“Natima,”her friend said, the urgency in his voice unmistakable. “It is for your own safety that I propose this.”He spoke carefully, avoiding reference to particular topics, but still his message was plain. “The Sadera system is the safest place for us.”
“I can’t leave,” she told him. “Please understand. Cardassia II is my home. I…can do too much good here to just leave.”
“You can always return when the…climate is more favorable.”
“But I am to attain my professorship in only a few months time,” she told him. “I know you understand what a great honor and accomplishment this is for me. I did not expect to be awarded this position for another year. If I were to leave now, I could lose my seniority…and it would disappoint many of my students, who have come to trust me as a mentor.”
Natima did not know how to explain to Russol the relationships she had with many of her students—the almost familial ties she had begun to forge with some of her younger protégés was especially powerful. It made her feel more like a mother than she ever could have imagined—something she had never expected to experience.
“I know that you can do much good in your current position, Natima…but I beg you…”
“I don’t want to leave my work behind,” she said firmly. “I feel that my teachings can be an inspiration to the next generation of Cardassians. It’s too early for me to leave, Gaten.”
He sighed. “Very well. But I…will miss your friendship. I will be going to the Sadera system myself before long. I have only a few more assignments to carry out before the end of my commission, and then…perhaps…in the future, I will see you there.”
“In the future,” she told him. “I will hope for that.”
Natima ended the transmission, thinking how much she would miss her old friend. He had been to her like family, but within the university, she had a new family now—a new generation of thinkers, of independent-minded individuals who would help to make the Cardassia of tomorrow a better place than the Cardassia of today.
The Shikina Monastery was mostly silent, the monks of the order going about even more somberly than usual, the vedeks scarcely speaking among themselves. Prylar Bek had been putting through frantic transmissions to the vedeks of the assembly for over a week, but none had any advice for him that could allay his fears.
Since learning the news of the threat on her son’s life, the kai had taken to her quarters, a secret room visited by only the most senior members of the Vedek Assembly—and Vedek Bareil. Bareil approached her there, though he knew that she had asked for solitude so that she could meditate. He was still desperately trying to work out a solution to the current danger. It was looking more and more as though it would be the villages—over a thousand people—and not the resistance cell, which would bear the brunt of Dukat’s anger. Nobody in the Kendra Valley was willing to turn over the son of the kai, just as Bareil had expected.
“Your Eminence,” Bareil reported. “As it currently stands, the villages are slated for destruction in less than twenty-six hours. I have contacted Kalem Apren.”
“Oh?” the kai replied, but she did not look at Bareil.
“Yes, Your Eminence. I know you feel that Kalem is somehow going to be instrumental to Bajor’s rebirth, in the time of the Emissary…”
“I have never spoken of such things with you, Bareil.”
“No, but—” He stopped. She had never spoken her thoughts to him, but he knew. “I tried to convince him to save himself—that perhaps there is some means of smuggling him out of the village—but he refuses to even consider it. He says his people need him.”
“They do need him,” Opaka said. “Now more than ever, but they will continue to need him.”
Bareil went on. “I have been considering—if I were to go to Dukat with a false location outside the Kendra Valley for your son’s cell, perhaps it could buy us enough time to contact another resistance cell—someone who could help those in the rest of the villages to escape.”
The kai appeared quite tired, and seemed somehow smaller than her already small size, as though she’d shrunk within her skin. “Vedek Bareil, the resistance does not have the means to evacuate the villages. Even if it were possible to convince Dukat that Fasil’s cell was elsewhere, there are many people in the villages who could not tolerate evacuation—elderly people, terminally ill people, people with small children…”
“We could get them to the forest, somehow. The detection grid is still nonfunctional, Your Eminence—we must use this fact to our best advantage!”
“You have concerned yourself with this matter far beyond your call of obligation, Vedek. I would request that you go to the Dakeen Monastery until this incident is concluded.”
“Eminence! I cannot leave at a time like this!”
“This is exactly the time for you to go, Bareil.”
“Kai—Eminence—” He could not express the frustration and horror he’d felt, watching this conundrum unfold. He knew he was overstepping his bounds, but he could not help himself. “What is it that you have foreseen? Why will you not act?”
The small woman sighed, her shoulders hunched as though the weight of their world rested upon them. “All I can tell you is that this is the way it must be. Whatever happens, it is Their will.”
Bareil felt frustrated by her answer. Ambiguity and pessimism were unusual for Kai Opaka. “Your Eminence…you have always told me that the Prophets look after those who look after themselves…that we show our greatest trust in the Prophets by having faith in our own abilities to solve our troubles.”
“I have faith in my own abilities,” Opaka said, her voice soft. “And I have faith in my own visions, as well. I have foreseen this, Vedek Bareil.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “Your suggestions…will lead to an unfortunate path.”
“Then we must ask the Prophets for the right answer!”
“The right answer, Vedek—or the answer that you want to hear?”
Bareil wished that for once, the steady leader would question her own beliefs. “You cannot be sure that—”
“Vedek, I am ordering you to go. I will not tell you again.”
Bareil felt gripped with misery. “Yes, Your Eminence.”
“But before you go, Bareil, you must put me in touch with Prylar Bek.”
“Prylar Bek?” Bareil repeated. “Do you mean…you would like me to convey a message to him for you?”
“No, Vedek Bareil. I will speak to him myself. Please arrange it for me, and then go.”
Bareil left the kai, holding out a thin ray of hope that perhaps Prylar Bek was still in contact with his Oralian, or perhaps he could somehow exercise some sort of influence over Kubus Oak—even Dukat himself. Perhaps Opaka knew something that she wasn’t telling, something that could keep her son safe. Perhaps she was protecting Bareil from a greater threat that she could not reveal. He struggled with his own doubt, but he was not ready to disobey a direct order from the kai. He headed to his room to gather some things, and to contact Prylar Bek.
The streets of Vekobet were empty but for a scant bold number of Bajorans. Soldiers spilled out into the abandoned regions of towns, searching the old, ruined habitat districts for the hiding place of Opaka Fasil and his resistance cell. They would not find them—of that, Kalem Apren was sure. Theirs was one of the most carefully concealed cells on Bajor, the secret of their location fiercely guarded by the few who knew it. Most Bajorans were reluctant to give up any resistance cell, but none would turn the kai’s own son over to the Cardassians.
Kalem was in his basement, the same place where he had conducted so many clandestine council meetings for the citizens of Kendra. Today, the low-ceilinged root cellar was more packed than it had been at the most hopeful of those gatherings, and Kalem still knew that it would offer them no protection from what was to come. They were here as much for the company of one another as for the false sense of security they conjured while huddling tightly together in the sweltering, sour-smelling dark. Raina had brought some chairs down from the main floor of their home, but most people were sitting together on blankets that had been laid on the hard dirt floor. Some were talking, halting amiability having begun to return to their conversation in the past few days. Others were tending to their children. Several were praying, but most were still sleeping—the best refuge they could have sought.