It took some time before the “meeting” came to order, though the lack of organization and leadership made it unlike any meeting she’d ever attended—more like a confused congregation at a party. The guests had been called to gather in a large, glassed-in room at the back of the manse, overlooking the expansive grounds, stone gardens, and cultured cacti. Russol and the host tried to maintain direction over the crowd, but as various well-dressed figures stood to speak, others would cut in and still others would stand to disagree, the resulting arguments and side arguments quickly giving way to chaos.
“The heart of our problems rests on Bajor,” one man kept insisting. “The costs of the Bajoran venture have long outweighed the profits. And when those resources have run dry, the market for those products that are reliant on Bajoran raw materials will crash, and the economy will suffer for it.”
This at least seemed to resonate with most at the meeting, but the solutions were another matter. “Cardassians will never accept an abrupt conclusion to the annexation,” another man cut in. “We must first find an alternate source of those materials that now come from Bajor—for when the Bajoran minerals have all been mined—”
“The problem is that Central Command is not pacing the removal of those materials!” interrupted someone else. “Bajor has more than enough resources to sustain Cardassia for many generations. But Central Command has been striking trade agreements with other worlds that do not make long-term economic sense for us. They are only interested in short-term wealth, where they should be providing for Cardassia’s long-term needs.”
“But the Bajoran resistance—the conflicts with the locals have become more than the current prefect knows how to handle. The Information Service refuses to report the truth on the matter of Bajoran terrorism—”
Natima flinched internally. When she’d been on Bajor, she had been one of the primary media censors. Her objective had been to downplay the violence on that world, reporting instead on the perceived successes of each Cardassian venture.
The arguments continued, and Natima began to feel exhausted just listening. She caught Russol’s eye and tried to convey to him her feelings. Why did you bring me here, Russol? This group has no direction, they are only united by their sense of frustration, but they use it against one another.Russol looked back at her, and Natima saw a shift in his jaw that seemed to indicate he did not disagree with her.
“Friends,” Russol called out over them. “We’ve come here tonight at great risk to ourselves. We may not all agree on each and every strategy, we may not even be sure what it is that we want to change—only that change is what we all desire, in the Union’s policies regarding Bajor. We need people like you if we are going to bring about that change.” He swept his arm out in a gesture to indicate everyone in the room, but Natima felt as though he might be speaking directly to her, as though he was addressing the look she had just given him. The room was mostly silent now, and Natima finally felt herself able to listen.
“Every day this annexation continues, more lives are lost, and another piece of Cardassia’s soul is chipped away. We need to make our domain reflect the integrity and hope that each of us carries inside, for the Union that couldbe—the Union we can see, in our hearts and minds, the pride of which inspires us toward greatness. We need people who believe that a sound government, a solid economy, and a world we can be proud of is worth the risk of being called dissident.”
Natima felt a surge of inspiration. She did indeed believe that Cardassia was worth fighting for; she loved her world and she loved her people. It was the tactics of its politicians and soldiers that she disagreed with. Over the years, she’d come to understand that the desperate times before the annexation had warped the sensibilities of the modern Cardassian. The traditions and customs that had sprung from necessity during those lean times, the rigid definition of what constituted a family—Natima would like very much if those definitions could be retooled to better fit the conditions of the present. Not only because she was an orphan, but because of something she had learned on Bajor.
Natima had only met one Bajoran insurgent, but that meeting had been enough to learn something about the whole of them, she believed. The terrorists had bucked their old social proscriptions, the castes that had once defined their society, and they had bucked the proscriptions imposed upon them by their occupiers. They had done it to preserve something more inherent than tradition—it was a sense of self that they clung fast to, a deep-rooted definition of what it meant to be Bajoran. Natima had been envious when she had recognized it, and she was envious still, for she felt no such connection to her own world—not anymore.
She longed to revisit it, the Cardassian patriotism she had enjoyed before her time on Bajor. She hoped that perhaps Russol would be the one to resurrect it, Russol and this group of squabbling dissidents. Fifteen minutes ago, it had seemed impossible to her—but now, as she watched the group of people around her, rapt at Russol’s words, she allowed herself to hope that it might be true.
B’hava’el had just begun to dip in the valley below the foothills, and Li Nalas knew he’d do best to get back to camp before the sun got any lower. It was a long walk to the camp, which was situated in the sparsely vegetated valley below him, and Li didn’t relish the idea of sleeping out in the open. It was warm now, but once the sun went down behind the valley’s rim, it would not be.
He looked across the narrow ridge for Mart, the teenager who had joined his cell only a few months before. Mart had been awestruck to join the movement alongside the famed Li Nalas, and it was all Li could do to keep from shattering the illusion for the youth, intending to let him down gently, as he had tried to do for most of the others in his current cell. His fame was merely the stuff of legend, rather than the substance, but it wasn’t always easy to dissuade people from believing otherwise. He’d had more than his share of luck, that was all.
“Li!” called Mart, squatting at the edge of a nearby bluff. The two were concluding the day’s surveillance, even though the Cardassians had not been sighted in this valley for decades. Mart’s panicked expression as he hurried to join Li suggested that the time had come. “There’re flyers coming in this way!”
Li instinctively hunkered down with his back to the steep hillside behind him, though it did him no real good. What did they want over here? As far as they knew, this was deserted outback. His cell usually camped here in the summertime, moving toward the cities in the winter, when resistance activity went up.
“Looking for us, maybe,” Mart said. His voice was steady, but his eyes, glassy and green, reflected deep fear—and changed to beseeching as he turned to look at Li. He really believed that Li could keep him safe, that Li Nalas was the folk hero everyone made him out to be.
Li figured he’d do his best, though that probably wouldn’t be worth much. “Come on, Mart, we’ve got to take cover. It looks like we’ll be spending the night here. If we can get to the wooded area above the bluff before the sun goes down, we’ll be okay.” The flyers were coming from the direction just beyond their camp. Li turned just before he noted that the thrum of the Cardassian engines had changed; the ships were landing.
“What are they doing?”
“Probably putting down ground troops,” Li said. This was unusual. The Cardassians usually sent their patrol ships out to the same clearings over and over, where they disgorged confused soldiers with clumsy handheld scanners. This was different. Those flyers seemed to know exactly where they were going, and where they were going was uncomfortably close to home camp. Li reached for his comm, to send a clipped warning back to the others, but the ships were so close to the encampment, there was no way they didn’t already know. Li squinted at the faraway Cardassian craft, no larger than children’s toys at this distance, the burn from their engines causing a blurry haze all around their thrusters. They hadn’t landed at all, Li could see now. They were hovering.