely—Cardassian. In no way could she be called Bajoran. For the
first time since his arrival, Rugal felt that it really was possible for
him to have sprung from the soil of this barren unpromising world. Were
there others like Lang on Cardassia? Others who spoke this kind of
language? Where could he find them? He checked the back of the book. She
was professor of ethics at the Institute of State Policy. If he worked
hard and got accepted into the institute, could he study with her?

Rugal halted by the doors of the library. Beyond, the hallway was dimly
lit, and, with his head buzzing from all these new ideas, it took him a
moment or two to realize that there were people standing out there,
conferring in low tones. He frowned and listened. Kotan was there, and
Tekeny Ghemor and Meya Rejal and a fourth—another man—whose voice he
didn’t recognize. When somebody said the word “defection,” Rugal decided
that eavesdropping on this conversation was definitely a bad idea. He
took a step or two back from the door, started whistling, then pushed
the doors open and went out into the hall.

It had given them all the warning they required. All four turned to look
at him, guiltily, like conspirators caught plotting. Exactly like
conspirators caught plotting, in fact. “Rugal!” Kotan said, in falsely
jovial tones, glancing back at the newcomer. This was a tall man in a
smart suit who looked like he had been having a truly terrible day.
“Allow me to introduce my friend Alon Ghemor,” Kotan said. “The legate’s
nephew. Alon—my son, Rugal.”

Alon Ghemor looked at Rugal with sudden interest. He was about Kotan’s
age, Rugal thought, although he didn’t have Kotan’s permanent air of
endurance, and that made him seem younger. He took a step forward,
pressed his palm firmly against Rugal’s, all the while looking directly
into his eyes. “Welcome home. I’m sure your father must be...” Rugal
watched him struggle to find a socially acceptable way of saying, /sorry
that you didn’t do the decent thing and stay dead/.

Kotan came to his aid. “His grandmother and I are delighted to have him
home. Gul Dukat”—he gave Alon a meaningful look—“went to a great deal of
trouble on Rugal’s account. I was most grateful.”

“Ah. Yes.” Alon gave a dry smile. “I see.”

“What are you doing up so late, Rugal?” Kotan said.

“I couldn’t sleep. I came looking for something to read.” Rugal looked
round at them all. “Who’s defected?”

Four dissidents jumped, as if they’d been electrocuted. Meya looked
sick; Alon livid. “Rugal,” Kotan said faintly, “you shouldn’t listen to
other people’s conversations—”

“That’s what my mother taught me. But everyone around here does it.”

Tekeny Ghemor laughed out loud. His nephew, however, was squaring off.
“Natima Lang. Heard of her?”

Rugal raised his chin defiantly. “Yes, of course. She’s professor of
ethics at the Institute of State Policy.”



“Alon,” Kotan said unhappily, “don’t say any more to him, please. I
don’t want him put in danger...”

Tekeny said, gently, “Kotan, dear boy, if Rugal is going to go around
listening at doors, he has to take responsibility for what he hears.” He
winked at Rugal. “Besides, I think he’s well able to handle the
consequences. Go on Alon, tell him what’s happened.”

Alon gave his uncle a fond smile that did more to impress Rugal than
anything else he had done so far. “Two of her students have been
producing a radical broadsheet and handing it out around the campus. The
Order’s overlooked it so far, but the last one the students printed they
handed out in the shuttle and down in Torr market. Preaching to the
student body is one thing, but trying to stir up the service grades is
something else. The Order put out warrants for their arrest yesterday
afternoon, capital time. And Lang’s run. She’s taken the pair of them
and fled Prime. They’ve sent a warship after her, and they’re serious
about getting her back.” He stopped, and put his hand to his forehead.
“Meya, for pity’s sake, do you have any /kanar/ in this house? I’ve
spent the day persuading my superiors not to send armed units onto the
campus to drag off anything that speaks. My mouth’s drier than a Lorikal
homestead.”

Meya went over to the comm and woke the staff. At her direction, the
five of them trooped into the library, gathering in armchairs around a
low table. With the dim lights and the basement walls, it had a faintly
bunkerish feel. After a few metrics, a disheveled-looking servant
brought /kanar/ and cold /feyt/ with flatbread, which Alon attacked like
a famine victim. When the servant had gone, Tekeny said in a troubled
voice, “Do you think this could trigger another round of crackdowns, Alon?”



“No idea. They won’t march into the campus, not now, but there’ll
certainly be a purge of the teaching staff. I don’t expect most
departments to reopen till after the shortest day. As for Lang herself,
it depends on whether they catch up with her. If they do, she’s dead. If
they don’t...” He shrugged.

“They’ll want to punish somebody for this,” Kotan said. They all looked
at each other anxiously. Alon patted his friend’s shoulder.

“Don’t despair yet! I’ve been spinning it that she was a maverick and
out of control. If we keep our heads down and don’t do anything stupid,
this one too should pass.”

Rugal didn’t think that Kotan looked much comforted. But Tekeny had the
final word. “I know we all feel angry with Natima tonight, for
endangering us this way. But I cannot find it in my heart to blame her.
These two young people, her students—she could have sacrificed them to
secure her position, to secure /our/ position. But what would our
movement be then? If we killed our young to keep ourselves safe?” Kotan
reached out to take Rugal’s hand; Tekeny smiled. “We would be no better
than that which we seek to replace.”

The party broke up early the following morning. Rugal said good-bye to
Leirt, and he and Kotan began the long journey back to the city. After
Kotan had finished his usual ritual sweep for listening devices, he
said, “What did you think of Alon Ghemor?”

Rugal gave him a curious look. “Why are you interested in my opinion?”

“Why? Because I think you’re a good judge of character. Because you
don’t have any reason to lie to me—other than cruelty, and every day I
watch you monitor yourself for that. But chiefly because I haven’t yet
noticed you holding back when you had something to say that was both
unpalatable and true.”

Rugal felt faintly embarrassed. But there was definitely a smile on
Kotan’s lips. “I don’t know... I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I
mean, I know that was a bunch of politicians”—he returned the half
smile, which Kotan graciously acknowledged with a tip of the head—“but
he did seem unusually... um, smooth.”

“Did you pick up what his official role is?”

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure. He seemed to be talking as if he knew what
was going on in...” Rugal lowered his voice to a whisper. “Well, in the
Order.”

“Well done. Broadly speaking, he’s the point of liaison between the
Detapa Council and the Obsidian Order. Crueler people than I call him
the Order’s messenger boy. They also seriously doubt his loyalty to us.”

“So who is he loyal to, Kotan—the Council or the Order?”

“Sometimes I worry that Alon himself is no longer sure. It can’t be
easy, shifting between two such distinct groups, one powerful but
paranoid, the other open but toothless. He seems to keep the relevant
egos well stroked, and he does manage to run a duplicate set of
expenses, for which one can only feel admiration. But if it came to the
crunch... ?” Kotan frowned. “Alon has the heart of a reformer and the
head of a pragmatist. He longs to see his uncle leading a truly powerful
Detapa Council, and he gets impatient at the delay. But if the Council
fell tomorrow, I have no doubt that Alon Ghemor would be transformed
into the Order’s most loyal operative. And I’m terrified of what that
would do to him. He is my very good friend, and I worry how he struggles
to balance his beliefs and the demands of his job. I hope one day he
strikes that balance, and becomes the better man that I know he is.” He
gave Rugal a dry smile. “I hope for that in much the same way that I
hope for a new Cardassia.”

“You never know,” Rugal said. “The Obsidian Order might fall first.”

“Cardassia without the Order?” Kotan looked positively alarmed by the
idea, never mind the risks inherent in saying it out loud. “One hardly
dares imagine. Unlikely, I’d say, but either way, I guarantee you—Alon
Ghemor is one of Cardassia’s great survivors. He’ll rise to the top one
day. Wait and see.”

As the skimmer drew into Coranum, Rugal realized that in his pocket he
still had Natima Lang’s little green book. He must have put it there
after finishing it, and then forgotten about it in the aftermath of the
news of her defection. In his bedroom, he looked around for somewhere to
hide it, eventually settling on the picture of Arys that stood upon his
bedside table. As he forced off the frame, he thought about how he had
wanted to study with Lang. Perhaps it was better that he couldn’t. He
had been glad to discover more that was good about Cardassia—Leirt, the
hunt, Tekeny Ghemor, Natima Lang—but he didn’t want to stay here. He
wanted to go home. Carefully, he replaced the frame and examined his
handiwork. Not a bad job. He put the picture back on the table and then,
on an impulse, kissed his tip of his finger and touched it against his
mother’s face.

It was fortunate he had brought the book back with him. Back at the
house in Perok, Meya and Gerat Rejal had already purged their library of
Lang’s collected works. Rugal would never see another book by her on
Cardassia Prime.


• • •





Natima Lang escaped via Deep Space 9. Since neither the Central Command
nor the Obsidian Order could quite pin the blame on the other, the
civilian administration was the natural target for their ire. Department
budgets were cut, policy papers were sent back repeatedly for review,
surveillance and identity checks on members of the Assembly were more
and more obtrusive. Kotan became despondent. “Trying times,” he said
repeatedly. “These are trying times.” He spent many hours locked away in
his study and did not invite Rugal to join him.

Rugal understood that Kotan had his safety in mind, but he was sorry
about this new distance when they had only recently found some common
ground. At least it meant he had more time available to spend with
Penelya, although both were very conscious of being monitored. Their
conversations became almost superficial as a result, and she would not
let him hold her hand. /A strange way to live,/ Rugal thought, assuming
that a single unwise word might lead to arrest, always editing your
thoughts before vocalizing them, trying to guess if your friend was
daring to communicate something and what it might be. It was lonely and
artificial, and yet most Cardassians lived their whole lives like this.

It was not a happy period. He fell further behind at the academy, and
his tutors gave up. He read and reread Lang’s little book. Looking for
more of her writing, he went to the Central Archives, but there was
nothing on the open shelves, and he doubted it was a good idea to
request anything by her. So he kept rereading all that he had. Soon he
knew it intimately, and Corac’s book through Lang.

Some months after Lang’s defection, Proka Migdal got in touch. It was
almost a year since they had last spoken. Rugal was amazed that Kotan
allowed the communication to take place, but he didn’t offer to pass up
the opportunity. “You can’t talk for long,” Kotan said as he led Rugal
into his study. “And please be careful what you say.”

Rugal nodded his understanding. The picture was bad, but he smiled at
the sight of his father on the view-screen. “Dad! How are you? How’s
Mother?” The sound was bad too; he could hear his own voice echoing at
the other end. “Dad?”

Was it static, or did Migdal look old? /“Make sure you thank Minister
Pa’Dar for putting this message through, won’t you?”/

“Of course I will! Are you all right? Where’s Mother?”

Migdal had already started speaking over him, so it took Rugal a moment
or two to catch up and work out that he was being told that Etra was
dead. /“It wasn’t painful,”/ Migdal was saying. /“She just... went.”/ He
looked dazed.

Rugal had known in an abstract way that parents did not live forever. He
knew too that Etra and Migdal were elderly and had lived a large part of
their lives in poverty. None of this could stop him feeling as if his
heart had been torn from him. More than ever, he longed to be back home.
What was Migdal going to do without Etra? He would be lost without her.

/“I’m still trying to get you back,”/ Migdal said. /“Got a meeting with
someone after the election—they’re all busy picking a new kai.”/

“When was it, Dad?”

/“Four and a half weeks now. I couldn’t find you!”/



The tears nearly came at that, but Rugal didn’t want Migdal to see him
that way, not if the channel was going to disappear at any moment and
leave him with that image for Prophets only knew how long. /“Once the
election’s out of the way,”/ Migdal said, /“I’ll go and see this
woman—she’s an aide to one of the Ministers; Etra got her name and fixed
it all up—maybe she can help... Are you all right? Are they treating you
all right?”/

/I’m scared and I’m lonely and they want us dead/. “They’re treating me
really well. I went hunting a few months ago, you would have loved it!”

/“That sounds great! It’s like you’re on one long holiday! You keep on
enjoying yourself, now, don’t worry about me—”/

Gently, Kotan touched him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to
have to end this now.”

“Dad, I’ve got to go! Go and see that aide soon as you can!”

/“I will, I promise, I love you.”/

“I love you too, Dad!”

The screen went black. Rugal stayed in the chair, wrapping his arms
around himself.

“Rugal,” Kotan said, “I’m so sorry—”

“I should be there. He looks so old. He can’t possibly manage by
himself, and I’m stuck here.” Rugal slammed his hand down hard on the
desk. He turned to face Kotan. “I’ve got to go back—you could arrange
for that if you wanted to. I know you could, you’re a powerful man—”

“Rugal.” Kotan stretched out his arms, hands open. “What do you think I
could do? I can’t leave the city right now, never mind Prime, and
certainly not to go to Bajor!”



“We could go to Deep Space 9. You came to Deep Space 9 last time!”

“Before Natima Lang decided to make us all so conspicuous.” Kotan shook
his head. “It’s out of the question. We’d be arrested before we got out
of the city—before we even got out of Coranum, most likely.”

“I have to speak to him again—”

“I’m doing my best to make sure that you can. But you saw how difficult
that was—it took weeks to arrange even those few minutes.”

“But he’ll be lost without her!”

Kotan put his hand upon his son’s shoulder. “I understand. Truly.”

And Rugal knew that he did understand—he had lost his wife too. Rugal’s
other mother. A young laughing woman in a painting who was only the
ghost of a memory to him; nothing like Etra, who had loved him and cared
for him, and who had been there.

“I wouldn’t wish this on anyone,” Kotan said. “I’ll do my best to make
sure you can speak to him soon. I give you my word.”

It had to be enough, Rugal knew that. But his mother was dead. He went
and found Penelya, who understood. And he trusted to Kotan to make good.



Nine days later, Legate Tekeny Ghemor fled the Cardassian Union.

Kotan was brought back from the science ministry early that day, flanked
by two gils who remained stationed outside the front door. Alon
Ghemor—speaking entirely in the voice of the Order at the moment—had
advised him that a short absence from the political heart of Prime would
stand him in good stead.



The first thing Kotan did once he was home was dismiss the two maids and
the gardener—for their own safety. Then he explained the state of
affairs to his mother and son. It was not house arrest as such, Kotan
told them, but a voluntary self-exception from political life. No, he
did not know how for how long. Yes, Tekeny’s departure was a blow, but
one had to remain positive. Absolutely, he was sure that soon he would
be able to return to political life. No, he didn’t know when exactly.

Kotan told Rugal he would have to keep him away from the academy. It was
a courtesy to the other families whose sons were studying there. They
would now be anxious to put distance between their children and his, and
they would remember his tact and reward it, should his political star
ever rise again. Kotan wasn’t surprised that his son didn’t seem to
care. Rugal’s attainment scores had plunged in the past few months. It
was understandable; there was no purpose in the academy for him now. The
Obsidian Order had carried out a thorough review of the political
institute, and the ethics department, which Lang had headed, had been
subject to a thorough regularization of ideas. Whatever Rugal might once
have learned there, it had all been rooted out.

A few days after Ghemor’s flight, Rugal came to see Kotan in his study.
Kotan had been standing, staring out the window; he wasn’t used to
having so much time on his hands. “I’m sorry about all this compulsory
holiday, Rugal. It must be tedious.” Kotan was worried, too, that his
son had nothing to distract him from thinking about the death of his
Bajoran mother.

Rugal shrugged. “I’ve found things to do.”

“You don’t have to stay inside. Go and see Penelya.”



“I’m worried it might put her in bad standing with her uncle.”

“Yes, of course, she can hardly afford that in her position, can she?
That’s very considerate of you. Well, what can I do for you?”

Rugal took an urgent step toward him. “It’s my father. You said you’d
make sure I could speak to him—”

Kotan shook his head. “It’s out of the question.”

“I know things have changed since we talked about it, but I’m worried
about him—”

“Rugal—”

“They were married for nearly fifty years! He’s never been without her
before—”

“Rugal.” Kotan spoke so severely that it stopped the boy in full flight.
/Perhaps he should have tried this sooner. Perhaps he should have forced
him to settle down. Would it have worked?/ “It isn’t going to happen.
All my communications are being monitored. Any attempt to speak to Bajor
would lead to my arrest and, in all likelihood, my execution. Your own
record would be indelibly marked. I doubt you’d be able to enter any
higher institute as a result.”

“I don’t care about that! I’m not staying! How often do I have to say it?”

Kotan arched one eye ridge. “I note with some disappointment that the
possibility of my death does not move you to reconsider. Since nobody
else will look out for me, I’ll do it myself. I will /not/ risk arrest
in order to let you contact Bajor. Consider me selfish if you want.”

“But you promised!”

“And I’m going to have to break that promise. With deep regret.”

All the grief of the last few weeks burst through, like a storm after
drought. It was dreadful to watch, Kotan thought, and even worse to be
the cause. “You should never have brought me back here!” Rugal cried.
“You say you did it because you love me, and yet this is what you’ve
brought me back to? If they want you dead, they’ll want me dead—I’m your
son! Why did you bring me back? I was safe on Bajor. I was happy. I was
loved there too.”

There was a silence. “Did you know,” Kotan said in a wholly different
voice, “that that’s the first time you’ve called yourself my son?”

“I wish I wasn’t,” Rugal said bitterly. “It’s brought me nothing but
misery. If I could rip everything Cardassian out of me, I’d do it. I’d
do what Tekeny Ghemor’s daughter did. I’d change my face and wipe my
mind and go back to Bajor and never come back.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Kotan said. He could still hear himself
speaking in that strange tone of voice, distant and wondering. “Your
being my son has brought me nothing but joy. Even now, when you’re
standing there hating me, all I can think is: I’m glad he’s here to hate
me, because it means he’s still alive. It means he didn’t die.” He
smiled. “Oh, I’m sure that if I tried I could find a way to communicate
with Bajor for you. But I won’t do it, because I want you to stay alive.
I’m sorry if that makes you hate me even more. But I’m glad you’re here
to love and hate as you choose.”



If this was victory, Rugal thought as he tore furiously from the room,
it had a distinctly ashen flavor. He stormed down the hallway and up the
stairs. He got as far as the four little portraits of Arys and then had
to stop. His escape was blocked by Geleth. “Quarreled again?”



He glared at her.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She bared her teeth. “You don’t like us very
much, do you?”

“Has it crossed your mind I might have some very good reasons not to
like you?”

“Oh yes, that Occupation you’re always shouting about. It does bother
you a great deal. It bothers me not one jot, except insofar as it has
made my child unhappy. I have invested a great deal in my child. Kotan
has done the same with you, although there’s something oddly altruistic
in the way he talks about you.” She sniffed in displeasure. “Some people
never learn, no matter how hard you try to teach them.”

“Did you have something particular to say?”

“In fact, I did. I know you think I’m monstrous, but I don’t like seeing
Kotan distressed. He has a great deal on his mind at the moment, but so
long as he doesn’t do anything preposterous”—she glared at him—“then
he’ll weather this storm like all the rest. He’s bright and he’s worked
very hard to get where he is. He’s sacrificed a great deal. That
scientific business, he enjoyed that.”

She reached out to touch the picture nearest to her. Rugal felt oddly
revolted at seeing her hand so close to a picture of Arys. “But that had
to go. One can’t serve two masters, and family prospects count for more
than personal ambition. And that girl, that mother of yours who for some
reason hardly ever crosses your mind—one does wonder what’s being
repressed there—he was fond of her too. Another mistake—one shouldn’t
get so attached to individuals. Lost her too, doing his duty. Yes,
Kotan’s been a good son, all told. He’s done a great deal for the
family. He’s done a great deal for Cardassia too—that inoculation
program, and the science academies, and he’s helped keep the guls in
check. Real service. Not that you’ve bothered to find out anything about
it. What have you ever done, Rugal, to allow you to judge him so
harshly? What have you achieved?”

She took a step forward. She was only slightly stooped with age, and
nearly as tall as he was. “Drifting about. Trouble at school. Friends
with the most unsuitable people. You’ve made a poor impression. Your
father has done some fine things, and with luck, he’ll do many more.
What have you done? Wandered about, complained, argued, caused my son
even more grief. Is this what those Bajorans taught you? To think only
of yourself?” She smiled at him. “I always had a very low opinion of
Bajorans. You confirm my prejudices almost every day.”

In that moment, Rugal hated Geleth more than he had ever known it was
possible to hate another living being. “Get out of my way,” he whispered.

She smiled and didn’t move. He thought, madly, about pushing past her,
but he was not so far gone that he would assault an old woman. As soon
as she was ready, she sidestepped neatly out of his way. He thundered
past her down the corridor to his room.

“You’re not a credit to them, you know,” she called after him. “And I’m
not in the least surprised.”

He fell on his bed in a hot haze of anger and tears. He knew it would
hurt considerably less if it hadn’t in part been true.



Later that day, he slipped out of the house to find Penelya. He still
worried that it was not entirely safe for her to be seen with him, but
he needed to speak to someone who was not part of this particular madness.

She was there on their usual bench with her legs tucked up under her.
Unusually for her, she was not dutifully absorbed in her padd. That was
hanging from one hand, unread; instead, she sat chewing a knuckle and
frowning into the distance. Quietly, he called her name. She looked up,
startled; then, seeing him, she jumped up from the bench and ran across
to him. As they hugged each other, he realized how much he had missed her.

“I’ve been so worried about you. Is your father all right? Kotan, I mean.”

“He’s not dead, which I suppose counts for something.” When she frowned
at him, he said, “Sorry, Pen. He’s all right. We quarreled.”

“I’d never have guessed. He wouldn’t let you speak to Migdal, would he?
You know he can’t, don’t you?”

Rugal gave a deep, unhappy sigh. “I know. I fought with Geleth too.”

“I take that as read. You and Geleth are in a state of permanent
hostilities. With Kotan, it’s more like... sporadic outbreaks of
guerrilla war.”

“Cardassia, where only the military metaphors work. Sometimes I think
you’re as mad as they are.”

“Oh, I’m sure I am! What was Geleth’s complaint this time?”

“She thinks I’ve done nothing with my life.”

“You haven’t been here all that long. But maybe she has a point—no,
don’t look like that, I only say these things because I know you’re not
happy and because we are friends. But don’t you want to find a place?
Find out what it is you’re meant to do?”

“I already have a place—”

“I know, back on Bajor. I’m not trying to say that you don’t. But what
if takes you fifteen, twenty, even thirty years to get back there?”



“/Kosst,/ Pen, I’m not staying here that long!”

“But what if you do? What if they seal the borders and you can’t get out?”

“I’ll find a way somehow.”

“There’s a lot of empty space between here and Bajor. You could be
trying to find a way back for a long time. Are you going to spend all
that time doing nothing better than wishing you were somewhere else? Is
that good enough for you? Is there nothing worthwhile that you could do
on Cardassia? Nothing you want to do?”

He gave her a sharp look. “Are you doing what you want to do?”

She patted the padd. “I don’t mind what I do. Once I’m good at it, it
will help feed people. It’ll make people’s lives better.”

“It’ll make your uncle richer.”

“There are worse compromises in life, Proka Rugal, and I hope you never
find yourself having to make them.”

“Why make them at all?”

“You know why,” she said patiently. “Because I owe them.”

“What do you owe them? Why should you feel obligated to them? It isn’t
your fault you were orphaned. I was an orphan too, as far as Etra and
Migdal knew, and they never made me feel I owed them anything. I gave
them my love because they gave me theirs. That’s all there was to it.”

“I don’t want to quarrel with you. But being like this doesn’t make you
happy—”

“And all your obedience and gratitude makes you happy?”

“It’s enough. I know how much worse life could be.”



“So do I! I grew up under the Occupation. And people there weren’t
content to be obedient and grateful. They said that it wasn’t good
enough, that they wouldn’t put up with it. That’s the problem with
Cardassia. Too many people think that /this/”—he swept his hand around,
taking in Coranum and the city and the whole union beyond—“is good
enough. But it isn’t. You aren’t allowed to speak, you aren’t allowed to
think, and your reformers are part of the problem! They’re just one more
elite trying to grab power. That’s not making things better! That wasn’t
good enough for the Resistance. People said they could never win, but
they did. They threw the Cardassians off Bajor and they brought down the
caste system while they were at it. But that won’t happen on Cardassia,
because nobody will speak up and say that the whole thing is rotten,
right through to its heart. Everybody just keeps on playing the game.
It’s gutless. Everyone props it up. Everyone is part of the problem.
Well, I won’t be. I won’t roll over and say that it’s good enough.
Because I’m Bajoran, and a thousand years on Cardassia couldn’t change
that.”

He stopped, breathless and angry, but glad that he had said it all out
loud. That was another thing wrong about this place. If you could not
say what you were thinking, how could you ever work out whether it was
right or wrong? How could you ever work out how to make your ideas
better? But Cardassia did not seem to want better ideas. It only wanted
the same ideas, over and over again, even if they were useless or stupid
or wrong.

Penelya was trembling. He took her hand. “Pen? Are you all right?”

She squeezed his hand so hard that he couldn’t tell whether or not she
had meant to hurt him. “No,” she burst out, “I’m frightened! I don’t
know how you can say all these things out loud. I don’t even dare think
them!”

“More people should say these things out loud. If more people said them,
all at once, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”

“They would know!”

“Let’s see then, shall we? Let’s see what they do to me—”

“It won’t be you, though, will it? It will be Kotan they come for, or
me. Perhaps they’ll tell my uncle he should think again about looking
after me—”

“Then you’d come to me and we’d look after each other. We don’t need
them, Pen! Not really! They want us to think we do, but in fact we can
do without them. We can do and be whatever we want.”

She was still shaking. Carefully, he wrapped his arm around her and
then, very gently, he kissed her on the top of her head. Don’t fall in
love with her, Kotan had said. As if there was anything he could do
about that. If they could not tell him to whom he should direct his
loyalty, they certainly could not tell him on whom he should lavish his
love.









*Four*





Rugal made several decisions as a result of this conversation. The
first, perhaps the most significant, he did not discuss with anyone, but
it was the cornerstone of everything he did afterwards. He decided not
to be afraid anymore. The Cardassian madness—the falsehoods, the
paranoia—had started to eat into him like acid. That had to stop. His
second decision was not to return to his academy, whether Kotan’s
exception ended or not. He was no longer willing to waste his time
listening to Cardassian orthodoxy. There had to be something better,
even here. All he had to do was go and find it.

Winter came, cutting deeper than Rugal had anticipated. Geleth told him
that this one was comparatively mild. He spent his days in the sunroom,
a small glass-roofed, solar-paneled chamber on the side of the house,
built to trap heat. Kotan often came to sit with him. This particular
afternoon, the new maid—an Obsidian Order plant if ever there was—was
setting out tea. The teacups were an heirloom, coming to Arys from her
great-grandmother. They were carved from the bones of a /leyik,/ a huge
furred land animal long since hunted to extinction so that the people of
Coranum could enjoy their redleaf tea in style.

Kotan dismissed the maid, waiting until she had gone back up the steps
into the main part of the house before speaking. “You do understand,” he
said, passing Rugal his cup, “that leaving the academy means you’ll
never get into the institute? And that without the institute, there’ll
be no political career?”

“I know,” Rugal replied. The teapot drooped in Kotan’s hands, and he
looked so sad that Rugal could not help but regret that he was dealing a
death blow to the man’s hopes. But they had been foolish hopes; they had
had no basis in reality. “I’m sorry. But it was never going to happen.
They got to me far too late. I’ve seen too much of how things are,
beyond Cardassia. I can’t believe them because I know what they say
simply isn’t true.”

“I thought, perhaps, that when you saw some of the work we were doing,
my friends and I...” Kotan held up his hands in defeat. “Well, that’s
the end of it.”

“It’s not as if I don’t care.” Rugal clutched the handle of the cup and
tried to put into words what he had been thinking. “It’s not as if I
think the kind of change you want for Cardassia is wrong. But it’s not
enough—”

“We have to start somewhere. Already the Council has substantially
checked the power of Central Command—we forced a treaty with the
Federation, another with Bajor. If you had been here twenty years ago,
you’d understand. These are tremendous shifts in policy—in power. We’ll
look back one day and see that this was the moment Cardassia began its
transformation. But change takes time—unless you want to see people die
for it.”

“Power? But what you’re doing is taking power for yourself, for your
friends. Yes, you seem like good people, but swapping one elite for
another isn’t change! That won’t last! It will all fall into the old
pattern: you’ll disagree, turn on each other, fight, and someone will
try to get ahead of everyone else. It won’t make a difference to
Cardassia as a whole—”

“So what do you suggest we do instead?”

Rugal took a gulp of the smoky tea for courage. “You could start by
holding some elections.”

Kotan pressed the fingers of one hand against his forehead, as if in
pain. He glanced back the way the maid had just gone. “I do wish you
wouldn’t say such things so loudly,” he muttered. “Rugal, what do you
think would happen if we did? What do you think people would vote for?
More power to the military, most likely. You have to educate people
first—you can’t let them go out and vote for whatever they want! You
don’t know what you’d end up with!”

“I think that’s the general idea.”

“And here is where you critically fail to understand Cardassia.” Kotan
eyes were alight. Truly, he loved to debate these matters, whatever he
said about his lost scientific career. “Perhaps that kind of profligacy
would work on Bajor, but it cannot work on Cardassia. Don’t you
understand how fine a line we walk here? How we barely scrape by with
what we have? If Cardassia did not have its small elite deciding quickly
what goes here, what goes there, it would collapse. There would be
chaos. People would die—”

“People already die. Have you taken a walk along the river recently?”

Kotan gestured around his comfortable prison. “My horizons are sadly
limited at the moment.”

Rugal bit his lip. “Sorry. But do you understand what I mean? You say
that the only reason not to change the way things are done is because
that’s the best way to look after the Cardassian people. But it doesn’t
even do that. Although,” he held up his teacup to admire it, “I suppose
the residents of Coranum don’t do badly out of the whole setup.”

“By all means try the alternative. I think you’d like it less.”

“I didn’t like the Occupation either, and I survived that. You can’t
frighten me that way, Kotan.” The way Penelya was frightened, and
thousands—millions—like her.

Kotan put down his cup and stared at his son anxiously. “You’re up to
something, aren’t you? What is it?”

Rugal shook his head. “If I’ve learned anything here, it’s that your
family and friends don’t need to know the detail.”

Kotan studied him for a while, one hand still at his forehead. Rugal
drained his cup and put it back down on the table. “Any more in the pot?”

Kotan, still watching him, refilled both their cups. “As the head of the
house, I could order you to tell me what you’re doing. Or forbid it
outright.” Rugal snorted. “No, I didn’t think that would work.” Kotan
breathed in the steam from his tea, and then sipped. “You know that it’s
my duty to inform the Order that they should be watching you. I could
probably have my exception lifted if I did.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“Of course I wouldn’t do that. But it might be nice,” Kotan said
plaintively, “to at least maintain the fiction that I have authority in
my own home.”

Rugal saluted him with his cup. “Think of us as a model for a new
Cardassia.”



“Hm. Try not to get us all killed.”

Rugal ran his finger along the fine bone handle of the cup. “Someone
else will probably get there first.”



Rugal was indeed up to something. He didn’t believe Kotan would mind,
but secrets were safer given the man’s current position. Rugal had
listened whenever Penelya had talked about the other side of Cardassian
life, and he had kept his eyes open during all their trips, whenever
they had gone down the river, or taken the shuttle through Torr. Rugal
and his family had lived hand-to-mouth on Bajor; he knew what poverty
was like, and he had hardly been brought up to filter it out. During the
day, Rugal clung to the sunroom. At night, he was down at the river.

The first time, he had gone down there by himself. He had slipped into
the kitchen when Maleta’s back was turned and filled a bag with as much
as he thought would go unmissed. He took a knife too, in case of
emergencies. Then he went down to the shantytown beneath the Veterans’
Bridge and handed out all the food he had. It disappeared in no time. He
had not used the knife. Not yet.

He spotted Erani and her friends roughly the same time that they spotted
him. They had a much slicker operation: a big table with two large pots
on it, from which they were ladling out soup or stew into cups. Rugal
opened his hands to show the last few children tugging at his sleeves
that he really didn’t have anything left and walked over to the table.
This was what he had been counting on: that he would find like-minded
people here already.

There were three of them—two females, one male. Rugal lifted his palm in
greeting. “Anything I can do to help?”

They stared at him mistrustfully. Then one of the females—this was
Erani, as he found out shortly afterwards—told him, “Help Arric collect
the used cups. We can’t afford to give them away.”

Arric Maret was the male. He was about Rugal’s age, perhaps slightly
older. As they went around collecting the cups, he explained more about
what they did.

The three of them were here almost every night during the winter, he
told Rugal. As the food stalls in the central market packed up for the
day, they went around and scrounged any leftovers. They took these back
to the kitchen of Erani’s apartment near the technical school in west
Torr, and cooked up whatever they had in the two large pots. Then they
hit the road. They had a large and ancient skimmer that Erani’s mate,
Tekis, had liberated from a scrapheap and lovingly coaxed back to life.
It rewarded her with intermittent reliability. Paying for the permit to
keep this wreck on the road was their biggest expenditure, but Tekis
loved her skimmer. Erani called it the deathtrap.

“I wonder what our masters think would happen if we were allowed to
travel around by ourselves,” Arric said, as they piled the cups into the
back of the skimmer. “What I think is that everyone would go to Ostek
for the day, come home, and never bother going there again.” He laughed.
He was sensible and good-humored. Rugal liked him.

Erani had started the whole thing, Arric said. She had been homeless for
a short while as a girl after her father had thrown her out. She was now
a student of social policy at the technical school. Arric had met her
and Tekis at a study group; Erani had been arguing with the tutor about
the causes of poverty, and Arric had been impressed. She spoke from
experience rather than prejudice. He caught up with her after the
session and asked if she knew if he could help in some way. His father
had been an orphan. Erani had looked him up and down and then said,
“We’ll pick you up under the campus clock at twelfth bell. Wear
something warm.”

“That was last winter,” Arric told Rugal. “I haven’t been back to the
study group since. I’m too busy in the evenings.”

Tekis, who had been listening to this, added, “Sometimes, Rugal, people
come along and it turns out that what they really want to hand out is
lectures. You know—tell people they should work harder or else do their
civic duty and go into a work center.” She looked Rugal up and down
appraisingly. “We don’t bother picking them up again.”

Rugal took the hint. Not that it was necessary: he wasn’t here to
preach, although he wasn’t surprised to find out that some people were.
He knew from listening to Geleth that many Cardassians had strange ideas
about the poor. They thought it was a fault of the character, rather
than bad luck or circumstance, and they wouldn’t give as a result. On
Bajor, the Occupation had made everyone poor. It wasn’t possible to hold
anything back. If somebody didn’t liberate it, as Tekis put it, then
you’d be shamed into sharing. But no one on Bajor was ashamed to be
poor. The Cardassians had made everyone poor. So you spread around what
you had.

Not on Cardassia. Here, you relied on the charity of your family, like
Penelya, or you could voluntarily enter a work center or, if you
appeared in front of an archon for vagrancy too often, you would be
assigned to a work center. If you had run away from violence or abuse,
relying on family was not an appealing option. If you had been orphaned,
it was not always an option at all. As for the work centers, Rugal had
been on Cardassia long enough to spot a euphemism when he saw one. But
received wisdom was that if you were idle enough to hang around the
streets, you could stay there until you were willing to work, or until
somebody made you work. In the meantime, you were free to rely on the
foolishness of people like Erani, Tekis, and Arric to get a hot meal
during the winter.

By the time of his conversation with Kotan, Rugal had been coming down
to the river with Erani and the others most nights for nearly two
months. What he saw there, in the heart of the Union’s capital city,
hadn’t stopped shocking him, even though he had seen the effects of the
Occupation. The children distressed him most—how young some of them
were, how sick. Respiratory diseases, malnourishment, exposure—all of it
a short skimmer ride but light-years away from Coranum and the five
lucky children of Mikor Khevet.

The others had been friendly in a low-key way, nodding “hello” when they
picked him up and “see you tomorrow” when they dropped him off. They
asked no questions; he was free to offer information if he wanted, but
he wasn’t pressed. He didn’t discuss his childhood or try to explain
what he was doing here, and neither did anyone else. The desire to help
was taken for granted: how could you not want to help, confronted with
all of this? After about a month and a half, however, Rugal made a bad
mistake.

They had been discussing, in general terms, the news that the Detapa
Council had signed a treaty with Bajor. It had happened three weeks ago,
apparently; although the state information services were only now
releasing details. Rugal was cursing his bad luck: relations with Bajor
were thawing at exactly the time he could not, on Kotan’s account, risk
contacting his father. The three others discussed it in a lackluster
fashion—Bajor was a long way from their problems—and then Arric asked
Rugal what he thought. Bitterly, Rugal said, “I hope they’ve checked the
small print. Legate Turrel will want the thing signed in blood.”

Nobody replied. In fact, they all went quiet, and they stayed that way
on the journey back into the city. Rugal had to ask if they would
collect him the following day. Erani gave a curt nod, and Tekis drove
off at speed. They did pick him up, but all three had been markedly
cooler ever since that conversation, even Arric.

Penelya laughed at him when he asked her what she thought the problem
might be. “What do you think?” she replied. “You turn up out of the
blue, you go out of your way to make yourself useful, and then you say
something seditious. They think you’re from the Order, you idiot. Nobody
in the whole Union is mad enough to say the kind of things you say. They
think you’re trying to get them to incriminate themselves.”

He couldn’t believe his own stupidity. No wonder they were holding him
at arm’s length. “But why haven’t they stopped taking me along?”

“Why bother? The Order would only send someone else along. It might as
well be you as anyone else. At least they know you.”

Twisted Cardassian logic again—the open secrets that nobody voiced. Life
would be so much easier if they all simply talked to one another. It was
almost as if Cardassians preferred life to be complicated. The best
option, Rugal decided, was to be honest, and to hope his actions spoke
as loudly for him as his words.

This particular evening, the pickings at the market had been poor. They
ran out of food early, leaving a queue of thirty or so disappointed and
fractious people to drift off hungry into the night. Arric, who was an
orderly at Torr’s free hospital, had liberated some drugs that a girl
had asked them to get for her baby. He and Tekis went off in search of
her while Rugal and Erani packed up. A handful of people were hanging
around, no doubt hoping that something else would materialize from the
back of the skimmer. There was some unhappy murmuring as it became clear
that nothing was forthcoming. When Erani went to speak to them, palms
out to show there was nothing left, one of the group, a too-skinny and
frantic-looking adolescent male, elbowed his way to the front. In the
lamplight coming down from the bridge, Rugal saw the glitter of a knife.

Erani saw it too. She dived back to cover, but slipped, caught her
ankle, and swore. Rugal shot forward. He grabbed the boy’s wrist and
twisted it sharply. The boy dropped the knife, and Rugal kicked it in
the direction of the river. There was a soft splash as it went in. Then
Rugal twisted harder, until their would-be assailant was down on his
knees. “Ow! All right! Let go!”

Rugal released his grip, and the boy fell onto his back. “Whatever we
have, we give. Don’t try that again.” He looked at the rest of the
group. “That goes for all of you.”

They were smaller than him, and hungrier, and they hadn’t expected him
to move so quickly. They backed off and dispersed. Rugal went to check
on Erani, leaning against the skimmer and rubbing her ankle. “Are you
all right?”

Her eyes flashed at him in anger. “Who do you think you are? How dare you!”

“Erani—”

“If I need your help, I’ll ask for it,” she spat. “But I don’t. Next
time, back off!”

When she had rubbed her ankle back into shape, they finished packing the
skimmer, then got in and waited in hostile silence for Tekis and Arric
to get back. After a moment or two, Erani said, “Where did you learn to
fight like that?”

What could he say? That eight years as the only Cardassian in a Bajoran
school taught you something about self-defense? That the expensive
preparatory academy he had recently left insisted on basic military
training? He answered honestly but without elaboration. If she wanted to
know more, she could ask. “Bajor.”

“Bajor?” Erani frowned. “You’re not everything you seem, are you, Rugal?”

“I’m not what you think I am.”

“No?” They got no further since at that point, Tekis and Arric returned.
Arric joined Rugal in the back and Tekis got into the driver’s seat.
Erani leaned over to give Tekis a kiss. “Guess what?” she said. “Rugal
learned how to street fight on Bajor.”

“Bajor?” Tekis glanced back at him. “Bet you were busy out there.”

Wonderful. Now they seemed to think he had been some kind of operative
during the Occupation. Rugal shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets
and grasped the earring he always carried around with him. “You’d be
amazed.”



The deathtrap lurched forward. Arric and Tekis fell into conversation,
but Erani was quiet, and Rugal was conscious of her watching him all the
way back into the city. Would she ever trust him? What could he do to
persuade her that he had nothing to do with the Order?

Within a few short weeks, it was no longer a problem. Within a few short
weeks, everything had changed. The unspeakable, the unthinkable
happened. The Obsidian Order fell. And for one brief, terrifying,
exhilarating moment, it looked as if it had taken the old Cardassia with it.



The Pa’Dar household received the news in memorable fashion. Very early
one morning, there was a hammering at the front door. Rugal, woken by
the noise, got his knife from his jacket pocket and hurried downstairs.
Kotan was already down in the entrance hall, bundled up in a luxurious
red robe and trying not to look afraid. He nodded to Rugal, who had
taken up a position on the stairs, and opened the door.

In fell Alon Ghemor. When he saw Kotan he gave a cheerful salute and
then pulled his friend into an embrace. “Get dressed! It’s starting!”

Kotan smoothly disentangled himself. “Alon, I believe you’re drunk.”

“Kotan, I believe you’re right.”

“Is it a good idea for you to be seen here?”

“Doesn’t matter! All over! Where are your shoes, man? Come on, it’s
starting!”

“Alon,” Kotan said with commendable forbearance, “assume I have missed
the briefing. What, exactly, is starting?”

Since nobody was going to be dragged off by thugs with warrants tonight,
Rugal tucked his knife away and went down to join the two men in the
hall. Ghemor explained with occasional lapses into outright glee what
had been happening. Four days earlier, the former head of the Obsidian
Order, Enabran Tain, had launched an attack on Dominion space. His
target was the homeworld of its leaders, the Founders. He had missed.
His fleet had been annihilated and Tain himself was missing, presumed dead.

Naturally, not a whisper of this had made its way onto the state news
broadcasts. The Cardassian people had been blithely going about their
daily business while, a quadrant away, one-third of their government had
been spectacularly imploding. “I don’t believe it,” Kotan said. “Not
until I see that old bastard swinging by the neck from the top of the
Office of Public Order will I believe he’s dead—”

“If he’s not dead, the Dominion has him and that’s dead enough for our
purposes. Kotan,” Ghemor lurched forward unsteadily, “the Order’s
ruined! They’ve broken the terms of the founding settlement by building
this fleet.” /Of course,/ Rugal thought, /the Order isn’t supposed to
have military capability./ “This is what the Council’s been waiting for!”

“Alon, have you gone mad? The military’s going to move into the space,
most likely they’ll factionalize. Are you actually excited at the
prospect of civil war?”

“Central Command doesn’t have the resources! They’re overstretched in
the DMZ and it’s the /police/ keeping order on Prime. The police—they’re
the key. The city constabularies, whatever’s left of the Order’s lower
ranks—if we can get them to take their orders from the Detapa Council,
we’ll be running the show by the end of the week. But we’ve got to move
tonight. The news about the Order’s already starting to leak out.”
Ghemor tugged Kotan’s arm. “Put your clothes on, man! You’re coming with
me!”

“I can’t leave the house, and you’re much too drunk to pull off a coup
d’état. Get yourself into hiding, Alon, and don’t stick your head out
over the parapet again until this has played itself out.”

“Kotan!” Ghemor grabbed him by the shoulders. “This is what we’ve been
waiting for! This is what my uncle has been working toward his whole
life! The moment when the Cardassian people take control of their own
destiny!”

/Or the moment when a small group of politicians took control of it on
their behalf./ Kotan, Rugal saw, was wavering. “I’d go if I were you,”
Rugal said. “You’ll regret it if you don’t. Besides, if the guls do get
organized before the Council does, they’re sure to send a squad over to
eliminate you. Probably better not to be at home.”

Ghemor was glad of this unexpected ally. “Exactly that. Absolutely
right. Very clever, that son of yours.”

Kotan hesitated for another moment or two. Then: “Stay indoors,” he told
Rugal. “Seal the doors and the windows, put the security fields up.
Don’t speak to anyone, including that girl of Khevet’s—I mean it, Rugal,
for her own safety. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow night, I’m not
coming back.” He held out his palm, and Rugal pressed his own against
it. “If that happens,” Kotan said, “there’s money in the safe in my
study. Try to get into the country...” He hesitated again. “Look after
Geleth, please?”

“Kotan! Of course I will!”

“Tell her when she wakes up—” A rare smile curled across Kotan’s face.
“Tell her I’ve gone to form a government.”

“She won’t be impressed.”

“She doesn’t have to be impressed. I’m keeping her informed purely out
of courtesy.” Kotan curled his fingers around Rugal’s hand. “Good luck,”
Rugal said, gripping back. “Try not to get us all killed.”

Kotan laughed and gave him a confident salute. Soon the two men were
gone, heading down into the city in a great armored skimmer. Geleth
received the news with surface indifference, but Rugal caught the steely
glitter of satisfaction in her eyes.



It took four days, the removal of one legate and three guls, and
profligate use of both blackmail and bribery to secure the Detapa
Council’s transition to power. On the fifth day, after the news of
Tain’s disastrous expedition began to leak out, the Detapa Council made
their Declaration of the Transference and Assumption of Powers to the
whole Union.

This was a carefully worded agreement between the Council, the
commissioners of the various city constabularies across Prime, and the
still-smoldering ruins of the Obsidian Order, brought to the table by
Alon Ghemor. In it, the Detapa Council assumed all legislative and
executive power, the constabularies were tasked with keeping the peace
in urban centers, and the rump of the Order—hastily renamed the
Cardassian Intelligence Bureau—took charge of security. The military was
entirely stripped of executive power, although all members of the
Central Command were invited, in polite language not entirely devoid of
threat, to put their names to the Declaration. One by one, the guls fell
into line.



The deal had been struck in time-honored fashion. Even now, several
senior police commissioners were relocating their families to some
lovely houses in Coranum and Paldar, which had lately become vacant. But
the outcome was more than satisfactory. Nobody (except that one legate
and his three attendant guls) was dead. Both the Central Command and the
remnants of the Order had been brought into line. On the personal level,
it had been a good few days for Kotan and his associates. Kotan had been
appointed to the Detapa Council, and took back his post at the Ministry
of Science. Erek Rhemet had been appointed to work with the chief archon
at the Ministry of Justice, reviewing all cases brought by the previous
regime (and bringing a few of his own). Ithas Bamarek became chief
commissioner of the constabularies. Alon Ghemor was running the new
Intelligence Bureau. The last member of the Five—the name given to Meya
Rejal’s closest political allies—was Meya Rejal herself. She became the
chief executor of the Detapa Council, and Cardassia’s new head of state.

Like many around him, Kotan assumed it was only a matter of time before
Tekeny Ghemor was invited back to take over that job. Throughout his
exile, Tekeny had sent regular transmissions to the Cardassian people,
encouraging them to pursue their dream of freedom. The Obsidian Order
had gone to great lengths in their attempts to suppress those messages.
They had still gotten out (Kotan feared that his son, if asked, might
have been able to lay his hands on them), and now they were becoming
freely and widely available. Ghemor’s messages to the people now took on
an expectant tone. He too clearly thought he would soon be home to
attend his own coronation.



It quickly became apparent that Meya was in no hurry to summon him back.
Tekeny, Kotan knew, was too cautious—never mind courteous—to force the
issue by arriving in Cardassian space uninvited. Meya should simply get
it done, Kotan though; be the first to shake hands with Tekeny when he
set foot again on Cardassian soil, proving herself his loyal friend and
most trusted ally. Surely that way everyone would win? As the days and
then the weeks passed, Kotan became uneasy. He took a few soundings from
colleagues, in that uniquely Cardassian way that allowed anyone who
didn’t want to discuss the matter to ignore the subtext of his
questions. Several other members of the Assembly shared his bafflement,
but they were prepared to wait and see. Most of all, they did not want
to risk the new positions to which Meya had appointed them. Kotan
decided he too would wait and see, but when the graffiti started
appearing, he knew this was turning into a serious problem.

Graffiti! In Cardassia City! There it was, in capital letters scarlet as
/mekla,/ plastered the length of the walkway in front of the Assembly
Hall: BRING TEKENY HOME. It was touchingly blunt—Cardassians didn’t have
much experience with freedom of expression—and it was a disaster waiting
to happen. More and more graffiti began to accumulate along the walls
and walkways of the city. And then there was an explosion of opinions,
as if the Cardassian people had suddenly found their voice. Everyone was
talking about what should happen. New broadsheets appeared almost every
day, full of argument and opinion. Messages came from Natima Lang,
calling for elections, and this was picked up at once. The message from
the ground was clear: /We want elections. We want Ghemor./



Meya Rejal’s response was to broadcast to the Union every night, capital
time, making soothing noises about the need to maintain law and order
and the integrity of Cardassia’s borders at this difficult time of
transition. No mention of elections or Ghemor, as if she hoped that by
talking in vague terms about threats to the Union, people would panic
and forget about both. It didn’t work. The old propagandists had been
able to lie as much as they liked and not worry about the consequences.
Meya Rejal was discovering something her predecessors had never had to
bother about: that public opinion was something to be reckoned with. The
talking in the streets went on, the broadsheets multiplied in number,
and every so often, a group of people made some banners and stood
outside the Council Chamber or the Assembly Hall and chanted: /“We want
elections. We want Ghemor.”/ Occasionally, Kotan wondered whether Rugal
was mixed up in any of this. He would have been appalled if he’d known
to what extent.



The night of the Declaration, Rugal went to the usual collection point
outside Torr Central Station and waited for the deathtrap. It didn’t
turn up. As he made his way slowly back to Coranum, he thought that
perhaps the events of the day had kept the others at home. When he
wasn’t collected the following night either, he knew something was up.
He couldn’t find an address for Erani or Tekis, but he tracked Arric
down to a loft in west Torr. When Arric saw Rugal on his step, he tried
to close the door in his face. Rugal shoved his shoulder in the way.
“You don’t have to let me in! I just want to know what’s going on!”

“I’m not going to tell you anything. Not now!”



“Arric, I am not and I never was a member of the Order. I wanted to
help, that was all. I still want to help. Can’t we talk?”

“Talk? You never talked! That was the problem! You turned up from
nowhere and you never said a thing about yourself—”

“If it matters so much, I’ll talk now! My name’s Rugal Pa’Dar. I got
left behind on Bajor and I was brought up by Bajorans. My father is
Kotan Pa’Dar. He’s a member of the Detapa Council. I didn’t tell you
that before because until last week he was under house arrest and I
didn’t want to put you in danger. I don’t understand this place and I
keep on making mistakes. But I only want to help! Everything’s changing
and I want to help!”

From behind Arric, a female voice, tired and slightly irritated, said,
“Oh, let him in, will you? He sounds almost as sincere as Erani and he’s
going to wake the baby.”

Arric opened the door slowly and stepped back. Rugal went past him into
a long, open-plan room with a kitchen at one end and some partitions at
the other. Sitting on a couch by a small viewscreen in a bashed-up case
was a young female. “I’m Serna,” she said. “Keep the noise down, will
you? I’ve only just got Tela down.”

Arric gestured Rugal toward a chair, then sat down next to Serna. “All
right,” he said. “Let’s hear the story again.”

Starting with the ill-fated journey to Deep Space 9, Rugal told them
everything. No more secrets. He finished with what he had said on the
doorstep. “I know you have something to do with the broadsheets and the
transmissions from Lang and everything else that’s going on around here.
I want to help.”

Arric glanced at Serna, who shrugged. He cleared his throat. “You said
your father is on the Detapa Council. So why are you here? Why aren’t
you up in Coranum learning the family trade?”

“I don’t want all that! Look, I have this friend—Penelya—and she gets
stopped on the shuttle by police officers, all because her parents were
killed by the Maquis. That’s not right! And all those people we’ve
helped, Arric, all those people down by the river—it shouldn’t be like
that. Cardassia has enough to go around, so long as everyone is willing
to work hard and to share—and isn’t happy to hide away in Coranum
pretending nothing is wrong. This is Cardassia’s chance—like Bajor had a
chance with the Resistance—to become something better.” He opened out
his palms; this was everything he had to give. “I just think it should
be better.”

Arric and Serna exchanged a look. “All right,” Arric said. “If you
really mean what you said, then come and do some leafleting round Torr
tomorrow night. We’ll be meeting at the tenth bell in the small study
hall at the technical school.” He sighed and shook his head. “Erani’s
going to kill me.”

She didn’t, but she was furious to see Rugal again. Arric, however,
stood his ground. “He wants to help. I don’t think we should stop him if
he wants to help.”

“So he can take all our names back to his father’s friends?”

“They’ll have your names already,” Rugal said. “But they’ve probably got
more important things to worry about right now than you.”

Erani glared at him. “You’re not winning me over.”

“I’m not trying to win you over. I’m trying to help with what you’re doing.”

She let him stay. Throughout the rest of the spring, he went down into
Torr, helping put together their broadsheets, distributing them
tirelessly around the blocks and tenements of Torr, quarreling over
their contents in street-corner /geleta/ houses and taverns. They got
regular messages from Natima Lang—Rugal never quite worked out how these
were getting through, and Erani wasn’t telling—and once there was even
one from Tekeny Ghemor, wishing them well. They distributed these too,
and they kept the message simple and clear. /We want elections. We want
Tekeny Ghemor./

Spring turned to summer. The temperature rose. People became angrier
about the delay. Then someone put a flamethrower to a former Obsidian
Order facility on the north edge of Torr, right where it adjoined the
finance district. The next day, there were two constabulary officers for
every ten people on the streets of Torr, and whenever they came across
someone distributing broadsheets, they took the material away. That
night, another former Order building went up in flames. The next day,
the officers took away both the broadsheets and the people distributing
them. On the third day, there was a sit-down in Torr Central Market to
protest the arrests. The constables broke it up with hounds. After that,
it was chaos. Within a week, there were parts of the western Torr sector
where the constables didn’t dare go during the day. Other parts of the
sector were more contested; there were running battles most nights.

Erani was so ecstatic she even spoke to Rugal unprompted. “This is what
I wanted. Like your Resistance. This is what Cardassia needs. Not
Declarations. Revolution.”

It was the end of Arric’s involvement. He had a mate and a small child,
and he was getting afraid for them. Rugal went by the loft one day. “Get
out of it,” Arric advised. “It’s going to explode soon. And when it
does, and if you’re in the middle of it—don’t count on your father’s
name to save you, Rugal.”



“The servants are getting restless,” Alon Ghemor remarked to Kotan one
evening as they settled down in the private sauna of the Ghemor house.
“And can we blame them?”

“I think there’s still time. If she’ll just back down a little...”

“Did you hear the news from Masad?” Alon said. “Students have been
blocking the walkways in front of the office of the city’s archon.
They’ve not administered any justice in three days. There’s a strike of
transport workers in Lakarian City tomorrow, and I’m hearing rumors of a
general strike...”

“She could ask Tekeny to return as a private citizen first. It will take
the heat off her, buy her a little time...”

Alon sighed. “Someone has to speak to her.”

Kotan wiped at the sweat on his forehead. “I’ll go if you go.”

They made their appointment with Rejal for early the following morning.
When they got to the sunroom by her private office, however, Kotan was
surprised to see that she had convened a full meeting of the Five.
Rhemet was there, Bamarek too—and also, standing at the head of the
table behind Rejal’s chair, resplendent in full uniform, was Skrain
Dukat. “Meya?” Alon said, puzzled. “I thought this was going to be a
private meeting?”

“Unfortunately, events are running away with us.” She gestured to the
two men to sit down. “I have information”—she glanced back briefly at
Dukat—“that the city is facing a very real and serious threat. I’m only
sorry I didn’t hear this from your people, Alon,” she added. “I know
you’re loyal to your uncle, but I didn’t think you would put personal
animosity above the security of the Cardassian state and the safety of
its people.”

“What?” Alon gaped at her. “Meya, what are you talking about?”

She looked down at the padds on her desk rather than at him. “There is
going to be a rally in the Torr sector this evening. Upward of twenty
thousand people. It’s expected to be the signal for riots across twelve
urban centers.”

“What are their demands?” Kotan said, although he thought he already knew.

“Elections. The immediate return of Tekeny Ghemor.” Meya looked at Alon
as if he had wounded her physically. “Alon, I didn’t think you’d let me
walk blindly into something like this.”

“I swear,” Alon said, “that this is the first that either I or the
Bureau has heard of it.”

“Then you’re incompetent,” Dukat cut in. Meya raised her hand to stop him.

“Meya,” Kotan said. “You know what the way out of this is. Address the
whole Union this morning, all channels, no exclusions. Say that you’re
extending an invitation to Tekeny Ghemor to come home.” Dukat took a
step forward. Kotan hurried on. “What purpose does their demonstration
have then? You’ll have forestalled them—”

“They’re still calling for elections,” Dukat pointed out.

“So Meya will have responded to one of their demands, but not the
substantive one. Meya,” Kotan spoke with soft urgency, “this could be
your last chance. This morning—that’s all you’ve got. Get in touch with
Tekeny’s people right now. Come up with a statement that saves face for
both of you. Get him on the next transporter home. And when he arrives,
be the first in line to shake his hand.”

Dukat intervened. “If you do that, you’re backing down to terrorists.
They won’t stop here. Tomorrow there’ll be new demands. First, these
elections, I should think. And then what? The right to assemble? The
right to combine? I’d give Cardassia”—he snapped his fingers—“/that/
long before she’s on her knees.”

Meya was sitting upright in her seat. She had not looked back at Dukat
as he was speaking, and she had not jumped at the snap of his fingers.
“My difficulty,” she said in a neutral voice, “is that I have no real
means of preventing this action. Despite all the good work of Ithas and
his people, the city constabulary is not in control of most of the
western end of Torr. There is very little I can do to stop these people.”

Alon and Kotan looked at each other in disbelief. It was as if Kotan had
not even spoken. “Meya,” Alon said, and she stopped him with one
upraised palm.

“No!” she said. “I will not give in to the threat of violence. That is
not the Cardassia that we want, Alon.”

Dukat put his hands flat on the table and leaned down to speak to her
directly. “You don’t need the constabularies,” he said. “Not when you
can rely on my support.”

There was a long pause. “Meya...” Bamarek said, uneasily.

“I can’t do that under the terms of the Declaration,” Meya said. “No
return to martial law. Policing is entirely within the remit of the
constabularies—”

“So appoint a special police force. Six units from the Third Battalion,
Second Order will secure the Torr sector for you. What are you waiting for?”

“Meya,” Kotan said in horror. “Please!”

She got up from her seat. “We’re done here. Thank you for coming,
gentlemen, and thank you for your advice. Dukat, stay.” She nodded to
the rest of the Five. “For Cardassia,” she said, in dismissal. Kotan
left reeling. The choice had been between Skrain Dukat and Tekeny
Ghemor. How in the name of Tret Akleen had it turned out this way?
Beside him, Alon Ghemor was shaking with anger. “I have done everything
that woman has asked of me! I have gutted the Obsidian Order. I have
purged the Bureau so thoroughly that there is scarcely an intelligence
agency left. And then she has the nerve to accuse me of treachery?”

But Kotan was barely listening. He had to get a message to his son.
Don’t go near Torr tonight.



Rugal found Erani and Tekis in the /geleta/ house nearest the technical
school. He told them what Kotan had said, but Erani wouldn’t listen. “I
swear,” Rugal said, “something bad is going to happen tonight.”

Erani replied with scorn. “You only know this because your father told
you. And you want me to listen to the advice of a member of a Detapa
Council? They’re using you to spread panic among the movement! I don’t
know whether you’re doing it on purpose and to be honest I don’t care.
But I do know what the intention is, and I’m not going to fall for it.”

“It’s not like that! Kotan wouldn’t do that!” Rugal looked helplessly at
Tekis. “Tell her, will you?”

Tekis shrugged. “What makes you think I don’t agree with her?” She
finished her small cup of /gelat,/ and they both got up and began to
head outside. Rugal went after them. “I’m trying to help you! I’m trying
to protect you!”

Erani turned on him. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled herself up
close so that they were face-to-face. “I told you once already,” she
hissed. “I don’t need your help. Now back off!”

“Sweetheart,” Tekis said, pulling her away. “It’s not worth it. Leave
it. Rugal,” she said to him, “I’m sure you mean well. But you should go
now. You’re not part of this. Go back to Coranum and leave us alone.”

Rugal watched helplessly as they went off down the walkway. It was late
afternoon. Hardly any time left. But he couldn’t go back and leave them
to their fate.

He went to see Arric and Serna. They were frightened too; they did not
believe a rally this size was going to pass unchecked. The three of them
sat with the lights dimmed in front of the loft’s main window, keeping
watch over the west side of Torr. A little before eighth bell, crowds of
people began to assemble outside the technical school. They were going
to walk the length of Torr’s main street and assemble in the Central
Market to listen to speakers call for elections. That would go on until
eleventh bell, when they would disperse, back to their homes or to the
/geleta/ houses to carry on the conversation.

As the eighth bell sounded, Dukat’s special police units entered Torr.
Like all urban centers on Cardassia, the sector built to house the
service grades had only two exits. The special units rolled their
armored vehicles into place, and then sealed off the exits behind them.
Shortly before a third after eight, they stopped the rally and ordered
those assembled to disperse. The order was rejected. The people of Torr
asked to be allowed to pass and hold their meeting. The special units
gave the warning twice more, and each time it was rejected. At a third
after eight exactly, the units opened fire.

By the ninth bell, Rugal couldn’t bear it any longer. Leaving Arric and
Serna to lock their door behind him, he went down into the fray. It was
only two walkways from their tenement building to the /geleta/ house
where he had been that morning, but it took him nearly until the next
bell, ducking between door fronts and keeping to the shadows.

As he had hoped, Erani and Tekis had taken cover there, but Tekis had
been shot in the arm. Erani had bound it, but Tekis was sitting with her
head in her hands. Rugal knelt down in front of her. “Can you walk? You
can’t stay here. We’ve got to go.”

“Go where?” Erani said bitterly. “They’ve sealed off Torr.”

“I think I can get you out,” Rugal said.

“I keep telling you I don’t want your help!” Erani shot back. Tekis
looked up. She was white-faced and scared. “Sweetheart, they’ll be
looking for us. They won’t stop until they find us.”

“I’m sure I can get you out of Torr,” Rugal said. “It’s not about help,
Erani. It’s about your options. I don’t think you want to go to a labor
camp, and I don’t think you want to see Tekis in one. I’ll get you out
of Torr, and then you’re on your own. Whatever network Lang’s operating,
however you’ve been getting people offworld to her, now’s the time to
take advantage of it yourselves.”

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you—”

“Erani, please!” Tekis said.

Outside, sirens were wailing; there was screaming and disruptor fire,
and the sky was ablaze. Inside, it was very quiet. Only the three of
them, in the dark. Erani and Tekis sat hand in hand, with their
foreheads leaning against each other. “All right,” Erani said at last,
and grudgingly. “We’ll go with you. But no farther than the outskirts of
Torr.”

They went by back streets and walkways, trying to keep to the dark and
out of sight. By the eleventh bell, they got to the eastern checkpoint.
“What’s your plan?” Erani whispered.

Rugal swallowed. “Follow me. Don’t say anything. Try to look rich and
dazed.”

He made them dump their identity rods, but he kept his own. He led them
right up to the checkpoint. Six armed officers trained their disruptors
on them. Rugal waved his hands in the air. “Help!” he shouted. “Help! My
name’s Pa’Dar! I’m the councilor’s son!”

The officers got them facedown on the ground. When ordered, Rugal
offered his rod. Once his identity was confirmed, he tried to explain
away his two companions. “These are my friends Lyset and Maris Khevet.
We were down in the sector from Coranum meeting friends from the
university for dinner. Then all this shooting started. Lyset got hit.
They’ve both lost their identity rods. We just want to go home!”

There was some discussion among the officers and then, to Rugal’s frank
astonishment, the barrier was lifted and they were let through. Nobody,
it seemed, wanted to take the chance of locking up a councilor’s son. As
they walked past the barrier and out onto the perimeter road, Erani
hissed in his ear, “/That/ was your plan?”

“I’m sorry it worked!”

“So you should be!”

They walked on for some time along the perimeter road, the red glare of
Torr to the left, the empty expanse beyond the city limits to the right.
Eventually, they left even Torr behind and began to walk around the edge
of the Munda’ar sector. Its warehouses were hardly lit at this time of
day, and they were plunged into almost total darkness. Night sounds were
heightened: animal cries, the whir of aerial patrols passing overhead.
It was strange, Rugal thought; they were still so close to the city, and
yet the wilderness was only a step away.

Not long after the twelfth bell sounded across the city, they came to a
fork in the road. Erani looked down the right-hand turn, which led away
from the city and into open country. “This is where you should leave
us,” she said. She jerked her thumb in the other direction. “That’s the
quickest route back to Coranum.”

The three of them stared at one another for a few moments. “Good-bye,”
Rugal said. He didn’t offer to press palms. “Good luck. I wish we could
have been friends.”

“With your father?” Erani laughed. “We could never be friends.” She put
her arm around Tekis and led her off into the night. Rugal walked back
to Coranum, where nobody would be looking for radicals. He never saw
either of them again. Whether they made it through alive, when so many
didn’t, he never discovered.



The battle went on through the next day and into the next evening. By
sixth bell of the second day, the whole of Torr was back under
government control. After that, there was a curfew and spot checks on
all shuttles heading in and out of the sector. Rugal went a few times to
see Arric and Serna, but on the whole, it was simpler to stay up in
Coranum. With no work to do, and too much time on his hands, Rugal
quickly became homesick. One night, while he was sitting out in the
stone garden desultorily watching a violently hued sunset, Kotan came
out to join him. He looked excited, nervous too. “I think,” Kotan said,
“that it’s probably safe enough to get a message through to Bajor.”

Rugal’s spirits lifted at once. “If you’re sure it’s safe, then I’d like
to try.”

“I also thought that now that I’m able to travel again, we might
consider applying to leave Cardassia to meet your adopted father. Bajor
would be out of the question,” Kotan said very quickly, “but I can see
no reason why neutral territory would not be acceptable. Deep Space 9,
perhaps.”

“I thought the borders were closed,” Rugal said cautiously.

“A temporary measure. As soon as law and order’s fully restored, travel
in and out of Cardassian space will become as easy as it’s ever been.
Easier, I should think. The Council’s committed to showing our neighbors
that we are a new nation, that we can participate in the affairs of the
quadrant—and not solely as aggressors. A less hostile and more
responsive Cardassia.”

/Unless you’re a Cardassian citizen who wants to express disagreement/.
Rugal wondered how Kotan could say these things, whether he really
believed them. A position on the Council covered a multitude of sins, it
seemed, but if it meant that he could finally speak to Migdal and find
out how he had been coping since Etra’s death, Rugal would have gladly
spouted any number of platitudes himself.

He thought it would be easier than ever to get through to Migdal. It
wasn’t. The problem was not technical, nor did it have anything to do
with the fear of surveillance that had constrained them in the past.
They simply couldn’t find him. There was no information about him at the
most recent address that Rugal had, but that had been months ago. He
tried older addresses: the first place they had rented after moving to
Ashalla, and eventually even older ones, in the various towns where they
had been before trying the capital. But he could not find Proka Migdal,
retired policeman and widower.

How could someone disappear? Bajor was not Cardassia. The sparse and
heavily edited news that Rugal had gathered from home hinted at a place
in growth, prospering, full of new confidence and energy. Could one old
man simply disappear?

Rugal gave up trying to find an address for someone called Proka Migdal,
and began racking his brains to think of family friends who might still
be in contact. They had moved so often while he had lived with
them—because he had lived with them—that it was difficult to know whom
he should approach. He tried various people in various places, but none
had any news of the old man. At last, he found someone with news—not a
friend of Migdal’s, but the son of a friend, Darrah Bajin.

Bajin was a middle-aged man with a kindly expression currently tempered
with concern. /“I’m so glad to hear from you, Rugal. We had no idea how
to get in touch, no idea whether it was even possible.”/

“Is he there? Is he all right?”

Rugal realized later that he had been assuming that Migdal was ill, in
the hospital, or in care somewhere. He understood later that he had been
assuming his story was heading toward its happy ending. He had been
taken away to a bad place where he had suffered, and now he should be
allowed to go home. Surely he had earned it? But Rugal had a long way to
go yet, before coming home.

/“I’m afraid he died six weeks ago, Rugal,”/ Bajin said. /“It wasn’t
painful, not at all, he was just very old. And he missed Etra. We all
took turns sitting by him in the hospital, and we’ve all been praying
for him ever since. He talked about you all the time, you know.”/

Rugal got through the rest of the conversation on automatic, thanking
Bajin for looking after his father, for all his kindness. He should have
been there, he kept on thinking; and instead he had been here, playing
at being a radical. Cardassia had tricked him into caring about its
troubles, when he should have been keeping his mind set on Bajor. When
he finished talking to Bajin, he sat for a while by the blank screen.
There was a quiet tap at the door. Kotan entered. His hopeful expression
rapidly disappeared.

“It’s not good news, is it?”

Kotan: the chain that had dragged him unwillingly to Cardassia, the
chain that had kept him here. Now there was no escape. “That depends. My
father’s dead, which means there’s nobody on Bajor working to get me
back. Which I suppose you think is good news.”

“My dearest child, don’t say such things!”

“And don’t you dare say anything about love. It was never about love. It
was about possession. I was /your/ child, /your/ son. You wanted me back
because you thought I belonged to you. I don’t belong to anyone. I
shouldn’t be here, and I should never have been here. He was an old man,
and he didn’t have his son with him when he died.”

“Rugal, I am so sorry—”



Every time they had had this quarrel in the past, Rugal thought, he had
been too emotional: angry, tearful, upset. He had been a child. Now he
felt clearer in his mind than he had ever done. Kotan—Cardassia—had
fooled him, promising change, promising a new way of life. It had all
been lies. “I’ll never forgive you for this,” he told Kotan. “Never.”

He left the room, went upstairs, and packed. Not much: a few clothes,
his earring, Lang’s book, and the picture of Arys that concealed it. He
contacted Arric and was offered the couch. Then he went to see Penelya.

“Never is a long time, Rugal,” she said, after he told her what had
happened.

He held her to him as if she was the most precious thing in the world.
“It isn’t long enough.” He would get back somehow, he swore. He would
find his own way back to Bajor, without Kotan’s aid, or his blood money.
But he could not help thinking he might have left it too late.









*PART TWO **

*A LONG WAY FROM HOME (2372–2375)**





“How many sacrifices will my people be asked to make?”

*—*Legate Damar











*Five*





Throughout that first summer of civilian rule, dust and rumors shifted
uneasily around Cardassia. Broadcasts remained restricted, and in the
absence of anything official, people made their own news. Stories
coalesced, gathered pace, spread out—and then shifted again, changed
shape. First you heard it whispered that the leaders of the Torr march
had been making speeches on the steps of the new Information Bureau.
Next everyone knew this was a lie—their families had identified their
bodies in Maklar Prison. The next tale to go around was about a
gathering of the Oralian Way in a warehouse on the southwest edge of the
Munda’ar sector. Three thousand city dwellers—and a further thousand or
so from the suburbs—turned up at what everyone knew was the right hour
on the right day. Some had come to pray, some to heckle, most to gawp.
Officers from the city constabulary—fifty-two twitchy and underpaid
conscripts from provincial towns and colony worlds—somehow managed to
disperse the crowd without a shot being fired. The whole Union, from
cosmopolitan capital to desert township to border outpost, let out a
sigh of relief. A student strike in Culat ended less well, with
thirty-four arrests and three fatalities, but the news was successfully
suppressed, and nobody but the most cynical believed that story. Many of
the tales were downright outrageous: a man standing at the foot of the
Tozhat Memorial had suddenly turned into a great white bird and then
flown up to the top of the monument, screeching Meya Rejal’s name three
times and finishing with a curse. Some people declared it was
Changelings, here, at the heart of Cardassia Prime; others said that was
rubbish. The problem was that nobody knew for sure, and if the
government knew, it wasn’t telling.

In all this confusion, there was one thing that everyone understood:
something had changed in Cardassia when the civilian government opened
fire upon the assembled people of the city. Even to people who were used
to surveillance and disappearances and the quiet persistent knock on the
door in the middle of the night, this was something new. In the noisy
taverns and /geleta/ houses of Torr, around the staid, well-polished
dining tables of Paldar, sometimes even in the chill grand salons of
Coranum itself, it could be heard—shouted or mooted or implied—that this
time the government had gone too far. If the military had once rounded
up dissidents whom Order agents interrogated, that had been expected,
almost accepted. But this was meant to be the people’s government.
Everything was meant to be different, now.

It was a hot dusty summer, even by the standards of Cardassia Prime. The
water ration in urban areas was cut. The capital crackled with
suppressed energy and anger, and the provincial cities followed suit. In
their temperature-modulated offices in Tarlak, Meya Rejal and the Detapa
Council watched anxiously, hoping nothing else would happen before
winter came to cool Cardassia City and the rest of the Union with it.

Kotan knew he should be as troubled as his colleagues, but his sympathy
for their plight had ebbed considerably since Meya had picked Skrain
Dukat over Tekeny Ghemor. Besides, he had other things on his mind.
Geleth had embraced the new water ration like a youth movement’s newest
and keenest recruit. Now she was sick.

Kotan tried again and again to make her change her mind. “I’m a Council
member, Mother. My family and I are entitled to half as much water
again—” But Geleth, regal and feverish on the couch in her somber
sitting room, would not bend. “If what the government—/your/
government—needs is restraint, than that is what it shall get. We all
have to make sacrifices, Kotan. I sincerely hope you are not taking extra.”

Matters came to a head one evening, when he found her crumpled on the
floor of her sitting room. She had slipped and fallen, and had been too
weak to get back to her feet. As he helped her to the bed, she
whispered, “The boy. I want to see the boy.”

Kotan knew from Alon that Rugal was working in one of the free hospitals
near the river, and living with friends in the southwest of Torr. He
sent a few messages, explaining that Geleth was ill and had been asking
for him. For almost a week he heard nothing, and then there was a
grudging reply: /I’ll come./ He had Penelya to thank for this again, if
he’d known.

Face-to-face again, father and son eyed each other warily. Rugal looked
older, Kotan thought, certainly a man now, and he looked thinner... No,
that was not quite it. He looked sparser.



Rugal could still see nothing but the enemy. He was shocked, however, at
the change in Geleth. She had become frail; the bones and ridges of her
face stood out like accusations. Kotan told him, “I’m afraid she’s going
to kill herself over this.”

“Perhaps this is way she wants to go,” Rugal said. “Doing her patriotic
duty.” He had been taking half of his ration down to the wharves. People
had started drinking the river water and he was afraid there was going
to be an outbreak of something soon. Wasn’t public health Kotan’s
responsibility?

Rugal returned to visit Geleth as often as his work in the hospital and
along the river allowed. Sometimes he would come straight from his
shift, falling asleep on the long shuttle journey out to Coranum. Geleth
sneered at his work overalls, telling him he might as well be lowborn.
He replied that it was more useful than sitting on a couch in the dark.
They kept this game up for several visits, but when Geleth abandoned
insults and began to talk about her childhood in Anaret province, Rugal
knew she had made the decision to die.

When Geleth had been young, before reaching the age of emergence, Anaret
had been stricken by drought. The crops failed, the twin lakes shrank,
and great billowing dust storms swept across the plains. Times were hard
in the cities too, and nobody could get permission to relocate. In her
district, Geleth said, all the youth swore to take less of the water and
do more of the work. After four years of scraping a living out of
nothing, the central government stopped wrangling over the details of
the relief package, and built a pipe from the coast.

“It was far too late for the sick and the old,” Geleth said. “We’d
stopped their water during the second summer.”



So cruel, and yet there was a crazed kind of bravery about it that was
uniquely Cardassian: something to do with extreme conditions, an
unquenchable desire to survive, and a callous disregard for individual
life. That last had allowed great sacrifices on behalf of the
collective, but had also permitted atrocities toward anyone perceived as
surplus. Hunger, thirst, privation—Rugal understood better now how this
had been the norm for many on Cardassia, and still was for some. It was
no surprise that when they had laid eyes on the paradise of Bajor, they
had grabbed hold and gorged themselves sick. What would happen, he
wondered, if the whole planet went the way of Anaret, or the whole
Union? Its structures were already strained, its foundations rotting.
How many would be left to die? Would there be any pity to spare?



Late one unforgiving evening near the end of summer, Kotan was summoned
to a special meeting of the Five. He was surprised by the invitation;
Meya had barely called on him for advice since he had pressed for the
return of Tekeny Ghemor. He hoped it was a sign; perhaps Meya was trying
to move beyond the partisan politics that had led to the massacre in
Torr, and show that she did not hold grudges. Perhaps, with hard work
and goodwill, Cardassia could still embark upon a new era.

The usual suspects had gathered in Meya’s private office. Rhemet,
Bamarek, Alon Ghemor—all familiar from years of country house gatherings
during which they had, on reflection, entirely failed to prepare to
govern the Union. Kotan knew that Meya often drafted in others to help
the Five—military advisers, for example, or scientific experts. Cases of
Sethik’s disease were on the rise along the southern coast of the main
continent, and he assumed that it was in this capacity that he had been
asked to come along this evening. This assumption changed as soon as
Skrain Dukat strode into the room. Unusually, Dukat was not swaggering.
In fact, he looked as fraught as a student radical up before the
district archon.

“Skrain,” Kotan said amiably as they took adjacent seats. “You’re
looking tense. Are the guls giving you a hard time? Or have you simply
gone a few days without killing anyone?”

Dukat’s lip curled, but he managed no reply before Meya Rejal called the
meeting to order. “Thank you all for coming out this evening. We have a
problem.” She pressed one finger against the ridge above her left eye
and kept it there, as if to relieve some inner pressure. “Dukat, tell
them what you’ve learned.”

Dukat rose splendidly to his feet. /Give the posturing monster his due,/
Kotan thought, /he certainly knows how to play to the gallery./ “It is
my unfortunate responsibility,” Dukat said, “to inform you of the
intelligence that has come my way this evening. A Klingon fleet is
heading toward Cardassian space. It will pass our borders within thirty
metrics and, if unopposed, is due to attack Prime within three days.”

There was a brief stunned silence. Alon Ghemor was the first at the
table to gather his wits. “That’s impossible. We haven’t heard a whisper
of this at the Bureau.”

Dukat smiled nastily. “The Bureau is not what the Order was.”

Ghemor ignored the bait. “What’s your source?”

“You won’t like it if I tell you.”

“No, but I might be able to shed some light on its reliability—”



“It’s Garak.” Dukat pushed the two syllables out, as if they sat
unpleasantly in his mouth. Catching Ghemor’s startled reaction, Dukat
eked out a thin smile. “I said you wouldn’t like it. But what is more
significant here”—he turned to address the wider group—“is Garak’s own
source. Starfleet.”

The ramifications of this news suddenly impacted upon the room.
Everybody started talking at once: /Is this true? How do we know it’s
true? If it’s true, how long till they get here?/ And, perhaps asked
most: /Why/? Kotan, familiar with Rejal’s working methods, knew that she
was giving them a chance to let off steam, but that soon she would want
someone to ask a more serious question to bring order to the discussion.
He caught her eye and she nodded. “All of you!” Rejal raised her voice
above the melee. “Stop panicking and start thinking. Kotan, you have a
question?”

“Yes, I do. Could somebody tell me exactly who this Garak is? And why
exactly we should trust him?”

Ghemor and Dukat exchanged looks. Ghemor took on the unhappy task of
explaining. “He’s a former Order operative. He was a close associate of
Tain. As to trusting him... speaking generally, I’d say no, but if it
comes to defense of the homeworld, and if Starfleet really is his
source...” Alon sighed. “Then I’d have to say, absolutely.”

“I agree that we can rely on Garak’s information,” Dukat said. “And you
cannot begin to imagine how much I dislike saying that.”

A more considered but still deeply troubled silence descended upon the
room. “But this is incredible!” Rhemet said. “What possible reason could
the Empire have to attack us?”

Dukat took a pace or two around the room until he was standing behind
Rejal’s chair. Kotan watched as Meya put her hands flat on the table and
gritted her teeth. Dukat sneered down at them all. “That’s very simple,”
he said. “They think you’re all Changelings. How else could half a dozen
untried civilians have toppled the mighty Central Command? I have to say
it’s a persuasive analysis.”

All around the room, shoulder ridges quivered in rage. Rhemet said, with
new venom, “If this Garak was one of Tain’s men, how do we know this
isn’t a rearguard action by the Order? Some scheme by whatever’s left of
it to claw back a degree of power?”

“The Order’s dead,” Alon replied flatly. He had gone very still. Kotan’s
heart went out to his friend. Only the most fanatical Order agent could
have enjoyed purging their former colleagues, and Alon was a deal maker,
not a zealot.

“Alon, forgive me,” Rhemet said, “but we all know you were one of them—”

“Believe me, that particular cancer has been cut from the body politic.
That’s the task Meya gave me when she appointed me to the Bureau. That’s
what I’ve done.”

“It could still be a feint—”

Dukat finally lost patience. “Believe whatever you want. Believe it
right up to the moment that fifty Klingon birds-of-prey scream down on
the Council chamber and blast you to pieces. They’re coming. That’s a
fact. Do you want to talk about it further, or do you want to do
something about it?” He leaned down over Meya’s shoulder, his face close
to hers. “What’s it to be, Chief Executor? Will you restore the military
to full powers?”

“Gul Dukat, when I took office, I promised the Cardassian people I would
limit the power of the military. I put a resolution to that effect
before the Detapa Council, and the Council agreed on it. Therefore, the
Council would need to debate any restoration of powers.”

Dukat reacted with scorn. This plainly made no sense to him. “You’ve
already let us take up arms against our own citizens, and you won’t give
us free rein against Klingons?”

“No!” Meya said quickly, holding up her hand. “That was not a military
operation. I drafted those units as special police—”

“This is sophistry!” Dukat slammed his hand against the table. As if
jerked into life by this, red lights on the console next to Meya’s right
hand began to flash. Kotan saw that her hands were trembling as she
reached out to view the communications. She read for a moment, and then
turned to her colleagues. “Information from our listening posts along
the border. They at least are in no doubt about the fleet’s existence.
More conservative estimates now put their arrival on Prime around
sunrise, capital time, the day after tomorrow.”

Dukat strode toward the door. “We’re done here. It’s time to end this
nonsense. We need to be able to act without constraint—”

“Meya,” Bamarek said, “if you do that, you may as well resign. Whatever
political capital you have left comes from your commitment to rolling
back Central Command. If you’re going to hand back the power you’ve
taken, you’ll be left with no credibility—”

“Unfortunately,” Alon said, “Meya’s credibility as leader of the
Cardassian Union does depend upon there still being a Union left for her
to lead. Meya, it was a good policy, it’s still a good policy. But we
have a war on our hands. We didn’t ask for it, but it’s happening. We
need to be able to respond.”



“Meya,” Rhemet said urgently, “this is exactly what I was talking about
before. The old regime, the Central Command, this is what they’ve been
waiting for, the chance to take over again—”

“A moment ago it was the Order you were complaining about,” Dukat said.
“Now it’s the military. You’re a fool.”

That stung Bamarek. “The Order, the Central Command? What’s the
difference? Meya, don’t fall for this! You’re the head of the
government. They have to obey you!”

“By law, yes.” Meya glanced back at Dukat. “But would they in fact?”

Kotan looked at her with deep sympathy. It was an impossible situation.
Would Central Command refuse to take orders from her? Could she take
that risk? Did she have enough political support left? He doubted it.
“Executor,” Dukat said, “let us do what we’re good at. Let us act.”

“I second that,” Ghemor said. He got up from his chair, waiting to be
able to get on with handling the crisis.

“Kotan?” Meya said, and he understood now why he had been asked to
attend this meeting. She trusted him. By opposing her and risking the
loss of his position, he had somehow earned her confidence. He was sorry
for her. Tekeny Ghemor, a former legate, could have pulled the military
in his wake, but Tekeny would not have needed to set himself up in
opposition to the Central Command in the first place. “What else can you
do, Meya?” Kotan said. “Nobody could possibly have predicted this. No
one will blame you for changing your mind. But they’ll certainly blame
you if you hesitate and lives are lost as a result.”



She nodded. Again, Kotan felt pity for her. Did it always have to end in
defeat? Perhaps it was inevitable. If life was a battleground, all you
could ever be was a victim or a victor.

“Very well,” Rejal said. “Using my authority under the Declaration, I
hereby impose a state of emergency and empower the Central Command to
pull whatever miracle it can out of its collective ass.” She waved one
finger down, like a conjuror performing a trick. “There. Cardassia
returns, in part, to military rule. Don’t get too excited, Dukat,” she
called after him, as he swung out the door. “This will be reviewed by
the Council at the end of the week.”

Dukat halted in the doorway. “Ah yes. The Council. I’m afraid I cannot
guarantee its safety on Cardassia Prime. I propose therefore to evacuate
its members to a place of greater safety. Perhaps Deep Space 9? I
believe I can prevail upon the commander there to offer you sanctuary.”

Meya put her head in her hands. Rhemet said, “Abandon Prime? We couldn’t
possibly do that! We might as well not bother coming back.”

“By all means remain,” Dukat said. “I, however, shall be taking a ship
away from Prime at oh two hundred. Any member of the Detapa Council that
wants to be on board is welcome. The rest can take their chances with
the Klingons.”

The group split up in focused and somber mood. Kotan, falling into step
beside Alon Ghemor, reflected on something Rhemet had said. Dukat,
Ghemor, himself—it had taken the three of them to persuade Meya to make
this decision. The military, the Order, the Council: old Cardassia, once
again. They had fallen back into their parts as if they had never
stopped playing them, as countless generations had done before.

“A miracle,” Ghemor muttered. “I think it’s going to take one. You
should get that boy of yours praying to his Prophets.”

“I don’t think he believes in them. Besides, do you think Bajoran gods
are likely to come to the aid of Cardassia?”

“Any god will do right now. True, false, friendly, hostile—I’m open for
business.”

It was not a bad philosophy. For himself, however, Kotan preferred to
put his faith in phasers.



“One day you might be glad this happened,” Geleth said. She was now too
weak to sit up, and was confined to bed. “Nothing like a war to bring
the great unwashed out behind their government. One great Union, bound
together in a single purpose by threat and loss. And nobody wants to
seem a traitor, do they? Except your son...” She sighed, and it seemed
to Rugal that she expelled a little more life as she did so. “When do
you leave Prime?”

“I don’t,” Kotan said bluntly.

Geleth’s fingers twitched on the coverlet. “Not the best time to
discover your sacrificial side.”

“Mother, I can’t leave you behind.”

“You’re an idiot,” she replied.

“All right, if you prefer it this way—I don’t want to be indebted to Dukat.”

“You’re an outmaneuvered idiot.”

Kotan picked up her hand. Geleth closed her eyes. Rugal, standing behind
Kotan’s chair, leaned down to whisper, “Go. I’ll stay with her.”



Kotan rubbed his eyes. “I could certainly do with some sleep.”

“I mean, you should leave with the rest of the Council. There’s still
time. I’ll stay.”

Carefully, Kotan rested his mother’s hand upon the bed. He nodded to
Rugal to follow him out into the corridor. “I can’t go.”

“You certainly can’t stay.”

“I can’t leave her! She has to have family with her when she goes.”

“I’m family,” Rugal said. “Or so you keep on insisting.”

Kotan shook his head. “It’s out of the question. You’re not old enough—”

“I’m nearly nineteen.”

“It wouldn’t be safe.”

“Kotan,” Rugal said gently. “I’ve been Cardassian on Bajor and Bajoran
on Cardassia. Do you honestly think I can’t look after myself?”

“Whether you like it or not, you’re the son of a prominent politician.
If the Klingons take Prime, and you’re here, you’ll be an obvious target—”

“I’ve been a target one way or another for most of my life!”

“This is entirely different. They’ll take you hostage. Capture is
dishonorable. You won’t be treated well.”

“I doubt I will. But if you’re still here...” Rugal fumbled around for
inspiration. “If you’re here, they’ll probably kill you instead of
imprisoning you, and if I’m standing next to you at the time—which I
would be—then they’d probably kill me too. So, altogether, it’s much
better for me if you go because that way you actually increase my
chances of survival.” He paused for breath. “/If/ the Klingons take
Prime.” The “if” was ironic. Even the state news broadcasters were
currently employing the ironic “if.”

“There are rituals to perform,” Kotan said faintly. “You don’t know
anything about them. She has to have it all done properly.”

“Penelya will know what to do. I’ll ask her to come. She’ll come. We’ll
do it all perfectly. You can trust us, Kotan.” Rugal gave him a
wide-eyed look that, unbeknownst to him, irresistibly increased his
resemblance to Arys.

Kotan muttered something inaudible and probably profane. “All right!
I’ll abandon my elderly mother to the care of two adolescents and flee
Cardassia Prime. Happy?”

Hardly, but at least Kotan was soon on his way to safety. Penelya
arrived not long afterward, shortly before the curfew came into force.
She hurried inside; they locked the big front doors behind her and put
up all the force shields. “It’s strange outside,” she said. “The whole
city has gone silent. Except for the patrols.”

The army back on the streets? That was the end for Rejal’s government,
surely? What would take its place?

“I’m sure everyone feels safer now.”

“Apart from the invading fleet hurtling toward us, you mean? Yes, I’m
sure everyone’s quite relaxed. How’s your grandmother?”

Rugal sighed. “Difficult to say. She isn’t awake very much, although
when she is, she’s completely lucid. She stopped eating yesterday, and
she’s only taking a little water. I’m glad Kotan isn’t here any longer.
It was tearing him in half.” Catching her expression, he said crossly,
“I’m not completely heartless! I can’t sit and watch someone watch his
mother die and not feel some sympathy!”



She took his hand. “Shall we go and see how she is? We probably
shouldn’t leave her alone for too long.”

“All right. Hold your breath. It’s like a flower show in there.”

They went into the bedroom, dimly lit, and heavily scented from the huge
floral displays that had been arriving over the previous weeks. Even in
these uncertain times, the Cardassian aristocracy had observed all the
proper forms: hardly a day had gone past without the delivery of yet
another lavish and richly perfumed bouquet from a neighbor or colleague
or junior official eager to commend himself to the councillor. Penelya
coughed slightly. Rugal shifted a chair round to the bed for her, then
sat down opposite. Disturbed by the sound of them, the old woman flicked
open her eyes. “Has he gone?”

“Kotan?”

“Who else, idiot boy?” she rasped. “The gardener?”

“You needn’t worry—they’ve both gone.”

“Good. Kotan mustn’t die.” She eyed Rugal. “You’re dispensable.”

“Thank you, Grandmother.”

“He can still find someone else, marry her, have more children. It would
do him good to stop fretting over that girl. It would put you in
perspective too. A man should have more than one child. Children die so
easily, it makes no sense to pin all your hopes on one.” She aimed one
malevolent finger at him. “Look what happens if you do.”

“/You/ only have one child.”

Geleth laughed like rusting metal. “So I do! There’s a reason for that.”
To Rugal’s alarm, she began trying to pull herself up. Penelya moved
quickly to help, steadying her, propping pillows behind her. “Are you
the Khevet girl?”



“Yes, ma’am. I’m his niece.”

Geleth sank back into the pillows and rolled her eyes up toward the
ceiling. “What has our great race come to when the best that can attend
your death bed is a /skrit/ and a boy who believes he’s Bajoran? Never
mind, it will have to do. Rugal, get rid of the girl. I want to talk to
you.”

Penelya stood up immediately and headed for the door. Rugal hurried
after her. “What’s going on?”

“It’s called /shri-tal,/” Penelya explained quietly. “The last thing any
of us do. She’s going to tell you all her secrets.”

“/Kosst,/ Pen, I don’t want her secrets! Who knows what she’s done in
her time?”

Penelya squeezed his hand. “I can’t stay for this, I’m sorry. It would
only distress her. But I’ll be right outside. Shout if you need me.” She
glanced back at the bed. “I don’t think she’s got long.” She kissed him
quickly on the cheek and then left, shutting them in behind her. Rugal
stood for a moment with his hands clenched and then went back to the
bedside. Geleth opened her eyes. “Has the /skrit/ gone?”

It was street slang for someone without parents—about as vile a word as
Rugal had heard in two cultures with half of century of grudge between
them. “If you call her that again you can die by yourself.”

Geleth made a dry sound, probably laughter. “Very well. Has your girl gone?”

“Penelya is waiting outside, yes.”

“Check the room.”

“What?”

“How long have you lived here now? You’re still no cleverer than a
Bajoran. Surveillance, you little fool. I’m not spilling a single secret
if there’s the slightest chance anyone’s listening.”

Stubborn and skeletal, she directed his sweep of the room, sending him
to corners he had only ever half glimpsed. “I thought Kotan would never
go,” she complained as he went around. “I wasn’t sure how much longer I
could last. There he sat, holding my hand, waiting for me to start, and
all I could think was, ‘When will you leave so I can talk to Rugal?’
Well, he’s gone now, so we’d better get this done and I can finish with
this filthy business of dying. They didn’t say it would hurt so much—no,
they don’t mention that when they talk about glory! But most things have
hurt, over the years. You’ll discover that yourself one day. Don’t pull
that face! For all your talk of Bajor, I bet you’ve never been thirsty
before this year, Rugal, not really thirsty. You have no idea what
that’s like.” She gestured at his chair with a bleached hand. “Sit down.
Don’t speak. Listen. I think even you can manage that without causing
trouble.”

Silently, Rugal took the place she had appointed for him. Geleth licked
cracked lips. “You seemed to be paying attention when I told you about
my childhood in Anaret.”

Rugal nodded.

“Good. Now, you also need to know that I wasn’t born there. That’s very
important. It’s not simply a matter of pride—although who in their right
mind would want to come from such a hellhole? No, I was born here, in
Coranum. My parents had a house farther up the hill, not far from where
your parasite of a girlfriend lives now—don’t glare, it’s only the
truth! But our house, now... Oh, it was even more beautiful than her
uncle’s! Plenty of room, plenty of money, plenty of everything, as it
should be. My parents, myself, my younger brother, and eighteen staff.
My father was an important man, he owned several transportation
companies, and food replication plants throughout the southern
hemisphere. So how did we end up starving in Anaret? That was thanks to
a man called Ghret Pa’Dar.”

She watched dryly as comprehension dawned on Rugal’s face. “But that’s—!”

“Kotan’s grandfather, yes. So you have learnt some family history. Good.
Never did anyone any harm on Cardassia Prime. All the best feuds are
handed down. Ghret Pa’Dar was Kotan’s grandfather—your
great-grandfather. He and my father were in business together. He was
the cause of my father’s ruin.”

Something cold started snaking up through Rugal’s stomach. It must have
shown on his face; Geleth began to smile. “Now, let me see if I can get
this straight...”

“I’m sure you won’t miss a thing, Geleth.”

“Well, it was all a very long time ago, and I was very young, and these
things are usually complicated...” She hesitated, frowned, as if a new
thought had crossed her mind. “I say that, but it all comes down in the
end to need. Needing to have more than anyone else. Perhaps now you’ve
seen one of our droughts, you understand why. Gather all you can to you,
because as sure as the hot sun rises in the morning, the rain will stop
and the food will run out. Gather up everything you can, from wherever
you can. How else can you be certain to survive?”

/You could share,/ Rugal thought, but he chose not to argue. She was too
frail, and besides, he wanted to hear what had happened.

“So. My father and Ghret Pa’Dar met as young men at the Institute of
Commercial Endeavor. Pa’Dar was not very highborn, you know.” She
sniffed. “Father used to say all the time how lucky Pa’Dar was to have
made friends with us. And Father was really very generous—our families
spent holidays together, summers by Lake Masad, winters in the Retlak
Mountains... It was all very friendly, right up to the moment Ghret
Pa’Dar informed the Ministry of Agriculture that my father had been
running his replicators below capacity and claiming it was power
shortages. It pushed the prices up, you see. Everyone did it, only one
didn’t want to get caught. Father was forced to resign, and Pa’Dar took
over his directorships. Our poor family lost our lovely home, and Father
was assigned a service position at a food distribution depot in Anaret.
I was thirteen. I spent the next ten years there, through the whole
drought...” She frowned, as if working on a puzzle. “I’ve often wondered
if Ghret somehow found out the drought was coming. The Order controlled
the release of weather forecasts to stop panic buying, but if he did
know, it would have made sense to remove my father and take full control
of the business before demand soared. I imagine Father would have done
the same. But who knows, at this late date?” She waved a brittle hand.
“Get me some water. I’m going to need it after all.”

Rugal filled a glass and held it to her lips. She drank eagerly, as if
the talking had drained her reserves. In the quiet, Rugal heard, from
beyond the confines of the house, the wail of a siren. A prickle went
along his spine. Were they conquered yet?

“I’ve told you about the drought,” Geleth said. “No need to dredge it up
again. Mother died, and my brothers, and eventually Father gave up too,
the coward. But I survived, and when it was over, I left Anaret. I
walked all the way back to Coranum, and I came here, to this house. But
it was closed; the family was gone. A servant next door told me that
their fortunes had also declined, and Ghret had taken an administrative
post in Culat. So I walked there. I found their house and I hammered on
the door and shouted through the window until they let me in. I told
them everything that happened to us—it’s not as if I didn’t give them
fair warning!—and I said they should make amends. They were ashamed and
took me in. By the end of the following year I had married their oldest
son, Irvek. Give me the rest of that water.”

She drank some more and closed her eyes. Rugal waited patiently, unsure
that he wanted to hear more, unable to suppress the need to know how her
story would turn out. Would she die before finishing? Would the Union
fall first? An alarm went off, closer this time. Geleth’s eyes shot open.

“Not long now,” she said. “Not long. So. Irvek Pa’Dar. Your
grandfather—as far as the law is concerned. I must say, he was not a bad
man, nor a bad husband. He did exactly what I told him. Which is how,
after twelve years of marriage, our fortunes had improved sufficiently
that we were able to return to Coranum and reopen this house. The
following year, I gave birth to Kotan.”

She went quiet again. “Who was his father?” Rugal whispered. “It wasn’t
Irvek, was it?”

“No, no, that was Tirim, Irvek’s secretary,” she said carelessly. “Nice
young man, hard-working, rather shy. Liked flowers. And devoted to me,
of course. Couldn’t believe his luck. As soon as I knew I was pregnant,
I had the Order arrest him for possessing dissident literature. He /did/
hold dissident opinions—must be where Kotan got it—although he was never
stupid enough to own that kind of material. I had to bribe the Order man
to lay a data trail. Don’t worry,” she added, seeing his expression, “I
didn’t spend the family fortune on it. The salaries were terrible, and
there was always someone in need of a bribe. Yes, he was Kotan’s father,
not Irvek.” Her eyes fell. “Nice young man, excellent manners. Kotan
sounds like him, when he’s trying to tell you something you don’t want
to hear.”

She closed her eyes, and she smiled, fondly, lost in memory. Rugal
swallowed. These hideous flowers, making him feel queasy...

“Rugal?” Geleth quavered. “Rugal, are you still here?”

“Yes, yes, of course I’m here.”

She snaked out her hand and grasped his. “It won’t be long now.”

“Geleth, does Kotan know any of this?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! This is /shri-tal/. Nobody else knows.”

His mouth was dry and sour. This piece of information could ruin Kotan
once and for all. Cardassians were so particular about blood
relationships, as if they were the only connections that mattered in life.

“Why have you told me this?” Rugal said bitterly. “Why not /wait/—?”

“And take it with me? Because somebody else might know. You must always
assume somebody has found out everything about you. One day they may use
this information against your father. In which case, you are forewarned,
and so you are forearmed. Not to mention,” she added slyly, “that
perhaps one day /you/ might need this information yourself...”

Rugal’s flesh crawled. She meant, as a weapon against Kotan. He wiped
his free hand across his mouth.



“Family is everything, Rugal. The survival of the family, above all. Any
one of us, at any moment, might be called upon to become a sacrifice on
its account.” Her thumb caressed the edge of his hand. “Family,” she
repeated. Her voice was slipping down to a whisper. “The Pa’Dars
shouldn’t have forgotten whose daughter I was. My child, here, in this
house; his child, here, after we’re both gone. No son of Pa’Dar. You say
it all the time, Rugal—and it’s true, it’s true! Sometimes it frightened
me, the way you said it. You were so sure! Sometimes I thought you had
found me out!”

She kept on in this vein for some time, mumbling, muttering, her
sentences slowly unraveling into fragments. Her hold on him did not
weaken, and he let her hang on to him, the slender thread attaching her
to this world. After a while, she fell silent, except for her thin slow
breathing. If she had anything left to tell him, she would have to say
it soon.

“Rugal!” she cried.

“I’m here.”

“I’m afraid!”

Rugal placed his palm against her face. “Don’t be,” he said. She opened
her eyes, but was unable to focus, all her reservoir of strength and
purpose spent. He loved and loathed her, all at once; there was no
middle ground. He loved her courage and her indestructibility; he
loathed all she had done and all she stood for. “Don’t be afraid,” he
said, but she no longer seemed able to hear him. They remained like that
for a short while—she in fear, he trying to comfort her—until, at last,
she died. He leaned in to kiss her, the only time he ever had, more a
breath than a touch, on the ridge between her eyes. “Good-bye, Geleth.
Wherever you are now, I hope it’s peaceful.”



Gently, he released her hand and set it to rest upon the coverlet. He
stood up, stretched, sighed. Kotan would be devastated. Leaving her, he
went to the window and altered the shading slightly so that he could
look outside.

Dawn was spreading out over the city, pink and tranquil. The colors
startled him with their softness, but Rugal knew it would not last. Soon
the sky would turn bright blue and the sunlight harsh, and the day would
grow old and then fade into darkness. He wondered if the planet had been
taken yet. Would he have heard if it had? Would Penelya have come in to
tell him, or was this ritual too special to be disturbed by something as
trivial as the end of the Union? Rugal peered through the window, past
the summer-jaded garden, up at the sky. There was nothing hostile out
there that he could see, nothing beyond the ordinary.

He turned away from the window and crossed the room, eyes averted from
his grandmother’s corpse. Outside, in the corridor, he found Penelya.
She had laid some cushions on the floor and was stretched out on them,
fast asleep. The morning light, catching her hair, turned it from plain
brown to rich gold. He knelt down beside her, brushed his thumb along
her cheek, and then kissed her gently. Her lashes fluttered and she
opened her eyes: amber, liquid, and vital. She sat up. “Has she gone?”

“Yes, she’s gone. Pen, she said—”

Quickly, she put her finger against her lips. “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell
anyone, not even Kotan. If she’d wanted anyone else to know what she had
to say, she would have had them in there.”

“All right.” A shiver went through him at the thought of telling Kotan
everything that Geleth had said. No, he would never breathe a word of
it. What purpose would it serve, beyond hurting him? Once, not long ago,
he would have been delighted with this knowledge, and used it as further
evidence that he did not belong here. Now he understood that he did not
have to prove that anymore. He knew that he was not, and never would be,
Cardassian. That was sufficient. Now there was nothing left to do but
keep on living. “Pen,” he said. “Come to Torr. Come and live with me.
We’ll find the room. We could be together—”

Again, she touched her finger against his lips. “Ssh. I can’t. You know
why.”

“I understand. But I’ll wait,” he promised. “I know I can change your
mind. I know we should be together.”

She smiled and stood up, and they put their arms around each other. She
kissed the ridge on his forehead. “Really,” she said, “we ought to find
out whether or not we’re now vassals of the Klingon Empire.”

They held hands and went downstairs. “In many ways,” Rugal said, “it
could be a vast improvement.”



They did not become the Empire’s servants that day, nor the following
day, nor any day after. Still some way short of Cardassia Prime, the
Klingon fleet was halted. They got no farther into the heart of the
Union, although the outlying systems were to suffer from their presence
for some time yet. Nonetheless, less than a week after they had made
their less than dignified escape, Kotan and the rest of the Detapa
Council returned to Cardassia Prime from Deep Space 9.

When his official skimmer drew up outside his house, Kotan knew at once
that his mother was gone. All the windows were darkened, and the steps
and the front terrace were lined with rows of big crimson /perek/
flowers, the offerings that had been coming to the house before he left,
now suffering badly in the heat. Someone had clearly tutored his son on
how the house should appear—probably the Khevet girl, Penelya. He must
remember to thank her. Perhaps he could even extend a formal invitation
to the house. It might bring Rugal back, for a little while at least.

His son was waiting for him inside, lurking in the hallway, hands shoved
deep into his pockets, a habit presumably picked up to avoid having to
press palms with parents and other undesirables. When Rugal saw him, he
frowned and bit his lip. “You look dreadful.”

“Thank you, Rugal. You look as if you have everything under control.” He
busied himself putting down his bag. “From the display outside, I assume
she’s gone.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. It... it was quiet, in the end.”

“Good.”

“She talked a little, not much.”

“Thank you, but don’t say any more. If there was anything she wanted me
to know, she would have found a way to tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” Rugal said again. He had taken a couple of steps toward the
door, as if waiting for the first opportunity to make a quick getaway.

“You did an excellent job on the front of the house. Geleth would have
approved.”

“That was all Penelya’s doing. I wouldn’t have known where to start.”

“Please convey my thanks.”

“I will. She’ll be pleased with that. Thanks.”

Kotan began to walk slowly along the hall. “I really am very sorry,”
Rugal said once again.

“So am I, Rugal. And I’m sorry too that you were also unable to be with
your parents when they died. I understand better now.”

“I think,” Rugal said roughly, “that she was glad to go when she did.
While you were still part of the government. It mattered to her, didn’t
it? That you were successful in that way. I think in the end she was
satisfied.”

“Thank you. You may well be right.” And perhaps she had been satisfied.
She had died back in Coranum while her son was in power; she had avoided
seeing either the ignominy of defeat at the hands of the Klingons, or
else the inevitable downfall that was the ultimate reward of all
political ambition. Geleth had played her pieces and, unlike her son and
her grandson, unlike all Cardassia’s surviving generations, she would
not have to live through the endgame.



Kotan had her cremated. He thought about placing her in the big
mausoleum on the hill in Coranum alongside his father and grandfather,
but somehow it did not seem right. Coranum had been her home as a child,
and again after her marriage, but it was the years in Anaret that seemed
to define her life. When autumn came, he arranged to travel out there.
He asked his son to come with him out of habit rather than expectation,
and to bring the girl. He was surprised when Rugal agreed. He suspected
Penelya’s influence, and was grateful.

The journey was long and wearisome. Rugal was aloof as ever; the girl
overpolite and anxious to please. An uneasy silence settled between them
that looked set to last until they arrived. Kotan was weary from grief,
and his arm ached from the inoculations they had all been given before
coming out into this part of the world. There had been twenty-two cases
of water fever in Anaret province since the summer. Nobody, particularly
not the Councillor for Scientific Progression, believed it was under
control. Nothing was under control. It was only a matter of time before
one of these outbreaks became a serious epidemic. Meya Rejal was hanging
on to power, but only with the acquiescence of the Central Command. The
war with the Klingons was draining resources like the steady drip of
blood from an open vein. They had squandered their opportunity, Kotan
reflected dully; all that time they had waited for their chance, and
this was how it turned out. A war they could not win; a population they
could barely keep alive. How soon would it end? You would put down a
hound in this much pain.

After nearly a day of travel, they passed beyond the brown irrigated
fields of Tamsket and out into the red rock plains of Anaret. At first,
the land appeared entirely uniform, and the sheer expanse of its single
violent color threatened to overwhelm Kotan as much as his grief at
Geleth’s death. But as his eyes adjusted to the world unfolding around
him, he saw how the land was in fact more varied. He became able to
distinguish between hues: the darker, browner rocks that hinted at a
rare source of water, the bright red of total desert. Sometimes, out of
the corner of his eye, he detected motion: a /regnar,/ perhaps, flitting
from cover to cover, or a /honge,/ plunging down from the sky where it
had been circling to make its kill. His was not the only species adapted
to eke out a living in the midst of these unpromising rocks.

Beyond Odek, the district capital, the road became rougher and
ill-maintained. The township of Metella, where Geleth had spent her
youth, was about thirty metrics to the south. They reached it in the
early evening: a haphazard but dogged collection of shacks gathered
around the distribution depot, home to some fifteen hundred sullen souls
hardened by want and neglect. Kotan watched his son look around with the
frank terror of the city dweller confronted with the wilderness.
“Prophets! Is this it?”

For a split second, all Kotan’s desire to placate Rugal dissipated, and
he became his mother’s son. “Yes,” he said harshly. “This is where you
come from, Rugal.”

“Geleth thought of herself as coming from Coranum.”

“She was wrong,” Kotan said. “This place made her, whether she liked it
or not.” And this was where she would remain, Kotan thought, until the
sun went supernova and Prime boiled away, or until his people blasted
themselves into oblivion, whichever came first.

They spent a restless night in a tiny hotel without running water. Early
the next morning, before sunrise, they went out to bury her ashes.
Penelya had asked Kotan quietly whether she should attend; Kotan had
said yes. It was an indication that Kotan considered Penelya family—not
that his son would understand. And Kotan wanted somebody else there who
could join in the chant for the dead. He didn’t want to have to say it
by himself.

They walked south out of town, along a dusty track, for about ten
metrics. Eventually they reached the place where, during the drought,
the bodies of the dead had been burned, including, presumably, Geleth’s
immediate family. Kotan put down upon the ground the blacksilver urn
that contained Geleth’s ashes. Removing the lid, he began to chant the
names of his fathers and mothers who had died before he had been born,
back three times three generations. When he had finished this, he said
the refrain. Penelya joined in, and her voice—high and female, different
from his own baritone—comforted him. Rugal, of course, remained silent.
He did not know the words.



/“We are the sum of all that has gone before,

We are the source of all to come.”/



Then, from a leather pouch slung over his shoulder, Kotan brought out
the dried petals of the /perek/ flowers, the symbol of the respect in
which his family was held. These he dropped into the urn, and this time,
he chanted the names of his beloved dead: Arys, his father, his
grandfather. Once, he would have said Rugal’s name at this point. Again,
Penelya joined in the refrain.

This time Kotan Pa’Dar chanted his mother’s name, nine times; as he said
it, he held his hand over her ashes and the petals and, with a thin
knife, an heirloom, he cut quickly across his palm. As the blood dripped
down, he and the girl said the refrain for the last time. Rugal did not
speak. When it was over, Kotan bent down and, with his bare hands, began
to dig at the soil. He thought: /Did Rugal not listen to us say the
refrain? It’s so short. Was he not able to pick it up? Could he not
bring himself to join in, even now?/ Tears ran silently down Kotan’s
face; he dug at the ground more viciously, less effectually. He heard
the girl murmuring softly in distress. Then Rugal spoke. Rugal, his son,
irretrievably lost. “Kotan. Stop.”

“We have to put her here,” Kotan explained. “We have to put her to rest.”

“I know. Wait. I’ll do it.”



Kotan did as he was told. Rugal walked away across the field, returning
soon with a metal pole, a piece of abandoned fence. This he used to
hammer at the ground. Kotan let him finish the task, burying the urn and
covering it. He had no strength left in him. It was day, and the
temperature was rising. Soon the land would burn and become all but
uninhabitable.









*Six*





The war stuttered on, corrosive and unwinnable, and during the winter of
that year, the Maquis attacked more than a dozen colony worlds in the
DMZ. Yet Meya Rejal remained defiant. She had waited a long time for
power, and she did not intend to relinquish it without a fight. She knew
that her weak point was her reliance on the military; she needed them to
fight the war and to keep food, water, and other essential supplies
moving around the Union. But her dependence on them infuriated her
allies in the civilian political bodies. Where was the new Cardassia she
had promised? Why were the guls still so powerful? Rejal needed to break
with them somehow. Changing the constitution had failed to control them
as a body. She would have to break them one by one.

As winter took hold of the capital city, a series of public
scandals—some genuine, some entirely contrived—kept the population
gripped. The ’casts were full of the latest legate caught bringing the
family name into disrepute. The Cardassian people fell on the stories
like /honge/ upon fresh meat. It was a welcome distraction from the
rationing, the queues, the stream of young soldiers returning broken
from the front. It felt good to see somebody punished. Why not the rich
and the mighty? A moralistic mood gripped the Union; family values were
back in fashion. Privately, Rejal congratulated herself on her success,
on finally making public opinion work in her favor. And then, by chance
rather than her own connivance, Rejal found herself placed to destroy
the most powerful gul of all: her own senior military adviser, Skrain Dukat.



Rugal first heard the name Tora Ziyal during a long day shift spent at
the beck and call of his immediate superior, Nelita. Rugal had begun
training as a nurse at the start of the autumn, and Nelita believed that
there were only two important things that Rugal needed to learn. First
of all, he should obey everything she said. Immediately. Second, he
should under no circumstance even think of sitting down. Medical
knowledge came a long way below all this. Halfway through his shift,
Rugal took his twenty-metric break and, as usual, slipped up onto the
roof for some fresh air. Even in the winter months he went outside,
preferring the cold to the dank interior of west Torr’s only free hospital.

Two of the nursing staff were up there already, sharing a bag of hot
/canka/ nuts and swapping gossip. They acknowledged Rugal’s arrival with
a nod, but they didn’t speak to him. He kept a deferential distance.
These two were qualified, he was not, and when you were this far down
the Cardassian hierarchy, the slightest degree of superiority mattered
vastly. Rugal leaned back against the wall, took out a packet of dried
/leya/ fruit, and started eating as quickly as he could. Nelita had not
yet let him take more than twelve and a half metrics of his break.



“So what’s her name?” one of the pair said to the other.

“Tora Ziyal. Can you believe it?”

It was the Bajoran-sounding family name that made Rugal pay attention.
Tora Ziyal (it turned out) was the daughter of a senior military adviser
to the government (they didn’t say his name), but not his /real/ daughter.

“It’s wrong,” said one, furiously breathing out steam from her mouthful
of hot nuts. “Nobody else gets to parade their bastards around. I don’t
see why he should get away with it just because he’s in with the
government. Aren’t things supposed to be different now?”

“So you’d think.” Her friend’s face screwed up in distaste. “Is it true
she’s a half-breed?”

Rugal didn’t hear the answer to this because at that moment his wrist
comm lit up red. He was wanted back inside. “Better get down there,” one
of the pair said, not unkindly. “Nelita will throw you in the river if
you keep her hanging around.”

Rugal carefully tucked away what remained of his /leya/ slices and
rushed back down to work. Throughout the rest of the day, however, he
pondered this Tora Ziyal. A half-breed? It didn’t take much to guess
what the other half was; not only was there the family name to go by,
there was also his colleagues’ disgust. Which other vassal planet
stirred up such revulsion in ordinary Cardassians? He went home that
evening intent on learning more about Tora Ziyal.

He was fortunate to be sharing rooms with one of the best sources of
information on Cardassia Prime. Arric was addicted to the ’casts. He
would watch anything: holo-documentaries with titles like “Great Guls
and Legates” and “Heroes Against the Federation”; state news of highly
doubtful content; and every single gossip channel he could get without
having to pay.

When Rugal brought up the topic, Arric was busy assembling his
daughter’s supper. There were five of them living in this space at the
moment: Arric and Serna and their little girl, Tela; Rugal; and another
female called Elat who worked with Serna cleaning a big office building
in Barvonok. Rugal still hoped that Penelya would eventually be able to
come and join them here. Perhaps once she had passed her first set of
exams, Mikor might decide she had earned some freedom and give her
formal permission to change her address. Rugal hated to think of her
stuck all the way out in Coranum by herself. There wasn’t much room
here, but it was friendly and the rations for four adults combined
stretched further than you would expect. With a fifth adult’s rations,
they could live like legates.

“Of course I’ve heard of Tora Ziyal,” Arric said. “She turned up on
Prime weeks ago. She’s Gul Dukat’s daughter.” He stopped stirring and
frowned at his friend. “Are you all right?”

Gul Dukat. The man was inescapable. “I’m fine,” Rugal said. “Go on.”

“It’s been everywhere. I keep telling you to spend less time reading
broadsheets and more watching the ’casts—you find out more about what’s
going on in politics that way. She’s half Bajoran...” Arric paused for a
moment, spoon in hand, contemplating what that might mean. “I suppose
you have to feel sorry for her. I can’t imagine she’s having much fun
with the bigots up in Paldar. But it’s hard to feel sorry for Dukat—he’s
the worst product of our narrow-minded militarism.” Arric laughed.
“That’s more like how I used to talk, isn’t it? Look, I’ve got to give
this to Tela. Put channel six on—they run an item about Tora Ziyal and
Gul Dukat and how it means the end of civilization as we know it at
least once an hour. That’ll tell you more than you need to know. They’ve
even been following her around the capital city the last week or so.”

Rugal cleared the couch of assorted shoes, laundry, and lessonpadds,
stretched out, and put on channel six. Within fifteen metrics, as Arric
promised, there was something about Tora Ziyal. Ten metrics after that,
Rugal had become so angry that he had to turn it off. He went back to
the news, which was reporting triumphs against the Klingons in the Hagal
system and projecting higher than average year-end figures for the
manufacturing sector. The newsreader had her eyes down, which everyone
knew was intended to signal that what she was saying was a pack of lies.
Rugal abandoned any attempt to work out what was really going on and
went to make a pot of redleaf tea. He was thinking about Tora Ziyal. She
was the daughter of the man who had ruined his family—both his
families—but she was Bajoran, like him. He was sure Arric was right and
that she was not being made welcome on Cardassia. He sympathized with
this young woman, stuck among strangers, far away from her own kind.

The tap gave out a stutter and nothing else. Rugal sighed. He grabbed
the big bottle by the sink, shouted to Arric that he was going out, and
ran out into the cold evening down the street to the public pump. There
was a queue of five ahead of him, stamping feet, rubbing hands, and
grumbling. As he stood waiting, Rugal wondered how much of all this
business was Rejal’s doing. It would certainly suit her to see Dukat’s
influence reduced. Did Kotan know anything about it? Had he given his
approval? Kotan would also like to see Dukat’s reputation in ruins. But
would he do that at this poor girl’s expense? By the time he got to the
front of the queue, Rugal had convinced himself that Kotan was to blame.
And he had determined to find out more about Tora Ziyal.

Rugal balanced the bottle under the pump and keyed in his ration code to
activate the flow of water. The key-panel lit up, briefly, and then went
dead. A collective groan went up in the queue behind him. Rugal gave it
a thump—sometimes that worked, but not this time. “They said they’d come
and fix it,” the next person along said mournfully. “They were supposed
to be here last month.”

Rugal tapped the barrel. It gave a dull sound. There was plenty of water
in there, if they could only get at it. He looked at the faces around
him—cold, tired, dispirited—and he found himself thinking of Geleth,
going mad with thirst in the desert, while the Assembly tried to summon
up enough interest to build a new pipeline to Anaret. “We’re not waiting
any longer,” Rugal said. “We can do this ourselves. This casing isn’t
thick. Does anyone have anything sharp?”



Kotan Pa’Dar was very well informed about Tora Ziyal. He had heard all
about her the evening of her arrival on Cardassia Prime. But his opinion
on the subject was much more complicated than his son assumed.

Once a week, Kotan and Alon Ghemor met for dinner at the Civilian
Assembly Hall. The hall was a huge burnished dome in the heart of the
Tarlak sector; the restaurant that served the Assembly members took up
the top floor of the building, and it revolved gently, so that the view
out was always in the process of changing. It was best at night: to the
north one could see the golden palaces crowning the hill of Coranum; to
the southeast, the silver-blue light show pulsing across the surface of
the Natural History Museum; to the south and west, the sheer steel
towers of Barvonok, the Union’s counting houses. Kotan had always longed
to bring Rugal here and show him the jeweled city, but the boy had
Geleth’s contempt for ostentation, not to mention that unfortunate
tendency to blurt out whatever he was thinking. A trip here would have
to wait, but Kotan was ready for the long haul. Kotan’s whole life had
been a test of his staying power.

Even in these slender days, it was no hardship coming here. The food was
a marvel. Yet Alon had been sighing over his plate of /elta/ leaves
stuffed with /tuli/ fish ever since it had been brought out to him.

“I’ve had enough,” Alon said at last. Kotan guessed he wasn’t talking
about his dinner, since Alon immediately shoved a forkful of leaves into
his mouth. Through them, he said, “This has been the worst week of my life.”

Kotan nodded his understanding. At the start of the week, the last three
trials of those former high-ranking Obsidian Order agents arrested for
crimes against the new Cardassia had drawn to a conclusion. Their
executions had been conducted at sunrise.

“Twenty-seven,” Alon said bitterly. “Twenty-seven of my former
colleagues. Do you know what they call me at the Bureau these days? The
Great Leveler.”

“It was all necessary,” Kotan said, but without the enthusiasm to carry
it off.

“I wish I could believe that.” Alon took a huge gulp of /kanar/. “If
this was all really delivering a new Cardassia, I might be able to
stomach it. But it hasn’t, and it won’t. The Bureau’s nothing but a
rumor mill these days. When we’re not spying on legates and their
whores, we’re faking up holo-images of the same. What does that possibly
do for Cardassia? Who’s served by that?” He drained his glass. “She
won’t let me do anything more substantial. She doesn’t trust me—can’t
trust me, not with my name. Whenever I speak, she hears the whisper of
Tekeny.”

“I know it’s been difficult, but we have to stay hopeful. What else can
we do? There’s still a faint chance that Meya can make something of all
this.”

“Well, she can do it without me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m finished. I’m resigning. Tomorrow morning. I’m done.”

“Leave the Bureau?” Kotan sat back in dismay. “You can’t do that! What
would the Bureau do without you? When it comes to that, what in the name
of Tret Akleen himself would you do with yourself?”

Alon finished his plate with relish. “I’m going offworld. I’ve bought an
estate in the Peyit system. I’m going to drink /kanar/ all day and write
a set of scurrilous memoirs that no one will dare publish. If I’m going
to waste my life, I might as well enjoy myself doing it.”

“But, Alon! All your talent! And what about your /duty/? We have a duty
to see this through—”

“We have to face facts, Kotan. We lost. I’m still not sure how it
happened, but we lost. This was going to be the golden age—do you
remember? A new Cardassia. Do you remember how we’d talk about what we’d
do when we got into power? Reform, and change, a peaceful, prosperous
nation with Tekeny at its head, father to us all... And what do we have
instead? Outbreaks of /yatik/ fever, a war with the Klingon Empire that
we cannot and will not win, and Skrain Dukat. What happened? How did it
all fall apart? Why does the scum always rise to the top? Why aren’t
good intentions enough? For the life of me, Kotan, I’ll never understand
it.” He pushed his plate away with a clatter.

Kotan glanced around the dining room. Before the war, in any given week,
all Cardassia’s political elite passed through the doors of this place.
You had to be seen here. It was where one picked up gossip and news: who
was falling, who was flying. Now the place had a subdued air, as if the
party had ended and only the most dogged were hanging around to see what
the dawn would bring. At least it meant that there was nobody around to
see the director of the Intelligence Bureau crying into his /kanar/.

“We shouldn’t lose heart, Alon. There’s still a chance that we can
create something better. What we need is to end this war as quickly as
possible, even it means all but defeat—”

Alon shook his head. “Dukat would never allow it.”

“He’s not invincible. And the war can’t last forever. We can’t sustain
it—there’s no public will for it and there certainly aren’t the
resources. One small victory, that’s all Meya needs, and then she’ll
have saved face enough to sue for peace and shed Dukat like she’s
sloughing off scales. I bet you our next dinner that’s what happens.”

“I’d like to think you’re right. But I don’t believe we’ll see even one
small victory. And if it does by some miracle happen, it will be the
guls that take the credit, not Meya.” Alon lowered his voice. “She’s
already putting out peace feelers. I don’t think she cares about saving
face any longer.” He sighed. “I lie awake at night wondering where this
is going to end. If this government falls, what will happen? Who will
take its place? I’m afraid it might be something worse.”

“Who knows—it might even be you and me. We’re what passes for the
opposition. Imagine it—Alon Ghemor, leader of the Cardassian Union.”

Alon snorted. “The Cardassian Union would have to be desperate. Anyway,
the first thing I’d do is get my uncle back. Tekeny Ghemor, leader of
the Cardassian Union. It has a much better ring to it.”

Kotan tipped his glass forward to tap it against Alon’s. “I’ll drink to
that.”

A more cheerful mood descended upon them. Alon ate with more pleasure.
Kotan watched him carefully, trying to decide his next step. His aim was
to get to the end of this dinner with Alon’s mind changed, and this
whole madness of resignation forgotten. The idea of losing his friend
from the capital was appalling; he felt lonely just at the thought.
Surely he could think of a way to persuade Alon to stay? Even if he
could no longer remain at the Bureau, he ought not to quit the political
scene completely. Duty, at least, should keep them going, even if there
was little promise of reward.

Their next course arrived, a meticulously constructed dish of breast of
/petha/ resting on a bed of /temet/ roots. They had barely finished
admiring the artistry when the doors swung open and Erek Rhemet strode
in, a crowd of junior officials from the Justice Ministry following in
his wake. Alon peered at the party balefully. “Erek’s in remarkably good
form tonight. You’d never guess the government was on its knees. Makes
you wonder what’s going on. Oh well, not my problem any longer.”

Rhemet didn’t keep them in suspense. The moment he saw them he waved and
came over to their table. “Gentlemen,” he cried, calling to the servitor
to open a fresh bottle of /kanar,/ “at last we have something to celebrate!”

Kotan glanced across the table at Alon. He looked about ready to take
his knife to something other than the poultry. Rhemet’s bonhomie had
been bearable while they had all been dissidents. In power, it had
transformed disagreeably into self-satisfaction, particularly once Kotan
and Alon had been sidelined from the Five. “Go on,” Kotan sighed. “Tell
us what’s happened.”

Rhemet leaned forward, putting one elbow on the table, as if to draw
them into his confidence. Then he boomed, “Dukat! We’ve got him, the
slithering psychopath! He won’t get out of this one!”

Heads turned. Whispering began. Alon tapped impatiently on the table
with his knife. “I’m still none the wiser, Erek.”

“A daughter! He’s turned up with a long-lost daughter in tow!”

Alon winced and averted his eyes. “I must be missing something,” Kotan
said frostily. “Isn’t the return of a missing child good news?”

The people around Rhemet nodded frantically. “/Very/ good!”

“Best news since Enabran Tain got himself killed!”

“I can’t believe he’s had the nerve to bring her back to Prime, never
mind the capital. Athra must be furious with him—he’s even got the girl
in the house!”

“Did you hear what he was calling her?” another added. “Tora Ziyal.”

There was a collective grimace. “I gather from her name she’s not
entirely Cardassian?” Alon said.

“A half-breed and a bastard,” one of them confirmed cheerfully.



Erek Rhemet seemed to have realized his misstep. With one eye on Kotan,
he said carefully, “The girl’s mother was Bajoran, you see, one of
Dukat’s whores, I should think. Nothing at all like your own particular
circumstances, Kotan. Besides, you must be pleased to see Dukat in this
position, surely?”

“One would think so,” Kotan replied pleasantly. Alon grimaced, but Erek
decided it was better to be agreed with than to be found at fault.
“Exactly! A most satisfactory revenge, I’d say if I were you. And
exactly what poor Meya needs at the moment—it’ll be all over the screens
tomorrow, and I bet the guls won’t be so self-satisfied for a while!
Well, I’ll leave the two of you to your dinner. Have this bottle on me.”

He and his party moved on to the table that was waiting for them.
Slowly, Kotan began to shift food about his plate. He was sufficiently a
product of his culture to be pleased at the news of an enemy’s ruin—but
to bring a lost child back to Cardassia? That, Kotan knew, was an act of
real courage. It did not seem right for Dukat to be punished for it, not
when there were plenty of crimes to choose from. What about the girl
herself? Was her life to be ruined, as Rugal’s had been? Was she going
to be another victim of Cardassia’s entrenched and senseless rivalries?
He could imagine the treatment she was receiving at the hands of her
newfound family: the veiled barbs, the outright hostility. It must be
unspeakable.

/Strange,/ Kotan thought, as he put food mechanically into his mouth. He
had been intending to rally Alon’s spirits, and now he was beginning to
think that his friend had it right. They had lost. All the hope and good
intentions with which they had embarked upon this experiment in civilian
rule were worn out. He himself was tired of it—the compromises, the
missed opportunities, the never-ending feuds. It had all lost its
flavor. Even his position on the Detapa Council didn’t count. He had
never wanted it. It had been Geleth’s ambition, not his. She had lived
to see him accomplish it, and now she was dead and it did not matter
anymore.

“Nobody would blame you, Kotan,” Alon said in a neutral voice, “if you
were delighted by this news. Dukat deserves nothing better from you.”

Kotan put his knife and fork down by his plate in orderly fashion. He
drained his glass. “Maybe not. But, do you know, Alon—I think I may have
had enough too.”



Tora Ziyal tried not to mind when people stared. She was a young woman
of courage and determination, and she trusted her father absolutely when
he swore that they could be happy together on Cardassia Prime. For this
reason, she had resolved not to hide herself away in the big town house
in the Paldar sector. She would go about her business on Cardassia as if
she had as much right to be here as anyone else. Besides, her
stepmother, Athra, detested her, and her half-brothers and sisters
followed their mother’s lead. If she was going to have friends on
Cardassia other than her father, Ziyal knew she would need to look
beyond the Dukat family home.

She had taken solace in drawing and painting. She had begun tentatively
at first, but very quickly she realized that if this was to be serious
work rather than a pastime, she had to study. Each morning, therefore,
Ziyal took the shuttle down into the Tarlak sector to visit the state
galleries. She was slowly working through each room, taking the
paintings and the sculptures one by one, learning the progression of
Cardassian art and the techniques of the masters. Each day, at least one
stranger remarked upon her appearance, as if she too were one of the
exhibits. Sometimes it was harmless: a child who could not help pointing
at her face and exclaiming. Sometimes it was less pleasant, but until
recently Ziyal had been held in a prisoner-of-war camp, and far worse
had happened there.

This particular day, Ziyal had gone to the Betik Gallery’s collection of
approved contemporary art. The previous evening, to make up for a
dreadful scene with Athra, her father had presented her with a book
about the holo-mosaics of Lim Prekeny. Ziyal had come to the Betik
Gallery to see the most famous of them, /The Collectivity/. It was
generally accepted to be Prekeny’s masterpiece, the piece with which she
reestablished her reputation after her artistic license had been revoked
for profligacy. The form she had chosen proved her patriotism:
nine-tenths of the mosaic was holographic rather than material better
used for military purposes.

At least, that was the conventional reading. As with all Cardassian art,
Ziyal found herself looking for hidden meanings. For example, Prekeny
could have made her mosaic entirely virtual. She had not. Dotted around
the whole were small triangular pieces of stone. The holographic tiles
altered their color and shape, but these physical pieces remained solid
and unchanging. If you sat and watched the mosaic for some time, your
eyes drifted to them. Most people didn’t sit and look for a while. They
looked for long enough to say that they had seen it, and then they
walked on.

Ziyal had been sitting here all morning, becoming more and more absorbed
in the minutiae of this extraordinary piece of work. As she studied the
small purple triangle in the top left-hand corner, two young
Cardassians, a male and a female, came and stood before it. The young
man was wearing overalls and had his hair cut aggressively short. Her
father would be shocked by that, Ziyal thought with a smile; he was
constantly nagging his sons to grow their hair longer. The young woman
was neat and small; she wore a gray dress, and her mid-length hair was
tied back in a simple style. They were holding hands. The young man
said, “I’m not trying to make a big deal, I just don’t like it.”

“You don’t understand the first thing about it!”

“I shouldn’t need to understand anything about it. What’s wrong with me
saying that I don’t like it?” He looked and sounded like someone from
the service grades. Ziyal was surprised to see him here—surprised and
pleased. She had thought Cardassian society was strictly regimented and
segregated. Perhaps, once again, the surface was misleading. That was
heartening. Perhaps there was somewhere she could slot in too.

The young woman said to him, “You can’t appreciate it properly if you
don’t know what Prekeny was trying to do when she sat down and made the
thing. She didn’t throw bits of rock around randomly, you know!”

“Are you sure?”

She slapped him on the arm. “Sometimes I could throttle you—” Ziyal
smiled. She liked this kind of enthusiasm, and, from the plainness of
the girl’s clothes and hair, she suspected this was someone else
dependent on a family’s goodwill.

“Before murdering me, how’s this for an opinion? I don’t like the
colors—that one there is horrible, like someone’s mixed mud with
blood—and I don’t like how the shapes change all the time either, it
makes my eyes go weird. And when you stare at it for too long, you feel
like you’re about to fall over.”

The young woman almost jumped up and down on the spot with rage. “That’s
the point, you idiot! It’s meant to make you feel like that! Prekeny
spent eight years in forced resettlement—this is all about her exile,
her dispossession, her terror. She did the sketches for it in between
digging ditches in a field on Cardassia IV. It’s a brilliant combination
of neo-Hebitian archetypes with Third Republic abstractionism, and it’s
a downright miracle it even exists, never mind that she got permission
to display it here!”

Ziyal reached for her sketch pad. These two were too good to miss.
Quickly, she got down the broad strokes of them: the girl’s passion,
which was spiky but appealing; the boy’s frown, which could have been
unlikable if he hadn’t been so obviously smitten with his companion.
Right now he was scowling and trying to come up with a way to counter
the barrage of information that she was throwing at him. They looked as
if they had arguments like this all the time. Eventually, Ziyal guessed,
they would realize that this was what they did with each other, and then
they could simply get on with enjoying being together.

“How exactly am I supposed to know all that?” the young man said. “And
why should I have to know it before I can stand and look at a picture
and say whether or not I like it?”

“Rugal, you’re impossible! I don’t know why I bother with you!”

“I just think it looks horrible!”

Ziyal laughed out loud. The two young people turned to look at her. The
young man’s frown deepened. “What? What have I said now?” The young
woman hit him on the arm again, and then smiled brightly at Ziyal. “Hello!”

Ziyal tilted her head, part friendly, part shy. “Hello,” she replied.

“Did we disturb you? I’m sorry if we disturbed you.”

“You didn’t disturb me at all. I was enjoying your discussion.” She
hesitated. She was never quite sure whether she was saying the right
thing on Cardassia. She suspected this was in part a blessing, making
her miss many of the insults that were directed toward her, but it also
made her feel as if she was not able to participate fully in any
conversation. “I’m sorry I eavesdropped.”

The girl sat down next to her—thumped would perhaps be a better
description—kicked off one of her shoes, and started rubbing her foot.
“Oh, don’t worry about that! I bet I was talking at the top of my voice.
You probably couldn’t have helped listening if you’d tried. Aren’t you
Tora Ziyal?”

The question came out so quickly that Ziyal had almost answered it
before suspicion stopped her. “Why?”

“Well, we came all this way to meet you, and Rugal spent a fortune on
getting into a gallery containing art that he can’t stand, so it would
be a shame if we’d found the wrong person—”

“Pen!” the boy hissed. She blinked back at him, unperturbed, and went on.

“Not that I’d mind if you were the wrong person, since you’re perfectly
pleasant and I’m enjoying talking to you.” Ziyal was lost for words, but
the girl had plenty left to say. “The thing is,” she went on, “we were
worried that you were having a bad time—we’re both fairly new to Prime
and we’ve not always had a wonderful time—and when we saw on the ’casts
that you spent most of your time out here in the galleries, we thought
we’d drop by and say hello and see how things were going for you. Rugal,
don’t kick my ankle! It hurts!”

The boy turned to Ziyal, a horrified expression on his face. “Look, I’m
really sorry. Sometimes she starts talking and doesn’t stop and it’s a
disaster, but most of the time it’s fine and once you’re used to it it’s
even interesting...”

Ziyal, who had started packing away her sketching materials, stopped.
She looked up at them. The boy was distraught, the girl still friendly.
She brought out her drawing pad. “This is what you look like,” she said,
opening to the page where she had sketched them, and holding it out for
them to see.

At first, they were both suitably chagrined. Then the girl started
laughing. “Oh, I bet we do! That’s wonderful. He’s Rugal, by the way,
and I’m Penelya—Pen. That’s very funny. I like you, Ziyal. I think we
should be friends.”

Friends had been in lamentably short supply on Cardassia Prime. Ziyal
smiled. “I think so too.”



They wandered around the gallery together, as if they were three
ordinary people and not an orphan, a half-breed, and a disappointment.
Every so often Ziyal attracted attention and occasionally comments;
somehow it did not seem so bad now that she was with the others. In the
gallery’s cafe, between cups of hot bitter /gelat/ and sugary white
cakes, she shyly let them look through her sketches. Penelya quickly
grasped her main themes: hybridity, coexistence, outliers. Rugal became
deeply absorbed in a series she had done trying to merge Cardassian and
Bajoran architectural features.



“It doesn’t work yet,” Ziyal said, fretfully.

“No,” he replied, “but you can see how it might be done.”

After that, the most pressing matter was to resolve the quarrel over
Prekeny’s mosaic. “It’s ugly,” Rugal stated flatly.

“It’s important,” Penelya shot back.

They turned to Ziyal for adjudication. She thought about the remarkable
work for a little longer, and then said, “I think it’s both.” It took
her a moment to understand why they started laughing at her; when she
did, she started to laugh herself. She was in danger of becoming a
walking advertisement for reconciliation.

They left the gallery and walked across Meritok Square toward Victory
Boulevard. Ziyal asked her companions about themselves. Penelya, it
transpired, had too few parents; Rugal too many. Ziyal spoke with love
and gratitude of her father. He was her blind spot—she knew that—but now
that her mother was dead, he was all that she had. The faint hope of
being welcomed by a large family of half-brothers and half-sisters had
been extinguished within moments of arriving on Cardassia. Her father
was everything. Penelya understood, Ziyal could see, Rugal less so.

“‘Family is all,’” he said, his frown deepening. “That’s the old
expression. But it isn’t true. It can’t be all. It can only ever be a
piece. People need more resources than that.”

At the far end of the boulevard was the massive monument to Gul
Darhe’el, hero of the Occupation. Ziyal had not yet visited it, and
Penelya and Rugal insisted dryly that she must—every Cardassian child
was dragged through it at least once in their school career. Rugal’s
cohort at his academy had gone there on three separate occasions even
during his brief time there. They joined the long queue, stretching back
down the boulevard, and slowly shuffled toward the entrance.

The monument was a massive block of huge white stone with an arch cut
right through it. At the center, sunk deep into the ground, was a big
black stone on which Darhe’el’s name was set in golden letters. Visitors
to the tomb streamed past on either side, coming through in opposite
directions, passing the carvings on the wall that showed scenes from the
gul’s life. When they reached the black stone, they had to bow their
heads to look down at it. They had to show respect. “I hate this kind of
thing,” Rugal muttered. “It’s offensive. There are sick and hungry
people a short shuttle ride away from here, and still they spend all
this money on huge monuments and infantile parades.”

Ziyal understood. Places like this did not move her, although she could
see their purpose. “It’s for consolation, isn’t it? Cardassians seem to
need to be reminded that they matter. And if there are Klingons
hammering at the gates and Maquis blowing up colonists, and if—as you
say—there are people getting sick and going hungry, then perhaps a
little consolation is no bad thing?”

Penelya pressed her fingertip against the sheer mass of white stone that
loomed above them. “I think I take more consolation from Prekeny’s
mosaic,” she said, very softly, as if afraid she might be heard. “To
think that someone could live through what she lived through, and then
produce something beautiful and wise.”

“You’re right, of course,” Ziyal said frankly. Rugal kissed Penelya
gently on the ridge on her forehead. Then a man in the queue behind them
made his opinion known. He had a long white scar down one cheek and a
medal on his chest—a veteran of the current campaign. “You three should
be ashamed of yourselves. Darhe’el was one of our greatest heroes. He
gave everything for Cardassia!” He was shaking with anger. “I bet you’ve
all sacrificed nothing. How dare you come in here and say things like
that! As for you,” he spat in Ziyal’s face. “Filthy murdering Bajoran scum.”

Rugal, hand raised, took a step forward, but before it went any further,
Penelya pushed her way out of the queue and ran back outside. Ziyal and
Rugal chased after her. “I’m so sorry!” Penelya cried, close to tears.
“That was my fault! I shouldn’t have said anything!”

Rugal put his arm around her. “You can say whatever you like. Anyway, I
think it was all three of us in combination.” He looked around,
bitterly. “There are times when I hate this place so much I could rip
all the ridges from my face.”

Ziyal was shocked. “Don’t say that! You don’t mean that!”

They stood for a while in silence, in varying degrees of distress. Ziyal
thought about what Rugal had just said. She herself had never felt that
way, had never wanted to change the way she looked. She knew people
assumed she was the product of rape, of hatred—but she knew she was not.
She had seen how it had been between her mother and her father. She was
living proof of the possibility of love between Bajor and Cardassia.

She said, slowly, “People here have all these reasons to hate each
other, and they feed them rather than try to lose their appetite for
them. And they brought that way of doing things with them to Bajor, and
now Bajor has to struggle with exactly the same problem. And that’s not
to say that people don’t have good reasons to hate each—Bajor has every
reason to hate Cardassia!—and I do understand why people want revenge,
and reparations, but... when will it end? Would Bajor be happy if
everything Cardassian was wiped out? I don’t think so. And I don’t want
half of me to be wiped out. All told, I quite like myself!”

She stopped speaking. She didn’t often say these things, not in speech,
at any rate. Most of it was in her pictures, if people took the time to
look at them properly. Most people didn’t. Her friends, however, were
looking at her approvingly. They glanced at each other, and Penelya
smiled, and Rugal nodded, as if to say: /Yes, she’s one of us./ It made
Ziyal feel better than she had done at any time on Cardassia, except for
the times when she was with her father.

They parted ways in the early evening, in friendship, and with promises
to meet, all three of them, as soon as possible. They never did. Before
they could get together again, Tora Ziyal and her father had been driven
from Cardassia Prime.



The young master nearly kicked down the front door. Maleta had to jump
out of his way as he came past her. “Where is he? In the back?” He
didn’t wait for an answer, but strode down the hall toward the master’s
study. Maleta hurried after him. She had seen many things in her years
of service to the Pa’Dar family, but the young man who refused his
father’s money and preferred to live like he was lowborn was something
shockingly new. Maleta thought the master should have taken a firmer
stand over the whole business, but for some reason he seemed content to
let his only child spend his days wiping up after beggars. Nothing good
would come of it. There had to be standards. One day the young master
would inherit the house and the money. Maleta doubted he would keep on
scratching out a living in Torr when that happened. But would he be fit
to be the master of the house?

The young master had kindly left the door of his father’s study open
behind him, so Maleta lowered herself down to sit on the stairs and listen.

“How could you!” the young master shouted.

“Rugal! Always a pleasure to see you. What have I done now?”

“You know what I’m talking about!”

“These days, I never know what anyone is talking about—don’t kick that,
please, it belonged to your mother—perhaps you could take a moment to
tell me?”

“Ziyal! Tora Ziyal! Kotan, how could you?”

The Dukat half-breed. Maleta sniffed. It had been all over the news
yesterday that she had left Cardassia Prime. Quite right too.

“Ah. Yes. I heard that she’d left.” Maleta heard the creak of the
master’s chair as he sat down again. “I doubt you’ll believe me, but I
had nothing to do with that.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe you.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“After all that happened to me. She was lonely! Pen and I had made
friends with her. She could have settled down here, given time. It
wouldn’t have been easy, but she was brave and clever and she could have
done it.”

“Rugal, did you hear that I had resigned from all my government
appointments?”

There was a pause. Maleta leaned forward. “What?” the young master said.

“About six weeks ago. I resigned from the Council, the Science Ministry,
and the Assembly. Alon Ghemor resigned from the Bureau at the same time.
In protest over Meya’s use of this affair as a means to discredit Dukat.”

Maleta heard the young master take a few steps around the room. “You
mean that you and Alon Ghemor felt sidelined, and decided to position
yourselves as a credible opposition?”

“You can think that if you prefer,” the master said in even tones. “I
found myself thinking that Dukat did not deserve to be punished for what
must be the single selfless act in his entire life. Ghemor’s left Prime,
by the way. Not what you’d do if you were thinking of yourself as heir
apparent.”

There was another long pause. “I’d like to believe you.”

“You can,” the master replied simply.

“So... what are you doing with yourself now?” The young master sounded
less sure of himself. Maleta pursed her lips. Good.

“A little reading. A lot of thinking. I’ve been following your work in
Torr. You and your friends have been doing some good things out there. I
wonder—do you see yourselves as a kind of commune? Your broadsheets
suggest that you do.”

Another creak of a chair. “That’s one way of describing it.”

“You’re lucky that the central administration is so badly overstretched.
Interfering with water supplies? Distributing food and medicine without
the proper permits? Running a barter economy? A few years ago you would
have been infiltrated by the Obsidian Order and shot.”

“And what good would that do anyone? It’s because there’s barely any
administration anymore that we have to do what we’re doing. There’s food
in the depots, but it doesn’t get distributed quickly enough, and people
get missed out or passed over and they go hungry.”

“I’m not quarreling with you, Rugal. I’m simply pointing out how
different things are now. Would you like to see the whole of Cardassia
run this way?”

The young master hesitated before replying. “I don’t know... I have to
think about that. It might be better for everyone.... But it’s not meant
to be revolution, Kotan. We just want to be left to get on with things,
left in peace. What’s the problem with that?”

“Speaking as a former Council member? Because you show up the cracks in
the system. Simply by doing what you’re doing, you demonstrate how far
things have broken down, how useless the administration is.” The master
laughed. “Speaking as a private citizen—more power to you.”

“Well. Thanks.”

Another creak as someone stood up. Maleta heard the chink of /kanar/
glasses and a bottle being opened. “I’d like to help,” the master said.

“Oh yes? How? Actually—/why?”/

“Money would help, I imagine—”

“I don’t want your money.”

“But perhaps you don’t want my money. Very well... what about influence?
Experience? Access? Come to dinner next week. I’ll gather up some
friendly faces, potential donors. Industrialists, directors of
charities, owners of hospitals that I worked with when I was at the
ministry. They might want to supply you with funds—or material, if you
don’t want their money either. I’ll feed them and you can tell them what
you’re doing and why it’s important.” He paused. “I’d be obliged if you
avoided using the word ‘revolution,’ however. Or ‘commune,’ if it comes
to that. The people I’m thinking of have sensitive stomachs.”

The young master didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “If you’re
still trying to position yourself as a credible opposition to Rejal, I
won’t have it. I won’t let you use us in that way.”

“My dearest boy, my days as a politician are over. I buried those
ambitions with Geleth. But my days of duty to the people of Cardassia?
They are not over, and will not be until I myself am buried. I want to
help because it is my duty to help. No other reason.”

Maleta didn’t hear anymore because at that point somebody closed the
study door. She heaved herself to her feet, brushing out the creases on
her apron. So he wasn’t interested in the master’s money, was he? She
gave a snort of laughter. Give it time.



In the year after his resignation, Kotan Pa’Dar was the happiest he had
been since the death of his wife. The work that he was doing was the
most satisfying since his earliest days as a scientist. He brought all
his experience and good reputation to the task. He greased palms and
stroked egos to make sure necessary projects were pushed through. He
made important links between administrators in other urban centers, and
he did not forget the famine-threatened provinces or the desperate
refugees from the Maquis. Nor did he remain secluded in his part of the
city; he was prepared to go and get his hands dirty in the harder-hit
sectors. His efforts barely scratched at Cardassia’s structural woes.
But for Kotan, it was deeply satisfying work. Best of all, it brought
him into regular contact with his son.

This was Rugal’s fourth year on Cardassia Prime. At nineteen, he was a
spare young man who never laughed and rarely smiled. His resemblance to
his paternal grandmother was striking. He was frequently angry, but he
had learned to control the emotion, and he was most at his ease in the
company of the Khevet girl. The girl herself was also quiet, but in a
calmer way, as if she inhabited some private fortress that she had
constructed for herself, where the exigencies of her life were not able
to touch her. Together, they looked exactly like the lowborn couple in
the painting by Agrat: dutiful and accepting of their station. Kotan
might have worried it was a joyless sort of life they led, except that
his son, with Penelya, was somberly tender, and the girl, with his son,
was radiant. Kotan wondered when she would agree to join with him. He
hoped it would be soon. He wished them all the happiness that he and
Arys had shared, but for their whole lives.

One evening, Kotan invited them both to his home, for a triple
celebration. Rugal had recently qualified as a paramedic. Penelya had
scored at the top in the first-year examinations at the School of
Agronomy. And Kotan, for his public service and work in the Torr sector,
had been awarded a Civilian Commendation. Geleth would have been livid,
Kotan thought, with mild pleasure.

After supper, which was sparse but companionable, the three of them sat
in the sunroom and talked through some of the difficulties they had been
having distributing medical supplies around the east side of the Torr
sector. They were interrupted when Kotan received an urgent incoming
message. He read it, frowning. “This is odd,” he said. “From Ithas
Bamarek, of all people. He says I should see what’s happening on the
viewscreen.”

The three of them went into his study and pulled up chairs. On the
screen, Skrain Dukat was announcing to the Cardassian people that, on
their behalf, he had brought them under the authority of the Dominion.

“/Kosst/...” Rugal whispered. He put his arm round Penelya’s shoulder.

Kotan stood up. He started pacing around the room. “I don’t believe
this.” On the communication console on his desk, red lights began to flash.

“/You might ask,/” declared Dukat, “/should we fear the Dominion? And I
answer you, not in the least.../”

“Prophets,” said Rugal. “Sometimes I think he believes everything he says.”

“Dukat always believes what he says,” Kotan replied. “At least for the
moment that he’s saying it.”

“/Cardassia will be made whole... for my son, for all our sons/.”

The screen went black. “No daughters, I notice,” Penelya remarked. “Poor
Ziyal.”

“Kotan,” Rugal said in a low, scared voice. “What’s going to happen?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Kotan said. The screen began to blink. “Wait,
what’s this?”

The picture resolved into an image of two women standing side-by-side in
front of the symbol of the Cardassian state. One of the women was
Teretis Geyl, the Chief Archon, the senior judicial figure in the Union.
The other was Meya Rejal. Geyl spoke first, fluently and with assurance.
/“People of Cardassia, we reject the extraordinary statement made by the
traitor Dukat. It has no basis in law; it is a direct infringement of
the new constitutional arrangements made under the Declaration of the
Transference and Assumption of Powers. We reject his authority to speak
for the Union; we reject his claim to power. We recognize the authority
of the Detapa Council.”/ She turned to her companion.

/“People of Cardassia,”/ said Meya Rejal shakily. She had a hunted look.
/“I call on us all to stand united at this time. Let us not bow down to
tyranny; let us not give way to threat. We are a proud people and we
will survive.”/ She put her hand against her heart. /“I swear,”/ she
said, and now her voice was steady, /“that I will fight for you. I will
fight for Cardassia.”/

The screen went dead again, and they could find no other transmissions,
not even on the unofficial channels that Rugal knew. “Kotan,” said
Penelya urgently. “Are you safe?”

Touched, he reached out to pat her hand. “Dear girl. I’m sure Dukat has
more on his mind at the moment than settling some ancient score with me.”

“We’ll look after you,” Rugal said robustly. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

On Kotan’s insistence, Rugal and Penelya left shortly afterward. Rugal
took Penelya back up the hill to her uncle’s house, and then took the
shuttle out to Torr. At the security checkpoint, four Jem’Hadar boarded
the shuttle behind the regular police unit and followed them down
through the carriages as they checked identities. The Cardassian
officers looked uncertain. The Jem’Hadar looked implacable. Back at
home, he and Arric and Serna watched fearfully as a fireworks display
took place somewhere in the Paldar sector. At least someone in Cardassia
City was pleased at this turn of events.









*Seven*





But bravely spoken and defiant words were not enough to save Teretis
Geyl and Meya Rejal. Not in the face of overwhelming force. Taking
refuge in the bunker beneath the Council chambers, they attempted to
organize the city constabularies and the few troops still loyal to the
administration as a defense against the Dominion invasion.

A third before the first bell, when it was still dark, the building was
stormed by the Jem’Hadar. They marched in, seized the Chief Executor and
the Chief Archon, dragged them out and executed them on the spot. The
images played on every channel for weeks afterward, in between repeat
showings of Gul Dukat’s accession speech.

The purge that followed the end of civilian rule was unparalleled even
in Cardassia’s recent bloody history. Ithas Bamarek was shot following
the dissolution of the Cardassian city constabularies. A civilian
militia was created—a fifth of the strength of the previous police force
and directly answerable to Dukat—but the Jem’Hadar took over maintenance
of law and order in all urban centers. The rest of the Detapa Council
was tried and executed for “weakening the Cardassian state.” Some
high-ranking Assembly members shared this fate; others were interned in
labor camps or placed under house arrest. As for the rest of the Five:
Erek Rhemet, who had been offworld at the time, was rumored to have
sought asylum in Mathenite space, joining Tekeny Ghemor to form a
government-in-exile. The Cardassian Intelligence Bureau was made a
subsidiary agency within Dominion Intelligence. There was no news from
the Peyit system of Alon Ghemor. He had disappeared into the cold and
dark space. Kotan assumed this was good news. If Dukat had captured
Tekeny Ghemor’s nephew, he would surely have broadcast both the news and
the subsequent execution widely.

As for Kotan himself, his recent charitable work—and the fact that he
had quit his government posts to carry it out—saved his life. He was one
of the few members of the civilian administration held in genuine public
affection. He was not even placed under formal house arrest. He did wake
up one morning, however, to find two Jem’Hadar stationed outside the
front doors and another two on the avenue beyond. He had told Penelya
that Dukat would have better things to do than bother with him, but in
his heart Kotan knew that he had not been forgotten. The presence of
those four Jem’Hadar confirmed it. As soon as Dukat was sure his
position was secure, as soon as the Cardassian people proved their
unconditional love for him, he would start settling old scores. In the
meantime, Kotan kept to his house and hoped that Rugal would have the
sense not to do anything foolish enough to get them all killed.

Dukat’s coup had overwhelming popular support. Food and goods from
Dominion territories began to flood Cardassian shops and depots, and the
new masters of Cardassia proved able to distribute them, particularly in
the provinces, where the Jem’Hadar were quickly embedded. Within weeks,
news was released of military successes against the Klingons. Dukat’s
popularity soared. Tora Ziyal was forgotten. People began to talk, in
sentimental terms, of the great Cardassian family, with Dukat at its
head. They took their children out to the Akleen sector to see the
Jem’Hadar drill, and they cheered as they watched. In the streets and on
the walkways, people congratulated each other on surviving the past few
years, and said how glad they were to have been delivered.

One afternoon, Rugal joined Arric on the roof of the free hospital for
his break. Now an auxiliary medic, Rugal and his ilk reigned supreme up
here. (The doctors went somewhere else.) They talked about Dukat’s
accession and, because they were in private, Arric asked, “Do you know
what’s going to happen to you?” Rugal had long since trusted him with
the story of Dukat’s part in his kidnap. “Will Dukat be coming after you
and your father?”

“I don’t know.” Rugal replied honestly. He gave his friend a wry smile.
“Don’t worry. The first sign of trouble, I’ll be gone. I don’t want any
of you hurt either. Particularly Tela.”

“Rugal, I didn’t mean that—”

“I know you didn’t, but I do. It’s possible he’s forgotten about us. He
has a war on his hands, after all.” In truth, Rugal was deeply fearful
on Kotan’s account. He had gone past the Pa’Dar family house and seen
the Jem’Hadar there, but he hadn’t dared to contact Kotan directly. In
the meantime, he and his friends were watching with despair the collapse
of their work in Torr. For over a year they had labored to get the
people of the sector working together to deliver supplies and services
to each other, and now their fellow citizens were abandoning the effort
in favor of Dominion handouts. “So much for the project,” Arric said,
one evening at home.

Elat, Serna’s friend, took a more practical view of the matter. “What’s
the problem? There’s food in the shops, there’s a reliable supply of
drinking water. Isn’t that the kind of thing you were trying to get done
around here?”

“That’s not freedom,” Rugal objected. “Simply being fed isn’t freedom.”

“It’s better than working all night and then having to queue for hours
just to be able to eat enough to go back to work,” Elat replied.

“Some people will always rather be fed and enslaved than hungry and
free,” Arric said despondently. “Or so it transpires.”

Serna picked up their small daughter and kissed her on the top of her
head. “People have been hungry for so long,” she said. “There are limits
to what anyone can be expected to bear.”



In the summer, Dukat proclaimed a three-day holiday across the Union to
coincide with the longest day in the capital. Festivals were held across
major urban centers throughout the Union. The centerpiece of the
occasion was a massive military parade through the capital city to mark
the defeat of the Klingon Empire. The parade would culminate in the
unveiling of a new statue of Dukat in the Plaza of the Union.

Rugal and Penelya went along to watch. Attendance wasn’t compulsory, but
word was likely to get around if you hadn’t seen it, and he was loath to
draw attention to himself and Kotan. As the afternoon wore on and the
spectacle showed no sign of abating, Penelya said in a quiet voice,
“This might even be good for Cardassia.”

Rugal gave her a puzzled look.

“What I mean is... if we’re part of the Dominion, then we can rely on
them to bring food and medicine, and build houses. So we won’t go and do
what we’ve always done in the past. I mean, invade other worlds and take
what we lack. Perhaps this really will mean peace and prosperity, for
all the people of Cardassia.”

“I’m not convinced this has anything to do with the welfare of the
Cardassian people,” Rugal said. “As long as we do what we’re told, as
long as we’re grateful for what we’re being given, then there’ll be
peace and prosperity. But if that ever changes...” He looked down at the
ranks of Jem’Hadar beginning to take their places around the
still-covered monument. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to them, the
omnipresent soldiers of an occupying power. “We might turn out to be
surplus to requirements.”

Brass instruments blasted out a fanfare of ear-popping stridency. When
it ended, there was silence in the plaza, a silence that—if the screens
were anything to go by—was stretching out across the whole Union. Three
metrics passed this way, in honor of the fallen in the recent war. And
then, slowly, to the beat of drums, the statue of Dukat was unveiled.
“Rugal,” Penelya whispered. “I have to tell you something.”

Someone sitting behind them made a shushing sound. One of a pair of
Jem’Hadar positioned nearby looked their way. “Does it have to be right
now, Pen?” he whispered back. She subsided, but then, as the last
covering was removed, and the black and silver figure of Dukat was
revealed, and the crowd rose to their feet to applaud and cheer madly,
she said softly, “I’m leaving Cardassia Prime. I’m going back to Ithic.”

He had been distracted by the proceedings and hadn’t been listening
properly. He turned to her. Ridiculously, he laughed. “What did you just
say?”

“Ithic. I’m going back.”

He took her by the hand and they started to weave their way through the
crush. One of the pair of Jem’Hadar, seeing them, raised his weapon
slightly. “She’s sick,” he muttered. “Too much excitement.” The
Jem’Hadar nodded, let them past, and they hurried out of the plaza.

The walkways were quiet. Everyone was watching the parade. They walked
along for a while in silence. She had on that awful expression she wore
when she was trying to look pleased about something bad that was being
done to her. When they got to the small park by the statue of Legate
Artoc, he dragged her over to one of the stone benches. “It’s good news
really,” she said, in a sharp, bright brittle way that made his heart crack.

“Penelya...”

“I’ve wanted to go back there for ages. You know that. It’s my home.”
She glanced back in the direction of the plaza. “It’s thanks to the
Dominion, I suppose. If we had never joined the Dominion, we would never
have beaten the Klingons, and as long as we were fighting the Klingons,
we couldn’t fight the Maquis... But the Maquis are gone now. Ithic is
back under Cardassian control. Dominion control. Whichever. It makes no
difference. So I’m going back.”

“Don’t. It’s a terrible idea—”



“All my parents’ holdings are back in my uncle’s possession. And he’s
decided that the best thing for me to do is go out there and find out
how the operation is run. Learning on the job, he says. Which is good,
isn’t it? It pays my uncle back for all the money he’s spent on my
upkeep, and it means I get to do something that contributes directly to
Cardassia’s food problems, and you know how I’ve wanted to be useful, to
earn my place—”

“/Kosst,/ Pen, stop it!” Rugal said angrily. “What about your studies?
He promised to put you through the institute. Now he’s sending you out
to the middle of nowhere while you’re still unqualified so that you’ll
always be dependent on him. He’s cheating you!”

“Don’t!” Penelya shot back. “Don’t say anything like that to me ever
again!” She stopped to collect herself, taking a deep breath. “I don’t
want anything like that to be the last thing that we say to each other,
Rugal. I want us to stay friends—”

“That’s not good enough. Penelya, don’t go. Stay here. Marry me. Kotan
likes you. He won’t mind, not now he knows you. We can make a life here.
You can come and live with us in Torr. You can carry on studying. You
don’t need your uncle’s money. We’ll get by. Kotan will help.” /Yes,/ he
thought, /if it would keep her here, he would take Kotan’s money/. He
would do anything to keep her here. He would even call himself Kotan’s
son, call Kotan Father. “You don’t have to go where your uncle sends
you.” Hope rose in his heart as he said these things to her, as he
sketched out this possible future to her. It all made perfect sense. She
couldn’t possibly refuse.

Penelya let go of his hand. She stood up and walked to stand in the
shade of a huge /mekla/ bush whose scarlet flowers were brilliant in the
sunshine. It was a glorious day. Of course she would say yes... “It’s
not that I don’t want to say yes,” she said, and his heart split in two.
“I do, I swear I do. But I can’t. My uncle could have left me to live on
the streets, and he didn’t. He took me into his house, and he took care
of me—No, it’s true!” she said, when he shook his head. “I owe him a
great deal for that. And I need to repay that, before I can be...
well... free.”

“If you stayed with me,” Rugal said quietly, “then you would be free.”

“I wouldn’t, Rugal. There would still be the debt.”

“There isn’t any debt!”

“Yes, there is. But, listen! There is another option. You could come
with me. Why not?” she said eagerly, going back over to him. “It’s a
colony world. It’s only just getting back on its feet. Someone like you,
a medic, would be very welcome there. Why not come to Ithic with me?”

He took her hands within both his own. Could he do that? Ithic was so
far away... If Cardassia Prime had been the end of the line, Ithic might
as well be the end of the world. “I can’t,” he said with difficulty,
weaving his fingers through hers. “I have to go back to Bajor. It’s all
I’ve ever wanted. I can’t stay here forever. I know it makes no sense, I
know it must seem like madness, I know that nobody has ever believed me
when I’ve said it—”

Gently, she leaned down and kissed him, stopping the flow of estranging
words. “I have always believed you, every time you’ve said it. I have
never doubted that one day you would go back to Bajor. I shouldn’t have
asked you to stay, that was wrong. But you have to understand—that need
to go back, that sense of having to be somewhere, that’s how I feel
about Ithic. That’s how I feel about my duty.”

There was no answer to that. He kissed her in return, on the ridge
between her eyes. “Perhaps one day you’ll change your mind,” he said.
“I’ll wait, in case you do. I promise.”

“I won’t hold you to that,” she said, and already she seemed to be
speaking from a great distance.

“Too late,” he said fiercely. “I promised.”



He missed her beyond words. She had been his first friend on Cardassia,
the only thing that had made his earliest years here bearable. Since the
deaths of Etra and Migdal, she had been his chief reason for carrying
on. Now that she was gone, he was purposeless. He worked, he slept, he
ate. He sat and watched the triumphalist newscasts and military
recruitment drives that filled up the channels until it was the early
hours of the morning, when Serna and Elat would get back from work and
make him go to bed. He was lying on the couch staring at a ’cast when he
heard the announcement of the death of Tekeny Ghemor.

His first thought was of Kotan. Tekeny had been a father figure to him.
He would be devastated. Over the next few days, while he helped with the
new inoculation program that was being implemented at the free hospital,
Rugal pondered whether he ought to risk contacting his father. One
evening he took the shuttle out to Coranum, but there were still
Jem’Hadar outside the house, and he didn’t dare go past them. He didn’t
want to use the comm at home or one of the ones at work, and eventually
he went out to eastern Torr and used the public comm unit in a /geleta/
house he had never been to before.



Kotan, seeing him, was alarmed. /“My dear boy, what are you thinking of—?”/

“I heard about Tekeny,” Rugal blurted out. “I wanted to say I was sorry.”

Kotan’s expression softened. /“Thank you. Thank you. That means a great
deal to me, Rugal. Tell me, how are you?”/

“Fine... How are you?”

/“Much the same as ever, although Maleta is feeding me too much and I’m
not able to get any exercise. How is your lovely girl?”/

Rugal clenched his fists. “She’s gone, Kotan.”

/“Gone?”/

“Mikor sent her back to Ithic.”

/“Ah.”/ Rugal watched as Kotan worked out all the ramifications of that.
/“I see. I’m very sorry to hear that. I was hoping to see you joined.
Well, perhaps it can still happen one day. When I can move freely again,
I’ll speak to Mikor. I gather he’s doing very well at the moment...”/ He
collected himself. /“Rugal, don’t stay on this line any longer. I’m very
grateful that you’ve been in touch. Look after yourself. I’m sure we’ll
be able to see each other soon.”/

“Good-bye,” Rugal said. “Take care.” He cut the transmission and gave a
deep, shuddering sigh. It had been good to see Kotan, after all these
months, and he was glad to know that the man was still safe. He was
glad, too, to have spoken to someone about Penelya. Arric and Serna were
good friends, but Kotan was the closest thing that he had to a history.
It had been the right decision to get in touch, he thought, as he went
back home. His sadness seemed to have lessened as a result.

Perhaps it was this communication. Perhaps it was only a matter of time.
Whatever it was, a few weeks later, Rugal was called to his supervisor’s
office. When he went in, he was met by two officers from the civilian
militia, who promptly arrested him on a charge to be specified at a
later date. /So this is it,/ he thought as they bundled him into the
back of their armored skimmer; by the end of the week he would be dead,
or en route to some barren and forsaken moon for corrective labor. Even
despite the shock tactics—cuffing him hand and foot in front of his
supervisor, shuffling him out of the hospital in full view of his
workmates—Rugal felt oddly tranquil. He realized he had always assumed
that, if he hadn’t escaped to Bajor, this would be how it would end.

They drove for about twenty or thirty metrics, during which time Rugal
sat, as instructed, with his head between his knees. When at last the
skimmer stopped, he was ordered to get out; he obeyed, dizzy and
stumbling slightly. He blinked at the bright sunlight streaming down on
the grand building in front of him. This was not Maklar Prison, he
thought—unless Maklar Prison had recently been refurbished as a country
house in the style of the Second Republic.

The two officers led him inside through a plant-filled atrium and down
along several elegant corridors to a small sunroom. They ordered him to
sit down, releasing his ankles but not his wrists. Then they took up
guard positions, one by the door to the room, the other by the largest
of its three windows. Nobody spoke. Rugal stared down at the chain
between his hands. After another ten or fifteen metrics, he heard
footsteps in the corridor. He looked up as Dukat walked in. Behind him
was Kotan.

Even with the sun streaming down on his back, Rugal shivered. Dukat
beamed at him and clapped his hands together. “How glad I am to be here
at this family reunion! Even better, to be the agent of it! Kotan,” he
barely glanced behind him, “do take a seat—how about there, next to your
boy. Rugal, has anyone offered you a drink?”

Rugal held up his wrists. “I think I’d have trouble with it.”

Dukat nodded at one of the guards, who came and released his wrists.
Rugal rubbed them, looking sideways at Kotan. The man gave him a warm,
anxious smile and reached out to place his hand, briefly, on top of
Rugal’s. Dukat watched the whole exchange like a voyeur. “Here,” he
said, holding out two glasses of /kanar/. He took a chair opposite them
and held up his own glass. “To families! Long may they remain together!”
He drank deeply; Kotan sipped gingerly. Rugal held his own glass out in
front of him as if it were a grenade.

“Not drinking?” said Dukat.

“No thanks,” Rugal replied. “I’m on duty at the hospital. Was there
something particular you needed from me? I’d like to get back.”

Dukat blinked at him, wrong-footed and baffled. Rugal heard Kotan
smother a laugh. “I’d like to get back too,” Kotan said carelessly. “I
had a busy afternoon in the garden planned. For a man with a military
dictatorship to run, Dukat, you have a lot of time available for
face-to-face gloating.”

Dukat stared at them both in disbelief. He gestured behind him to the
armed guards standing by. “You do understand that I can order these two
men to kill you and still be well within the law?”

Kotan’s good humor subsided. “If you had intended to kill either of us,”
he said quietly, “I don’t think you would have bothered with this whole
charade.”



“No,” Dukat agreed. “No, I wouldn’t.” He stood up and began to pace the
room, coming to a halt by one of the windows, where he began slowly to
play with the dimmer control. The room began to darken slightly. Rugal
glanced at Kotan; when he caught the man’s eye, he gave him an
encouraging smile, receiving one in return.

“You’re a difficult man to track down, Rugal,” Dukat said.

“It’s a big Union. And I’m sure you’ve been busy.”

“Your father,” Dukat nodded at Kotan, “was considerably easier to find.
While I was busy fending off Klingons, he seems to have been making
himself popular with the people.”

“That’s because he was doing good work,” Rugal said, quietly and
truthfully. “And they appreciated his efforts.”

“And yet my efforts on their behalf have been considerably more popular,
wouldn’t you say? Nobody’s starving on Cardassia Prime now, are they?
Not like in the good old days, when the Five were in power.” The room
went a little dimmer. “Speaking of the Five, have you heard from your
old friend Alon Ghemor recently, Kotan? I wonder if he has heard of his
uncle’s deathbed recantation. I’m glad Tekeny saw reason, just in time.”

“Wherever Alon is,” Kotan said, in measured tones, “I’m sure he was as
devastated as I was to hear about Tekeny’s death. And I’m sure he knows
exactly what to believe about it.”

Dukat shrugged. “Alon Ghemor doesn’t matter. I’ll find him eventually.
But you, now, Kotan, let’s talk about you. The only other member of the
Five. The last surviving member of the old Detapa Council...”

“Dukat,” Kotan replied in a clear voice. He sounded more in command than
Rugal had ever heard him. “Must we continue in this way? You did
terrible harm to me when you stole Rugal. I hated you for a very long
time. But I will not be consumed by it any longer.” He put down his
glass and stood up. “We can end this. I mean you no harm—I cannot mean
you any harm! And I would never have harmed your daughter.”

Dukat swung away from the window. He strode across the room, stopping
only when he and Kotan were standing face to face. Kotan swallowed, but
he did not flinch. “It was the Detapa Council that drove us into exile,
the Council that drove my daughter away—a Council of which you were a
member!”

“Kotan had nothing to do with that,” Rugal said quickly. “He resigned
over it.”

Dukat stared at him, and then back at Kotan. Rugal held his breath. Then
Dukat shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It makes no difference.” He
strode away, back to the window. “Most likely you’re lying anyway.”

“Then what do you want from me, Dukat?” Kotan held his palms out. “A
declaration of my loyalty, like you wanted from Tekeny? My life? You can
have both, if you want. If you really believe that they will satisfy you.”

Dukat looked at him in contempt. “Begging, Kotan? I knew you were a
coward. I don’t want your loyalty, and I don’t want your life.” He
looked out the window. Casually, as if he was asking for the time, he
said, “I want your son.”

Before Rugal’s eyes, Kotan seemed to crumble. What was it Geleth had
said? /All the best feuds are passed down./ Once upon a time, Kotan
Pa’Dar had threatened Skrain Dukat’s position. So Dukat had stolen his
son. In return, Pa’Dar had used Dukat’s daughter to ruin him—or so Dukat
believed. And now Dukat was powerful again, and the debt had to be
repaid, in kind. Except that there wasn’t any debt. Kotan had not harmed
Tora Ziyal. And it didn’t make any difference whatsoever. “Dukat,” Kotan
said. “Please...”

In the end, Rugal couldn’t bear to listen to his father beg. Not on his
account. “Dukat,” he said quickly, ignoring Kotan’s frantic gesture
telling him to stop. “What do you want? Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

Dukat turned and smiled at him. /When Dukat smiles at you,/ Rugal
thought, /it’s like being served up on a plate in front of something
large and hungry and in possession of a very sharp knife/. He could not
understand why Ziyal loved this man. He was the closest thing to a
monster Rugal had ever met—and Rugal had met Geleth.

“Well,” Dukat said, “and speaking confidentially, you understand, it’s
entirely possible that we may soon find ourselves at war.” His eyes
flicked between father and son. Kotan, suddenly understanding, said, “Oh
no! No! I absolutely forbid it!”

“It’s not your decision,” Rugal pointed out. He still had his eyes on
Dukat, who was still smiling. /I’ll let him live,/ he seemed to be
saying, /if you do what I want/.

“Rugal, I did not bring you home and risk public disgrace just to have
you killed fighting whatever war this maniac has planned—”

“Kotan, please, shut up!”

“The young man is right,” Dukat said. “It’s not your decision, Pa’Dar.”

Rugal got up from his chair and began to pace the room. He came to rest
by the window. He altered the dimmer so that the sunlight could stream
back in, and he stared out across a lavish green garden. /This strange
planet,/ he thought. /Wholly alien and wholly familiar, all at the same
time./ Once he had hated it, without qualification. Now, after four
years, he was not sure. He knew he did not love Cardassia—or at least,
he did not love what people said Cardassia was meant to represent. What
he had come to love were specific people, certain qualities. He loved
Penelya’s fortitude, how she always kept her dignity even when she was
treated with contempt. He was proud of his friends, and the people of
Torr, who had been cold and hungry and afraid and had not turned on each
other, but had worked together. He had been in awe of Ziyal’s courage,
her vision, how she had tried to communicate it and make it tangible. He
had, in the end, come to admire Geleth, who had survived unspeakable
losses with her spirit unbroken.

And what about Kotan, who had dragged him away from his family and from
Bajor, and had brought him to this strange cruel place? In the end, he
had to say that he did love Kotan, and for one simple reason. Kotan had
loved him without condition. Whenever Rugal had been angry or bitter or
accusatory, Kotan had not responded in kind. He had loved Rugal because
he was his son, and he had asked for nothing in return. And that, in its
turn, was unanswerable. “I’ll do what you ask,” Rugal said to Dukat. He
felt light as he said it, almost happy, as if he was releasing himself
of an obligation that he had not until now known existed. “I’ll join
your ridiculous army.”

That last took some of the edge off Dukat’s triumph, Rugal was pleased
to see. As for Kotan—he didn’t look at Kotan, because he didn’t think he
could quite bear to see what this particular sacrifice was costing his
father.

• • •





Between the start of Rugal’s basic training and being commissioned into
the Second Order, the war that Dukat had promised began. The Federation
mined the wormhole, preventing Dominion ships from coming through from
the Gamma quadrant. In response, the Dominion took Deep Space 9. Who
knew where it would end?

Before leaving Cardassia Prime, Rugal went back for the last time to the
Pa’Dar house in Coranum. That afternoon he had to report to the Second
Order’s garrison in the Akleen sector. The next day his company was
leaving for Ogyas III, to guard a scientific research facility of
unspecified purpose. Kotan, seeing him in uniform, said tiredly, “The
never-ending sacrifice.”

“Someone had better be willing to end it,” Rugal replied, “and soon. Or
there won’t be anyone left to sacrifice.”

Arric, Serna, and Tela came to see him off. Kotan was confined to the
house and could not come. They wished him luck—Arric was dazed by this
turn of events—and then Rugal was on his way. The company was
transported out onto the /Ramaklan/. Sitting crushed in a line of other
indistinguishable troops, Rugal thought how he had longed for this
moment, when at last he escaped Cardassia Prime. Be careful what you
wish for.

They stopped en route for four crowded days at Deep Space 9—Terok Nor,
as the other men called it, and Rugal tried his best to use that name.
The company took up residence in the Ferengi’s bar, drinking overpriced
/kanar/ and harassing the dabo girls. Rugal, unwilling to attract
attention by going off by himself, sat near the door drinking redleaf
tea and looking out across the Promenade. He was remembering the first
time he had been here, with Migdal. It seemed a lifetime ago.



He recognized Tora Ziyal the moment he saw her, less because of her
distinctive looks—she had her back to him—but because she had impressed
herself so strongly upon his memory. She was talking in forceful fashion
to a young human male (and what was a human still doing on Deep Space
9?) and they soon parted ways. The human male came past the entrance to
the bar; Ziyal went off in the opposite direction. Rugal finished what
remained of his drink, and hurried out of the bar. “Ziyal,” he called
after her. “Tora Ziyal!”

She stopped and turned. She frowned to see that it was only yet another
Cardassian gil—and then she recognized him. Her face lit up. “Rugal
Pa’Dar!” she said. They met and pressed palms. “What are you doing here?”

“I came in on the /Ramaklan./”

She looked down and noticed his uniform for the first time. “You joined
the /army/?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She laughed. “How long are you here?”

“We’re leaving in the morning. How are you, Ziyal? How have you been?”
He was painfully glad to see her; she was a drop of sanity in the ocean
of madness that had been overwhelming him. “What have you been doing?”

“Oh, all kinds of things.”

“Painting, I hope?”

“Of course!” She glanced around quickly. “Look, I have to be somewhere
now, but perhaps you could come to my quarters later? We could catch up,
have something to eat. Say twenty-two hundred?”

“Yes, I’d like that. Thank you.”

“Till twenty-two hundred then.” She gave him a lovely smile, and then
went on her way down the Promenade.


• • •





She served him Bajoran food. It was one of the greatest kindnesses
anyone had ever done him. He could have cried. They ate /hasperat/ with
warm flat bread, and /ratamba/ stew, and finished up with
/moba/-flavored ices. Memories of Migdal and Etra, of his lost childhood
and stolen happiness, were stronger than ever before. Ziyal watched with
amusement as he ate everything she put in front of him and then took
second helpings. She told him about her time on the /Groumall,/ then on
Deep Space 9, and then her brief stay on Bajor. It was clear that Deep
Space 9 was the place that she considered home. “It’s the mix of
people,” she said. “A half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian female doesn’t look
too much out of place.”

“That was why Migdal, my Bajoran father, wanted to come here. He thought
we’d get less trouble here. Etra, my mother, was going to open a dress
shop. She was a seamstress, and there wasn’t anyone else here doing that
kind of work—”

Ziyal gave him a strange look. “Oh yes, there is—well, there was. There
was a tailor’s shop on the Promenade.” Rugal put his hand to his
forehead and groaned. At this late stage, it was only funny to learn
that the move to Deep Space 9 might well have turned out to be yet
another of Proka Migdal’s epically bad decisions. How he had loved that
old man.

“Of all the people I have ever known,” she said, as she served up the
/raktajino,/ “you are the one I would have said was least likely to join
the Cardassian military. Whatever happened, Rugal? I thought you were
going to go back to Bajor.”

Since it was hardly possible to tell her of her father’s part in it, he
sidestepped the issue. “After I finished training as a medic I wanted to
do something useful. I couldn’t get back to Bajor, and the army seemed
the obvious move.”

“For you? Couldn’t you have found a civilian placement?”

“Remember that man at the Darhe’el monument?”

She shuddered. “I’m not likely to forget.”

“I thought he had a point. That it was all very well for me to judge the
military, but if I couldn’t speak from experience, then I shouldn’t
speak at all.”

She shrugged, but seemed persuaded. Rugal was amazed, not to mention
dismayed, at how fluently he had been able to lie. Cardassia had made
him good at hiding the truth. He tried to change the subject. “Was that
really a human male you were talking to earlier on the Promenade?”

Ziyal’s hand hesitated as she lifted her cup. “He’s just a friend.”

So they were both keeping secrets. Was he more than a friend? Did her
father disapprove? “I’m sure he’s nice...”

She shook her head and laughed. “Prophets, no, nothing like that! He’s a
journalist. But he’s also the son of the Starfleet captain who was in
command here. His name’s Jake, Jake Sisko. It’s an awkward situation,
obviously.”

Sisko. The man who had, all that time ago, sent him back to Cardassia.
Rugal frowned. If this was the son of the former commander of Deep Space
9, then he was also the son of her father’s sworn enemy. Should Ziyal be
talking to him? He caught himself in time. That would also, of course,
preclude her from talking to him, never mind giving him dinner. Besides,
she was free to talk to whomever she chose, without her father’s
permission, or his. He smiled inwardly at his reaction. He seemed to be
turning Cardassian in his old age.

“How is Penelya?” she asked, changing the subject herself.

“Her uncle sent her back to Ithic after the Maquis were defeated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Rugal. I know how fond you were of each other.”
She gave him a shrewd look. “Is /that/ why you joined the military?”

“No, of course not! Of course not! Why does it matter to you so much to
know why I decided to join the military? I did, and now I’m here. That’s
the end of it.”

There was an awkward silence. Ziyal put down her mug and bit her lip.
“I’m sure my father appreciates your willingness to fight for Cardassia—”

“Your father! Ziyal, Dukat is the reason I’m here now, in this uniform,
on my way to the middle of nowhere to guard a research facility for our
Dominion masters!”

She went very stiff. Color leached from her face. “I know you must be
worried about what you’re going to find when you get there, but it’s
hardly fair to blame my father for that. The whole of Cardassia
supported joining the Dominion and entering this war—”

“Ziyal, if it wasn’t for your father, I’d have packed up and left
Cardassia and gone to join Penelya on Ithic. If it wasn’t for your
father, I’d never have been taken away from Kotan and Arys in the first
place! But I was, and now I’m stuck in the middle of this insane war and
I have no idea if I’ll ever see Penelya or Kotan again!”

Ziyal stood up. “I think you had better leave,” she said coolly. She led
him toward the door, but before he could go, she turned to him. Her eyes
were wet. “I invited you here because I wanted us to be friends. I
didn’t have to, after all your father did to us.”

“What /Kotan/ did?”

“My father told me that it was Kotan who was to blame for my being
forced from Cardassia Prime.”

“That isn’t true—”

“That your father was the one behind the whole scandal, that he used it
to secure his position, and that’s why he’s the only one of the Detapa
Council still alive.”

“Ziyal, Kotan resigned from the Council because they were using you to
get to your father. The only reason your father hasn’t been able to kill
him is that he spent the time after that trying to stop the Cardassian
people from starving. Whatever Dukat’s been telling you, it’s a pack of
lies.”

They were standing facing each other like enemies. Ziyal’s eyes were
flashing; Rugal’s fists were clenched. Then, all at once, at the same
time, they understood what they were doing. Ziyal took a step back;
Rugal relaxed his hands.

“My grandmother used to say that all the best feuds are passed on,” he
said. “I won’t let this one be passed on. I’m sorry I said what I did
about your father, Ziyal. I didn’t come here this evening to upset you.”
And he hadn’t. Whatever Dukat had done, it was not the fault of this
lost and lovely young woman. She was mistaken, badly mistaken, about her
father—but Rugal did not want to be the one who shattered her illusions.
The universe was cruel enough without his help. He could only hope that
when she learned the truth, it would not be the death of her.

Ziyal smiled at him sadly. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “It’s their
battle, isn’t it? Not ours.”



Peace was restored, of a kind. Regretfully he said, “I should go. I have
an early start.”

She made a quick gesture, stopping him in his tracks. “What did you
mean,” she said, “when you said it was my father’s fault that you were
taken away from Kotan and Arys?”

His mouth; he always spoke before thinking. Kotan and Penelya had both
complained about it. “Forget it,” he said. “I spoke in the heat of the
moment. It was good to see you again, Ziyal. I’ll come back this way
when the war is over, if I make it. We’ll go to Bajor. I’ll bring
Penelya. You bring that human friend of yours, Sisko’s son. We’ll sit in
the sun and be at peace and we’ll never fight our parents’ wars again.”

As he went toward the door, Ziyal said, “Wait a moment.” She went and
got her art case, opening it up and rifling the contents. “I have
something for you.” She held out a piece of paper. “It was a very happy
day for me,” she said, “one of the few I ever had on Cardassia Prime. I
think it was a happy day for both of you too.”

It was the sketch she had made of him and Penelya. She had caught them
both so well, summed them up in a few quick clever lines, but with wit
rather than cruelty. Looking at her, Rugal missed Penelya acutely, all
over again. He cleared his throat. “Yes, it was.”

“Keep it. Take it with you. And when this is all over, we’ll all meet
again, like you said, and we’ll look back at all this and shake our
heads and wonder how we ever found ourselves where we are now.”

But they did not, nor could either of them have imagined where this war
would take them. They pressed palms, like Cardassians, and then, because
they were both Bajoran too, they embraced and said good-bye.









*Eight*





“For Cardassia,” said Dalin Tret Khevet, as he strapped on his chest
armor, “I am strapping on chest armor that is prone to cracking in the
subzero temperatures in which I am required to perform my duty.”

“For Cardassia,” replied Glinn Rugal Pa’Dar, as he checked the power
supply on his disruptor, “I have not had a decent cup of tea in over a
year and a half.”

“True words, Rugal,” Tret said sorrowfully, “true words. Mm, let’s see.
For Cardassia... What have I ever done for Cardassia? Oh yes, for
Cardassia, I skip every third meal.”

“For Cardassia, I have not yet strangled my commanding officer in his
sleep. Do you think the night vision on this visor is likely to work at
any point?”

“Never been less sure of anything in my life. For Cardassia, I have
forsworn the tender charms of my beloved for what seems like an eternity
if I’m being frank.”

“For Cardassia, I shall not throw up at any point during the next two days.”

They both snapped down their visors. “Hey, Tret!” Rugal said. “In this
light, we could be mistaken for soldiers! How did that ever happen?”

But Tret was no longer playing the game. He was staring down at his
disruptor as though he had just worked out what it was for. Softly, he
said, “My brother died, for Cardassia.”

And for one brief mad moment, Rugal envied Tret—envied him his home, his
history, his certainty. Most of all he envied his desire for revenge.
Because revenge was better than nothing—and nothing was the whole of
what Rugal felt for Cardassia. Then he remembered Kotan, and what Kotan
would undoubtedly say right now if he were here.

Rugal Pa’Dar began to laugh. “All right, Kotan!” he whispered to his
distant father. “For once, I’ll do what I’m told. For your sake, I shall
try not to get us all killed.”



On Ogyas III, the snow fell gentle and thick upon Keralek Base. The snow
generally fell just this gently, and just this thick, but most days the
garrison did not have to stand outside enjoying the experience. This
afternoon, however, Gul Rantok was giving out medals. /A typically
Cardassian reward,/ Rugal thought as he shivered within the protective
shielding of his armor. Keeping them out here while the names of those
to be honored were called out so that their comrades could loathe them
twice over: first for their success, and then for this afternoon in the
snow. A few Jem’Hadar were standing by dispassionately, like watchdogs,
overlooking the proceedings. They did not feel the cold, or did not
care. The Vorta, Verisel, was conspicuous by her absence. She would not
trouble herself to freeze, handing the Cardassians their baubles.

Rugal was among those receiving a medal today. He had earned it during
the first wave of the Romulan assault on Ogyas, for “conspicuous valor
shown during the evacuation of the civilian population.” Tret thought
the idea of Rugal receiving a medal was the funniest thing he had heard
since the war broke out. But then Tret had been stationed on Ogyas III
for nearly two years, and hilarity was in even shorter supply than heaters.

Rantok barked, “Glinn Pa’Dar!” Smartly, Rugal stepped forward. They
exchanged salutes, and, in fractious fashion (the gul disliked this
particular glinn), Rantok pinned the Triple Medal of Valor on his chest.
More salutes, then Rugal stepped back into line, his moment of glory
over. Beside him, he heard Tret struggle to contain his laughter.
Rantok’s litany ground on, and yet another glinn stepped forward to
receive his due. Soon Rugal’s own mouth began to twitch. All any of them
wanted to do was sit inside as close to a heat source as possible. Yet
here they were, standing in the cold, while the snow fell gently upon
them and Gul Rantok shouted out the name of another freezing young
soldier who wanted to be indoors. Honors that were punishments. Was it
possible, Rugal wondered as the whole business dragged on, that this was
all a little crazy?



Afterwards, and back indoors, Tret said, “Sometimes I think everyone
around me has gone mad and I’m the only sane one left.” He and Rugal
were making something like redleaf tea, only without the redleaf, which
had run out earlier in the month. “Then I think, perhaps I’m the one
who’s gone mad, and everyone else around me is sane. Then I come to the
conclusion that we’re all of us mad together. What do you think, Rugal?”

Rugal warmed his hands around his mug and took a sip of hot brown water.
His purpose was to listen. Tret outranked him.

“Of course,” Tret said, “you’re the only sane one around here, aren’t you?”

“If I were sane,” Rugal said equably, “I wouldn’t have come out here.”

“There are worse places to be.”

“There are /warmer/ places to be.”

“Yes, but some of those are even closer to the front line.”

Rugal grunted. Tret had a point. Was it better to freeze under Romulan
bombardment or burn up from Romulan disruptor fire? Death was still the
outcome, either way. He sipped his tea. Dying preyed upon his mind these
days. It was a large part of what they talked about: when they would
die, how they would die, whether or not it would hurt. Conversation was
sadly limited on Ogyas III. Sometimes they talked about how bad the food
was. Sometimes they talked about how cold it was. Death, food, and the
weather. That pretty much covered everything.

“You know,” Tret said, as he poured himself more of the appalling tea,
“this isn’t bad.”

Tret Khevet had come a long way from his sun-kissed life in Coranum. He
and his brother Colat had both joined up in that first rush of patriotic
fervor following the taking of Terok Nor. He had joined the Second Order
because it was Dukat’s old command; many young men like him had been
inspired by their charismatic new leader, a great hero who was going to
revitalize the Union. Clever, personable, physically strong, Tret had
quickly risen to the rank of dalin. He was second in command here, below
Rantok. By the time Rugal had got to Ogyas, however, the war had lost
its glamour for Tret. He was now firmly among the cynics. Colat’s death
at Chin’toka had undoubtedly been the final blow. But it also seemed to
have something to do with how long the civilians had been kept on Ogyas.

Keralek had originally been a Cardassian weapons research base, but the
Dominion had quickly retooled it as a Jem’Hadar cloning facility. There
was no further need for the research staff, but they had remained on
Ogyas for months afterwards. Tret had pressed for them to be sent away;
Verisel—and therefore Rantok—would not allow it. It was plain that they
were intended as shields, to ward off aerial attack or sabotage. The
first Romulan assault on Keralek Base had made it blindingly clear they
weren’t bothered in the slightest about the status of their Cardassian
targets. They were more than happy to slaughter indiscriminately. That
battle—Tret’s first, Rugal’s too—had been vastly overcomplicated by the
presence of these terrified, untrained civilians. It was only after the
assault that the civilians had finally been evacuated. When the base was
secured, Rugal had been the audience for Tret’s subsequent frenzied
outburst. Rugal had listened without interruption. It was a shame, he
thought, that Tret’s idealism was another casualty of this war, but if
he was only now grasping the brutality, the depravity, of the Cardassian
military, it was not soon enough. Rugal himself was not cynical about
this war. He had never cared in the first place. But he was glad that
Tret was here. He liked the young man, and besides, he was a link to
Penelya.

Rugal held out his mug for more tea. “I’m not sure about the aftertaste.”

“Oh, try it between bites of a ration bar. They offset each other.”

They were experimenting with this when Glinn Kelat put his head around
the door. Kelat typified the third class of soldier that Rugal had
identified: not yet cynical, not past caring, Kelat was one of the
surprisingly large number still enthusiastic about the war. He also
liked to be first with news. “Have you heard?” he said.

“How could we?” Tret said acidly. “You haven’t told us yet.”

The young glinn was so excited he didn’t notice. “The Breen have entered
the war!”

Tret and Rugal exchanged glances. If Kelat was hoping for a rapturous
response, he had come to the wrong room. “On whose side?” Rugal asked,
chiefly for politeness’ sake.

“Ours!”

“Who cares?” Tret muttered.

Rugal replied, “Good! Great! Thanks for telling us!”

Kelat, satisfied, hurried to carry the news off elsewhere. “I think,”
Tret said, after a pause, “that you and I are probably the only sane
ones left around here, Rugal. And I’m not entirely sure about me.”

Rugal wasn’t sure about him either. He didn’t think Tret was mad, not
yet. But he was probably cracking. Zeal fired you on; lack of investment
kept you ticking over. But cynicism? It was a short step from that to
despair. It was about as much protection as their armor.



As Rugal had suspected, the Breen’s participation in the war made no
material difference to the garrison stationed on Ogyas. “Couldn’t they
have sent some of them here?” Tret complained. “They’re used to the
cold. Aren’t we meant to be allies?”

Rugal nodded his support, but Tret had it badly wrong. The Cardassians
weren’t Dominion allies and never had been. From the start, they had
been no better than its servants, and they had fallen out of favor with
their new masters at least since the Federation had retaken Deep Space
9. By force of personality alone, Skrain Dukat could have kept up the
fiction that he was an equal partner. Corat Damar, demonstrably, could
not. Here on Ogyas, the situation was clear to anyone who cared to think
about it. The Jem’Hadar were slave drivers. Verisel was the overseer.
And Rantok was the idiot who mistook enslavement for service freely
given. There would be no relief sent the embattled troops on Ogyas. They
would stay here until the Dominion won the war or the Romulans smashed
them to smithereens. Or until they froze.

Rugal had to admit that it had not been a bad posting at first. Out of
the way, routine, and with the unexpected bonus of Tret’s company. Rugal
had been surprised that Dukat had not had something more unpleasant
lined up for him. Rantok had obviously been told to keep his eye on him;
he was a veteran of the Occupation and devoted to his former commander.
From the outset, he had watched Gil Pa’Dar for signs of sedition or
attempts to affect morale. Rugal had kept his mouth shut and executed
his duties to his best of his ability. Mostly, this was out of fear that
Kotan would face reprisals if he caused trouble, although this became
much less of a worry after Dukat’s capture. By then, Rugal had
discovered that immersing himself in the minutiae of military life meant
he didn’t have to think about anything else. Like Penelya, or the fact
that wearing this uniform was an offense to the memory of Etra and
Migdal. It was cold comfort that Rantok had had to promote him and then
decorate him.

The successful Romulan landing on Ogyas, and the ensuing bombardment and
blockade, had done more to damage morale on the base than anything Rugal
could have managed. Supplies were cut dramatically. Rugal coped with the
subsequent privations better than most—certainly better than Tret. The
scanty resources and constant noise of the Torr sector had inured Rugal
slightly. The blow to his own morale had come at the start of this year,
when he had heard from Kotan of the death of Tora Ziyal. That meeting
under the sun on Bajor could never happen now. A critical element had gone.

Every so often, Arric sent messages, obviously done hastily between
shifts at the hospital, mostly news of Tela, now entering formal
schooling. From Kotan, faithful as a hound, Rugal received regular
messages. Censorship prevented Kotan from writing much about life on
Cardassia Prime, so he wrote what he had been thinking. His messages
became more philosophical, more somber—more beautiful—as the war dragged
on. He talked about meeting and courting Arys, breaking the story up
into installments that made Rugal long for his next message. When he
sent the news about Tora Ziyal, he wrote how he would not wish upon
Dukat the grief he had felt at the death of his own child. He talked
about Bajor, where he had been exarch of Tozhat, and how his hopes for
friendship with the locals had soured so badly. He wanted to go back
there one day, to visit the graves of Etra and Migdal and thank them.
Rugal had all the messages stored on a data rod that he always carried
around with him, as he always carried the picture of Arys, and Ziyal’s
sketch, and his earring.

From Penelya he heard nothing. Rugal did not even know if she knew where
he was. Others sighed over messages from their beloved, Tret included,
but perhaps it was better not to have this constant reminder of a
different way of life. It was easier to keep his world closed to the
narrow sphere of Keralek Base; keep his interests limited to the people
around him—the cynics, the zealots, the ones who were past caring—and,
everywhere, ruthless and dispassionate, the Jem’Hadar.



The destruction of the Eleventh Order on Septimus III was when things
began to fall apart. By the time the Klingon invasion there started, the
expected Jem’Hadar reinforcements had simply not materialized. Half a
million Cardassian soldiers, mostly reserves and veterans, were
massacred. Suddenly, everyone else on Ogyas could see what Rugal had
known for ages: that the Dominion rated Cardassian life very low on the
food chain.

When the junior-ranking officers at Keralek heard the news, they were
gathered in the mess hall on the first basement level of the base. They
hunched around the tiny comm, cold and underfed and close to the edge,
listening as the scale of the disaster emerged. Reactions ranged from
disbelief to fury to outright distress. Even Kelat had a hard time
finding anything positive to say, although he struggled for longer than
most. “There must have been some sort of misunderstanding. That’s the
only explanation. Doesn’t that make the most sense? That there was a
miscommunication somewhere along the line?”

“Kelat,” Rugal said coldly, shocked out of his year-long stupor, “the
message is perfectly clear. If you’re Cardassian, you’re expendable.” He
felt Tret’s hand upon his arm, but continued nonetheless. “You might as
well be dirt.”

There was a stunned silence from the other five. Then Envek, the other
relatively keen officer, said, “It’s all Damar’s fault.” He lowered his
voice. “Yes, the Dominion have overstepped themselves, but Dukat would
never have allowed anything like this to happen—”

“Envek!” This was from Alaren, another of the cynics. “I don’t think
you’re /able/ to say anything if Rantok hasn’t said it first! Pa’Dar’s
right. We’re expendable. We’re surplus to requirements—”

A full-blown argument was soon under way. Eventually, Tret had to order
them to stop. He switched off the comm and, in the ensuing silence, he
stood up and addressed them all, white-lipped and ashen-faced. “I don’t
want a word of this getting out to the ranks. Morale’s low enough as it
is. I know what some of you think,” he glanced at Rugal and at Alaren,
“but this stays in here. If I find out any of you have passed this news
down to the ranks, I’ll have you out shoveling snow till the end of the
war. And I’ll have any foot soldier I find discussing it
court-martialed. Is that clear?” There was some mumbling, a few sullen
nods. “Then go and do something useful.”

They all dispersed. Rugal hung back. “Sorry,” he said, when he and Tret
were alone. He knew how much Tret loathed enforcing discipline; it sat
uneasily with the young man’s self-image as a likable and approachable
officer. “It’s just...” Rugal held up his hands, unable to express the
scale of it in words.

“I know.” Tret sighed. “Do you think we can possibly keep this quiet?”

Cardassians were good at keeping secrets, but they were also good at
passing them around without getting caught. And they excelled at turning
tiny pieces of information into full-blown rumors. “Honestly, Tret? Not
a chance.”



Rugal was right. The news sped around the base during the course of the
day, but the source of the information could not be identified. Tret
made a few more threats in the direction of the junior officers, and
left it to Tevrek, the senior-ranking and vastly experienced garresh, to
discipline the rank and file as he saw fit. Whatever he did, it worked;
any incipient hysteria was firmly quelled to the level of whispers in
corners. When the news of Damar’s rebellion broke, however, something
had to give.

Rugal was on duty in the ops room, coordinating perimeter security
sweeps. The past few days there had been practically nothing from the
Romulan side, and historically, this had been the prelude to another
assault. On top of that, two out of the last three supply ships had not
made it through. Everyone was tired, hungry, and extremely jumpy. About
twenty metrics from the end of the shift, Tevrek came into ops, looking
for Tret. Rugal sent him over to the far side of the room, and was
quickly absorbed again in the security sweeps, only to be shaken out of
it when he heard Verisel addressing Rantok in a high, clear voice. “Is
it customary within the Cardassian military for the junior ranks to talk
treason within earshot of their commander?”

Rugal turned to stare, as did everyone else. Tret was standing with his
hand over his mouth. Tevrek looked completely bewildered. Rugal inched
noiselessly across the room to one of the soldiers nearest the scene.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.

“Damar’s rebelled,” the man whispered back. “Half the military’s gone
over to him. Tevrek had come to warn Khevet that there might be trouble—”

“Tevrek /threatened/ him?”



“No, no—he was just informing him!”

Rugal glanced back across the room. Rantok’s eyes had not left the
Vorta. “No, ma’am, it is not.” He turned to Tret. “Khevet. Have this man
arrested.”

Tret whitened. He slowly removed his hand from his mouth. “Sir—” he started.

Rantok exploded. “/Do/ it, Khevet!”

So Tret did and, two metrics later, Tevrek was being escorted out of ops
under guard. The rest of the soldiers present continued their work in as
much silence as possible. When Verisel, aloof and inscrutable, finally
went out, Rantok addressed them. “I am not unsympathetic to your
concerns,” he said. “This is a difficult time, and difficult decisions
must be made. But we must demonstrate to the Vorta that we are loyal
beyond doubt. I will not have this place turned into another Septimus III.”

Nobody answered. They kept their heads down and did their work. Later,
off duty, Rugal lay wide awake in his bunk staring into darkness. A
military revolt, led by Corat Damar. He could scarcely believe it. The
military didn’t have a revolutionary bone in its whole rotten body. And
Corat Damar, everyone knew, was a drunk, a womanizer, not half the man
Dukat had been. Could it really be true? It would explain the relative
quiet of the past week. The Romulans were waiting to discover whether
they had new friends or old enemies to contend with over on the
Cardassian side.

Enemies, if you took only Rantok into account. Quickly, Rugal rolled out
of bed and slipped down the corridor to Alaren’s quarters. He tapped on
the door. When Alaren opened up, Rugal said, “I want to hear what he said.”

Alaren glanced past him, up and down the corridor, and then let him in.
As Rugal had suspected, Alaren had indeed got hold of Damar’s
transmission. Envek, with whom Alaren shared quarters, was on duty, so
the two of them could safely sit and watch it through. Alaren chewed at
his thumbnail, Rugal sat with his head in his hands. Damar was not a
politician. He did not have Dukat’s charisma, and his words were rough
and blunt, but when the transmission got to the end, Rugal realized he
was trembling. Not from patriotism, not that—but because the call with
which Damar had ended rang in his heart with the clear sweet sound of a
temple bell. It was the same call that had driven the Resistance on to
victory: /“I call upon Cardassians everywhere. Resist. Resist today!
Resist tomorrow! Resist till the last Dominion soldier has been driven
from our soil!”/

Not since reading Natima Lang had a Cardassian voice stirred Rugal in
this way, and this was the first Cardassian leader to do so. Not even
Tekeny Ghemor, kindly and sad, had moved him so profoundly. Was Corat
Damar—improbable as it seemed—the one that could bring Cardassia out of
the wilderness and into a new age? And when, Rugal wondered, had he
started to yearn so deeply, so fervently, for such a future for Cardassia?



Rugal did not try to recruit anyone. Tret approached him first. In
typically perverse Cardassian fashion, he was pushed into action by the
discovery that Damar’s Liberation Front was attacking bases manned by
Cardassian troops. Verisel had come up to ops from her den down on the
fourth level to make sure that the news was passed around the restive
garrison. “You must be glad now,” she said to Tret, in front of several
rank and file soldiers who thought of Tevrek as a surrogate father,
“that you placed the garresh under arrest. This kind of disloyalty
inevitably turns on itself. It must be rooted out before serious damage
is done.”

In their quarters that evening, Rugal listened to Tret rave about this
for a good twenty-five metrics. Eventually, he burnt himself out and
flung himself down on his bunk. As Rugal tried to concentrate again on
the duty rosters, Tret said, “We need to take soundings from the other
officers. Find out who would be with us, who against. Who do you think
we can trust?”

Rugal put down his padd. He rolled over to lean down and stare at the
young man lying on the bunk below. “Are you trying to get us both shot?”

“I’m not saying anything you haven’t thought—”

“Well, perhaps, but... a little self-restraint, please!”

Tret pushed himself up. “You’ve got a nerve, saying that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Pa’Dar, your antics down in Torr were the talk of the academy!
We had bets on whether or not you were going to be arrested. I had fifty
/leks/ on you staying free at one point.”

“Oh,” said Rugal faintly. He almost felt flattered. Quickly he collected
himself. “Tret, whatever we did down there, we were able to do it
because we were in a big city and we could always find somewhere to
hide. Where do you hide here? Everyone knows what everyone else is
doing. You can’t keep secrets in a place this small.”

“We can try,” Tret said, through gritted teeth. “Rugal, I can’t stand
much more of this. It’s never going to end unless we do something about
it. Damar’s speech—yes, I heard it too—it made more sense to me than
anything else I’ve ever heard in my whole life. Sooner or later, the
Dominion will be finished with us. Then what? Nobody’s going to come and
save us, Rugal. We have to save ourselves.” His eyes had gone wet. “I
couldn’t bear it if this war has been nothing but waste. Not after
everything we’ve lived through here—the cold, the food, the damn noise.
But most of all, not when it was this war that killed Colat.”

“All right,” Rugal said quickly, and mostly to stave off Tret’s tears.
If they started, Rugal doubted they would stop. “Alaren is definitely
with us. Metelek possibly. The other two, not at all. As for the lower
ranks, nobody knows them as well as Tevrek. Any chance of one of us
getting down to the fourth level to speak to him?”

Tret twisted out a smile. “Consider it done.”



Rugal did not doubt Tret’s newfound commitment, but before they got any
further, Verisel released the news of the compromise and destruction of
Damar’s Liberation Front. That same evening, Gul Rantok summoned his
senior staff to his office down on the third level. They trudged in
silently and each stood in varying degrees of sweaty guilt while Rantok
studied them in turn.

“There are no secrets on a base as small as this one,” he said, “and
both the Vorta and I are well aware of the seditious tendencies of some
of you.” His eye fell first on Rugal, then on Alaren. “Verisel, when we
discussed the matter earlier, was of the opinion that I should shoot the
lot of you, regardless of your political proclivities. You can thank me
for my intervention on your behalf, the only reason that the six of you
are still alive.” There was a pause. “I said, you can thank me.”

In unison, they mumbled out something approximating gratitude.



“You will reward me with your obedience. You will reward Cardassia with
your unquestioning loyalty. And you will serve the Dominion without
another word being said. Next time,” he glanced over at Rugal, “I’ll let
the Jem’Hadar loose on you. Now get out.”

Subdued, the six officers filed out. They headed down the passage to the
lift in silence. Rugal was about to say to Tret, /I told you so,/ but,
as the doors of the lift opened, Alaren hissed, furiously, “Remember,
she was prepared to kill us all. Loyal or not, you weren’t safe. Think
about that.”

A few days later, Damar turned up alive, and the civilian population of
Cardassia brought the planet to a standstill. Rugal could not believe
it. A revolution on Cardassia Prime—and he was missing it. Tret was
beside himself. “Funniest thing since you got that medal,” he told
Rugal. It was good to see his spirits lift, however briefly. It was for
the last time. The next news from Cardassia Prime was of the Dominion’s
reprisal: the destruction of Lakarian City and the death of two million
people.

They were all in the mess hall again when they heard. Rugal knew it was
the end of whatever allegiance any of them had remaining toward the
Dominion. Kelat had to leave the room to throw up. Envek wept openly.
Metelek turned to Tret and Alaren and said, “We’ll have to get Tevrek
out. He’ll carry the rank and file without question.”



Conceptually at least, then, Rugal was not surprised when the Jem’Hadar
began exterminating the Ogyas garrison. He was off duty when it started
but, mercifully, was not yet out of uniform. He was certainly nowhere
near sleep. The allied invasion of Cardassia had begun shortly before he
had gone off duty. Someone started thumping on the door of his quarters.
It was Kelat. “It’s started,” he said. “They’re killing them up there.”

Rugal heard distant disruptor fire and knew at once what Kelat meant.
Grabbing his own weapon, he said, “Where’s Tret?”

“Down in the mess. He and Envek and about fifteen or so from the ranks
are barricaded in there. They were following transmissions about the
invasion. We should get down there. Come on, we’ve got to move!”

As they ran down the corridor, Kelat told Rugal as much he knew. Partway
through the battle, the Cardassian fleet had switched sides. Then the
order came through from Prime: /Kill the Cardassians. All of them./ In
ops, the Jem’Hadar started firing indiscriminately. One of the men up
there had survived long enough to throw open a communication channel and
inform the rest of the base what was going on. They could hear it
anyway—the shots and the screaming. Then it went quiet. Presumably
everyone up in ops was now dead, including Rantok. “He kept on shouting
that he was loyal,” Kelat said. “I think they shot him through the head.
Surplus to requirements. Isn’t that what Alaren said?” He took a deep,
shuddering breath. “Alaren was on duty up there too.”

“Don’t think about it,” Rugal advised. “If you plan on getting through
this, don’t think about it.”

A klaxon wailed, briefly, making them run more quickly. Then Verisel’s
voice came over the comm. “/All Cardassian personnel, report to the
surface immediately. All Cardassian personnel, report to the surface
immediately./”

“Prophets,” murmured Rugal. “I hope they have the sense not to go.” He
heard disruptor fire again, slightly closer. He and Kelat reached the
stairwell and began to run down. The officers’ quarters were on the
second level; the mess hall on the third. All the while, Verisel was
issuing her measured, deadly order: “/All Cardassian personnel, report
to the surface immediately. All Cardassian personnel, report to the
surface immediately./”

Rugal heard footsteps above their heads—booted, running, chasing. They
put a spurt on and soon came out on the third level. They sprinted down
the corridor toward the mess, where they hammered on the door, shouting
out their names and demanding to be let inside.

“/All Cardassian personnel, report to the surface immediately,/” Verisel
told them calmly.“/All Cardassian personnel, report to the surface
immediately./”

The door opened a crack. A shot rang out behind them. Rugal fell inside
and Kelat fell on top of him. Someone yanked them in and then the door
sealed behind them.

Kelat had been shot in the left leg. Someone threw Rugal a medical kit.
“/All Cardassian personnel, report to the surface immediately. All
Cardassian personnel/—”

/“Kosst!”/ shouted Rugal, as he got to work on Kelat’s leg. “Won’t
someone shut her up?” He realized Tret was standing over him, one hand
holding his disruptor, the other held against his chest. “Is he going to
be all right?”

“It’s not so bad,” Rugal said, mostly for Kelat’s benefit. If they
weren’t in here for too long, he meant, or if they weren’t forced out.
He patched up the damage, and then gave the glinn something to dull the
pain. He looked up at Tret. “Rantok’s dead.”

“I heard,” Tret said grimly. He took a deep breath and turned his back
to the room. He let his face crumple up in pain.

“Tret,” Rugal whispered, putting out his hand.



“I’m trying not to let them see,” Tret whispered back, clutching Rugal’s
wrist like a lifeline. “They’re all terrified. I don’t want them to know
I’m hurt.”

“I have to take a look at it,” Rugal said. “I can’t leave it—”

“It’s been fine for the past fifteen metrics. I can wait a little longer.”

They were there for a long time. Verisel kept issuing her order, in
tranquil and terrifying tones. “Can’t we stop her,” someone said. “Isn’t
there some way to stop her?”

“We need to keep the comm open,” Tret said. He was sitting hunched over
at one of the tables. Rugal had given him some pain relief, but Tret
wouldn’t take off his armor to let him see how bad it was. Verisel spoke
again. “/All Cardassian personnel, rep/—”

It cut off, mid-sentence. “Is it over?” someone whispered. “Are we
safe?” Tret held up his hand, trying to listen. After a moment or two, a
quiet but distinct hiss starting coming from the ventilators.

“Gas!” yelled Envek. He dived toward one of the ventilators, shutting it
off. Rugal ran across the room to stop the flow of air from the other.
Everything went very quiet. They all sat and stood straining to hear
anything beyond the confines of the room. There was a brief burst of
disruptor fire that made everyone flinch, and then there was nothing.
Rugal inched over to Tret. “What shall we do?” he whispered.

“We wait,” Tret replied. “What else can we do?”

So they waited. After forty metrics, the lights cut out, and they had to
fumble around for flashlights. Tret would let them keep only one lit at
a time. They sat without speaking, Rugal next to Tret, listening to his
breathing become steadily more labored. The room was hot and shadowy;
gray faces stood out here and there like phantoms, beaded with sweat.
One or two people took advantage of dark corners to weep. Twice Tret
ordered them to eat, whereupon the silence was broken by a quiet
rustling of ration packs, the noise of chewing and swallowing, the odd
lackluster remark—then, again, silence. One flashlight died, then a
second. Envek started lining them up neatly, like soldiers on parade.
There was one more left after the current one petered out. Then it would
be dark as a tomb.

Rugal dosed, and he dreamed, distinctly, that the Vorta had come into
the room. She walked about, flanked by two Jem’Hadar, and one by one she
counted off the pale sweaty faces peering up at her from the darkness.
She came to a halt in from of him and said, “Seventeen. Report to the
surface immediately.”

“Never,” Rugal replied thickly. Beside him, Tret said, in a sleepy
voice, “Did you say something?”

Rugal jerked awake. A voice was issuing from the comm, someone young and
tearful. /“Is there anyone there?”/ it said. /“I’m Lok, Martis Lok, foot
soldier, second class. The war’s over. The Jem’Hadar have stood down.
The Vorta says that you can come out now. Is there anyone there?”/ His
voice started to shake. Tret and Rugal glanced at each other and nodded
in agreement. /Trap./

/“Sorry,”/ said Lok. /“I’m sorry. It’s over, the war’s over. But
Cardassia’s burning. Is there anyone else left? I don’t want to be the
only one left.”/

The lights came back on. People shuddered and tried to gather their
wits, looking around fearfully, disbelievingly. Kelat limped over to the
comm. He found an outside channel and a faint, jumbled transmission.
“It’s true,” he said, eventually. “It’s over.”



Tret slumped heavily against Rugal’s arm. Slowly, Rugal lowered him onto
the floor and began easing off the other man’s armor. As he worked on
the wound, he whispered in Tret’s ear, “I’m going. Do you want to come
with me?”

Tret licked his lips. “Where to, Rugal?”

“Somewhere else. Not here.”

The pain relief kicked in and Tret closed his eyes. “I think I’d like to
go home.”

“Then we’ll go home.”



Rugal told Kelat that he was taking Tret down to the med center and left
him in charge. If the war really was over, Kelat was as good an officer
as any to surrender the base to the Romulans. Rugal had no intention of
falling into Romulan hands. In a place this remote, after a campaign
this relentless, he was not convinced they would bother with niceties
like the rights of prisoners. He would rather try his luck on the
surface. He was finished with this war. He had never wanted any part of it.

The med center was on the fourth level. Rugal and Tret walked there
slowly. Every so often they stepped over a corpse. Tret’s eyes were wide
and bright from exhaustion and drugs. In the med center, Rugal cleaned
and treated Tret’s wound more thoroughly. He found surface gear in one
of the storage lockers, and coaxed Tret into it. Then he put his hand on
Tret’s arm and navigated him out of the room.

At the far end of the corridor, behind a heavily shielded door, were the
holding cells. Tevrek was still there. Rugal hesitated briefly, caught
between wanting to get away as quickly as possible and knowing that the
garresh was by far the best person to hold the remnants of the garrison
together. Rugal sighed. He was deserting. He should get away as soon as
he could. But there was still some residual sense of duty left—not
patriotism, but responsibility to those poor bewildered survivors he had
left up in the mess hall. He propped Tret up against the wall and went
off toward the holding cells.

Behind the shielded door, the air was thick and sweet. Rugal coughed and
covered his mouth. It didn’t take long to find Tevrek’s cell, and it
didn’t take long either to establish that the garresh was dead, a victim
of Verisel’s final attempt to kill all the Cardassians. Looking into the
other cells, he found another dead foot soldier, who had been under
charge for sleeping on duty. In the last cell, there was a Romulan.

She was lying on the bunk, and he assumed she was dead too—in the wrong
place at the wrong time. He checked the information on the panel on the
wall by the door of her cell. Her name was Selik, she was a colonel, and
she had been captured during a skirmish on the surface eight months ago.
An unlucky one, then, Colonel Selik. Rugal closed her file and was about
to leave when he saw her move her head slightly. She looked toward the
door and then pulled her legs up in front of her in defense.

Rugal pressed his hand against the control on the panel. The door opened
slowly. Selik scrambled up into a sitting position, her arms still in
front of her. They and her face were purpled by bruising. She saw his
face and his uniform and she cursed him, violently.

“Are you hurt?” Rugal said, in a neutral voice. He took a step forward,
holding up his hands to show that he meant her no harm.

“No. Yes. No. Why do you care?”



“I’m a medic. If you’re hurt, I can help. The war’s over, Colonel. We’re
not enemies any longer.”

She spat at him. From behind, Tret said, “I think we should take her
with us.” Rugal turned. Tret was standing in the doorway. He looked
calm, and steady on his feet, and infinitely better than he had only a
few moments before. It was amazing what the pain relief could do,
keeping you going beyond what seemed reasonable, keeping you able to do
your duty. “Why not?”

“For one thing, I don’t think she’s particularly well disposed toward us.”

“She wants to leave, we want to leave. It’s cold out there, and we’ll
need backup.” Tret coughed into his hand. “Strength in numbers. All look
out for each other. I thought you liked that kind of thing.” He glanced
over at Selik. “Coming, Colonel?”

She wouldn’t let Rugal near her. She took his medical kit from him, and
he and Tret went to find her some outside gear. Tret took his time over
the task, and soon Rugal was shaking from anxiety. Surely someone was
going to come looking for them? Eventually Tret was content that he had
found the right outfit for Selik, and they took it back to her cell.

She had washed, and it was an improvement. She put on the uniform and
the boots that Tret had selected for her, and then all three of them
went out into the corridor, where the sickly smell of the gas still hung
heavy. “I closed the filter,” Selik said. “Soaked the blanket with water
and covered my face. What was going on?”

“Our fleet switched sides at the end,” Rugal said. “The Vorta was
ordered to kill the Cardassians. Those the Jem’Hadar didn’t shoot she
gassed.”

Selik laughed—a slight sound that danced on the edge of lunacy. Rugal
said to Tret, “I want you to remember that you were the one who asked
her along.”

They entered the stairwell and went up four levels. At the top level,
they climbed up the metal ladder and released the bolts on the hatch.
Then they clambered out onto the surface of Ogyas III.

It was as if they had crawled out of the fire caves. The dead air of the
base was swept away by a bitter wind. All around was entirely white.
Rugal could not determine where the land ended and the sky began. Selik
took a few steps forward, then fell to her knees. She gulped in lungfuls
of the freezing air and clawed at the snow until her hands were full of
it. Tret stood with one hand on his disruptor, one arm wrapped around
his body, entirely still. Gently, Rugal touched him on the shoulder.
“Last chance,” he said.

Tret stirred into life. He glanced back down the hatch into the base,
and then he shrugged. “Let’s go.”



On the second night out, Rugal awoke with a start, thinking he had heard
a voice. Selik was standing at his feet. Snow was falling between them,
nothing else. The fading glow of their fire lit her up starkly,
harshening the sharp contours of her face to skeletal. She was holding a
Cardassian disruptor, and she was aiming it at Tret’s head. “Wake up,”
she was whispering, softer than the flurry around them. “Wake up.”

Tret’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked. When he saw Selik, he sat up
slowly. “Are you going to kill me, Colonel? I don’t suppose I’d blame
you if you did.”

Rugal licked cracked lips. Could he get up and across to her before she
fired? Would trying only kill Tret? He took in the distance between her
and his friend, guessed that he would not be able to do it, and cursed
again that they had brought this woman with them. What had Tret been
thinking? She was the enemy, cease-fire or not; they had kept her
prisoner for eight months during which she had been subjected to
repeated beatings. It was written all over her body. No wonder she
wanted to kill them.

“I don’t want to die, Colonel,” Tret said. He sighed, as if unutterably
weary, as if unable to summon the strength to care that she had a
disruptor within inches of his head. “Not even now. Not even after
everything...”

He gave up on words and gestured around him at the void. She didn’t look
at it. She kept her eyes fixed on Tret. “I want it to stop,” she
whispered to him, as if trusting him with state secrets. “I want it all
to stop.”

Tret stretched his arms out further. “I know,” he said. “I know.” For a
fraction of a second longer she wavered, and then she let the disruptor
slip through her fingers. She fell down on her knees and wept. Tret,
leaning forward, pulled her into an embrace, and Selik clung to him.
“I’ll say again,” Rugal muttered, grabbing the disruptor, “that it was
your idea to bring her along.”

Tret didn’t answer. He kept murmuring to Selik—soothing sounds—until her
sobs subsided. She took a few deep shuddering breaths, and then she went
quiet. Not long after, she fell asleep. Carefully, Tret laid her down on
the ground and put a blanket over her. “I’m tired of people dying,” he
said to nobody in particular, and almost in irritation, as if
complaining that his feet were wet or that he was cold. “I’ll drag her
through this wilderness on my back, if it means she stays alive.”



Six, maybe seven days later, they came to one of the outlying Cardassian
guard posts. Beyond this was Romulan-controlled territory, a fact they
were all brooding over but did not discuss. The guard building, which
was squat and black and had appeared out of nowhere from the whiteness,
was empty, apart from the bodies of the four foot soldiers who had been
manning it. There had been two Jem’Hadar stationed here as well, which
would have been enough, but they were gone. Such a remote place, and
still there had been Jem’Hadar to carry out the Founder’s order. What
could have happened on Cardassia Prime?

They dumped the bodies outside for the snow to cover them, and got the
heat and the light working inside. They ate some food, and Tret found a
bottle of very rough /kanar/ that they didn’t bother to pour out, simply
passing it around between the three of them until it was gone. Tret went
to sleep on one of the bunks. Selik, looking out the window, said, “Look.”

Rugal went across to join her. She pointed to the sky and, peering up,
he saw the Jem’Hadar ships leaving Ogyas. Of anything Cardassian, alive
or dead, there was no sign.



They didn’t leave the guard post for another three days. There was heat
and light, and food for a while yet. Rugal found a /kotra/ board, and he
and Tret filled the day with game after silent game. Selik slept. On the
third day, she was more alert and she began pacing the small room from
end to end. “We must be getting close now,” she said.

Tret was contemplating his next move and didn’t answer. Rugal, without
interest, said, “Another week, perhaps.”

She wandered aimlessly around the room. “I’ve been a prisoner for eight
months,” she said.



“I know,” Rugal replied, watching Tret’s hand as it hovered over one
small purple piece and then moved it to the side.

“That’s a long time.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I didn’t give anything away. Did you know that? I never gave anything
away. You got nothing out of me.”

Rugal, now considering his response to Tret, did not reply.

“Not that they’ll believe me, of course.”

She stopped talking. Then, all of a sudden, Tret realized what was about
to happen. He jumped up from the table, sending the board flying, and
dived across the room. “Don’t!” he yelled, but Selik already had hold of
one of the disruptors. She put the muzzle in her mouth, fired, and that
was the end of the matter.



They packed and left and walked on. There was nothing but the empty
land, the white sky, the cold, snow. Tret struggled; it was chiefly pain
medication keeping him on his feet. Sometime during the third day out
from the guard post, he collapsed. Rugal got him upright and they went
on, but at a drastically slower pace. After falling down a second time,
and being forced on a second time, he began to drift in and out of
awareness. Rugal, pulling him onward and listening to him murmur, heard
him talking to Selik, then to Rantok, then to Verisel, whom he berated
in fierce fragmented sentences. At one point he seemed fully alert;
Rugal was about to start hoping, until Tret asked him when Selik would
be back.

On the seventh day, when they stopped to rest, Rugal scrabbled around in
their packs for some ration bars. He held one out to Tret. Tret didn’t
take it. He remained lying on the ground, very still. Rugal knelt down
beside him and touched his cheek.

He was dead, of course, like everyone else. Very gently, Rugal closed
his eyes for him. He rearranged the young man’s limbs so that he was
lying peacefully, with his left hand resting on his chest. He looked
appallingly young, and damaged, wrecked by cold and pain. Already the
snow was coating his body, as if trying to make it seem that Tret’s
death—and his life—had never happened. Rugal tried brushing it away, but
the snow was falling more quickly than he could clear it. Abandoning the
attempt, he took off his service medal and carefully put it into Tret’s
hand, like a charm to ward off oblivion. /For Cardassia,/ he thought,
looking down at his friend. Cardassia’s son. Cardassia’s sacrifice.
Would anyone remember? Would anyone care? Everyone had gone mad.
Everyone was dead.

Rugal stood up, dusting away the flakes of snow that had been
accumulating on him as he said good-bye. Around him, everything had
fallen silent, beyond comfort or reproach. He picked up his pack, Tret’s
too, and he walked on into the void.









*PART THREE **

*RETURN TO GRACE (2376–2378)**





“Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it
is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow, and the triumphs
that are the aftermath of war.”

*—*Herbert Hoover











*Nine*





One bright day twelve weeks after the war had ended, Ellen Smith and her
three-person crew docked their ship, the /Lotos,/ at the main spaceport
on Weibak IV. Ellen left the others to get on with the routine business
of gathering news and supplies, and went to her meeting with the
colony’s provisional governor. An antiquated skimmer was waiting to
collect her—that level of organization spoke volumes about the relative
ease with which Weibak had come through the war—and Ellen was taken in
modest style out to March, the small town that served the spaceport. A
rural world, a sunny day—you could almost convince yourself the war had
never happened.

This part of the quadrant had been Cardassian space, although in recent
years the Cardassians hadn’t been able to run a blockade, never mind the
Union. The Maquis had done well out here, until the Jem’Hadar arrived,
whereupon colony worlds that had effectively become independent once
again found themselves under centralized rule: the Dominion’s. The
Maquis was obliterated. But now the Dominion had surrendered, and the
Cardassians were ruined, and all the quadrant’s great powers were
staggering. And on a small green world in what was now a
Federation-protected system, Ellen Smith was going to see the governor
and she was authorized to speak on the Federation’s behalf. It all
seemed a little crazy to Ellen, but these were difficult times. The
quadrant’s strained governments had to make use of whatever resources
there were at hand.

The /Lotos/ had been doing supply runs in these systems for nearly
twenty years. When they went Cardassian, the crew kept their heads down
and tried not to look like Maquis. Which they weren’t—Ellen wouldn’t
carry weapons—but for the settlers out here, abandoned by the
Federation, it was good enough to be a friendly, non-Cardassian face.
They had always been made welcome out in these colonies, and that hadn’t
changed after the war, when people were desperate for some news of their
fate. So they were now part of a Federation protectorate. But what did
that mean? Had they escaped Cardassian rule for good? Or was this only a
temporary respite? On some worlds, all people wanted was news, an idea
of how they were still connected to the wider quadrant. On other worlds,
the situation was considerably more complicated, and considerably less
stable, than it was here on Weibak.

Hundreds of ships like the /Lotos/ had been making a living out here
before the war. Twelve weeks after, they were what passed for
infrastructure. Headquarters Allied Reconstruction Forces were far away
on Cardassia Prime, so Ellen had contacted the people at HARF to ask:
/What can we do?/ The reply had been: /Get out there. Find out where we
need to be and what we need to do./ She had been happy to help. Nobody
in their right mind wanted to see these worlds collapse. Besides, it was
a nice salary coming from HARF, and they weren’t paying in /leks./



March bore few marks of the war. It was summer, the grass was green,
kids were running about the small streets, looking safe and happy.
Everyone seemed pretty cheerful—as you might if you had suddenly ceased
to be a Cardassian citizen and were once again living under Federation
jurisdiction. Ordinary people were going about their everyday business,
talking and laughing in the sunshine. Ellen saw no Cardassians. There
had been hardly any Cardassians on Weibak; they had not had the chance
to return before the war had diverted resources—and bodies—away from
their resettlement program. A quirk of fate, a small decision taken in a
backroom office somewhere on Cardassia Prime, and the Jem’Hadar had
never come to trouble the good people of Weibak.

Ellen wondered if they knew how lucky they were. Three weeks ago, the
/Lotos/ had been on Sea Fall. The Cardassians had gone back there after
joining the Dominion, and they had brought the Jem’Hadar with them.
There were no Cardassians on Sea Fall these days, and the surviving
humans had a haunted look, as if they had seen things nobody should ever
see. Ellen never wanted to visit a place like it again, though she
almost certainly would over the coming months.

The skimmer decelerated with aplomb outside a small one-story building
unassumingly proclaiming itself the governor’s office. Ellen was scooped
up at once into the care of a brisk and nice young man who introduced
himself as the governor’s assistant. “Welcome to Weibak, Captain. How
was your journey?”

“Fine. A few problems in Calphan space—they’ve been flooded with refugees.”

He looked surprised. /It’s bad out there, kiddo,/ Ellen thought. /The
sun isn’t shining everywhere, you know./ “Oh yes?” he said. “Where from?”

“The next system along has been put under Romulan jurisdiction. People
aren’t so keen on being under Romulan protection, so they’re taking the
quickest route into Federation-administered space. I’d probably do the
same myself, but the ships they’re coming in are held together by string
and rust. They’re easy prey, and they’re attracting predators.” Ellen
had sent a full report back to HARF, but who knew when resources would
be available to patrol out that far. “They’ve got next to nothing. But
someone still wants it.”

They had reached the door of the governor’s office. The young man held
it open for her. He was obviously troubled. “I think we don’t know how
lucky we’ve been here.”

Ellen felt a brief pang of guilt. Why shouldn’t Weibak have come through
just fine? Why shouldn’t this perfectly pleasant young man get up on a
summer’s morning, stroll to work, and chat with a passing visitor? It
was better than the alternative. “Places like Weibak are all that’s
holding this together,” she said. “Seriously. Don’t beat yourself up.
You’re doing a great job.”



Maria Alvarez, the newly appointed transitional governor, had until
recently been running the customs and excise office. She and Ellen went
back at least fifteen years. As they sat down to a good lunch with a
pleasingly home-cooked flavor, Ellen mocked Maria’s new office. Alvarez
took it in good humor, and in return, and in cheerfully lurid fashion,
she painted a picture of Weibak as being in the direst of straits, only
salvageable by a huge injection of Federation resources. Ellen explained
exactly how and why this wasn’t going to happen. When Alvarez, still
amiable, abandoned the attempt, Ellen promptly went on the offensive,
and by the time they had started on the fresh fruit, she was telling
Alvarez that the civic-minded thing to do right now was send some of
Weibak’s surplus out to Calphan space.

“What the people of these systems need to do,” Ellen said sententiously,
“is help each other and look after each other.”

/God, she was starting to sound like Starfleet now./ Alvarez snorted.
“Give me a break, Ellen. I’ll do it, but I want one thing made clear.”
Here came the price tag. “When the lines are finally drawn around the
quadrant, I hope the Federation will remember exactly how civic-minded
the people of Weibak have been.”

Fair enough. Ten years ago, the people here had been traded off in a
treaty. They had turned to the Maquis for protection, and then faced the
threat of Cardassian and Dominion invasion. It was a small world with no
leverage in galactic politics, and this would surely be the only moment
in its history when it had something the Federation wanted. Who could
blame Alvarez for wanting to deal? Ellen couldn’t promise that when the
postwar shakedown was finished, these people would finally and
unequivocally be recognized as Federation citizens. But she would do all
she could. “Maria,” Ellen said, as they shook hands across the table,
“you’ll get your reward in heaven.”

Alvarez became more serious. “Where next, Ellen?”

“Mesquad, first. Then on to Hewe, and after that Slokat. I’m aiming to
be on Ithic by the end of the year.”

“You know that the Maquis were massacred on Hewe?”



“We’d heard.”

“I’ve no idea what happened to the general population.”

“Based on what I’ve heard from other ships”—and what Ellen had seen with
her own eyes—“the Dominion seems to have preferred to intern the
non-Cardassian populations. Unless the locals deluded themselves into
thinking they could resist the Jem’Hadar.”

Then you got what had happened on Sea Fall. Alvarez shuddered. “I’ll say
this to you now, but I can’t believe how lucky we’ve been here.”

“And I’ll say it again, and from my heart, that if these systems don’t
pull together right now, we’re all going under by the end of next year.
Don’t forget your neighbors, Maria. If only because they’ll be looking
at you and wondering if it’s fair Weibak got off so lightly, and why
they shouldn’t simply come and get some of what you have.”

After the meeting broke up, Ellen went back to the spaceport in the
ancient skimmer that had brought her over. She sat in the back,
clutching a bag of peaches Alvarez had given her, and fretting about
whether she had done enough and if she had been right to leave on that
note of warning. She wasn’t a politician, not even a local politician.
She moved cargo and news around. But she meant what she had said, and
she knew that reconstruction depended on what people like Alvarez chose
to do now. Sheer good luck had left Weibak in good shape. But if a
handful of the weaker colonies collapsed, if the influx from the Romulan
protectorates increased, it wouldn’t be long before refugees started
arriving here. Weibak might be safe right now, but it was a long way
out. It wouldn’t take much pressure to push it toward collapse.

Back at the ship, Ellen saw Roche and Joseph by the cargo bay door. She
put Weibak and her worries behind her, and shouted, triumphantly,
“Peaches!” holding up the bag like she was Perseus and it was the
Gorgon’s head. And then the Cardassian walked up to her and asked if he
could join her crew.



“No,” said Roche fiercely. “Absolutely not. Under any circumstances.”
Roche was what passed for the engineer on the /Lotos,/ and he was more
Bajoran than the kai. His parents had fled the Occupation before he had
been born, and he felt in some obscure way that he had been cheated out
of his birthright. Sometimes it was a pain in the neck. Like now.

Ellen glanced over to where the Cardassian was waiting for her to come
back with her answer. He was a young man with a big pack, and he looked
tired. It had been a tiring war. What had he done during it? Was he
soldier, settler, refugee? “He says he has to get to Ithic. We’re the
first ship he’s come across that’s going that way.”

“It’s a long way to Ithic,” Jen said. “What’s he going to do there?”

“Probably planning to invade it,” Roche muttered.

“He says he’s trying to find someone he knew.”

“His problem. Ellen, please—not a Cardassian.”

“For once, I’m with Roche,” Joseph said. “Probably more trouble than
it’s worth.” Jen nodded her agreement. Sweetly, Ellen added, “He also
says that he’s a medic.”

There was a pause. Even Roche could see how that might be useful. Then
the Cardassian spoke. He must have got fed up watching them argue and
decided to make his own case. “I was working at a free hospital in
Cardassia City when the war broke out.”



Roche looked at him coldly. “And after the war broke out? What did you
do then?”

“For a while, I killed Romulans. Then I stopped. Why, what did you do?”

A soldier, then. Whereas Roche, like Ellen and Jen and Joseph, had
wisely spent the whole time safely within allied-controlled space. It
was best to leave that kind of thing to professionals. Roche turned back
to Ellen. “I don’t care if the Prophets have given him healing hands. I
don’t want a Cardassian around. Ellen, most of the worlds we’re going to
are full of people than have suffered at the hands of his kind, really
suffered. They’re not going to trust us with one of them on board. You
know what they’re like—”

“Stop before you say something we’ll all regret,” Joseph murmured, but
too late. That had clinched it for Ellen. She had nothing against this
Cardassian, but she could see how his presence might be more trouble
than it was worth, and she would have been content with whatever
decision the others made. But Roche had overstepped the mark. What did
he know about Cardassians, really? He had probably never even talked to one.

“There are Cardassians on most of those worlds too, Roche,” she said
hotly. “And part of what we’re supposed to be doing is making sure the
two populations aren’t warming up to killing each other. Do you think a
Cardassian might be useful in those cases? Medically trained or not?”

“I only want to get to Ithic,” the Cardassian said quietly. “I’ll keep
out of your way. I don’t want to fight, and I don’t want any trouble.
Lock me in my quarters if you don’t want anyone knowing I’m on board.”

Joseph laughed. “The Cardassian in the attic, eh? All right, let’s give
it a go. A medic should come in handy.”

Roche wouldn’t be budged. Jen wasn’t keen either. “I say he comes,”
Ellen said. “And I’m the captain. Casting vote.” She glanced at the
Cardassian. “I’m Ellen. Welcome aboard.”

“I’m Rugal,” he replied. “You have an interesting take on the democratic
process.”



The /Lotos/ was en route to Mesquad within thirty hours. Rugal was glad
to leave Weibak, where Cardassians had been thin on the ground and
attracted all the wrong kind of attention. The ship’s captain, Ellen,
went out of her way to make up for the lukewarm welcome from the rest of
the crew. As she took him around the ship, she told him about the work
they were doing for HARF. “The places we’re going to have been under
Federation jurisdiction since the end of the war, but it’ll be months
before they can get to some of the more distant worlds. They don’t have
the people. So what happens in the meantime?” She opened a door, and
they both peered into a small dark room. “Medical room. Bit small. Sorry
about that. And about the boxes. We’ve still not unpacked some of them.
Maybe you could take a look and see what’s there?”

“I will,” Rugal said.

“Great! Thanks! Anyway, all these people can’t be left to run out of
food and power and so on. So that’s where ships like ours come in. We’re
moving supplies around, making sure these places stay on their feet.
Engine room that way. Roche is there a lot of the time.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

They went down a narrow passageway with doors on either side leading to
more storerooms, crew cabins. “We check in, find out what they’re doing,
we find out what we need, and we pass that information on to other ships
in the area. If there’s a small problem, we try to sort it out. If
there’s a big problem, we send for Starfleet.” She came to a halt
outside the farthest door and spread her hand out dramatically across
her chest. “We are the masters here.”

Rugal smiled. He gestured toward the door. “Is this my cabin?”

“What? Oh yes!” She opened up and let him in with ceremony, as if she
were showing him to the best suite in the hotel. She went right in
herself and looked around. “Ta da! All yours. Settle in, come and get
something to eat when you’re ready. Anything you need in the meantime,
shout.”

“Thanks,” Rugal said. She went on to talk for a while about Mesquad,
their next planetfall, and he started maneuvering her gently but firmly
in the direction of the door. Finally, she left him in peace. He sat
down with a sigh of relief. It had all been slightly exhausting and
entirely unnecessary. He didn’t want to make friends. He wanted to get
to Ithic as quickly as possible. Slowly, he took off his boots, and he
lay down on the bunk and stared up at the wire mesh above. In recent
weeks, Rugal had found himself paying close attention to the detail of
his surroundings. He had counted a lot of tiles on walls and ceilings.
Rivets were good too; anything would do as long as it stopped his mind
wandering. Gaps in wire mesh would certainly do the trick...

After Tret Khevet died, it had taken Rugal another couple of weeks to
escape Ogyas. He had walked on for several more days, pressing on beyond
what had so recently been the front line. The first chance he got, he
swapped his uniform for a Romulan one. It was only ever going to be
effective at range, so he needed to avoid attention. But the movement of
the Romulan infantry was in the opposite direction from the one he was
taking. They were heading into the Cardassian territory from which he
was trying to escape. Their advance was disorganized, the haphazard
progress of a badly bruised army, but it was purposeful, and at some
point someone was going to notice that this particular infantryman was
not going the same way as everyone else. As soon as someone stopped him,
they’d know he was Cardassian. Either they’d shoot him on the spot, or
they’d realize he was a deserter, hand him back, and then he’d be shot.
Neither fate particularly appealed. He had to get offworld.

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.

As they drew closer, Ellen noticed that Rugal wasn’t sleeping much. He
sat up late in the kitchen, reading medical texts or scouring the
survivor lists that were sent out on a weekly basis from Cardassia
Prime. Insomnia was hardly a good sign, but Ellen took heart from the
fact that he spent the time sitting in one of the communal areas. He
could have stayed in his cabin and stared at the walls or sat in the
medical cupboard and counted pills. The night she came to talk to him
about Ithic, he moved along the couch and let her sit next to him. That
was practically physical contact. If only he could have spent a little
more time on the /Lotos/. She might have saved him yet.

She handed him a padd. “A couple of ships have been past Ithic already
and sent a few reports out for the rest of us. I put them together for you.”

“Thanks, Ellen. I appreciate that.”

“It’s not been the happiest of places, but nothing like Hewe. The last
we heard there were Cardassians there, still.”

He glanced up. “Not as bad as Hewe, but not as good as Slokat?”

“They were something else on Slokat, weren’t they? I’m surprised it
wasn’t the same on Ithic. From what I can make out they were all a bit
utopian, the settlers. Idealists. They wanted to be self-sufficient,
live the good life in peace alongside fellow travelers in a pastoral
idyll... some sort of commune, I think. You know the sort of thing.”

He smiled down at the padd. “I get the general idea.”

“The Maquis weren’t popular—didn’t fit with the pacifist ideals, I
suppose. But they still kept an eye out for Ithic anyway. Enough to keep
it independent, not quite enough to earn serious reprisals when the
Cardassians came back. But of course they didn’t want the Cardassians
there, and it was made worse by what the Cardassians were doing with the
land. Most of the Federation settlers had small farms—”

“Cardassians don’t farm that way,” Rugal said offhandedly, still
flipping through the information on the padd. “Their agriculture is
aggressively industrial. As much food as possible, as quickly as possible.”

“Oh, so you’re an expert on farming too?”

“I knew someone who knew about farming. She talked a lot.”

“You seem to have known a lot of people. Anyway, the Cardassians came
back, the Jem’Hadar wiped out the Maquis, the land seizures started—”

“What did the human population do?”

“No armed resistance to speak of—pacifists, remember—so no massacres
either. Some people took work on the new big farms, a few decided the
game was up and set out for Federation space. The rest were interned. A
lot of Cardassians turned up after it became part of the Dominion—it was
one of their most stable agricultural worlds in the DMZ. I’m assuming
your friend was one of these.”

“Any idea what happened to them? When the Jem’Hadar turned on us?”

“‘Us,’ Rugal?” Ellen quirked up her eyebrows. “I thought you were Bajoran.”

“Ellen, let me tell you that when eight Jem’Hadar are chasing you down a
basement corridor with death in their eyes, you are more aware than you
have ever been of what your face looks like. I’ve never been so
Cardassian in my life, and I’ve never been so terrified either. What
happened when the Jem’Hadar started killing us?”

“The same as everywhere. Lots of corpses. The last ship to pass by
Ithic, about three months after the war, reported that there were
Cardassians in the town near the spaceport. Not many, but some. If your
friend was out in the sticks, I think she had as good a chance as anyone
at making it through.”



They fell into silence. “You know,” Ellen said, “you’ve never explained
how /you/ made it through.”

“Did I really never say? It was easy. I passed myself off as Romulan.”

Ellen laughed out loud. “Cardassian, Bajoran, Romulan... is there
anything you /haven’t/ been?”

“Federation,” Rugal said. “I’ve never been Federation.” He stood up, and
tapped the padd against the palm of his hand. “Thanks for all this,
Ellen. Good night.”

They reached Ithic a week later. Ellen went to see Rugal in his cabin
while he was packing. “I’ve been talking to some of the locals. It
sounds tense. I don’t think leaving you here is a good idea.”

“Ellen, I have to go—”

“It could be nearly a year before we come back. I’m not convinced you’ll
make it through that year alive. Nobody’s going to stop and ask where
you were born, Rugal. They’ll look at you, they’ll see you’re
Cardassian, and they’ll shoot.”

“Not even the Jem’Hadar managed that.”

“You’re not invincible! No matter how it seems. You’ve been lucky,
that’s all.”

He paused briefly in his packing. “I’ve been resourceful. And lucky,
yes. But chiefly resourceful.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, Rugal,” Ellen said quietly. “Cardassians
are rarer than they used to be.”

He stopped what he was doing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out
a piece of paper, folded over twice. The paper was very dirty, and it
had clearly been folded and unfolded many times. On it was a sketch of
two young Cardassians. One was obviously Rugal, the other was a young
woman. “That’s Penelya,” he said. “We should have stayed together, but
we didn’t. And I have to know either way, Ellen. Because not knowing
will kill me, more surely than the Romulans or the Jem’Hadar.”



Manea, the town that served the main spaceport on Ithic, had a grim
aspect about it, neglected and unkempt. Ellen took Rugal to meet Marcus
Gerrard, her contact on the transitional council. He met Rugal with
frank dismay. “You didn’t say he was Cardassian,” he said to Ellen. “And
he’s planning to stay?”

It was always odd to hear yourself talked about as if you were not
there. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?” Rugal said.

“What’s he planning to do here?”

“I’m looking for a friend. She was working on a farm near Littleport.”
The frown on Gerrard’s face deepened. “Are you sure this isn’t going to
be a problem?”

Gerrard addressed a point between him and Ellen. “Most of the
Cardassians are planning to leave, that’s all.”

“I don’t think my friend would have left her farm, not unless she was
made to by the Jem’Hadar.” /Or anyone else,/ Rugal thought.

“Are you sure it was her farm in the first place?”

Rugal sighed. “Mr. Gerrard, I don’t want to argue over territory. My
friend wouldn’t have gone willingly. If the Jem’Hadar didn’t murder her,
I think she’ll be where she was before this appalling war happened. I’m
not here to cause trouble. I’m certainly not here to colonize. I want to
find out if she’s alive or if I have to add another name to the list of
the dead. Then I’ll go. If she’s here, we’ll both go. In the long run,”
he added dryly, “you might end up with even one less of us.”

Gerrard glanced at Ellen. “I wish you’d said he was Cardassian.”



Ellen folded her arms. “Whatever you’re thinking when you say that,
Rugal is the opposite. Did I mention he’s a medic?”

“When are you coming back?” Gerrard said.

“Eight months, perhaps ten.”

Gerrard looked at Rugal with open dislike. “Marcus,” Ellen said quietly,
“you’re not going to refuse someone entry because of how they look, are
you?” To Rugal’s eyes, it seemed as if Gerrard intended to do just that.
“I know you’re keen for Starfleet to get here as soon as possible,”
Ellen said. “But this isn’t the best way of getting their attention.”

Gerrard muttered something under his breath. Then, very quickly, he
thumped some data into the padd he was carrying, giving Rugal permission
to stay. “Ten months, and then we’ll review his status. But I’m not
happy about this, Ellen. The Cardassians and their Dominion allies did
enough damage in two short years to keep us busy for a generation. It
would be better all around if they could go away and leave us in peace.”

His aversion was understandable. But it seemed excessive, even for the
postwar DMZ. Particularly given the fact that Rugal didn’t see a single
Cardassian in Manea the whole time he was there.



Before the /Lotos/ departed, Ellen took Rugal aside for one last word,
and to give him a portable subspace comm. “Let us know if you need us to
come sooner rather than later. Keep your head down. I don’t like the
vibe I’m getting from this place. And I hope she’s there, Rugal. I
really hope you find her.”

They embraced—fondly, carefully—and Rugal wondered briefly whether this
was a good decision. They were not exactly friends, the people on the
/Lotos,/ but—Roche apart—they had come to accept him on his own terms.
He was committing himself to months on a world where Cardassians were
not welcome, with the strong possibility of even more heartache. He was
terribly afraid that, very soon, he would discover that Penelya was
dead. How much easier to accept that now, to leave with the /Lotos/ and
carry on traveling in that small bubble in space, only ever touching
other worlds and other people infrequently and for short periods of time.

But he had to know, so the /Lotos/ left without him. He stayed in Manea
only long enough to fill his pack with supplies for the cross-country
journey. He had about a week of walking out to Penelya’s farm, which
itself lay a day or two’s walk past the township of Littleport. Beyond
Manea, it had to be said, Ithic didn’t seem so bad. It was the beginning
of the autumn, in a temperate country, and the tired and wilted greens
of late summer were being replaced by the various colors of the
fall—reddening and yellowing leaves, crisp blue skies. It was nothing
like Ogyas and it was nothing like Cardassia Prime. No wonder Penelya
had always spoken so fondly of this place.

He saw no people, human, Cardassian or otherwise. Everyone had gone
underground, or was dead. In Littleport, the shops on the high street
were closed and the rows of houses were empty. It was as if everyone had
been spirited away, leaving their homes and possessions behind. He was
surprised that people hadn’t started drifting back, eight or nine months
after the end of the war, but if there was anyone living in Littleport,
they were going to great lengths to avoid him. In the general store, he
found food and water, and he left money for when the owners returned.
Perhaps they had all gone into hiding to wait out the end of the war.
Perhaps they hadn’t heard that it was all over. He found paper and a
pen, and wrote: IT’S ENDED. THERE’S PEACE. He put the date at the bottom
of the sheet, and stuck it in the door of the shop. Someone might see it
there and discover that they didn’t have to worry anymore.

A day beyond Littleport, the landscape began to change. The small farms
and the gentle countryside gave way to something bigger, emptier, and
browner. Rugal recognized Cardassian country: industrial, efficient,
intolerant of variety. Even the road he was walking along changed its
nature. It no longer bypassed woodland or curved around hills. It cut
through everything. He found the environment depressing; featureless and
without charm. He didn’t much like to think of Penelya living there.

His pace quickened. During the course of his second day out of
Littleport, the road became lined with wire and metal fences. Beyond
these, the plain brown fields were hunkering down for winter, and every
so often he saw industrial buildings, warehouses, and silos. There were
signs posted at regular intervals to indicate that this was private
property, and each of these carried the Khevet family name. Tenantless
land, and ownerless. Mikor was dead now, presumably, and Elinas, and the
three girls, and the rest of Coranum. There was nobody to go and tell
about Tret. Only Rugal was left to remember them all, and to hope that
there was still one person left to inherit.

Midafternoon, he came to the side road that led onto Penelya’s lands.
There was a large metal gate; there would have been security fields too
at some point, but the power had failed and they were no longer
activated. Rugal entered the estate by the simple method of climbing
over the gate. He walked on, inward, for at least an hour, at the end of
which he came to a long brick wall stretching off in either direction.
He climbed it and, at the top, pulled himself up into a sitting
position. Looking out, he nearly laughed. Everything as far as the eye
could see was green.

After the long brown walk, this sudden verdancy was almost overwhelming.
There was a patch of woodland to his left; a stream, meadow. At first he
didn’t understand. When he saw the long, low house in the distance, he
grasped what was going on. Somebody—Penelya? her parents?—had kept this
tract of land like this intentionally. They couldn’t live looking at
those dull fields either. Rugal slid down the wall and walked slowly in
the direction of the house. It was as if a small piece of another world
had been set down here, or he had passed through a portal onto a
different planet. Here the trees were shedding their leaves—gently,
peacefully—untroubled by the horrors wracking the wider world; there the
stream was bubbling past. As Rugal walked toward the house, he thought,
/Yes, this is how it’s meant to end. She’ll be here, this is where I
have to find her, this is where she has to be/... His hands were shaking
as he went through the gate into the garden and up the path to the front
door.

The door was standing ajar. Gently, he pushed it open. “Penelya?” His
voice came out thick, as if it had rusted in all the time that he had
been alone. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Pen. I’m here. I
changed my mind.”

It was dark inside. Reaching along the wall, his hand found a light
control, but the power was down and nothing happened. “Pen? Pen, are you
here?” His eyes adjusted to the dark. He looked around.



There had been a struggle, clearly. The chairs were knocked over; one of
them was broken. So was one of the windows. The air was damp and musty.
Rugal wandered through the small house, checking the three downstairs
rooms and the four upstairs, but there was nobody here, and it had been
that way for some time. The house was empty. She was gone.

Moving slowly now, Rugal went back out into the garden. He looked around
for some disturbance in the earth, but there was nothing. No graves.
Back inside, he bent down to lift one of the chairs back into a standing
position, but the thought of the effort it would take to clear the place
properly suddenly overwhelmed him, so he stopped and left it where it
was. He went back out, closing the door of the house behind him.

The sun had set. The sky was darkening and the stars were coming out. It
was chilly, hardly unbearably so, but enough to enervate. Rugal sat down
on the step and put his head in his hands. This was the end. He had bet
everything on finding Penelya here. But the war had come to Ithic too,
and there was nothing for him here either. He lay down under the stars,
let the darkness cover him, and slept.









*Ten*





Morning brought a stiff neck and only the vaguest feeling of having
rested. Rugal made a makeshift breakfast and sat down on the step
outside the house, looking out across Penelya’s garden. It was pretty
but disheveled. There must have been nobody here to maintain it for
months now, but he could see that she had made the garden practical,
useful—the way she felt she ought to be herself. Nearest to him there
was a patch of sweet-smelling plants that he guessed were herbs. A
little farther away were fruit trees. Nobody had been here to pick the
fruit, and most of it lay rotting on the ground. He didn’t have names
for the fruits. Were they native to Earth? To Ithic? They could have
been Cardassian for all Rugal knew. He was a confirmed city dweller, and
there hadn’t been much fresh fruit around Torr.

Looking through the neglect at how this had once been, how it might be
again, he could understand why Penelya had wanted to come back here. It
was not only because of duty. It was because this had been her home,
where she had been born and had grown up. This was where she had been
happy, with her mother and her father. Rugal sighed. If he had
understood that fully, and sooner, he would have come back here with
her. But he had been so wedded to the idea of going back to Bajor. He
had wanted to return there in triumph with her on his arm, proving wrong
everyone who said he could not go back.

He got up and walked down to wander among the trees. There was still
some fruit left on the branches; not everything had gone to waste. He
picked one of the better ones; a little round fruit, greenish-yellow,
speckled with brown patches. It looked edible, so he bit into it. The
flesh turned out to be white and tasted very sharp. It was not expected,
but it was not unpleasant by any means.

The more Rugal thought about his desire to return to Bajor, the more it
seemed to him like madness. How had he ever believed he would get to go
back? Why had Kotan humored him for so long? He had never been welcome
on Bajor, not really; he had known that as a small child. He was a
visible symbol of the Occupation, of oppression, a constant reminder of
the dark time that most Bajorans now wanted to forget. Yet still he had
insisted it was home. He had been like Migdal, longing to return to
Korto, when in fact there was no going back. All that time and energy he
had wasted. He could have come here with Penelya. They could have lived
and worked here in happiness. It might only have been for a very short
time, before the Jem’Hadar had come for them, but it would have been a
period of peace, of grace. Instead he had ended up on Ogyas, and as for
Penelya...

Rugal could only assume that she was dead. The simple fact that he loved
her and wanted to be with her would not have saved her. The universe did
not rearrange itself simply according to one’s desires. That was how a
child thought. If there had been Jem’Hadar anywhere near this place,
they would have obeyed their mad gods and stopped at nothing to find her
and kill her. And if the Jem’Hadar hadn’t killed her, someone else
probably would. This was no time to be Cardassian. They were the pariahs
of the quadrant.

None of which, Rugal thought, biting deeply into the bittersweet fruit,
answered the immediate question: What was he going to do now? Bajor was
not an option; it had only been home with Etra and Migdal, and they were
long since at peace. There was little point in hurrying back to Manea;
the /Lotos/ was gone, and it could be weeks or months before another
ship came past Ithic that would be willing to take a Cardassian on
board. Most likely it would be another refugee ship, and that was not a
way of life he would choose willingly again. Manea itself was not an
option: like Ellen, he had been uneasy there, unsure why there were no
Cardassians to be seen, when the last ship to come to Ithic had reported
that there were. Littleport had been deserted, and he didn’t like the
idea of haunting it. Besides, at some point, the humans would return,
trying to rebuild their homes and livelihoods. Once the humans were
back, a single Cardassian would certainly be unwelcome, and probably a
target.

A great loneliness washed over him then; a sense of isolation and
disconnection that ripped the breath away from him. He slid down to sit
with his back supported by the trunk of the tree. There was nowhere to
go; there was nobody left to be with. The house behind him was empty,
the land around him deserted. All the time on the /Lotos,/ Ellen had
kept on saying that he shouldn’t hide away, that it wasn’t good for
him—and as he sat there, winded, he understood why. There was nothing
else to think about but the losses—Penelya, Tret, Arric, Serna, Tela,
Kotan. His whole world. There was nothing to distract him from these
absences, nothing to help him forget. He should have stayed on the
/Lotos,/ and let himself take comfort in the company of strangers. Or he
should have done his duty and stayed with those bewildered refugees from
Destiny. Not his duty as an officer of the Second Order, not even his
duty as a medic, but something more fundamental—a duty to life, to care
for it and not to squander it. He could have done some good there. Now
it was too late. He had been set on this futile quest, this belief that
he would find his girl and go home in triumph, and it had been a great
delusion.

He sat for a while counting the pips at the core of the fruit until his
mind was empty once again. Some sense of proportion, of practicality,
returned to him. He had expended a great deal of energy to get here, and
probably the best thing for him to do now was to stay. There were
fences, the wall—he would be safe. This had been a farm. He could work
out how to sustain himself over the coming months and then, when the
/Lotos/ returned, he would go with it. Perhaps by then he might have
worked out what he was supposed to do with himself. That was the great
dilemma. What was he supposed to do, now that the world had ended? What
were any of them supposed to do?



At first, what he chiefly did was sleep. The upstairs room at the back
had been Penelya’s—her clothes were hanging in the closet, and there was
a pair of her work boots still crusted in mud. He claimed that room for
his own. He found some of his own messages sent after she had come back,
and was ashamed to discover the stiff note of reproach that rang through
them. No wonder she had stopped replying.

He made a slow, not entirely effective effort to tidy up the house. He
picked up the chair that had been kicked over—that was a start, at
least. He opened windows so that the cool air of autumn could clear away
the mustiness that lingered like gas around the small rooms, and he
covered over the cracks of the broken one rather than fix it. Some days
it was difficult to do anything, even to get out of bed. He would lie
and think about the time he had lived in Torr, busy with work and
surrounded by people. It had, on reflection, been the happiest time of
his life. One day, when the wind had picked up, he sat on the step
watching yellow leaves drift slowly down from the trees to cover the
grass. He sat there for hours, until he realized how cold he had become.
But he went and sat there most evenings, because there was more to look
at outside. For a while, he listened to transmissions picked up on the
comm that Ellen had given him. One day he realized he had stopped. He
wasn’t listening for survivors anymore.

One evening, about a fortnight after he had arrived at the farm, he was
sitting as usual on the step, when he thought he saw movement among the
fruit trees. “You’re imagining things,” he said out loud (he had long
since started talking to himself). “Still, better take a closer look.”

The light was dimming. He had to strain his eyes to make out anything in
the shadows. It was probably an animal, but Rugal didn’t know whether
the wildlife on Ithic was large, small, herbivorous, or predatory. He
picked up a branch lying by him on the ground and took a few steps
closer to the trees.

“Is there somebody there?”

There was a rustle of leaves, and then everything went suspiciously still.

“I’m friendly. I know I don’t look it, but I am. You don’t have to be
afraid.”

There was no reply and nothing moved.

“If you were going to kill me, I think you would have done it by now. I
don’t mean you any harm. Why not come out and talk to me? If you have
news, I’d like to hear it.” He took a step or two forward closer to the
trees, and then stopped again. He stretched out his arm to hold the
branch away from him, so that he no longer seemed armed. “I’ll put this
down if that will make you feel better. I don’t want to fight. Not any
longer. I’m guessing you don’t either.”

He inched forward, silently, still holding the branch away from him. In
truth, he felt slightly foolish. It would probably turn out to be some
small creature foraging in the undergrowth. Catching another slight
movement, he took a quick step toward it, reached out, and grabbed
whatever it was out of its cover.

It was a human child, female, thin and dirty, with big brown eyes. Rugal
stared at her. She stared back. His right hand was full of her shirt;
his left hand was clutching the branch like it was his best chance at
survival. He felt faintly ridiculous—she was hardly the wild beast of
his imagination. He gave a small laugh, more a release of tension than
anything else. She gave him a furious look. Then she bit him on the hand.

“Ah!” Rugal let go of her, pulling his hand back to his chest. She
seized the opportunity and ran. Rugal didn’t chase her. “It’s all
right!” he called after the fleeing shadow. “I don’t like Cardassians
much either. But you’re safe with me.”

It didn’t make her come back, but then he hadn’t been expecting it
would. Back in the house, he cleaned up the bite—she hadn’t done any
damage to speak of—and then made himself some supper. On a whim, he got
out a second plate, and piled some food on it. Then he went down to the
trees and left it there, in case she came his way again.



The next morning the food had gone, but the plate was there. It had even
been washed. Rugal thought that showed scruples, not to mention manners.
He left something out the next night, and the next, and so it went on
for more than a week. Each morning he got up to find a clean plate left
on the step. It wasn’t a bad arrangement, he supposed, perhaps a little
too much like leaving out food for a hound. But the nights were getting
markedly colder, and he was concerned for this child, out by herself in
the wild. He wondered if there was a way of tempting her inside. He
certainly meant her no harm, but he was not sure how he could convince
her that she was safe around this particular Cardassian.

He was never quite sure when she was nearby, but he decided to work on
the assumption that she was there most of the time. He started clearing
up the garden so that he had an excuse to be outside talking to her. He
told her his name—he had got into the habit of calling himself Pa’Dar
now, so he used that—and said that he had come here to find a friend.
“Her name’s Penelya. She’s Cardassian, like me. Did you know her? She
lived here. She’s clever and funny and her eyes are brown. I wish I
could find her. More than anything, I wish I could find her.”

But the girl never answered. Sometimes he thought he heard her moving
among the trees, but it could have been the breeze. He kept on talking
anyway. “I walked here all the way from Manea. Do you know Manea? Have
you been there? I didn’t stay there long. They didn’t like Cardassians
much. I don’t know what the Cardassians did to them. I don’t think I
want to know—Cardassians can do terrible things. I bet Penelya didn’t do
anything. I hope they haven’t hurt her. Do you know anything about what
happened to her?”

Eventually he gave up asking questions and began describing how he had
got here. Now that he had started talking, it was proving difficult to
stop. He kept the gorier details of his journeys to a minimum. He didn’t
know what she had seen in the last days of the war, but he didn’t want
to add to it. “I didn’t come to Ithic until a few weeks ago. Before that
I was traveling around on a cargo ship. I don’t know if you’ve ever been
off Ithic. It’s hard out there right now, since the war. Our ship
traveled around delivering supplies. None of the governments can do it
right now, but people still get hungry even if there isn’t a government
around to do anything about it. Ithic is one of the prettiest places
I’ve seen. At least, it is around here. I didn’t like Manea, and I don’t
like the rest of this farm. And some of the other worlds were grim.”

Once again, his mind had wandered back to the horrors.

“Aren’t you cold? I know humans are better with the cold than we are,
but I’m freezing out here these days. You can come and sit by the heater
whenever you want. I won’t stop you and I won’t hurt you. Of course, you
could have an even better heater yourself, as far as I know. You could
have a palace on the other side of that hill. I haven’t been that way
yet. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. Walk across and take a look at the
other side of the hill.”

He didn’t. The next day he was exhausted, not from the work he had been
doing in the garden, but because he had dreamt of Tret, lying in the
snow. He was worried he had done something wrong when he had left him;
worried that he missed some important ritual that he had never had the
chance to learn. It seemed to matter very much all of a sudden, in a way
it hadn’t when they had gone out to Anaret and buried Geleth’s ashes.
The way it had mattered when Darrah Bajin had told him that they had
said all the right prayers over Migdal’s body. Rugal didn’t believe in
gods or prophets, but he wanted to show respect. There wasn’t much else
you could do in this life.

That afternoon, he sat on the step with a blanket around him. “I’m sad
today,” he told the girl who might not even be there. “I keep thinking
about a friend of mine. He died right at the end of the war. I know,
here,” he thumped his fingers too hard against his head, “that it wasn’t
my fault, but I can’t help thinking that if I’d only tried harder, I
might have got him farther. We might have both made it. He got lied to,
he got told he was doing a great thing, an important thing—and then the
people who told him that lie left him to die in the cold. That’s why I’m
sad today.” Rugal looked over at the spot among the trees where the girl
sometimes hid. He couldn’t tell whether or not she was there. It didn’t
matter. Nothing mattered, not really. Not after the end of the world.
“If there’s anyone left that you love, make sure you tell them that. And
if you don’t have anyone left”—he held out his empty hands—“you’re not
the only one.”



Rugal stopped talking. He put his arms across his knees and rested his
forehead on them. He wanted to be asleep. No, not asleep—he might dream
if he were asleep. He wanted to be unconscious. He wanted not to be
anywhere any longer. He wanted oblivion. If he could go back to Ogyas
now, he would lie down next to Tret and let the snow cover him. It would
be better than being alive, because it would not hurt.

“The house was empty when I got here.” A small voice, a girl’s, not much
more than a child’s, high and clear in the evening air. “Everyone had
already gone.”

Rugal lifted his head. The girl was standing in front of him—out of
arm’s reach, and half turned away, ready to make a run for it. “I don’t
know what happened to your girlfriend. Everyone had gone by the time I
got here.”

Slowly, trying not to startle her, Rugal straightened up. The girl was
watching every move he made. He put his hands out flat on his knees so
that she could see that they were empty and that he wasn’t a threat.
“Thanks for telling me.”

She shifted onto one foot. “Sorry I don’t know what happened.”

“It helps to know you didn’t see her killed. She might still be somewhere.”

The girl pulled a face. Not likely. How old was she? If she had been
Bajoran, Rugal would have said twelve or thirteen. She was thin and
grimy, and her eyes were huge in a small brown face. Around her head she
had a scarf that she was clutching tightly closed at her throat. One or
two strands of hair had got loose from their cover and were hanging dark
and lank around her cheeks. She was badly in need of a wash.

“My name’s Rugal.”



“I know. Rugal Pa’Dar, although when you lived on Bajor you were called
Proka Rugal. My name’s Hulya. Are you going to be staying here?”

“I thought I would, for a while. Is that all right with you?”

She shrugged. “How long is a while?”

“A few months—six, maybe eight. Some friends of mine—the people who
brought me here—are meant to be coming back to Ithic then. So I’ll be
around at least that long. My friend who lived here wouldn’t mind if I
stayed here. Is it all right with you?”

“I suppose so. It isn’t my house.”

“All right then. Thank you.” They stared at each other. “Are you going
to stand there all evening or are you going to come inside? I was going
to make something to eat.”

She hesitated for a moment longer, and then made her decision and came
to join him. Rugal shifted along the step so that there was room for her
to sit beside him. “Hello, Hulya,” he said, when she arrived. “It’s good
to meet you at last.” He held up his palm. She looked at it, and then
grasped hold of it and shook it. So that was how humans greeted each
other, he thought, as she pumped his hand up and down. It wasn’t so
different after all.

“Hello, Rugal,” she said. Letting go of his hand, she leaned back on the
step, propping herself up on her elbows, feet dangling. “So... what’s
for supper tonight?”



The first thing he did was insist she take a bath. She didn’t complain
and in fact welcomed it; living rough had lost whatever charm it might
once have had for her. While she was splashing around, he found clothes
for her in Penelya’s closet. They were far too big for her and in a
style that had been popular in Cardassia City three or four years ago.
They would have looked just fine on Penelya, but on Hulya they were odd,
as if she was wearing someone else’s skin on top of her own. But they
were clean and dry, and a considerable improvement on her own gear,
currently being cleaned to within an inch of its life.

Later, she sat at the kitchen table with a towel wrapped around her wet
hair and watched him warm up soup from packets that had he had brought
from Littleport. She was less than impressed. “How long are you planning
to live off this stuff?” she said. “It’s junk.”

“I know. But the replicator doesn’t work.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s broken.”

“Why haven’t you fixed it? You fixed the generator.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

She looked even less impressed. “You’d better do that first thing in the
morning,” she told him. “We’re going to need it over the winter. You
don’t look like the kind of person who can get a farm up and running
again. You’ve not even picked the fruit. Not properly, anyway. It’s
horrible watching it all go to waste.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I don’t want to go hungry, that’s all. Not when it starts getting cold.”

“Oh, it won’t get that cold.”

“Yes, it will!”

“Not as cold as where I was a year ago.”

“Yeah?” That piqued her interest. “Where was that?”

Rugal hesitated with his spoon halfway to his mouth. He hadn’t meant to
talk about Ogyas to this child. But it was always at the forefront of
his mind. “A place called Ogyas. It’s a very long way from here.”

“Was that where your friend died?”

He stared across the table at her in dismay. “What?”

“Your friend. The one you were talking about earlier. You said he died
at the end of the war and that’s why you were sad.”

Rugal put down his spoon. “Yes, that’s where he died.”

“What was his name?”

“Tret Khevet. He was a dalin in the Fourth Division, Second Order. We
went to school together and we ended up in the military together. He was
good at /rikot/ and he had a girlfriend on Cardassia Prime. They were
going to be joined as soon as he got leave.”

Tret’s girlfriend. He had forgotten about her. Eretis. Tret had carried
a holopicture of her around with him, and the last time he received a
message from her, she had been talking about the house she had found for
them in Coranum. A house big enough for a real Cardassian family with a
hero father and a devoted mother and lots of servants so that everything
could be done properly and look right. Would Tret have liked that, after
Ogyas? Would it have come as a relief? Or would it have seemed facile
after all he had seen? Rugal had forgotten about Eretis. Was there
anyone else to remember her, that pretty, bubbly, unmemorable young
woman, or was he the only one left who had known her? That would be bad
luck for Eretis. Rugal had shed more tears over the Rejals’ dog.

“I suppose she’s dead too,” Rugal said. “Everyone’s dead. Tret got shot
on the last day of the war.” He picked up his spoon again and ate
mechanically for a while. When he looked up at Hulya, he saw that she
had stopped eating and was staring at him with wide, scared eyes.
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’ll try not to do it
again.”

“Okay.” She relaxed, a little, and carried on eating.

“What happened to your friends and family, Hulya? Why are you by yourself?”

She didn’t answer right away. Perhaps he shouldn’t press her while they
had only just made friends. He started to tell her that they didn’t have
to talk about it, but she had already started. “Everything was all right
for a while. There were people looking after us.” She shot him a quick
look. “Maquis, you know?”

He nodded to show it was all right and that he didn’t mind. That was all
over now.

“So that was fine, for a while. They didn’t spend much time here, but it
was enough to mean that the Cardassians left us alone. Left us to mind
our own business, Mum used to say. Then they stopped coming altogether.
Dad went down to Manea, and when he came back he said that everyone was
saying that the Maquis were finished. I think he meant that they had all
been killed. A couple of weeks later, we saw the ships in the sky. They
were full of Jem’Hadar, bringing Cardassians with them. Some soldiers,
mostly settlers. The Jem’Hadar came to all the farms and rounded us all
up—all the humans, I mean. Then they made us walk out to a big camp
they’d built to the west of Littleport.” She took another mouthful of
soup. “It wasn’t so bad. But they took Dad and all the other men off to
a different one and we didn’t see him again.”

An internment camp, like the one he been in briefly on Destiny. “Was it
bad?”



“Not really. Boring, mostly. Some of the Cardassian guards were mean,
but some of them were nice to us kids. We were there for about a year,
me and Mum. Perhaps it was more. At the end it went weird for a few
weeks. All the Cardassian guards went away, and there were only
Jem’Hadar left. Then the Jem’Hadar went away too. That was /really/
scary, like something bad was about to happen and they were all getting
away before it did. But they left us there. All the security fields were
still in place and we couldn’t get past them. We started to run out of
food and we were hungry and some people got sick. We kept on thinking
that eventually the Jem’Hadar would come back, or the Cardassians, but
nobody did. There was a big quarrel about what we should do, whether we
should wait or try to escape, and eventually some of the women wouldn’t
wait any longer. They got the security fields down and we all walked
out. Nobody came and stopped us. Two days later we saw Jem’Hadar ships
in the sky—they were leaving. That was horrible. Because, you know... if
we’d /waited/ for them to come back, and hadn’t got ourselves out, we
might all have starved...”

She took a deep breath before carrying on. “They could have taken the
shields down, couldn’t they? If they knew they were going. Shouldn’t
they have taken the shields down?”

“Yes, they should have.”

“And the Cardassian guards. Some of them had been nice.” She shot him an
accusatory look. “Why didn’t they do it?”

Choosing his words carefully, Rugal said, “Right at the very end of the
war, the Cardassians and the Dominion fell out. The Cardassians became
enemies of the Jem’Hadar, like you and your people. I don’t think they
would have been given the chance to take the shields down.”

“You mean they killed them?”

Rugal sighed. “Yes.”

“That’s better. I mean,” she said, quickly, “I don’t want them to be
dead. But I didn’t like to think that they had left us there.” She
frowned and chewed at her bottom lip.

Rugal understood. How much easier it would have been if she could simply
have hated them outright. But some of them had been nice. “What happened
next?”

“A big group of us walked down to Littleport to see if there was anyone
there. It was empty. A big warehouse on the edge of town had been burned
down. Mum pretended that she didn’t know what had happened, but my
friend Jane overheard someone saying there were Cardassian bodies inside.”

Rugal felt sick. Was it only soldiers there, or settlers too? Was that
were Penelya was? He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Sorry,” Hulya said awkwardly. “She might not have been there. Some of
the Cardassians got away. I’ve seen some.”

“It’s all right,” Rugal said. “Go on. What happened next?”

“It took a while to get everyone down from the camp to Littleport. So we
did that. Other people were passing through the town, and they had heard
that the war was over, and the Dominion had surrendered. We had a party
that night; we lit a big fire and there was dancing and singing...” Her
eyes went distant for a moment. “Then people started heading off home.
Me and Mum went back to our place. We thought Dad would come and meet
us. Our farm had been farther down the valley, before the Cardassians
came. It was a mess. They had churned up most of the fields and turned
our house into a stockroom! Mum was furious. But the Cardassians like
these really big farms, with hardly anyone living on them. It’s not good
for the soil. That’s what Dad used to say. We waited for him for ages,
but he didn’t turn up. Then Mr. Kavanagh—he taught chemistry at the
school in Littleport and he had been taken away with all the other
men—Mr. Kavanagh came past and he told us that Dad had been killed ages
ago, not long after we’d all been split up. He got into a fight with one
of the Cardassians after they took us away, and one of the Jem’Hadar
shot him. All that time we’d been talking about him as if he was still
alive, and all that time he had been dead. That was horrible. Mum was
really angry. She said he always had to be the hero and really he was a
farmer and why couldn’t a farmer be good enough for him?” Her voice had
started to rise. “Why was she so angry with him?”

Rugal thought about that for a while. “I think that we get angry when
people die because we feel like they’ve left us behind. They’ve left us
having to carry on and cope with the whole mess of being alive.”

“I suppose so. I suppose that makes sense.” She sighed. “I wish she’d
stopped being angry with him before... Before.”

They were getting close to the heart of her story now. Rugal said
nothing, letting the girl go entirely at her own pace.

“The next farm down the valley belonged to Mr. Rowse. I walked down
there one morning. We needed a part for one of the water pumps and he’d
said he’d get one for us the next time he went into Manea and then I
could come and get it. When I got there, the door was open but I
couldn’t see anyone about—”

“Like when I arrived here.”

She blinked at him. “Yes, like that, I suppose. I couldn’t find him
anywhere. It was creepy. I thought maybe we’d got the day wrong, or
perhaps he’d had to go into town the day after he’d said, so I turned
round and went home. When I came over the hill, I saw smoke coming out
of the front window. There was a skimmer there too, one of those big
ones that can go over rough ground really easily. Dad always wanted one.
So I knew that there were people there. Eventually they came out from
around the back of the house. There were four of them. They filled the
skimmer up with loads of our stuff and then they went. I went down to
the house to look for Mum. I went inside...”

She stopped, and Rugal didn’t make her go any further. “Is that when you
decided to come over here?”

“I thought that maybe they were the reason why Mr. Rowse’s house had
been empty too, and that meant they were heading northwest, along the
road. I was too scared to go into Littleport in case they were going
there and they saw me. So I came this way instead. I knew there’d been a
Cardassian farm here, but I didn’t know whether there were any
Cardassians still living here or whether the Jem’Hadar had been here and
taken them all away like they’d taken us away. There weren’t Cardassians
anywhere around, and I liked how green it was behind the walls, so I
used what there was here, and when you turned up, I hid in the wood. I’m
sorry that I took things from your friend’s farm, but I didn’t know
where else to go.”

“Penelya wouldn’t mind. If she’d been here she would have asked you to
come inside. She would have looked after you. She was like that. I’m
glad you came here and I’m glad you’re here now.”

“I’m glad too,” she said. Then she seemed to run entirely out of words.
They stared at each other across the empty plates and devastation. This
madness that gripped his species, Rugal thought, it had reached
everywhere. This child, her life ripped to shreds, like millions of
Bajorans before her, like all those outliers that Cardassian society had
refused to admit—Penelya, Tekis and Erani, Ziyal. Himself. They had been
in the grip of a great delusion—and this was the price. With a sigh,
Rugal began gathering up their plates. Hulya got up and helped him.
“Thank you for supper,” she said, very politely.

“Sorry it was so bad.”

“That’s all right. But we will fix the replicator tomorrow, won’t we?”

“Yes, we will.”

“And then we’ll save what’s left of the fruit?”

“We’ll do that too. But you’ll have to tell me what to do. I haven’t got
a clue.”

He smiled at her and got a smile in return. As they made up the bed for
her in the room next to his, she said, “And you should fix that window
in the kitchen too. It looks horrible. It looks like nobody cares.”









*Eleven*





At Hulya’s instruction, Rugal fixed the window and the replicator. He
also picked what was left of the fruit, cleaned the house from top to
bottom, and brought back to life an elderly skimmer that had been left
in an outbuilding to rust in peace. That satisfied her for a day or two.
Under his own steam, he boxed up Penelya’s possessions—her clothes, the
padds she had been reading with the markers still set keeping her
place—and stored them away where he could not come across them
unexpectedly. Hulya found him while he was doing this, sitting on the
bed holding an amber pendant that Pen would sometimes wear, which he had
found dropped behind a storage unit. It had been her mother’s. That
convinced him, if he still needed to be convinced, that she was dead.
She would not have abandoned it, not willingly, any more than he would
have abandoned his earring. When Hulya asked what it was, Rugal closed
his hand around it, dropped it in the box, and said, “Finished.” She
understood. It was something else from before that had once mattered,
but now needed to be put away in case it shattered everything that was
new and fragile.



He discovered that he was glad of the company of this child, who made
him eat and work, and didn’t seem to notice that there were times when
he could barely move from bed, but would sit by his feet talking about
what they were going to do that day until he got up and did it. He was
glad, too, to be there when the nightmares gripped her, or when
something they had been doing didn’t work right, and her rage and
hysteria broke through. He remembered being that way himself, when he
was a child on Bajor.

One morning, she announced, “We need to sow the wheat.” Doubtfully, he
agreed to give it a try. He had no idea how to start, but he supposed
that people—hers and his—had been throwing seeds at the ground on a
hundred thousand worlds for millennia now, so how hard could it be?
Besides, there was always the replicator. They sat at the kitchen table
one night with some padds and she listed everything they needed. “Most
of it we can get from Littleport,” she said. “But I don’t want to go
there. I suppose we could get it from our farm...”

Rugal didn’t like the idea of her going back there, but she refused
point-blank to go to the town, where she seemed to think she would come
face-to-face with the people who had murdered her mother. He could have
told her that she wouldn’t find any Cardassians there, but he did not
want to press the issue. “What if I go there by myself?” he said. “It’ll
only take a few hours—”

“No!” she said quickly. “I don’t want you to go there by yourself! If
there are people there, they won’t like Cardassians. They might hurt you—”

He was always surprised—grateful, too—at how the fact of his species
seemed not to bother her, when his people had brought her nothing but
grief. “I’m good at looking after myself, Hulya,” he said gently, but
the idea of him going and never returning had by now thoroughly gripped
her imagination. When he saw that she was beginning to tremble, he put a
halt to the conversation before she became irrevocably distressed. He
was getting very good at spotting the warning signs. His love, his
respect, for Etra and Migdal deepened every day. How had they coped with
this? Somehow they had.

Lying awake that night, pondering their options, Rugal had another idea.
He didn’t like it much, but he thought it might alleviate some of
Hulya’s fears. The next morning he dug out the pack he had lugged all
the way from Ogyas and unearthed his disruptor. He hadn’t handled it in
months, and it was not pleasant to be looking at it again. He put it on
the kitchen table, and when Hulya came down for breakfast, she sat for a
while staring at it, wide-eyed and wary. He said, “How about if I took
that with me?”

“Is that /real?”/

“As real as I am.”

“Where did you /get/ it?”

“It was issued to me. You know I was a soldier once.” He gave a wry
smile. “Not one of the mean ones.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“If I took that with me to Littleport, would that be all right?”

It was deemed acceptable, so the next day he left her at the house and
took the skimmer out beyond the wire fences.

First he went over to what had been her parents’ farm. There was a
freshly dug grave in the garden and a green branch had been set in the
ground as a marker. Someone else had been here before him and buried her
mother. Rugal was deeply thankful that he did not have to face the task,
that there was not someone else over whom he would not know the right
ceremonies to perform, the right words to say. Did they think the little
girl had died here too? They would not have found a body. Was there
someone he should find to tell about her? She had not mentioned anyone.
She did not seem to want to see anyone else.

Inside, even through the dust and neglect, and the evidence of the
murder that had happened here months ago, it was obvious that this had
been a happy home, well-run and comfortable. Upstairs, he found Hulya’s
small room; quickly, he packed clothes and the nearest toys, some
pictures of a smiling family of three. In one of the outbuildings he
found tools, power cells for those and for the replicator, and seed. He
was not entirely sure what he was looking for, but Hulya’s descriptions
had been detailed to the point of flamboyant. He threw it all in the
back of the skimmer and left quickly. Soon he was on the road to Littleport.

It was five or six weeks since he had been through the township, and it
was now without doubt inhabited again, almost busy. Everybody he saw was
human. Conspicuous and nervous, but trying to be friendly, Rugal tried
to buy what he needed at several different places. Some people looked
through him, some were outright hostile, while others would sell but
wouldn’t talk. One man asked where he had come from. “Oh, out that way,”
Rugal said, gesturing in roughly the opposite direction, and moving on.
He took care to head out of town the way he’d pointed, and he took a
back road home. He was glad to get away. He was even more relieved that
he had not needed to reveal the existence of the disruptor.



It was late afternoon when he got back. There was a light on in one of
the downstairs rooms. Hulya, at the sound of the skimmer, sped out of
the house and down the steps. When he got out of the skimmer, she flung
herself into his arms and howled. A sick horror swept over him. “What’s
happened? Are you all right? What’s happened?”

It took a while for her to communicate—and for him to work out—that
nothing had happened other than that she had been alone all day and
worked herself up into a frenzy. “Don’t go again,” she pleaded with him.
“Don’t leave me again.”

He picked her up and carried her inside. She was weeping against his
chest. “I won’t, I promise I won’t. If I have to go to town again, you
can come with me.”

“Promise you won’t leave me!”

“Hulya, I promise.”

“Don’t go there again. I don’t want you to go there again.”

It took a long while to calm her down that evening. He sat by her bed,
stroking her cheek and whispering to her until she fell asleep. As he
watched her breathing, he thought of Etra, doing the same on many nights
for him, and he thanked the Prophets that he did not worship for Etra,
thanked them on behalf of Arys, and he swore to this child’s mother that
he would do the same for her.

The next day Hulya looked through what he had brought back for her from
her home. She kept some of it around her for a day or two, and then he
found her packing the lot away in the storage unit where he had hidden
Penelya’s possessions. “Finished,” she told him firmly, and he entirely
understood.

• • •





By the time the two fields were ploughed and the seed they had was sown,
Rugal was exhausted. True, it had been his default state in recent
years, but this was nothing like the exhaustion they had all suffered on
Ogyas, the corollary of fear and privation. Nor was it like the way he
had felt when he had first arrived here at the house, when he had been
so thoroughly depleted he could sleep through whole days. This felt
better. It felt almost like being alive.

Soon the weather took a turn for the worse. There was rain most days;
some days the sun seemed barely to have risen by the time it was dark
again. They kept indoors and relied on the replicator. One morning,
after heavy rain had bashed the house, he saw that the roof had sprung a
leak. Quick investigation of their stores revealed that they did not
have the materials to fix it. He would have to go back to Littleport.
After some silence and some thought, Hulya agreed to go with him. But
she was not happy about it.

The township was even busier than it had been during his previous visit,
but still Rugal saw no Cardassians. He was convinced more than ever that
the Jem’Hadar had been successful in their purge of this area, and that
Penelya was in that burnt-out building on the edge of the town. Surely
some Cardassians should have passed his way by now? Perhaps it was like
Slokat, and whoever was left was keeping to their side of the country.
Perhaps he really was the only Cardassian on Ithic.

During their whole time in Littleport, Hulya kept her hand firmly in
his, or held onto his sleeve. They could not find what they needed; in
every place they tried, the proprietors said how short of material they
were. Rugal believed a few of them. “Let’s go,” he said to Hulya
eventually. “We’ll think of something else. Perhaps try another town. Or
think about going up to Manea for a couple of days—”

In a low fierce voice, she said, “I just want to go home.”

They had almost got back to the skimmer when someone called out to them
from across the street. “Hulya? Hulya Kiliç?”

Rugal felt her hand grip his. The nails dug into his palm. A human woman
was running across the street toward them. Hulya’s eyes had gone huge in
the oval of her face. “Who is it?” he whispered, but before she could
answer the woman had reached them.

“Hulya!” she said, bending down and seizing her into an embrace. “Where
on earth have you been? You disappeared into thin air!”

“Rugal, this is Doctor Anders,” Hulya said stiffly. “She was my
elementary school teacher.”

Rugal would have lifted his palm in greeting, but since Hulya was still
clinging onto his hand, he could not. He murmured a polite “Hello”
instead, but since Anders completely ignored him, he might as well have
remained silent. “We sent someone past the farm,” she said. “Hulya, we
thought you must have been killed too—”

“She’s fine,” Rugal said. “She’s been with me.”

Anders straightened up and looked at him with the usual kind of
aversion. Hulya said, “This is Rugal. He looks after me now. You don’t
have to worry.” She pulled at his hand, trying to get him to leave. “We
should go now. It was nice to see you again.”

Anders touched her arm to stop her. To Rugal, she said, “Who are you,
exactly?”

“I already said,” Hulya replied. “He’s Rugal. He’s looking after me.
We’re living out on the big Cardassian farm and we’re fine.”

By choice, Rugal would not have revealed exactly where they were, but
since it was out now, they would have to handle it as best they could.
“Hulya’s been with me since the fall,” he began to explain, but Anders
interrupted. “Did you come with the Jem’Hadar?”

“No, I came later. I was looking for a friend of mine. Hulya was living
rough and when she came past the house I started looking after her.”

“I see.”

“We’re fine,” Hulya said again. She shook her teacher’s hand from her
shoulder and pulled him away. “Come on, Rugal, let’s go.”

By now, he was clinging onto her hand as much as she was to his. When he
glanced back over his shoulder, he saw that Anders was still standing in
the street, watching them leave. He recalled the Starfleet commander
from all those years ago, the one who had taken him away from Migdal.
/These humans,/ he thought, /they will walk in and do what they think is
best for you, whether you want it or not./ In the skimmer, Hulya said,
“I liked her at school. And then she was in the camp with us. She was
one of the ones that got the security fields taken down. But I don’t
want to go back there again.”

“Me neither.”

They traveled in silence for a while. Once they were safely beyond the
big metal fences of the Khevet estate, he said, “We’ll try to get what
we need from the warehouses around the estate. It’s better to trade than
to scavenge, but I didn’t like it down there either. Let’s see if we can
get by.”

It was a good idea. They found what they needed for the roof and fixed
it. Winter settled in. It didn’t snow—thankfully, because he had had
enough of snow—but it got colder and wetter, so they stayed in the
house. He taught her /kotra/ and she taught him chess. He was worried
for weeks that someone from the town was going to come out and trouble
them, but they were left in peace. Perhaps they didn’t know about this
place behind the walls, and the farm was too big for them to know where
to look. So he hoped. Then, a week or so after the shortest day, they
had a visitor.



Hulya saw her first. She ran out from the house down into the backyard
where Rugal was taking advantage of a cold but sunny day to fix a fence.
Hulya had been saying that they should get a goat. Rugal had only the
vaguest idea what a goat was, and he suspected it would be trouble, but
it was probably less trouble than having Hulya talk relentlessly about
their pressing and urgent need for it. What were you supposed to do when
children asked for things? Was it better to give in over the goat now,
or would that only lead to an escalation of demands that would end with
a vast array of livestock, none of which he was qualified to look after?
Perhaps he could suggest a hound instead. He had always wanted a hound.

He was pondering the deal he would offer when Hulya, breathless, came to
a halt next to him. “Somebody’s coming up the path,” she said.
“Cardassian. A woman, I think. Could it be her? Penelya?”

His heart somersaulted in his chest. He took her hand. “I don’t know,”
he said, and marveled at how calm his voice sounded. “Let’s go and look.”

They walked around to the front. The Cardassian woman was standing on
the step. She was tall, thin, ragged, and when she saw Rugal she fell
into his arms as if he had come to save her. Hulya, standing to one
side, mouthed: /Is it her?/ Rugal shook his head. “You’re cold,” he said
to the stranger. “You’d better come inside.”

Her name was Arani. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you,” she said, as
she made short work of a bowl of hot /aytlik/ broth. “They said in
Littleport that there were Cardassians here, but I didn’t believe them.”
She started to cry, and grabbed hold of Rugal’s hand. “Well,” he said
awkwardly, “here we are.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him through her tears. “Here you are.”

He told her to carry on and, as she spoke, he fretted about that word,
“Cardassians.” He didn’t like the sound of that. Had he multiplied in
number in the minds of the people of Littleport? He put that worry aside
and tried to concentrate on the rest of her story.

Arani had been a technician employed by Khevet Agricultural Holdings.
She had only been on Ithic for a few weeks when the massacre had
happened. “I was based up the road at the central complex,” she said.
“We were working on a project to make more arable land available. We
were going to extend the holdings down toward Littleport.”

Hulya frowned. “But there were already farms there. People were living
on them.”

Arani gave her a bright smile. “Oh, there would have been lots of jobs
once the new big farm was in place. There would have been plenty for
everyone to do.”

The same way that there had been plenty for the Bajorans to do,
presumably. “How did you get away from the main complex?” Rugal said.
“Wasn’t it an easy target for the Jem’Hadar?”



Arani gave him a besotted smile. Just beyond her line of sight, Hulya
put a finger in her mouth and mimed being sick. Rugal kicked her shin
under the table.

“I was away from the complex when it happened. Two of us had gone up to
the northern weather station to carry out some data analysis. There was
another project,” she lowered her voice and leaned toward him, beckoning
him in with one finger, “very hush-hush. We were trying to alter the
temperature in some of the colder areas, raise it a degree or two, so
that there would be new land available when this area had ceased being
productive.”

Rugal drew back. Hulya openly recoiled. Take the world, then ruin it.
When would they ever learn? “Did you know Penelya Khevet?”

She frowned, puzzled, and then laughed. “Oh, you mean Penni! Yes, of
course, everyone knew Penni. She was adorable. A little clever for her
own good. She was an orphan, you know, only got the post because of her
uncle.”

Rugal got up from his chair. “Would you like some more tea?” he said
politely. When Arani nodded, he went over to the replicator, keeping his
back to her so she couldn’t see his face. “Do you know what happened to
her?”

“Sorry, no. I wasn’t here, of course.” She didn’t sound very interested
in this line of conversation. “Does it matter particularly?”

Did it ever matter particularly whether someone lived or died?
Reproachfully, Hulya said, “She was his girlfriend.”

“Oh. I see. I’m sorry, I wasn’t here. I don’t know what happened down here.”

Rugal brought two cups back to the table and wondered whether he should
tell her about the building on the edge of Littleport. She hadn’t yet
asked him whether he had news about any of her former colleagues. As he
sat down, she said, “I was telling you what happened to me.”

So she was. Rugal leaned back in his chair and let her get on with it.

There had been no Jem’Hadar stationed where she was; in fact, the
weather station was unmanned apart from occasional visits like hers. She
had been working when her colleague, Leterik, came in and told her that
he was hearing strange transmissions from the main complex and from
other Cardassian areas around Ithic. Leterik seemed to think that the
Jem’Hadar had started killing people, but Arani couldn’t believe it. “I
thought he meant the humans,” she said, “but he was sure it was the
Jem’Hadar. But weren’t they meant to be protecting us?”

“That was the idea,” Rugal said wearily.

“Anyway, Leterik was absolutely certain, so rather than fight with him,
I agreed to wait at the weather station for a few days until he thought
it was safe. We took the flyer down to Kovalet—that’s the big complex up
the coast from here—but there was nobody there and part of the building
was on fire. I still didn’t think Leterik was right about the Jem’Hadar,
but he found some security recordings at Kovalet...” She shuddered. “It
was horrible. All those people. They locked the doors, locked them in...
Anyway, there was nobody left there. And there were no Jem’Hadar either.
I couldn’t understand that. Have they all gone? Where did they go?”

“They left,” said Hulya. “They got in their ships and left.”



“The war ended,” Rugal explained. “The Dominion surrendered, the
Jem’Hadar stood down, and then they were recalled.”

Arani seemed to take it as a personal affront. “But they were supposed
to be protecting us! Leterik and I went into one town, and the people
there started shooting at us! Surely they wouldn’t have done that if the
Jem’Hadar had been there? The closer we got to Manea the worse it got.
Our flyer got shot down. We started walking, but there were people about
and when they saw us they attacked us. Leterik was killed, and then they
started hunting me down. I had to run for my life!”

It sounded to Rugal like an exaggeration, but whatever had happened, she
had clearly been terrified, so he let it pass. “What happened in
Littleport?”

“They weren’t friendly either. They said I should come here, that I’d
find Cardassians here. I thought it was a lie, perhaps a trap, but then
you walked around from the back and...” She stopped talking and started
to cry instead. Rugal and Hulya glanced at each other. “It’s been a bad
time,” Rugal said. “But you’re safe here. Why don’t we make a bed for
you? You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.”

She fell on his offer gratefully. When he had seen her to her room, he
came back downstairs. Hulya looked at him sternly. “She’s not staying,
is she?”

Rugal held up his hands in defeat. He didn’t like the idea either—but
where else could she go?



Arani did stay, and she continued to exasperate. But Rugal was
right—there was nowhere else for her to go. She was woefully unprepared
for the catastrophe that had struck her people, and he was frankly
amazed she had lasted this long. But then you could never overestimate
how resourceful people could be.

Arani had been bored on Ithic. She had only come here because of her
job, and she had intended to be back on Prime long ago. She and some
friends had planned to live in the capital city, renting a place near
the university in the more gentrified eastern section of Torr. She
seemed to think this was still an option, if she could only find a way
back. The first time she and Rugal quarreled, it was because she was
talking about going back to Prime. “Don’t you understand?” Rugal said.
“There’s nothing there! The whole place was flattened. The Jem’Hadar
killed a few thousand people here. They killed eight hundred million on
Prime.”

It was not so much that she refused to believe him. It was more that she
seemed not to grasp what he meant when he said these things. She kept
talking about her three friends (he assumed they were all dead) and the
part of Torr where they were planning to live (which would be a smoking
ruin) and she had a list of things that she intended to do once she got
back to civilization that she added to daily (none of which he imagined
were easily achievable on a world without functioning infrastructure).
It was one way of coping, he supposed, but it didn’t strike him as
healthy. Eventually he simply tuned her conversation out. But then she
started to interfere with what he and Hulya were doing on the farm.

Admittedly he was a novice, Hulya was a child, and Arani had worked for
a big agricultural company. But Arani’s attitude set his teeth on edge.
“If you’re serious,” she said—as if he wasn’t serious now!—“we can go
and get the equipment to do it properly. We can sell to the people in
Littleport, Manea too. But all this,” she gestured around his
hard-worked fields and laughed. “This is primitive! You might as well
not bother.”

For Rugal, their efforts to cultivate this piece of land had nothing to
do with efficiency or success—they had the replicator to live off, after
all. It was about finding something meaningful to do, something that
demanded that he looked ahead, to a future where his efforts paid off.
Even if something went wrong, even if it didn’t work out this time
around, that was itself a reason to look ahead to next year, when they
would do it better, get it right.

Arani didn’t understand, and finally he lost his temper. “If you don’t
like what we’re doing here, go. Get out of here. Go back to Prime and
try your luck there.”

There were tears, and a door was slammed in his face. He ended up
standing outside it apologizing. Eventually she came out, threw his arms
around him, and begged him not to send her away. He stood awkwardly,
while Hulya glowered nearby, saying he hadn’t meant it and of course she
should stay. What else could he say to her? Where could she go? They
could hardly send her off to fend for herself. They were stuck with her.
But Rugal could see that this was going to happen again and again: she
would become frustrated at being trapped here and she would take it out
on him. They were at the lowest point of this cycle when Gheta arrived.

It was toward the end of winter, one of those crisp clear days that are
very close to declaring themselves spring. This time Rugal saw the
visitor first, and he didn’t think for a second that it might be
Penelya. Gheta came striding up toward the house, her hand already
raised in greeting. “They said there were Cardassians here,” she said.
“I’m glad to see you.” She looked around and smiled. “This place is great!”


• • •





They made her redleaf tea and sat at the kitchen table to hear her
story. This was something Cardassians did now, Rugal thought, a new
ritual: greeting each other in amazement, asking each other how they had
got here. Gheta was younger than both Arani and Rugal, not quite at the
age of emergence. Her parents had worked for Khevet’s company, and had
been based in Kovalet. They were dead now, of course, but Gheta had been
hiking in the country when the massacre at the complex happened. “I’ve
been traveling around since then,” she said. “I was trying to find other
Cardassians. The humans don’t want us around, but there’s no point in
going back to Prime, and anyway, I like it here.”

“Wait till you find out how they’re running this place,” Arani said
darkly. “It’s all mucking about in the mud and digging ditches. Back to
basics.”

Gheta glanced at her, then at Rugal, sulking at his end of the table.
She shrugged. “Sounds good to me. That sealed-in complex in Kovalet
didn’t save anyone in the end, did it?”

Later, long after Hulya had gone to bed, and when Arani had followed her
upstairs, Gheta told Rugal more about her experiences since the war. He
was surprised that she had seen so few Cardassians. “They said when I
landed that most of them were leaving. I didn’t think they’d have got
rid of so many so quickly.”

“It wasn’t deportation, Rugal. It was the second round of massacres.”
She caught his expression. “Did you not know about that?”

“No, not at all.” He glanced at the stairs. “Arani said something, but
it’s hard to tell what’s exaggerated and what isn’t.”



“She seems like she might be difficult to get on with.”

“I should try harder. It’s not like there are all that many of us left.
What happened?”

Gheta curled her legs under her and warmed her hands around her mug of
tea. “After the Jem’Hadar left, those of us who had made it started
coming back to the complexes and the townships. The humans had started
coming back too. Some of them were interned, you knew that?”

“Yes, Hulya was, with her mother.”

“Tensions were running pretty high. If it had been only the locals,
maybe they could all have ignored each other. Maybe it would have been
the same. Anyway, a few ships had landed on Ithic by that time—mostly
people getting out of what’s now Romulan space. Can’t say I blame them.
The ships carrying Cardassians weren’t allowed to land, but the ships
carrying human refugees were. Mostly frightened people looking for
somewhere safe to hide. They weren’t the problem. Some of them,
however—not so nice. It only takes a handful. They found out about the
Cardassian survivors at Kovalet, and they went up there one night and
finished what the Jem’Hadar had started. The other humans turned a blind
eye. Kovalet was only the start. The same thing happened again and again
throughout the summer, all the way up the coast, anywhere Cardassians
had started to gather, and out this way nearly as far as Littleport.
That’s why you hardly see any Cardassians around here. The ones the
Jem’Hadar didn’t kill, the humans got later.”

“Prophets...” Rugal murmured. He had seen so much in the past few years,
but he still hadn’t predicted this.

“What frightens me, Rugal—really frightens me—is that when I came
through Littleport, there were people talking about the Cardassian
enclave out here. They were saying that there was a human child up here,
being kept by the Cardassians, and they didn’t like it. To be honest, I
didn’t believe it until I saw Hulya with my own eyes. But it’s going to
be summer again soon, and I’m afraid that the humans might decide to
pick up where they left off last year. Get rid of us once and for all.”
She was shaking. She put down her mug, and he leaned over and put his
hand on top of hers.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to cause a scene. But it’s been a bad
year. And I don’t want to sound alarmist, but I’m not sure the humans
are done with us yet.”

He walked around the house later, when everyone was asleep, making sure
that all the doors and windows were secure. The next morning, he took
the skimmer out to the gate and checked the metal fences for some
distance in either direction. Perhaps he should think about the security
fields again. But they couldn’t stay locked in here forever. That was no
way to live and, besides, if it was Hulya they wanted, they would find a
way inside somehow.



Gheta’s presence restored some balance. She had a way of handling Arani
that made the older woman feel her grievances had been heard and turned
out to be not so bad after all. As spring advanced, and the weather
improved, they had other problems to contend with. One day they found
that sections of the fence had been torn down. Not long after, graffiti
began to appear on some of the estate buildings. Equipment was damaged
too—a big blow ever since Rugal had decided not to rely on going into
Littleport for parts. They fixed the broken sections of the fence and
cleared off the other damage, and they talked about putting the security
fields back up. Arani was all for it; Gheta thought it would use too
much power. Hulya was in a stage of agreeing enthusiastically with
whatever Gheta said. As for Rugal, he resented the idea of being
imprisoned in that way. Since the day he had been separated from Migdal,
he had been told where and how he had to live—first by Starfleet, then
by the Obsidian Order, then by the military, and now some bigots on a
backwater planet wanted to do the same. They could forget it.

Not long after they had mended the fences, a skimmer drove all the way
through the estate up to the wall built around their enclave. It
remained there a few hours, and then went away again. When Rugal told
Gheta, she was shaken—and she was not easily shaken. “I’m afraid they’re
going to attack. Maybe I was wrong about the security fields. It might
be safer that way—”

Rugal shook his head. “I’m not giving them the satisfaction. I’ll go
down to Littleport first, talk to whoever’s calling themselves the
authorities, ask what they intend to do about protecting us. It’ll make
my point, at the least—”

“Don’t!” Gheta said quickly. “It would be all the excuse they need.”

They came to him in the end. He got back to the house one afternoon to
see a skimmer standing outside. When he went into the kitchen, there
were three humans sitting there with Arani. Gheta and Hulya were nowhere
to be seen. He recognized one of the humans as the teacher that he and
Hulya had met the time they had gone into Littleport. The other two he
did not know, but one of them was in uniform.



“I’m pleased the neighbors have finally decided to drop by,” Rugal said
to Arani as he got himself some tea, in as measured a tone as he could
manage. “But something tells me this isn’t a courtesy call. Doctor
Anders,” he said, “it’s nice to see you again. How can I help you?”

“There’s no easy way to put this,” she said, “but we’ve come to collect
Hulya.”

Rugal heard a faint ringing sound in his ears. “Oh yes?”

“My colleagues and I—this is Mr. Greene from Littleport’s organizing
committee, and Mr. Townley, from our police—we don’t think that it’s in
Hulya’s best interests to remain here.”

Rugal leaned back in his chair and drank some tea. “Have you asked Hulya
what she thinks about that?”

Anders looked unhappy. “She was here when we arrived, but she became
hysterical and ran upstairs. Your other friend—”

“Her name is Gheta.”

“Yes—she went after her.”

Greene spoke. “Does she often have tantrums like that?”

“Not as many as she used to,” Rugal replied.

“She shouldn’t be having them at all.” Greene was clear to whom he was
attributing blame. “It’s a sign of considerable distress.”

“Hulya spent a year in an internment camp, and then found her mother’s
body after she was murdered,” Rugal replied quietly. “If she wasn’t
distressed by that, we should be worried. She’s been much better in
recent months.” He got up from his chair. “Until today.” He walked over
to the kitchen door and called upstairs. “Hulya, I’m home. There are
some people here who’d like to talk to you. Do you want to talk to them?”



There was a pause and then she shouted back. “No!”

Rugal turned to his visitors. “You heard her. She doesn’t want to see
you. And I won’t force her.”

Anders said, “We’re only here because we’re concerned about Hulya. I
taught her; I knew her mother and father. They wouldn’t be happy that
she’s here by herself—”

“Is she by herself? There’s me, there’s Gheta, there’s Arani—”

“What I meant was—”

“I know what you meant,” Rugal replied coldly. He went on in a more
conciliatory tone of voice. “We’re not holding her hostage. Hulya stays
here because she feels safe here.”

“With all respect, she’s a very troubled little girl who doesn’t know
her own mind.”

“And with all respect to you, she’s much less disturbed than when I
found her.”

Townley pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’m done listening to
this,” he said. “We’re well within our rights to remove this child. So
we’re going to remove her.”

Rugal placed himself in the middle of the doorway and folded his arms.
“You’ll have to get past me first.”

Townley shrugged. “Fine.”

He was a big man, purposeful, and sure he was doing the right thing.
They scuffled for a while, and then Townley pushed hard. Rugal
overbalanced, and Townley was past him in an instant, and taking the
stairs two at a time. Rugal sprinted after him; Greene and Anders
followed behind. Townley checked the bedrooms one by one until he found
the one where Hulya was sitting on the bed with Gheta. He held out his
hand to Hulya and said, “Come on now. It’s all right. We’re going now.”



Hulya, panicked, looked at Rugal. “You’re not going anywhere if you
don’t want to,” he said to her.

“I don’t want to go with him.” she said. She jumped up from her bed,
slipped past Townley, and threw her arms around Rugal. “I want to stay
here. Rugal, I want to stay here.” He could feel tremors of distress
passing through her small body. He put his arms around her, circling her
entirely. “I’m not going!” she said.

Townley moved forward and firmly took hold of their entwined arms,
trying to force them apart. Rugal held on grimly. “I’m not going
anywhere!” Hulya shouted. She started kicking at Townley’s legs. “You’re
not taking me anywhere!”

“Hulya, darling!” Anders called from the landing. “We’re here to look
after you!”

“You can’t want to stay here!” said Greene. “Not with this lot! Hulya,
they killed your mum!”

Hearing that, Rugal was racked suddenly with guilt. He thought, /What if
he’s right, what if she’s better with her own kind? That’s what we do,
isn’t it? That’s what my people do.../

His arms went limp. Hulya, feeling his resolve weaken, gripped on even
more tightly. She started shrieking—at Townley, at Anders, at Greene.
“It wasn’t them! It wasn’t them! It was people like you! It was men like
you! Just like you!” Then, to Rugal, she cried, “You promised! You
promised you wouldn’t leave me! You /promised/!”

Shocked into action, Rugal renewed his hold. “Get off,” he said through
gritted teeth to Townley. “Get away from her.”

“Richard,” Anders called through the door. She was shaken and upset.
“Leave it!”

Townley still had one hand around Rugal’s upper arm, another around
Hulya’s wrist. Anders called out again. “Richard! We should leave it!”

Hulya, sensing victory, hissed, “Let go or I’ll bite.”

“I’d take her at her word on that one if I were you,” Rugal said. “Richard.”

Townley, unwillingly, backed down. He released his hold on them both and
went out to join Anders and Greene on the landing. Gheta followed him
out and closed the door. Rugal heard them talking and heard Gheta ask
them firmly to leave. Brave girl. He heard them all go back downstairs
and, not long after, caught the sound of the skimmer leaving. Soon the
house was quiet again, except for the weeping child in his arms, whom he
was holding and would not let go, exactly as he wished Migdal had done
all those long years ago.



When at last Hulya was asleep, Rugal went downstairs, where Gheta made
him some tea and Arani pushed a chair under him. He drank the tea and
then put his arms down on the table and rested his head on them. His
words came out thick and jumbled. “I thought it was Cardassians—us, I
mean—at her mother’s farm. I just assumed... But of course it was
humans, wasn’t it? That’s why she felt safe with me. That’s why she came
onto Cardassian land in the first place. Away from humans. Will I ever
learn that we’re not all bad?”

Gheta said, “They turned a blind eye while we were being killed. If
Hulya had been Cardassian, they wouldn’t have cared. But then they ran
out of enemies and turned on themselves.” She knelt down next to Rugal
and put her arm around his shoulders. “That’s why you’ll get to keep
her, Rugal. Because they didn’t protect her at all.”

• • •





A few days later he and Gheta went down to Littleport, where they had
agreed to meet Anders and Greene. Not Townley. Rugal never wanted to see
Townley again. He let Gheta do most of the talking. “None of us mean you
any harm,” Gheta said. “We’ve all suffered, and we’re all angry. I
understand that. But you can’t want to carry on this way, killing each
other, letting people kill us. You’ve seen what happens now—you can’t
control it. It’s not only us who get killed. You do too.”

Listening to her, Rugal felt proud of her: how well she spoke, how calm
she sounded. Being around humans frightened her as much as it frightened
Hulya. Yet she had agreed to come here with him the moment he had asked.

Both Anders and Greene had the decency to look ashamed. Anders said,
“All I want—all I ever wanted—is for Hulya to be where she feels safe,
to be with people that she trusts.”

“She is,” Rugal said. “There’s something you need to understand,” he
went on, wearily. “I was brought up on Bajor, by Bajorans.” How often
had he said this in his life? Never before had it seemed to matter so
much. “They were my parents, the only ones I ever knew. Then my
biological father turned up alive, and a Starfleet officer decided it
was better for me to go back to Cardassia with him. But it wasn’t. It
was a great wrong, and it did me great harm. I don’t want Hulya to
forget she’s human, and I’m the last person on this world to want to
make her think she’s Cardassian. But she’s safe and happy, and she wants
to be with us. That’s where she should stay.”

Greene agreed that he would talk to the organizing committee. Anders
wasn’t quite finished, however; she was worried about schooling, about
how they were taking care of Hulya’s education. Rugal told her to come
out to the house to discuss it. “And tell that policeman of yours,”
Rugal said on the way out, “that if he’s serious about keeping the
peace, he’ll have to protect us as well as you.”

Greene gave a wry smile and offered Rugal his hand. “Why not come and
say that to the committee?”

Rugal shook his hand. “Perhaps I will,” he said. But in the skimmer on
the way back to the house, he told Gheta that he thought she should do
it instead. “We’ll see,” she said. “That was enough humanity for me for
one day.” They sat in companionable silence for a while. Then Gheta
said, “Was that true, what you said? About growing up on Bajor?”

“Yes, it was true.”

She stretched her legs out before her and whistled. “That was a stroke
of luck.”



It was not the happy ending, but it was a start. The people of
Littleport still sent an occasional Cardassian their way, rather than
have them in their town, and there was a spate of damage to their fences
at the start of summer, but the vandalism had died down well before the
longest day. Gheta went to meetings of the organizing committee every so
often; one time she came back and reported that she’d overheard someone
describe them as “our Cardassians.”

“Like pets,” Arani said with a sigh. /But at least we aren’t in cages,/
Rugal thought.

By the time the longest day had passed, five more Cardassians—three
adults, two children—had drifted their way and they had had to turn a
storeroom into another house. Incredibly, too, the fields were full of
tall wavering wheat. Not long after they harvested it, Rugal received a
communication from Ellen Smith. The /Lotos/ was on its way back to Ithic.

/“You’re not dead then,”/ Ellen said.

“Impossible to kill.”

/“We’ll be with you soon.”/

“Typical. You’ve missed all the hard work.”

She laughed. She laughed easily, Rugal remembered, one of the things he
had liked about her. /“Did you find your friend, Rugal?”/

“No, I didn’t.”

/“I’m sorry.”/

“It’s not so bad. I found someone else.”

/“Tell me all about it when you see me. Are you coming with us?”/

“I’m not sure that I need to...”

/“Come to Manea to see us at least. For old time’s sake.”/

“I’ll do that. How is everyone?”

/“Much the same. Bringing peace and justice and the Federation way. Oh,
Roche is a changed man ever since Bajor joined the Federation. Won’t
hear anything said against Starfleet.”/

“We’ll have to have words about that... Did you say Bajor has joined the
Federation?”

/“Rugal! Half a year ago! Old news. What have you been doing there? You
used to obsess over newscasts.”/

“I’ve been busy.” Rugal thought for a moment. Something had occurred to
him, and an idea was taking shape in his mind. “Ellen, I might come with
you after all, but I’ll be bringing someone with me, and it all depends
on whether she wants to come. Is that all right?”

/“Fine, we’ll find room, always do. Come to Manea anyway. Six days’ time.”/

“We’ll be there.”



He explained to Hulya what he wanted to do, where he wanted to go, why
it mattered. He said he wouldn’t do it if she didn’t want to come along.
She thought about it for a while, staring out the window across the
fields at their improbable achievement, their home. “Will we come back
here?”

“Of course we will.”

“Then I think we should give it a try.” She smiled at him. “We’re good
at getting things to work, aren’t we?”

He kissed the tip of his finger and pressed it gently against her cheek.
“We most certainly are.”









*Twelve*





Sitting at his kitchen table, Miles Edward O’Brien was, in quietly
heroic fashion, watching his daughter make a mess of her math homework.
It hurt like hell to see quadratic equations mangled so cruelly, but
their sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain. It would be worth it when Molly
finally figured out the whole business.

/Beautiful girl,/ he thought, watching his daughter. This was their
second year on Cardassia Prime, and in the past few weeks, if you’d
asked, Miles would finally have said that it had been a good decision.
The kids were settled, Keiko’s work was getting serious professional
recognition, and the land around the base at Andak was miraculously
starting to turn green. Best of all, nobody had tried to blow them up in
well over a year. Life had settled into a routine; things were as
peaceful as you could possibly expect on Cardassia Prime. So long as the
government stood. The Federation was putting a lot of effort into making
sure of that, but in recent years Cardassian governments had been about
as stable as a one-legged Talorian...

“Da,” said Molly plaintively, “when can I give up?”



“Give it a little longer, sweetheart.”

“But it’s /agony/.” She had picked up the word from somewhere and was
using it all the time. He gave her most recent effort a quick look.

“Trust me,” he said, marking where she had gone wrong, “this hurts me as
much as it hurts you.”

She looked mutinous, but she carried on. How long till adolescence? They
grew up so quickly these days. Perhaps childhood—the peaceful life—was
drawing to an end.

The communicator buzzed quietly. Miles called out, “O’Brien.”

/“Jack at security. There’s someone at the gate asking to see you.”/

“Me? Not Keiko?”

/“He’s asking for you specifically.”/

Miles and Molly exchanged puzzled looks. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.
What’s his name?”

/“He says it’s Proka Rugal.”/

“Don’t think I know anyone by that name. Bajoran, is he?”

/“Cardassian.”/ There was a pause during which a muffled exchange took
place. /“He says you might remember him as Rugal Pa’Dar. And that he
still can’t stand/ zabu /stew.”/

Everything fell into place. The Cardassian boy who had stayed with them
that time on the station, the one who had been brought up by Bajorans
and had liked the Cardassian food that Keiko had made about as much as
Miles had. “My God,” said Miles. “Yes, send him over, Jack, send him
over right away.”

He stood up from the table. Molly looked at him hopefully. “Can I stop now?”

“No.”



Miles went to the doorway to watch for his visitor. He’d thought of him
from time to time, when news came out of Cardassian space—invariably bad
news—of sickness, and the fall of governments, and the outbreak of war.
He had never been sure the captain had made the right decision sending
the boy back to live among strangers, but he’d worried it was his own
prejudice against Cardassians that made him think that way.

Heading across the compound was a young Cardassian man that Miles
recognized as the same very serious boy he had met—what was it? Eight
years ago. The young man—Rugal—was holding hands with a human girl of
about thirteen who had an apprehensive look on her face. Rugal leaned
down to say something to her so tenderly that Miles’s father’s heart
melted. When the pair reached the house, Rugal offered Miles his hand
and Miles pulled him into a hug. “So glad to see you again. Glad you
made it.” He glanced down at the girl. “Who’s this one, Rugal?”

Rugal put his arm around his companion. “This is Hulya. She looks after me.”

“Da,” Molly said urgently from behind him. “Why don’t I show Hulya
around while you talk to your friend?”

Miles’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “All right, sweetheart, off you go.”

Molly bounced over to Hulya. “I’m glad you turned up when you did,” she
said fervently as she dragged her off outside. “He was making me do math.”

Miles and Rugal watched them go. “Today I’m a tyrant,” Miles said
cheerfully. “Tomorrow I’ll be the best person on the planet. You’ll
discover all this in time.”

“I have already.”



They smiled at each other in mutual satisfaction at this particular
aspect of their lives. “Well, sit down, sit down!” Miles said. “Tell me
about yourself. What happened after you got back?”

Rugal took a seat at the kitchen table while Miles busied himself at the
replicator. “A lot happened. The war, of course... Everything after. I
ended up on a world called Ithic in the former DMZ. That’s where I found
Hulya.” Rugal took the cup of /raktajino/ gratefully. “Before that...”
He gave a deep sigh that came from the heart of him. “Cardassia is a
strange place. I tried my best. I think.”

Miles sat down opposite him, stopping only briefly to clear away Molly’s
padds. “Were you in the war?”

“Yes.”

“Bad?”

“Isn’t it always?”

In Miles’s experience, people only said things like that when it was
truly terrible. People who had sat behind a desk the whole time said
things like: /Oh, you know, it could have been worse.../“It was a
terrible decision to send you back to Cardassia.”

“Yes, it was,” Rugal said softly. “What happened to him, that officer?”

“Oh, he did all right for himself.”

“Did he get promoted?”

“You could say that.”

“I got promoted. I even got a medal.” Rugal looked away, out the window.
How much damage had been done, Miles wondered, by sending this young man
back with his biological father? What life could he have led instead on
Bajor? “You know,” Rugal said, “you were a hard man to find, Mr. O’Brien.”



“Miles, please.”

“Miles. I never would have expected to find you on Cardassia Prime.”

“First Bajor, then here. I think we got into the habit of living in
places under reconstruction. Keiko’s job brought us here this time,
though, not mine.”

Rugal’s eyes lit up. “I read about what you were doing here. I didn’t
believe it was possible until I arrived. I never imagined anywhere on
Prime could be so...” He held up his hands. “So /green/!”

Miles laughed. “She’s done a great job, that wife of mine. I wish she
was here to see you—she’s up in the capital, about to go back to Earth
for a review of the project. They’d better decorate her when she gets
there.”

“I wish she’d come out to Ithic. There are whole areas that the
Cardassians wrecked while they were there. At least they didn’t have
enough time to do serious damage.” He leaned in eagerly. “We’ve been
farming, of all things. I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. Hulya’s got
the most experience. There are eight of us now. I never believed it
would work—you throw some seeds in the ground and the next thing you
know you’ve got a field of food. I’m still not convinced it really works.”

“You sound like you were making a life for yourself out there. What on
earth’s brought you back to Cardassia Prime? Are you looking for someone?”

Rugal shook his head. “No, no, everyone I knew was in the capital. I’ve
given up on that—you have to. You could lose yourself to the search
forever. I came here because...” He frowned. “You said, once, that if I
needed help, I could come to you. I know it’s been a long time, and what
I’m going to ask probably isn’t what you expected, but if the offer
still stands, I’d like to ask, at least.”



“Rugal, I’ve spent eight years wishing I’d intervened somehow to stop
you going back. If there’s anything I can do to make up for that, I’ll
do it in a flash.”

“All right then... I’d like your help to become a Federation citizen.”

Miles blinked. “You’d like my which to do what?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. I
was born on Bajor, you see. I didn’t know that until I went back to
Cardassia. I’d always assumed that we’d gone out there when I was a
baby. But Kotan and Arys—my parents, my Cardassian parents—were already
out there when I was born. I have my grandmother, of all people, to
thank for telling me that. I’d never been to Cardassia before I went
back there with Kotan. I was adopted on Bajor—legally adopted. It was
all done according to Bajoran law. Migdal and Etra were Bajoran. If they
were still alive, they would have become Federation citizens. So I
should be too.”

Miles went and got them both another /raktajino/. “Are you sure,” he
said carefully, “that this is a good idea?”

“I think it is—”

“I ask because when you stayed with me and Keiko on DS9, you hated
Cardassians, Rugal, really hated them. And it wasn’t right. It wasn’t
good for you, more than anything. I know that you must have had a
difficult time—what with the war in particular—but if that’s what this
is about, well, I can’t help you—”

Rugal shook his head. “No, it’s nothing like that, I swear. I did hate
Cardassians then. Not now. Not after everything I did there, not after
everyone I knew...” He put his hands down flat on the table, as if
trying to bring order to his thoughts. “It’s not that I don’t want to be
Cardassian—I’d go and change how I looked if I didn’t—it’s more that I
never was entirely Cardassian in the first place. Everything that
happened to me there, that’s a part of me now. But it’s not the whole of
me, and it never was. Starfleet shouldn’t have sent me back. This is a
way for the Federation to make amends. It would be...” He hunted around
for the right word. “It would be reparations.”

Miles sat with both hands around his mug, staring down into the liquid,
thinking hard. Rugal sat across from him, shifting around uneasily in
his chair. “I’m not sure what it is I could do exactly,” Miles said
slowly, after a while.

“Anything. I don’t know. How do I do it? Do I need to have a sponsor?
Would you do that for me if I did?”

“But there is somebody who I think might be able to help.”

Rugal looked at him hopefully. “Yes? Who?”

“Somebody who owes me a favor or two.”

“Someone in the Federation?”

“Not exactly.” Miles smiled. “In fact, I’d say he’s about as Cardassian
as they come.”

“Not to sound ungrateful, Miles, but if he’s Cardassian, how can he help
persuade the Federation of anything?”

The girls ran back inside then, giggling over some private secret. When
they saw the two men at the table they burst into fresh laughter and ran
off in the direction of Molly’s room. Miles stood up and went over to
the comm. “For one thing, he’s about the slickest talker I’ve ever met.
For another—it’s his job.”



/“As I’m sure you realized when you first thought of contacting me,
Miles,”/ Elim Garak said later over the comm, /“this is exactly the kind
of thing a newly appointed ambassador needs to be doing in order to
ingratiate himself with his hosts.”/

Miles didn’t bother untangling that one. “So you’ll help?”

/“This being perhaps the most delicate moment in the whole relationship,
when trust is as yet barely established between guest and host, and
knowledge of each party—working style, emphasis, personality—is as yet
to be fully explored and determined—”/

“Garak...”

Garak beamed. /“Naturally, if I can help, I shall. However, it might be
useful if you could first tell me some more about this young man and his
case.”/

“He was born on Bajor and he was abandoned there when the Occupation
ended. He was brought up by a Bajoran couple, but then his father turned
up alive... Don’t you remember the whole business? You and Julian
jaunted off to Bajor and found out there was a whole political scandal
brewing around it. Something to do with Dukat.”

Miles watched as Garak’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. /“Yes, I
remember the young man concerned. Councillor Pa’Dar’s son. I remember
him distinctly.”/

“Good! That’s great! So you’ll help?”

/“It’s hard to forget someone who bit you on the hand.”/

Miles didn’t miss a beat. “So you’ll definitely help.”

Garak’s eyes lit up and his lips curled into a smile. /Is it right,/
Miles wondered, /to be this fond of an assassin? “Miles,”/ Garak said,
/“I am as ever entirely at your disposal. Send the young man to me. I’m
sure we’ll get along famously.”/



Rugal and Hulya traveled back to Earth with Keiko O’Brien. She was
cheerful, friendly company, and Hulya came to trust her entirely. Rugal
was pleased. The girl was still cautious with humans, particularly at
first, but she no longer insisted on avoiding them entirely.

Keiko also knew the man that Rugal was going to meet. “The ambassador
is... well, he’s one of a kind, really,” she said, with an odd smile
that Rugal couldn’t quite interpret. “He’s smart, he’s charming, and if
there are any holes at all in your argument, he’ll pick at them until
your whole case unravels and he’ll smile while he’s doing it. If you do
win him over, though, you’ll have made a powerful ally.”

The newly appointed ambassador to the Federation from the Cardassian
Reconstruction Administration had taken up residence in a beautiful city
of light in Earth’s northern hemisphere, which Keiko said was called
Paris. His residence lay south of the river that ran through the city:
“The Left Bank,” Keiko said helpfully. They transported to the gates,
suffered the security search, and then were taken into a grand pillared
entrance hall, where the ambassador himself was waiting to welcome them.

The ambassador was a genial and elegant man of uncertain age and
impeccable manners. Keiko introduced him to Rugal as Elim Garak. Rugal
had not been able to recall the name from any conversations he had with
Kotan, and he wondered in which part of the government Garak had served
before the war. Rugal was sure that he had seen his face before, but he
couldn’t place it. The ambassador welcomed Keiko warmly, and when he
learned that she was planning to take Hulya sightseeing, immediately put
a car and a driver at their disposal. After they had gone, Rugal studied
the ambassador nervously. Whatever this man had done before and during
the war, it took intelligence and guile to have survived the last few
years of Cardassian political life and ended up in a position this powerful.

The ambassador smiled at him pleasantly. “Let’s go up to my private
office.” He led Rugal across the hall and up a grand staircase. “Do you
like the building?”

Rugal nodded his approval. “It’s very impressive.”

“When I took up residence here, I took the trouble to investigate the
history of the place. It turned out to have once been the embassy of a
military dictatorship whose name is synonymous with cruelty, aggression,
and sheer brutality of the most unspeakable kind. Someone at the
Federation Diplomatic Corps went out of their way to calculate that
insult so finely. I was quite flattered; I’m sure not everyone earns
such particular attention. Besides, it’s a remarkable building and a
magnificent city.” He glanced back at his companion. “Of course, you’ll
have seen the inside of many places like this, given your father’s
profession.”

“Kotan and I didn’t spend as much time together as we should.”

“No?” They came to the top of the stairs and fell into step together.
The ambassador eyed Rugal with sharp interest.

“He was busy with his work a lot of the time. We didn’t really get to
know each other until almost the end of my time on Cardassia Prime.”

“Fathers can be difficult in that way, or so I understand. But everyone
who knew Kotan speaks very highly of him. I was talking to the castellan
about him only yesterday. Alon sends his warmest regards, by the way—he
was overjoyed to discover that you were alive, and he extends an
invitation for you to visit should you ever pass through Prime again. He
also asked me to say—now, what was it?—that as your father’s old and
very good friend, he feels obliged to warn you that I am a treacherous
liar and that you would be well advised to watch your back when I’m
around.” Garak beamed as if delighted at this commendation. “Yes, I
think those were his words, more or less.”

“I’m grateful for that,” Rugal said faintly. A short conversation with
the ambassador was turning out to have roughly the same effect as a
month of Romulan bombardment. They reached some double doors, and Garak
pushed them open.

“Step into my office,” he said, leading Rugal inside. “Do take a seat,
there, over by the fireplace. /Kanar?/”

“Please,” Rugal said, taking a seat. He glanced around. The room was
furnished in a hugely ornate style that Rugal did not recognize, but
which was presumably in keeping with the history of the building. There
was a big and fanatically neat desk over by the window. The only
recognizably Cardassian object in the room was the painting hanging over
the fireplace, but he didn’t get a chance to study it in detail before
the ambassador returned. He handed Rugal his glass, and then took his
own seat opposite and studied Rugal with a mild air of amusement. “We
have met before, you know. Do you remember? I still have the scar.”

Garak leaned forward in his seat and held out his hand for Rugal to see.
There was a tiny white mark between thumb and forefinger. With a shock,
Rugal realized where he had seen the man before. He was the Cardassian
in the Ferengi’s bar on Deep Space 9. The one who had put his hand on
Rugal’s shoulder. Which Rugal had promptly bitten.

Rugal put his hand to his forehead. “I don’t believe this.”



“Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t take it personally,” the ambassador replied,
with only slight glee. “One of my best friends shot me once, and that
was a gesture of affection.”

“I’m so sorry...”

“It is entirely forgotten. Let us speak of more pressing matters. Tell
me, Rugal, why did you desert?”

Rugal was still regrouping from the ambassador’s opening move. His mouth
fell open at this new salvo. “What?”

“You were stationed on Ogyas throughout the war, yes? Fourth Division,
Second Order. Under the command of Gul Rantok. You weren’t reposted, you
weren’t listed as dead, and yet you weren’t there when the garrison
surrendered. What other explanation is there for your absence?”

Rugal realized his hands were trembling. “Technically, the war was over
when I left.”

“There’s no ‘technically’ about it,” the ambassador replied. He wasn’t
smiling now. “You hadn’t been demobilized.”

The man certainly knew how to wrong-foot. He also knew how to ask
questions. Rugal drank deeply from his glass of /kanar/. “I was pressed
into service,” he replied. “My enlistment wasn’t legal—”

“Fortunately for you, whatever records there once were relating to your
enlistment went up in smoke in the somewhat spectacular bonfire that
recently consumed so much of our home planet. Unfortunately for you,
that also means that there is absolutely no evidence to support your
statement that you were pressed into service illegally.”

“It’s the truth—”

The ambassador leaned forward in his chair. He had bright blue eyes, and
they didn’t leave Rugal’s face. “Understand this. If your attempt to
acquire Federation citizenship is primarily a scheme to escape the
consequences of your actions on Ogyas III, I shall not be pleased. Not
simply because I dislike having my time wasted, but because you will
have taken advantage of two very excellent people, Miles and Keiko
O’Brien. I don’t like seeing my friends used. I find that I am...” The
ambassador ran the tip of his tongue across his front teeth. “Offended.”

Rugal opened his mouth to protest, but the ambassador cut across him.

“I do wonder whether you have any idea what happened to the rest of the
garrison that was stationed at Keralek. No? Let me enlighten you. They
are still being held by the Romulan military, as we speak. I imagine
we’ll get them back eventually, once we’ve got the water running again
on Prime and done the million other things necessary to ensure Cardassia
doesn’t collapse into civil war. The problem—from their perspective—is
that they’re mostly rank and file. No friends in high places to pressure
for their return. It’s a very great shame that the officer being held
with them isn’t—for example—the son of a well-respected public figure
who was once good friends with the castellan. I admit that I’m speaking
only /technically/”—he fairly spat the word out—“but you too should be
under Romulan jurisdiction right now. Perhaps I should hand you over and
let justice run its course. It might help your former comrades raise
their profile. You could think of it as doing your duty by them.”

Shaken, Rugal insisted guiltily, “It wasn’t my war. I wasn’t conscripted
legally. Dukat threatened to kill my father!”

The ambassador stared at him. Then he began to laugh, unpleasantly. “Oh,
it was Dukat, was it? I should have known.” He fell silent and stared at
the picture hanging over the fireplace. When he spoke again his tone had
altered greatly, becoming meditative rather than brutal. It was an
unbelievable relief. If their earlier conversation had been like Romulan
bombardment, this must be how the firing squad felt.

“It seems to have become my life’s work,” Garak said pensively, “to mend
the damage done by Dukat. If it is indeed possible to do that in a
lifetime.” All of a sudden, he relaxed. He became entirely amiable
again. “All right, I’ll help, however I can. Besides,” he said, with a
smile that simultaneously reassured and struck fear into the heart of
his guest, “I spent years trying to get back to Cardassia. I’m sure I’ll
enjoy helping someone get away.” He glanced at Rugal’s glass. “Drink
up,” he said in a kindly fashion. “I gather alcohol can be a help after
an interview with me.”

Rugal did what he was told. He thought he had a fairly good idea now
which branch of the Cardassian government had once had the ambassador at
its disposal. Draining his glass, Rugal looked up at the painting again,
rather than at the bright blue eyes of the man sitting opposite. Now
that he looked at it, he could see it wasn’t Cardassian after all—or,
not entirely. An interlocking design of stylized floral patterns, it was
both Cardassian and Bajoran. He gestured toward it. “That’s by Tora
Ziyal, isn’t it?”

The ambassador, who had been watching him with undisguised merriment,
blinked. “Yes, it is,” he said softly. His face was transformed,
revealed, as though a mask had slipped. “However did you know that?”

“I met her, twice. First when she was on Cardassia Prime and then when I
passed through Deep Space 9 on my way to Ogyas.” Rugal reached into his
pocket, where he kept his treasures, and drew out the piece of paper
that had traveled with him for so long now. “She gave me this.”

The ambassador held out his hand. “May I?”

“Of course.”

Tenderly, Garak unfolded the page along its well-worn creases. “Well,
this is certainly you, I can tell from the frown. May I ask who the
young woman is? It’s not Ziyal.”

“No. Her name was Penelya Khevet.”

“Was? Do you know that for certain?”

“She was on Ithic when the Jem’Hadar turned on us. Then there was a
second round of massacres on Ithic—”

“Yes, I get the reports from HARF. I’ve been pushing for a criminal
inquiry. There’s some debate as to whether it will only cause further
ill-feeling and destabilization, but I would prefer justice to be served
in this case. You went looking for your friend there, I imagine?”

“Yes, but she wasn’t there. That’s where I found Hulya, though.”

“Not a bad outcome. But, from all you’ve said, you have no idea either
way whether or not your friend died?”

“I don’t think she would have left her farm.”

“People are on occasion forced to leave their homes. You know that.”

“I can’t think where she would go—”

“Anywhere, I should imagine, if it would keep her alive. Bolt-holes can
be the strangest of places.”

Rugal smiled. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, sir, but I have to
accept that she’s dead. There’s nothing to be gained from pretending
otherwise.” He realized how deftly the subject had been changed. “Did
you try to pretend Tora Ziyal was still alive?”

In the blink of an eye, all of the ambassador’s sparkle vanished.
Suddenly, he seemed old and careworn. He studied the drawing for a
moment longer, and then, carefully, he folded it up and handed it back.
“My dear boy,” he said, “sometimes I can scarcely believe she ever existed.”



It was several weeks before Rugal’s case could be heard, during which
time he and Hulya remained guests of the ambassador. When Rugal was not
preparing for the hearing with his advocate, Dravid, he and Hulya saw
more of Earth. Rugal thought he ought to get to know the world that he
hoped would soon, in a legal sense, be his—and was, in a historical
sense, already Hulya’s. They explored further the exquisite city that
the ambassador had elected to make his home. They went to another city,
on an island north of Paris, that was huge and grand and had
unmistakably once been at the heart of an empire. And they went east, to
an ancient city with many names that stood on two continents, and which
Hulya’s grandparents had left years ago for Ithic.

She was thoughtful on the way back. “It isn’t home,” she said. “But in a
way it felt like home. Even though I’d never been there before, it felt
like it was a piece of me or I was a piece of it. Does that make sense?”
It made complete sense to Rugal. He would have been hard pressed to
think of a better description of his relationship to Cardassia Prime.

The more Rugal saw of Earth, the more he envied Ziyal’s friend Jake
Sisko. This beautiful, benevolent world was his birthright. Rugal
wondered how his own life would have been different if he had come from
a world like this. How about Penelya’s or Ziyal’s? Seeing this place,
Rugal thought he could understand why Commander Sisko might have chosen
to send him back to Cardassia. People who had been happy in their homes
often lacked imagination; they lacked the understanding that what had
been a source of joy for them might be a prison for others. This was the
only reason he could find to explain Sisko’s actions—other than cruelty,
which did not seem likely in a man that Miles O’Brien respected. Earth
explained a great deal—although perhaps it did not excuse it.

They saw more of the ambassador than Rugal had expected; he seemed to
enjoy their company. Hulya was entirely at her ease around him. “Do you
have any children, sir?” Rugal asked, late one evening after Hulya had
said good night.

“Not advisable in my line of work,” the ambassador replied briskly,
thereby confirming Rugal’s suspicions of his previous career. “Tell me,
have you given any thought as to what might happen should you be
unsuccessful in your application?”

“There’s a right to appeal. But in the meantime I guess the Cardassian
government would request my extradition.”

“Regrettably, that would have to be the case.” Garak tapped his
thumbnail against his bottom lip. “You’ve been the subject of several
lengthy late-night conversations between me and Ghemor, you know.”

“I am sorry—”

Garak waved a hand. “What else are we here for? Alon’s concern is that
he can’t be seen to be treating you any differently on account of his
friendship with your father. Nepotism has no place in the new democratic
Cardassia. Very commendable on the part of the castellan. I, however, am
considerably less scrupulous. You only have to say the word, and you and
that young lady will be spirited away to wherever in the quadrant you
choose. Ithic, if you want—although that’s the first place people will
go looking for you.”

Rugal pondered this offer for a while. “I’m grateful,” he said, “but no.
I’d spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I can’t think
that would be good for Hulya.”

“Neither would your being shot for desertion.”

Rugal sighed and rested his head on his hand.

“What do you have planned for her?” Garak asked gently.

“We’ve talked about this. Hulya wants to go back to Ithic. Keiko O’Brien
has said she’ll make sure she gets back safely. We’ve got friends who
will look after her.”

“It seems to me that she would prefer to be looked after by you.”

“I think... I need this to be resolved one way or the other. Besides,
it’s come too far now. Too many people are involved. It would be wrong
to betray their trust.”

“Very honorable. You’ll make a model Federation citizen. But the offer
stands, should you change your mind.”

Rugal did not change his mind. He continued to work with his advocate,
and when the day of the hearing arrived, he dutifully took himself over
to the bland bureaucratic building where his fate was to be decided.

Three officials from the Federation’s immigration department were
hearing his case. The process was not adversarial, but a supporting and
an opposing counsel each presented evidence, with witnesses to support
them if necessary, whom they were able to question and cross-examine in
turn, and whom the panel of three could also question. Most of the first
day of the hearing was a detailed examination of Rugal’s time on
Cardassia Prime: he answered questions about his education, his
political activities and organizing, his medical training—all of which
was being presented as evidence that he had been committed to his life
on Prime.

It was an exhausting process, and Rugal found it hard to disagree with
the general thrust of the argument. Of course he had been committed to
it. He had done it all to the best of his ability. But he had still
wanted to leave. “It was difficult to make any contact with Bajor,” he
tried to explain, when Dravid cross-examined. “And it was impossible to
return. You have to understand what it was like living under the eye of
the Obsidian Order. Any wrong move and the people I lived with might
have been killed. I had to make what I could of the life I had there.”
Under Dravid’s careful questioning, they painted a picture of his old
life on Bajor. Rugal spoke about his parents, about his adoption, and
brought out his earring. “I carried it everywhere with me,” he said.
“Even to the front. Would I have bothered, if it hadn’t mattered?”

That afternoon, they came to the matter of his desertion. The substance
of the opposing claim, as Garak had suggested in their interview, was
that Rugal’s application for citizenship was being made so that he could
avoid the consequences of his actions on Ogyas. “If this case fails,”
the opposing counsel said, “it is likely that the Cardassian government
would make an application for Glinn Pa’Dar to be extradited to face a
court-martial.” She addressed Rugal directly. “I’m assuming you know the
penalty for desertion?”



“I do,” he replied. “But that’s not why I’m here—”

The chair of the committee stopped him from speaking further. When
Dravid cross-examined, however, Rugal was able to make some defense of
what he had done. He tried not to think of the people he had left
behind, and instead, he carefully reported what had happened that day
when Dukat had had him dragged from the hospital and brought him and
Kotan to his house in the country. He was only partway through his
narrative when the chair of the committee intervened. “It’s a remarkable
story that your client is telling, Mr. Dravid,” she said, “but do you
have any evidence to support it?”

“We have evidence of a long-standing feud between his father and Dukat,
the reason that my client was taken away from his biological family in
the first place.”

“But to support his claim that he was forced to enlist?”

“Regrettably, neither of the other two people present survived the war.”

“Then we should move on.”

The following morning, Keiko O’Brien gave evidence. She recalled her
meeting with Rugal on DS9 and, at Dravid’s request, described how
unhappy he had been to return to Cardassia. Under cross-examination, she
was asked whether she had intervened on his behalf to prevent that
return happening.

Keiko looked unhappily over at Rugal. “I did not.”

“So you must have thought that even if it was a difficult situation, the
right decision had been made?”

“At the time I didn’t know which was right. With hindsight—”

“We all wish for hindsight, Professor O’Brien.”

“But in this case, I think that matters. If Ben Sisko had known he was
sending Rugal back to a collapsing planet, and civil war, and Dominion
occupation, I doubt he would have done it—”

The chair of the committee held up her hand. “I think this is now hearsay.”

“But we ought to put it right,” Keiko said urgently. “An injustice was
done—”

Politely, but firmly, she was asked to stop speaking. When she stepped
down and came to sit next to Rugal, he saw that she was deeply
distressed. “I wish we’d done something,” she whispered to him,
squeezing his arm with her hand. “I’ll never forgive myself for doing
nothing.”

He was whispering back to her that she shouldn’t worry, when he became
aware that the small room had quietly but suddenly filled with security.
Glancing to look behind him, Rugal saw that Garak had arrived. He sat
down behind Rugal and gave him a sunny smile. “Is this your usual
security detail?” Rugal whispered. “Or are they here to arrest me?”

Garak shushed him. “Let me listen to the closing statements. I love
courtroom drama. Even when I’m the one in the dock.”

The opposing counsel summed up their case, that the application for
citizenship was chiefly to avoid prosecution for desertion. Dravid
responded that the legal case was clear: Rugal Pa’Dar had been adopted
on Bajor, and the citizenship of his adopted parents was his by right.
As the committee began to gather up their documents, Garak stood up and
addressed the chair. “Would you mind if I said a few words? Before you
begin your deliberations?”

She looked at him dryly. “It’s not usual. And the case will be decided
according to law, rather than appeals to our better natures. But, as a
matter of courtesy—” She gestured to Garak to continue.

“What I chiefly wanted to say was that these are tragic times for my
people. And it seems to me that the chief tragedy of our history is the
demands we have made and the obligations we have placed upon generation
after generation. I have come to believe that if Cardassia is ever to
escape this prison of our history, it must begin to reciprocate these
obligations and no longer require these sacrifices. Most of all, it must
learn to let go.” He gave a wry smile. “You say this case will be
decided by law rather than by any appeal to your better natures. Perhaps
what Cardassia needs to know at the moment is that she can still appeal
to the better natures of her neighbors.” He rested his hand lightly on
Rugal’s shoulder, and then drew it back. “I hope you’ll let us let him go.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Rugal said to him after the committee left.

“Do you think so?” the ambassador replied. “I rather thought I did.”



The committee returned after about an hour. The chair addressed the
people that were gathered there. “This is an emotive case,” she said,
“but—with all respect to the ambassador—one should try to judge
dispassionately. We agree with opposing counsel that for someone who
claims he wanted to leave Cardassia, Mr. Pa’Dar showed a very high
degree of commitment to and involvement in Cardassian society during the
time that he was living there.”

Garak leaned forward to whisper in Rugal’s ear. “That’ll teach you to
get mixed up with radicals.”

“Sadly, there are no surviving witnesses to substantiate the claim that
the enlistment was made under duress—I say sadly, given the presumed
circumstances of the death of Kotan Pa’Dar. But we do have several other
pieces of evidence to consider. Let me go through them.” She lifted up
the padd that had been resting on the table in front of her. “Firstly,
the place of birth: Tozhat, on Bajor. Secondly, we have evidence of
formal adoption under Bajoran law by Proka Etra and Migdal. Thirdly, we
have evidence of repeated attempts over the course of two years by Proka
Etra and Migdal and later Proka Migdal alone to appeal the decision
taken by Commander Sisko on DS9. In their eyes, at least, Rugal Pa’Dar
remained their son, right up to their deaths.”

Rugal felt his eyes begin to water. They had never given up, never
abandoned him. He reached for his earring, but Hulya, feeling him move,
took hold of his hand before he could find it.

“In the end, however, it is a matter of law. Entry into the Federation
has not obliterated or superseded Bajoran law. The decision taken to
return Rugal Pa’Dar to Cardassia was, I believe, not in accordance with
Bajoran law. So I’m overruling it. Rugal Pa’Dar was the adopted child of
Proka Etra and Proka Migdal and so, by extension, this makes him a
Federation citizen.” She smiled over at him. “Welcome aboard, Rugal. I
believe you may be the first person of Cardassian descent to join us.
I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong. Ambassador,” she said,
glancing past Rugal’s shoulder at Garak, “can I assume from your earlier
intervention that your government is not planning to request an
extradition hearing?”

“Madam, you assume correctly.”

“Then this session is adjourned.”



Rugal’s arms were full of Hulya. He bent down and kissed her on the top
of her head. “Congratulations, Rugal,” Keiko said, embracing him in turn
as soon as she had the chance. “Where now? Now that you can choose?”

“Bajor, first, I think. Then Cardassia Prime. I have to go back to
Cardassia Prime.”

The ambassador gave a dry smile. “It does tend to draw one back,” he said.



Bajor was as beautiful as he had remembered. It was home but not home.
Following the instructions that Darrah Bajin had given him, Rugal found
the grave of Proka Etra and Proka Migdal in the grounds of a small
temple on a hill near where Korto City had once stood. He had decided to
bury his earring here with them. Hulya was their true bequest.

She stood and watched him while he carried out the task: cutting a small
piece of turf, laying the earring down flat, covering it over once
again. When he was done, some words came into his mind. They seemed
right, so he said them. “We are the sum of all that has gone before. We
are the source of all to come.”

“What’s that?” she said.

“Something I learned from my father.”

She asked, “Are you finished now?”

“Nearly,” he replied.



They entered Cardassia as Federation citizens. The official at the
border looked at their details, then at him, then shrugged and let them
through. “Look at that,” Rugal whispered to Hulya. “It’s easy when you
know how.”

Their first stop was HARF in Cardassia City, to deliver the
documentation needed to begin the process of formally adopting Hulya. He
wasn’t going to let anybody take her away from him. “I’m not your
daughter though,” she told him firmly. He touched her gently on the
cheek. “Of course you’re not. You’re something else. Perhaps we’ll think
of a word for it one day.”

At the site of what had been the Pa’Dar house, now rubble, Rugal knelt
down and sifted ash through his fingers. He had nothing to bury here,
and enough had been buried already. Instead, he simply said thank
you—for the gift of life, for unconditional love that had not in the end
gone unappreciated. Then he left the ruin of the house behind and he
walked on up the hill.

The city was gone; only the afterimage remained. He thought as he walked
of another walk he had made years ago, with Erani and Tekis, the three
of them stumbling in the dark through barely understandable terrain.
They might have made it, he thought; and the idea cheered him, made his
heart lift. There were not as many of them as there had once been, and
anything that had come through the fire was rare and precious.

She was waiting for him in the wreckage of the stone garden. She was
older, like him, and marked in the way they all had been. When at last
he was standing before her, she said, “I changed my mind.”

“I thought you might,” he said. “So did I.”

“You went to Ithic?”

“I did.”

“What did you do there?”

“I farmed.”

She laughed. “By far the most sensible thing to do.”

“Will you come, then?”



“Of course I will.”

She slipped her arm through his, and they walked back down the hill,
down through the ruins that were and were not his inheritance, down to
where the child was waiting. Improbably, he found that he was able to
laugh. “Tell me,” he said. “However did you get here?”









*GLOSSARY*





A guide to characters, places, organizations, and other miscellaneous
items mentioned in /The Never-Ending Sacrifice/. The first appearance in
an episode or other work of /Star Trek/ fiction is given.

*CHARACTERS*





*Akleen, Tret:* Cardassian, founder of the Cardassian Union (“Tears of
the Prophets” [DS9])



*Alaren:* Cardassian military officer stationed at Keralek Base on Ogyas
III during the Dominion War



*Alvarez, Maria:* human, transitional governor of Weibak IV after the
Dominion War



*Arani:* Cardassian, employed by Khevet Agricultural Holdings on Ithic II



*Artoc:* Cardassian legate whose derring-do is commemorated by a small
statue in a park in Cardassia City



*Bamarek, Ithas:* Cardassian politician and dissident



*Corac, Ulan:* Cardassian author of /The Never-Ending Sacrifice,/ an
epic novel that follows seven generations of one Cardassian family,
which was held in high esteem by Elim Garak



*Damar, Corat:* Cardassian military officer, loyal to Dukat, who
followed Dukat as Cardassian head of state under the Dominion and later
led military and civilian uprisings against the Dominion (“Return to
Grace” [DS9])



*Darhe’el:* Cardassian military officer who commanded the notorious
Gallitep camp on Bajor, commemorated in Cardassia City with one of the
Union’s largest monuments (“Duet” [DS9])



*Darrah Bajin:* Bajoran, son of Darrah Mace (/Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers/)



*Darrah Mace:* Bajoran, formerly superior of Proka Migdal in the Korto
City Watch (/Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers/)



*Dukat, Athra:* Cardassian, wife of Skrain Dukat (/Terok Nor: Day of the
Vipers/)



*Dukat, Skrain:* Cardassian military officer, prefect of Bajor and
commander of Terok Nor, later Cardassian head of state under the
Dominion (“Emissary” [DS9])



*Elat:* Cardassian, resident of the Torr Sector in Cardassia City



*Envek:* Cardassian military officer stationed at Keralek Base on Ogyas
III during the Dominion War



*Erani:* Cardassian radical, resident of the Torr Sector in Cardassia
City, student of social policy at the technical school, girlfriend of Tekis



*Eretis:* Cardassian, resident of Cardassia City, affianced of Tret Khevet



*Garak, Elim:* Cardassian, formerly an operative of the Obsidian Order,
exiled on Deep Space 9, later close adviser to Castellan Alon Ghemor
(“Past Prologue” [DS9])



*Geyl, Teretis:* Cardassian chief archon at the time of Dukat’s coup d’état



*Ghemor, Alon:* Cardassian, nephew of Tekeny Ghemor, formerly liaison
between the Obsidian Order and the Detapa Council, then head of the
Cardassian Intelligence Bureau, later castellan of the Cardassian Union
after the Dominion War (/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Ghemor, Iliana:* Cardassian, daughter of Tekeny Ghemor, operative of
the Obsidian Order, missing in action on Bajor (“Second Skin” [DS9])



*Ghemor, Tekeny:* Cardassian military officer, member of the Central
Command and dissident (“Second Skin” [DS9])



*Gheta:* Cardassian, resident of Ithic II



*Keeve Falor:* Bajoran, formerly of the Chamber of Ministers (“Ensign
Ro” [TNG])



*Kelat:* Cardassian military officer stationed at Keralek Base on Ogyas
III during the Dominion War



*Khevet, Colat:* Cardassian, older son of Mikor Khevet



*Khevet, Elinas:* Cardassian, wife of Mikor Khevet



*Khevet, Penelya:* Cardassian, niece of Mikor Khevet



*Khevet, Mikor:* Cardassian politician and businessman, special adviser
to the Ministry of Justice and proprietor of Khevet Agricultural Holdings



*Khevet, Tret:* Cardassian, younger son of Mikor Khevet



*Kiliç, Hulya:* human, resident of Ithic II



*Lang, Natima:* Cardassian, formerly a correspondent for the Cardassian
Information Service, later professor of ethics at the Institute of State
Policy (“Profit and Loss” [DS9])



*Leterik:* Cardassian, employed by Khevet Agricultural Holdings on Ithic II



*Lok, Martis:* Cardassian foot soldier stationed at Keralek Base on
Ogyas III during the Dominion War



*Maleta:* Cardassian, housekeeper to the Pa’Dar family



*Maret, Arric:* Cardassian radical, resident of the Torr Sector in
Cardassia City, husband of Serna



*Maret, Serna:* Cardassian radical, resident of the Torr Sector in
Cardassia City, wife of Arric



*Maret, Tela:* Cardassian, daughter of Arric and Serna



*Metelek:* Cardassian military officer stationed at Keralek Base on
Ogyas III during the Dominion War



*Metrek:* Cardassian, tutor at an elite preparatory academy in Cardassia
City



*Nelita:* Cardassian, head nurse at the free hospital in the Torr
Sector, Cardassia City



*O’Brien, Keiko:* human, botanist, director of the Andak Project on
Cardassia Prime



*O’Brien, Miles:* human, husband of Keiko O’Brien



*O’Brien, Molly:* human, daughter of Keiko and Miles O’Brien



*Pa’Dar, Arys:* Cardassian, wife of Kotan Pa’Dar, biological mother of Rugal



*Pa’Dar, Geleth:* Cardassian, mother of Kotan Pa’Dar



*Pa’Dar, Ghret:* Cardassian businessman and politician, father of Irvek
Pa’Dar



*Pa’Dar, Irvek:* Cardassian politician, husband of Geleth Pa’Dar



*Pa’Dar, Kotan:* Cardassian, former exarch of the Tozhat settlement on
Bajor, member of the Civilian Assembly with a public health portfolio at
the Ministry of Science, later member of the Detapa Council; biological
father of Rugal (“Cardassians” [DS9])



*Pa’Dar, Rugal:* biological son of Kotan and Arys Pa’Dar, believed
killed during a Resistance attack on the Tozhat settlement on Bajor in
2362; adopted by Proka Migdal and Etra (“Cardassians” [DS9])



*Prekeny, Lim:* Cardassian artist, creator of holo-mosaics, most notably
/The Collectivity/



*Proka Etra:* Bajoran, seamstress, wife of Proka Migdal, adopted mother
of Rugal



*Proka Migdal:* Bajoran, formerly an officer of the Korto City Watch,
husband of Proka Etra, adopted father of Rugal (“Cardassians” [DS9])



*Rantok:* Cardassian military officer, Fourth Division, Second Order;
commander of Keralek Base on Ogyas III during the Dominion War



*Reco:* Bajoran, resident of Ashalla, friend of Proka Migdal



*Rejal, Gerat:* Cardassian politician and dissident, husband of Meya Rejal



*Rejal, Meya:* Cardassian politician and dissident, chief executor of
the Cardassian Union after the destruction of the Obsidian Order



*Rhemet, Erek*: Cardassian conservator, politician and dissident (/Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine—Hollow Men/)



*Selik:* Romulan colonel stationed on Ogyas III during the Dominion War



*Sisko, Benjamin:* human, Starfleet officer, commander of Deep Space 9
at the time of Rugal and Migdal’s visit; ruled that Rugal should return
to Cardassia with Kotan Pa’Dar (“Emissary” [DS9])



*Sisko, Jake:* human, journalist, son of Benjamin Sisko (“Emissary” [DS9])



*Smith, Ellen:* human, captain of the /Lotos,/ a supply ship operating
in the DMZ



*Tain, Enabran:* former head of the Obsidian Order (“The Wire” [DS9])



*Tekis:* Cardassian radical, resident of the Torr Sector in Cardassia
City, girlfriend of Erani



*Tevrek:* Cardassian, senior-ranking garresh at Keralek Base on Ogyas
III during the Dominion War



*Tirim*: Cardassian, secretary to Irvek Pa’Dar



*Tora Ziyal:* artist, daughter of Skrain Dukat and his Bajoran mistress,
Tora Naprem (“Indiscretion” [DS9])



*Turrel:* Cardassian military officer who negotiated the peace treaty
with Bajor with Vedek Bareil Antos and Kai Winn Adami (“Life Support” [DS9])



*Verisel*: Vorta, Dominion commander on Ogyas III



*Zolan:* visitor to Deep Space 9 who accused Proka Migdal of abuse
toward his adopted son Rugal (“Cardassians” [DS9])


*PLACES*





*Akleen Sector:* sector in Cardassia City given over to military use
(/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Anaret:* remote and impoverished province on Cardassia Prime, badly
affected by drought within recent memory



*Andak:* site of a post-Dominion War agricultural project on Cardassia
Prime, headed by Keiko O’Brien, aiming to make the planet agriculturally
self-sufficient (/Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—Cardassia/)



*Ashalla:* capital city of Bajor (/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—Mission:
Gamma, Book One—Twilight/)



*Barvonok Sector:* financial district of Cardassia City (/Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Betik Gallery:* art gallery in Cardassia City that houses a collection
of state-approved contemporary art



*Cardassia IV:* fourth planet in the Cardassian system, location of at
least one labor camp (“The Homecoming” [DS9])



*Cardassia City:* capital city of the Cardassian Union (/Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Cardassia Prime:* primary planet in the Cardassian system and center of
the Cardassian Union



*Chin’toka:* a Cardassian system bordering Federation space of great
strategic significance during the Dominion War; fought over twice during
the course of the war (“Tears of the Prophets” [DS9])



*Civilian Assembly Hall:* debating chamber of the Cardassian Civilian
Assembly; a huge landmark in the Tarlak Sector, with a large burnished dome



*Coranum Sector:* oldest and most prestigious residential sector in
Cardassia City (/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Culat:* population center on Cardassia Prime, location of a famous
university (“Nothing Human” [VOY])



*Deep Space 9:* Bajoran-owned and Starfleet-run space station at the
mouth of the wormhole leading to the Gamma Quadrant; of crucial
strategic significance before and throughout the Dominion War; Rugal and
Migdal visited the station in 2370



*Destiny:* planet in the DMZ where the human population was interned by
the Dominion during the war and the Cardassian population was
subsequently interned after the war



*Hagal system:* Cardassian system that was overrun during the
Klingon-Cardassian war



*Hewe:* strongly Maquis world in the DMZ where the Jem’Hadar carried out
fierce reprisals against the human population



*Ithic II:* planet in the DMZ that became Cardassian territory in the
treaty with the Federation; an important Cardassian agricultural world,
also home to a sizeable human population



*Keralek Base:* Cardassian weapons research base on Ogyas III, later
site of a Jem’Hadar cloning facility



*Korto City:* destroyed city in Kendra Valley, Bajor (/Terok Nor: Day of
the Vipers/)



*Kovalet:* Cardassian settlement on Ithic II



*Lakarian City:* major city on Cardassia Prime (“Defiant” [DS9])



*Littleport:* human settlement on Ithic II



*Lorikal:* rural district on Cardassia Prime badly affected by
overfarming and drought



*Maklar Prison:* notorious prison on the outskirts of Cardassia City



*Manea:* main human settlement on Ithic II



*Masad:* provincial population center and resort town on Cardassia
Prime, close to Lake Masad, the largest lake on Cardassia Prime and a
popular summertime destination for the adventurous (/Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine—Hollow Men/)



*Meritok Square:* large square in the Tarlak Sector of Cardassia City,
location of the Betik Gallery and several other state art galleries



*Mesquad:* Maquis world in the DMZ



*Metella:* township in Anaret province, Cardassia Prime



*Munda’ar Sector:* district in Cardassia City given over to warehouses
and storage (/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Natural History Museum:* state museum housed in a massive cobalt
pyramid that is a distinctive feature of Cardassia City’s skyline (/Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine—Fearful Symmetry/)



*Odek:* district capital of Anaret province, Cardassia Prime



*Ogyas III:* Cardassian outpost that became of strategic significance
during the Dominion War following the Romulan entry into the war



*Ostek:* coastal town and port serving Cardassia City



*Paldar Sector:* residential district in Cardassia City (/Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Perok:* rural district on Cardassia Prime renowned for its wild beauty
and good hunting; many wealthy Cardassians have country houses and
estates in this area



*Peyit system:* location of several Cardassian settlements and estates;
Alon Ghemor had property in this system



*Retlak Mountains:* a popular winter holiday destination on Cardassia Prime



*Sea Fall:* planet in the DMZ ceded to the Cardassians under the terms
of the treaty with the Federation



*Septimus III:* headquarters of the Cardassian Eleventh Order during the
Dominion War; scene of a massacre in 2375 following a Klingon invasion
and the failure of Weyoun to make good on a promise to send
reinforcements: this was a pivotal moment in the deteriorating
relationship between the Dominion and their Cardassian allies



*Slokat:* planet in the DMZ with evenly matched human and Cardassian
populations



*Tamsket:* farming district on Cardassia Prime, passed through on the
way out to Anaret



*Tarlak Sector:* administrative center of Cardassia City (/Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Terok Nor*: Cardassian space station and ore processing facility
orbiting Bajor; Cardassian command post during the Occupation; later
renamed Deep Space 9 after it passed into Bajoran and Federation hands
(“Cardassians” [DS9])



*Torr Sector:* densely populated and lively residential sector in
Cardassia City (/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Tozhat:* Cardassian settlement on Bajor, governed by Kotan Pa’Dar
(“Cardassians” [DS9])



*Valo II:* planet in the Valo system, sanctuary for many Bajoran
refugees during the Occupation (“Ensign Ro” [TNG])



*Victory Boulevard:* main thoroughfare in the Tarlak Sector of Cardassia
City linking Meritok Square to the Darhe’el Monument



*Weibak IV:* planet in the DMZ whose population remained predominantly
human, even after the eradication of the Maquis

*ORGANIZATIONS*





*Cardassian Intelligence Bureau:* Cardassian intelligence agency;
replaced the Obsidian Order after its destruction in 2371 (“Rocks and
Shoals” [DS9])



*Central Command:* Cardassian military authority which, with the
Obsidian Order, controlled the Cardassian Union until the early 2370s
(“Profit and Loss” [DS9])



*Circle, The:* Bajoran political faction with extreme xenophobic stance,
opposed to all alien presence on Bajor; in 2370 Circle members attempted
to overthrow the Bajoran Provisional Government, this coup failed in
part through the revelation that the Cardassian Central Command was
supplying the Circle with weapons (“The Homecoming” [DS9])



*Civilian Assembly:* Cardassian civilian policy-making body



*Council of Ministers:* Bajoran governing body (“The Homecoming” [DS9])



*Detapa Council:* Cardassian civilian governing body, effectively
powerless until the early 2370s, when it came to prominence following
the collapse of the Obsidian Order and repeated failures on the part of
the Central Command (“Cardassians” [DS9])



*Headquarters Allied Reconstruction Forces (HARF):* headquarters, on
Cardassia Prime, of the Starfleet task force established to oversee
reconstruction of those Cardassian territories placed under Federation
protection after the Dominion War



*Institute of Commercial Endeavor:* business school in Cardassia City



*Institute of State Policy:* school of political theory and doctrine in
Cardassia City; Natima Lang was professor of ethics here until 2370
(/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Liberation Front:* Cardassian resistance movement against the Dominion
that emerged toward the end of the Dominion War, led by Corat Damar
(“The Dogs of War” [DS9])



*Maquis:* armed resistance group of ex-Federation citizens on colony
worlds in the DMZ; formed after the Federation-Cardassian Treaty of 2370
ceded numerous Federation colonies to Cardassian control (“The Maquis”
[DS9])



*Ministry of Science:* Cardassian government department responsible for
promoting scientific research (“Destiny” [DS9])



*Obsidian Order:* Cardassian intelligence agency, feared for its
ruthless efficiency and fanatical devotion to the Cardassian state (“The
Wire” [DS9])



*Oralian Way:* Cardassian religion dating back to the Hebitian era,
suppressed during the period of the Bajoran Occupation, resurgent after
the Dominion War (/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*Vedek Assembly:* Bajoran religious council presided over by the kai;
wields great political influence on Bajor (“In the Hands of the
Prophets” [DS9])

*MISCELLANEOUS*





*/aytlik/ broth:* thick and nourishing Cardassian soup made from vegetables



*/canka/ nut:* when roasted, a popular Cardassian street snack (/Worlds
of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—Cardassia/)



*Chief Archon:* senior judicial figure in the Cardassian Union
(“Tribunal” [DS9])



*/D’jarra/ system:* the Bajoran caste system, effectively destroyed by
the experience of Occupation (“Accession” [DS9])



*Demilitarized Zone (DMZ):* the demilitarized area between Cardassian
and Federation space, established in the Federation-Cardassian Treaty of
2370; the treaty also involved the exchange of a number of colony
worlds, which triggered the creation of the Maquis; the DMZ remained
strife-ridden until the destruction of the Maquis in 2373 by combined
Cardassian and Dominion forces (“The Maquis” [DS9])



*/elta/:* climbing plant, native to Cardassia Prime; its leaves are a
delicacy



*enigma tales:* Cardassian mystery stories in which the purpose is not
to establish the guilty party but rather the nature of each character’s
guilt (“Destiny” [DS9])



*/feyt/:* Cardassian dish made from mashed legumes; originally a staple
rural food, it later became fashionable among wealthy urbanites



*/gelat/:* hot bitter Cardassian drink, served in small cups



*/geleta/ house:* establishment selling /gelat/; popular gathering
places in densely populated urban areas like the Torr Sector in
Cardassia City



*/hasperat/:* spicy Bajoran food (“Preemptive Strike” [DS9])



*/honge/:* large carnivorous raptor, native to Cardassia Prime (/Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*/Ih’valla/ caste:* Bajoran caste of artists (“Accession” [DS9])



*/indika/:* Bajoran flower with purplish petals



*/ithian/:* tall, long-living deciduous tree native to Cardassia Prime;
its leaves have a distinctive copper color



*/jumja/ stick:* Bajoran confectionary made from sweet, sticky tree sap
(“A Man Alone” [DS9])



*/kanar/:* Cardassian alcoholic drink (“The Wounded” [TNG])



*/keye/:* small furry domesticated animal, native to Cardassia Prime, a
popular pet



*/kosst/:* Bajoran expletive (/Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers/)



*/kotra:/* Cardassian board game (“Empok Nor” [DS9])



*/lek/:* Cardassian unit of currency, went into free fall after the
Dominion War (“Caretaker” [DS9])



*/leya:/* Cardassian fruit with white flesh, often squeezed for its juice



*/leyik/:* large, furred, Cardassian land mammal hunted to extinction
for its bones, which were used to make highly prized decorative objects



*/litik/:* a Cardassian shellfish, popular street snack in coastal towns



*/mekla/:* large Cardassian shrub with scarlet flowers



*metric:* unit of time, roughly equivalent to a minute (/Terok Nor: Day
of the Vipers/)



*/moba/:* sweet Bajoran fruit (“Rejoined” [DS9])



*/perek/:* Cardassian flower with scarlet petals, given as a symbol of
respect on the death of an individual; the flowers are displayed outside
the house and their petals later used during the Cardassian burial rite



*/petha/ fowl:* small game bird, native to Cardassia Prime



*/raktajino/:* Klingon coffee (“The Passenger” [DS9])



*/ratamba/ stew:* Bajoran stew (“For the Cause” [DS9])



*/regnar/:* reptile, native to Cardassia Prime (/Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine—A Stitch in Time/)



*/reta/:* semiprecious, dark red stone mined on Cardassia IV



*riding hound:* large domesticated canine, native to Cardassia Prime
(“In Purgatory’s Shadow” [DS9])



*/rikot/:* fast-paced Cardassian racket-and-ball game with impenetrable
rules, played on a court with three players; something between squash
and cricket



*/shri-tal/:* a Cardassian deathbed ritual during which the dying
person’s secrets are passed on to a close family member (“Ties of Blood
and Water” [DS9])



*/skrit/:* offensive word on Cardassia for someone without parents; an
orphan or bastard



*spoonhead:* pejorative Bajoran word for Cardassians (“Things Past” [DS9])



*/temet/ roots:* edible part of the /temet/ plant



*/tuli/ fish:* tiny Cardassian fish, eaten as delicacy



*water fever:* acute infectious disease affecting Cardassians,
contracted from contaminated water



*/yatik/ fever:* infectious disease affecting Cardassians which can
spread rapidly in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, e.g.,
dilapidated urban areas or refugee camps



*/zabu/ stew:* Cardassian stew, which Keiko served to Rugal and Miles,
to the unifying horror of both (“Cardassians” [DS9])

*CARDASSIAN MILITARY RANKS*





This list of Cardassian ranks and their Starfleet equivalents borrows
from the work of Steven Kenson’s unpublished /Iron and Ash/ supplement
for the /Star Trek/ Roleplaying Game from Last Unicorn Games.



*garresh:* noncommissioned officer



*gil:* ensign



*glinn:* lieutenant



*dalin:* lieutenant commander



*gul:* captain



*legate:* admiral









*Acknowledgements*





My thanks and love, as ever, to Matthew.

I would like to thank: Andrew J. Robinson, James Swallow, S. D. Perry,
Britta Dennison, and Olivia Woods—all of whom have so brilliantly
illuminated aspects of Cardassia’s dark heart. Also, my appreciation to
all those who have contributed to the /Star Trek/ wiki sites. You
deserve medals.

Grateful thanks to: my partner-in-crime Brenda Evans for continued
transatlantic friendship; Dwimordene for the Chicago Summit and so much
pleasurable communication over the years about the ups and downs of
writing; Kathryn Andersen for the stone garden; Ina Rae Hark, who first
set me thinking about Cardassian ties of blood and nation;
Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, who knew that 78 rue de Lille, Paris, was the
only possible address for the Residence of the Cardassian Ambassador to
the Federation; and Kat Woods for /Dawn Wind,/ one of countless gifts of
friendship.

Big thanks to Margaret Clark, for enthusiasm and support during the
latter stages of this project.

Above all, thank you to Marco Palmieri, who has made me believe I really
could do this writing thing.









*Una McCormack* is the author of two previous /Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine/ novels: /Hollow Men/ and /Cardassia—The Lotus Flower,/ which
appeared in /Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume 1./ Her short
fiction has appeared in /The Year’s Best Science Fiction 2007/ (ed.
Gardner Dozois), /Subterfuge/ (ed. Ian Whates), /Glorifying Terrorism/
(ed. Farah Mendlesohn), and /Doctor Who Magazine/. She lives with her
partner, Matthew, in Cambridge, England, where she reads, writes, and
teaches.