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“But…Vedek, after all the time I’ve waited, I am more ready today than I will ever be,” Wi
Russol met Natima at her house with a skimmer, a means of transportation that she supposed he felt was more discreet than public transport. But Natima knew only too well that if Russol had been marked as a possible dissident, it wouldn’t matter how he chose to travel; the authorities would know where he was going before he even got there.
Natima was taken to the residence of a retired archon, where she was greeted in the lobby of his impressively large house by one of his many servants. The furniture was rich and heavy, the art expensively austere. She was surprised that one so wealthy would have associated with government nonconformists; she had always supposed that rebellion stemmed from desperation, from the young, the poor, or men like Russol who’d been forced to take part in conflicts that they did not agree with.
There were many people here, seemingly from all walks of life and within every age category beyond young adulthood, though most of the people she saw were nearer to her own age. There were only a few women, and most of them seemed to be someone’s wife. It may have just been the backdrop, but everyone Natima saw seemed to come from wealth or prestige. She supposed she should have felt out of place, but she mostly only felt curious. She was uncomfortable speaking too freely to anyone she met, though the conversations she overheard quickly confirmed that these people were indeed radicals; she no longer believed Russol was trying to trick her. Staging something on a scale like this, with so many other people involved, seemed highly unlikely.
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 a
“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 a
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 a
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 co
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.