Sigils and Unions: The Thirteenth Order--Chapter 8

2375—The Dominion War—Eleven days after the attack on Rondac III
Cardassian Rasgălor of Lessek

The largest of the foothills were at their back now; following another day of joint training, the Thirteenth Order had set out with their supplies on their backs just like Macet remembered from his earliest days as a new ragoç under the boot of the Vigilance Corps. The gul of the Trager would have preferred more time to integrate the Starfleet troops into their unit, but time was quickly running out—the Romac, which had been under repair at the orbital shipyard, was set to undock at midday and spend the next four hours running through a postoperative checklist for spaceworthiness. This would only provide the other three Gălor-class vessels an excuse to stay in the area for so much longer. This left a four-hour window for the Thirteenth Order to strike.

It had been a two-day march to their current position, a network of kelbonite-fistrium caves just northeast of the planetside shipyard’s shield perimeter. So far the Starfleet soldiers, while they betrayed their doubts more openly than most Cardassian soldiers would ever dare—as though we here have a right to comment, Macet wryly thought—had performed as well as could be expected for beings who had been away from the battlefield for anywhere from six days to six months ago. A fair part of their enthusiasm came from the prospect of leaving behind the compound they had known for all but the last few days as their prison. They hungered to strike at the Dominion, certainly…but more and more he observed them looking to Makis Spirodopoulos for more than just encouragement and discipline as they had in their internment days—they looked to him for a goal, a direction. And so far, they seemed receptive to that direction. As long as Spirodopoulos stayed true…the Thirteenth Order had hope.

Macet balefully eyed the device dangling from the crook of Rebek’s elbow. He tried and failed to suppress a groan. “You really meant it.”

The petite gul knelt next to Macet on the dusty grey Lessekda soil flashed a toothy smile and nodded. Good, Macet thought even as he questioned her sanity in bringing that thing into the field. If she can smile, then maybe she has made the right choice in joining us after all. Maybe this is what she needs.

“I desperately hoped I had the wrong image in my head when you said ‘hunter array,’ but I can see my fears were justified. Please tell me you don’t intend to foist that misbegotten brainchild of the Science Ministry upon us all. It never even performed as advertised, not to mention the other reason we all hated it.”

Rebek laughed—not much of a laugh, but recognizable nonetheless. “I’ve been tinkering with it on and off for the past couple of years, with some advice from Berat, and I think I’ve solved all of the biggest problems. Granted, I still haven’t been able to make it interface with more complex systems like the ship’s computer—”

“Which is what the wretched piece of skrăgh was supposed to do in the first place,” Macet cut in.

“And that is still my primary objective—if I can ever get the proper code and hardware into place. Maybe someday after all this, I’ll see if Iymender will look at it…considering the kind of code he’s been writing lately, I have a feeling he’d have some ideas. Anyway, I’ve gotten the hunter array to talk to a number of stand-alone devices: my wristcomm, scanner…and the targeting scope of my rifle. I can fire a shot straight behind my back and see exactly where it’s heading, and depending on my settings, still see everything going on in front of me…a claim the Dominion and even the Federation—no offense,” she added with a quick glance at Spirodopoulos, “certainly can’t make of their targeting sensors.”

“At least theirs look a little less…stupid,” Macet mumbled under his breath, unable to find a better word to describe the awkward ugliness of the hunter array. “You try boarding an ali—er…Federation starship wearing one of those. You should’ve seen the looks on their faces.” Central Command policy at that time had stated that the hunter array was to be worn during all boarding procedures, ostensibly as a means of detecting any threats aboard foreign vessels, but also—had the thing actually worked correctly—to maintain a connection with their ship’s computer and even remotely operate it if necessary.

Macet had satisfied the letter of the regulation by ordering his glinns to wear the hunter array for the initial transport, but let them ditch the hardly-functional devices in their quarters as soon as they had the chance. Central Command—not to mention the Obsidian Order—would surely have been displeased to say the least at the idea of leaving such ‘cutting-edge’ technology unguarded, but, Macet had rationalized, it wasn’t like the hunter array actually did anything right that he would need to worry about. As expected, the connection with the Trager’s computer had been tenuous at best…utterly scrambled after transport.

A few months after that, the Science Ministry tacitly admitted its mistake and cut funding for any further development, and Central Command rescinded its ridiculous regulation. A couple months too late, of course. Macet summed up the entire thing with one sentence: “It was embarrassing.”

“Well, I’m not about to pass up something that works. Somebody should get a picture of this so I can send it next time that she-hound on the Yazar tries to tell me I’m too obsessed with my looks.”

Macet deadpanned, “You mean Gul Ocett?”

“I mean exactly what I said,” Rebek replied, her flutelike voice lethally sweet.

The rivalry between the two was the stuff of legend, and went all the way back to their basic training. Tayben Berat had been present for one exchange he later described to Macet: Gul Ocett had publicly derided Rebek’s ‘vanity’ and then claimed she could stuff the ‘pocket-sized gul’ into a vompăt ball. Rebek had retorted that someone ought to check Ocett’s hormone levels, and defended her creative interpretation of Cardassian Guard hairstyle regulations on grounds that, I may be a military girl, but at least I remember that I am a girl!

Ocett’s body had tensed like she was about to make good on her threat. Tayben tried to intercede—even though he was less than a month out of physical therapy at the time—and Ocett had simply fixed him with an aristocratic stare and said, Just you try it. Rebek had met Ocett’s gaze with equal coolness and declared, Thank you for that lovely insight. Then she’d turned her back and left the room, head held high. Berat had followed not far behind, but equally dignified in tactical retreat.

Macet, of course, had been none too impressed by Ocett after that report. He succinctly commented, “No comment.”

Rebek rolled her eyes, then slid the hunter array over her head, where she had unpinned her braids to accommodate the ungainly device. The crosspiece sat right on her cheekbones, the vertical band covering the krilătbre-yezul, the ‘hunter-eye’ from which the array derived its name—the inverted-teardrop-shaped prominence on every Cardassian therapsid’s forehead from which other peoples derived some of their favorite racial slurs.

For non-sentient creatures, the krilătbre-yezul made a fine sensor of bioelectric fields. This gave the vole in particular an impressive ability to detect pursuers, not to mention a nasty affinity for high-voltage conduits. Their ability to thrive in the midst of electrical hotspots where no cardasdanoid could follow without shutting down entire systems—most often vital systems with the greatest power flow—was what made the little vermin so blasted difficult to exterminate once they got into an artificial structure…especially ships and stations. The Cardassians’ ancestors had possessed other functioning nodes, but now those were so in appearance only, so in people this sixth sense was much attenuated: one generally had to draw within a meter to sense another’s bioelectric field. But with training, it was possible to use the input of the krilătbre-yezul to sense forcefields, holographic projections, and other forms of energy manipulation.

The hunter array, in addition to its vaunted heads-up display capabilities, intensified input to the vestigial sense much as an amplification device might for someone hard of hearing, granting a properly-trained Cardassian that much heightened awareness of his or her environment. While most soldiers, Macet included, had found that feature frustratingly difficult to interpret to the point of detracting from their situational awareness, he wasn’t surprised that Rebek, with her sniper background, had cracked the code.

Rebek reached up to her right cheekbone and twisted a small knob on the hunter array. Macet caught brief, iridescent flickers radiating between the crosspieces like light off a soap bubble: orange, yellow, green, cyan in turn before the field settled into invisibility. Once attuned to its wearer, the hunter array provided a heads-up display comprised of light so close to the eyes and of such low intensity that after initialization it was almost impossible for anyone else to detect. Next Rebek switched on the scanner that hung on her belt, followed by an adjustment to her wristcomm.

Finally, she hefted her sniper-issue disruptor rifle and tweaked a few buttons and knobs on various panels, the last one right on the business end. The sturdy rifle whined to life. Crouched down, rifle aimed ahead, Rebek nodded. “Ready.” Her eyes were raptor-intense, all trace of levity evaporated. All the vengeance of Septimus III bottled up into one tiny vessel, Macet thought, at once impressed and wary. We’ll need that fire—as long as we can keep it contained.

Glinn Daro laid a hand on Spirodopoulos’ arm and the terhăn nodded. It was time for them to move to the center of the formation. Gul Speros waited there already, tasked to lead the main assault after the first teams were through. “Wilkes!” Spirodopoulos called as he turned back. “You’re up!”

Though the young, orange-haired woman working her way forward had quickly been outranked by newer arrivals, the orange-haired Ivy Wilkes had gained a sort of mascot status for being the first to lead the Starfleet contingent. Now she volunteered as the trigger for Iymender’s viruses. And if his sabotage failed, she would be the first to fall.

So now I send not only my own people, but the children of another state to dangle their fatelines before the grasp of death. My one inheritance from my mother’s line, the one she gave me despite herself, he thought, acknowledging the DNA that under most circumstances they wished more than anything to expunge. We are meddlers, all of us—helpless to behold the universe as it is without a vision of what it could be, overlaid on the world as clear as the hunter array’s images are for Zejil. And we cannot help but see the lines from purpose to means to end like the tendrils of a vine and to feel the sense that they are there for the grasping if we would but reach.

Macet, for his part, remained near the front, but the point position belonged to Wilkes and Rebek.

The gul of the Romac pointed ahead. “Follow me—the sensor perimeter isn’t far.”



2375—The Dominion War—Two minutes to ground battle
Cardassian Rasgălor of Lessek

The air was alive here.

Its resonance spread along her skin, yet she knew its point of origin as her ears might pinpoint the hum of a tuning fork. The impression certainly belonged to a person—that much was obvious, but there was something feverish about it, a strange quickness to its oscillations: a heart that beat faster to drive a metabolism that produced, shed, and replenished more heat than seemed natural.

Its source, Ensign Wilkes, stood at arm’s length from Rebek. It was all the Cardassian woman could do to keep from stealing a glance at Wilkes’ holster to make sure that disruptor pistol was still where it belonged.

The sixth Cardassian sense in its unaided form was a general proximity alarm at best, but with the help of the hunter array, she received the refined, directional input her pre-Hebitian hunter-fisher ancestors must have had. Accordingly, the hunter array’s amplification tickled at some of the most primitive instincts: take heed, predators roam here. And by it Rebek sensed the base’s shield perimeter a quarter of a terhăn kilometer ahead as ripples might spread from a bobbing buoy in a lake.

The base sat recessed in a low valley where the flat ground had allowed it to be built quickly and with minimal resources. Defense against this sort of straight-on ground assault had been the last thing on its creators’ minds, however, or they surely would have opted for the high ground. Lessek lay well within Union territory, for starters—and secondly, in the age of shields, transporters, and precision space strikes, the usual procedure for an attack on such a small facility would have been to attack from air or space: hammer away the facility’s shields, beam troops directly in, and seize the facility from the inside. Ground troops had their role, of course—but in places where transporters could operate, typically as support rather than the main thrust of an assault.

Three terhăn meters ahead, the hunter array traced a green line on the ground before her eyes: the sensor perimeter. She turned to the Starfleet ensign. “This is it. Are you ready?”

Wilkes nodded apprehensively. Though she tried to hide it, the ridgelessness of her eyes literally shed light on how they widened with the anticipation and fear.

“Then go—we haven’t much time.”

The young Starfleet officer glanced sideways at Rebek, a second hesitation born in her eyes. She drew breath to speak, and when the words emerged—in accented but passable Cardăsda, Rebek understood why. “Gorhoç edek, Gul.” It was the formal reply of subordinate to gul: I obey.

Wilkes knelt into a defensive-ready crouch much like a Cardassian fighter beginning the Stratagems—knees bent, one foot slightly forward, hands out, fingers splayed as if to ward off an oncoming attacker.

Then she sprinted forward, kicking up a cloud of grey dust behind her.



2375—The Dominion War—Two minutes to ground battle
Cardassian Union Warship Sherouk

A dull burn crawled up Gul Berat’s spine, into his shoulders, and down through his wrists. This was to be expected; such was the price he paid for intensity of emotion, both past and present. Though his lower mind lobbied for a painkiller and his body protested that he ought to at least step into his office and work through the stretching series his physical therapists had assigned four years ago, he refused. He had promised his crew when he accepted the ship sigil from Gul Zarvat that through him they would receive the full support of the Cardassian Union. True, he had been able-bodied then, but that changed neither his oath nor his will to execute it. And right now, he was needed here on the bridge, in the command seat.

The turbolift clicked into place behind him, and Glinn Yejain stepped onto the bridge. Berat did not rise to accept his first officer’s report. A transfer from another crew might have interpreted this gesture the usual way—the assertion of superiority—but from Berat it was simply the one concession he made to his nerves to preserve stamina for later. Yejain and the others knew this pre-battle stillness quite well, and accepted it because they knew what it would give way to. “All sections report ready,” Yejain announced as soon as he stood at the foot of the command seat platform with a quick, shallow bow.

“Good work, Yejain,” Berat replied with a smile, inclining his head to represent the reciprocating bow. None of the four ships in the Thirteenth Order formation had openly declared battle alert lest the Dominion detect their systems girding for war. Still, on each ship the first officer—or acting first officer, in most cases—had personally toured the decks of their Gă’ălour from nose to backfin to muster the crew to full readiness. “Be ready to bring weapons and shields online the instant we hear from the surface.”

Berat felt a knot in his stomach. That spot in the center of his back sent a particularly insistent jolt throughout his body. His right shoulder twitched despite a now-instinctive meditative exercise intended to seize the errant energy discharge and divert it where its effects would show less. Yejain’s sharp eyes clearly saw, but he gave no sign; he was well used to this by now. “I obey, Gul.”

Berat counted himself grateful: considering the circumstances, this was actually shaping up to be a relatively good day. And an excellent thing indeed, considering I’m the only gul spaceside—not to mention of the glinns, only Va’Kust is younger than I am. The glinns commanding the other ships—Va’Kust, Topak, and Hatel of the Ghiletz, all awaited his signal. And in the case of catastrophe, command of anything that might remain of the Thirteenth Order would fall to him.

He closed his eyes.

Pieces of the Prenkar rained down like meteorites on the surface of Septimus III and volley after volley of quantum torpedoes on the planet’s surface blew a choking cloud of radioactive dust into the atmosphere to join the rising ashes from innumerable brush fires, compounding astronomically every time they struck a weapons cache or a base reactor.

Many good men—so many of them answering the call to service for the second time in their lives, when they should have been looking forward to their summit years or resting from prior injuries—had already perished in the Klingon ground assault. And the rest…the Klingons were determined now to obliterate them all rather than leave the now-defenseless survivors to contemplate the depths of their failure as Cardassians might have done. Any who lived through the final orbital assault—unlikely as that seemed—would succumb to radiation poisoning in short order: there would be no evacuation. The planet itself descended into a frigid hell far worse than nuclear winter, worthless for millennia to come.

The Prenkar—gone. The Eleventh Order—gone. The life of Septimus III itself—gone.

The Romac survived because he, Gul Tayben Berat, had chosen them. The Prenkar had been too far gone, already breaking apart. And the only way to save the Romac had been to abandon the Prenkar and the Eleventh Order to their fates. Cardassia needed the Romac. It needed Gul Rebek.

But Cardassia had needed Gul Igrun and Legate Met’Orn, and their people as well.

Berat released a shuddering breath.

That can’t happen again. It just can’t, he fervently willed.

The chronometer chimed and the bridge crew fell silent. There was no other signal; there would not be until—unless—the ground team succeeded.

“The battle on the ground should be joined,” Berat announced. “Now we wait.”



2375—The Dominion War—Two minutes to ground battle
Cardassian Rasgălor of Lessek

The foothills lay at his back now like spectral grey shadows of the Appalachians; below lay the shipyard, just out of sight, tucked into the depression like the town of Blacksburg in the Shenandoah Valley. They would follow the path of an old riverbed carved out millions if not billions of years ago between the hills—the river itself, however, had not flowed for thousands of years before the first Cardassian set foot on the planet.

The foothills here on the Cardassian outworld—rasgălor, as they called it, felt to Spirodopoulos the way the Blue Ridge always did when he visited America. See, Mike, his grandmother had explained to a boy accustomed to the great, jagged prominences of Thessaloniki, these mountains may not seem like much to look at, but the truth is they’re far more ancient and for that you have to respect them. Just like how a certain homely carpenter from a hole-in-the-wall is in fact the Ancient of Days—once you know how to look.

The Greek soldier slung his Cardassian rifle on his back and knelt.

He crossed himself as he always did before battle. Except this time, as his fingers moved from right shoulder to left, they brushed against the central rib of his cuirass. He’d almost begun to forget its alien strangeness, but now Ensign Folani, who had witnessed his ritual numerous times on AR-558, snorted.

Spirodopoulos couldn’t resist a tiny chortle at the image as he mentally stepped outside himself. I bet You’re getting a kick out of this, he thought to the Almighty with a crooked smile that quickly evaporated. At least, I hope so, because I’d much prefer that to winding up in Hades for it.

He drew in a breath and subdued his face and mind. Lord of the Powers be with us, for in times of distress we have no other help but You. Lord of the Powers, have mercy on us.

Guide my hand that even in the midst of war I may be temperate in my actions, that I may act only where I must act for the sake of friends and allies, new and old, that You might show me the way to bring others out from the yoke of oppression. Help my allies from another of Your myriad worlds to unite with their sundered brothers and find the way to peace. And for what I am about to do…forgive us all, that it has come to this.

Kyrie, eleison—Christe, eleison—Kyrie, eleison. Amen.

Then he looked up.

Spirodopoulos still hadn’t found the chronometer function on his wristcomm, but he acutely sensed the ticking of each second nonetheless. He checked the settings on the Cardassian disruptor rifle once more, flicked the safety off and back on.

Next he throttled the beam intensity settings back and forth. The rifle had only three settings: heavy stun, kill, and vaporize. Roast, rape, and raze, Chief Librescu had called it in a bit of Federation-Cardassian War veterans’ slang Spirodopoulos had icily warned the noncom that he had better not ever hear from any soldier of the Thirteenth Order, especially not where the Cardassians might hear. Still, Alexandru Librescu had added, this tried-and-true weapon had one of the sturdiest designs he had ever encountered—one he respected so greatly that he had kept one after the war and grumbled about his captain’s refusal to let him take it on away missions.

Spirodopoulos set the disruptor rifle back to stun. Despite the difficulties, he and the guls had agreed—Cardassian lives were to be spared if at all possible. Some would rebel when the Thirteenth Order stormed the base, and excessive bloodshed was not likely to encourage them. Those who continued to collude…though it didn’t sit well with Spirodopoulos, his understanding was that the Cardassians intended to take prisoners—and not as they had with the Starfleet contingent.

The Jem’Hadar and Vorta, of course, were a different matter. When it came to them, raze sounded like a very good setting indeed.

He felt a pang of shame. He crossed himself again.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do. They can’t; their bodies hold their souls in chains I can’t imagine.

Ultimately, it was their worldly creators who would pay for that sin. And when it came to the damned Founders, Spirodopoulos had to concede his mortal nature: his forgiveness only went so far.



Ivy Wilkes made a quick dash-and-retreat, darting across the sensor perimeter and back like she would in a football speed drill. Please let that be enough to bring down the shield! she thought in as much time as it took her to make it there and back.

The diminutive Rebek stared stonily into the distance as Wilkes mentally ticked off the seconds. Iymender had said it could take a full thirty seconds for his first set of viruses to override the required systems, but that made the delay no more tolerable.

Finally, the Cardassian woman beheld something through that ungainly device encircling her head. “It’s starting…the shield generators are starting to shut down. Just a second more…”

This time Wilkes saw it too: with a subtle fizz, the forcefield sputtered out of existence.

Rebek snatched up a rock and rounded up with a form that would have made the baseball players of old jealous. She unleashed a blistering fastball that shot down into the valley—

—beyond the dome where the shield should have been, unobstructed.

Gul Rebek tapped her wristcomm thrice.

Wilkes gulped. Here we go…



Tick-tick-tick.

Lieutenant Commander Spirodopoulos shot to his feet at those three tiny clicks from his wristcomm: Rebek confirmed shield failure.

They had only minutes to reach the foot of the hill before the shields snapped back online. “Get up!” Spirodopoulos shouted to the armored Starfleet soldiers, unstrapping his rifle. “Thirteenth Order—on your feet! Vacation’s officially over, people! Let’s show the Dominion we’ve still got it!”

A few meters away, Gul Speros stood as well, his body rigid, black eyes burning with singular determination. “Mriytic Cardăsa!” he cried, lifting his rifle above his head. Cardassia will rise!

The Cardassians were outnumbered approximately two-to-one by the Starfleet group, even after a new infusion of men from the Ghiletz, but they more than made up with it with the intensity of their battle cry.

Then one voice rose above them all: Gul Akellen Macet—his voice ablaze with a righteous fury Spirodopoulos fancied would have put even the man’s deranged cousin on the run.

“THIRTEENTH ORDER—FORWARD!!!”

Cardassian Guard and Federation Starfleet charged headlong with the wind at their backs and gravity on their side—one force fixed upon a united goal.



2375—The Dominion War—The Battle for the Shipyard
Cardassian Rasgălor of Lessek
Lessek Planetside Base

Shipyard surveillance monitor Sorabec was in a foul mood she dared not let on.

“Somebody’s awfully quiet today,” Gruner remarked in a cheery conversational tone that Sorabec knew was anything but. Why today, of all days, does Ragoç Gruner have to be early for his shift? “Give me a smile, Remegh…don’t be shy.”

Her supervisor was one of those who seemed to think women in the military outside the sciences were only there to fulfill some secret dream of bedding their male superiors—and certainly not in the context of wedlock where a proper Cardassian kept the sexual act. No, Gruner was one of those too blasted many who thought that because he could legally bear arms, his personal weapon was free to roam wherever it wanted. In his world, the rules didn’t apply to him. And the sad part was that under many guls—who had their own dalliances to hide, they didn’t. To make matters even worse, Gruner was distantly related to someone on the Detapa Council…that is, one of the members the Dominion had actually kept.

It was enough to make Sorabec envious of her cousin Vatriy, who had died a few months ago on the Aldara. Gul Danar may have been an irascible ghentregămst, but at least he didn’t put up with that kind of garbage on his ship…rumor had it that the first sorry skrăgh to try it with one of his female officers had ended up rather permanently ‘disarmed.’

And being dead, Vatriy certainly wasn’t enduring this now. Gruner had been trying to jump in her armor since day one on this rock and had done everything short of actually grabbing her posterior to let her know it. The way he stroked his neck ridges every time he caught her eye bordered on the pornographic. To add insult to Gruner’s desired injury, he had a massive double chin that practically swallowed his jaw ridges whole; the twin chin ridges might as well not be there. Worse, he had a kănar-gut that bounced low enough to peek out from under his cuirass every time he took a step. The thought of looking up at Gruner from that position was enough to make Sorabec want to vomit.

What, Sorabec sarcastically thought for not the first time as Gruner loomed over her chair, sucking up to the Vorta doesn’t get the blood racing anymore?

What she really said was, “Kiba’avzayn, Ragoçayn.”

Said good tidings, though, certainly weren’t for Gruner. They really belonged to Riyăk Iymender, wherever he was. According to the chronometer, he and that unprecedented hybrid force were supposed to come crashing down from the foothills in less than a minute to liberate Lessek from its Dominion overlords—and from there, the entire Cardassian Union.

She had to give it to the lanky programmer…he sure had a lot of nerve for a code-cruncher. Not that anybody would’ve guessed it to look at him: until the new Dominion-approved glinn—the same one who had seen fit to gift the base with Gruner’s presence—put a stop to it, Iymender had the tendency to sit down cross-legged wherever the inspiration might strike…often without warning and almost always somewhere guaranteed to snarl up foot traffic…and chew on the end of his stylus until he collected his thoughts sufficiently to actually scribble something on his padd. What a recruitment poster, some of her friends had quipped at the sight. And Glinn Thivok had only tolerated it because Iymender delivered such results.

But then the riyăk had approached Sorabec with the nearly unthinkable: rebellion. And the more she got to know Iymender, the more endearing his oddities became…and she had started to see there was more to him than that, a young man with a great deal of potential who just needed a little work on his social skills. In spite of herself, he’d started to grow on her.

Quite unlike the man who now sought to attach himself to her like a giant, parasitic, spaceborne amoeba. Sorabec kept her eyes glued to the feed, barely even acknowledging Gruner’s presence as he hovered irritatingly over her shoulders like a Klingon glob-fly. She hoped the man ran afoul of a Starfleet disruptor blast.

No, she decided as she leaned back in her chair trying to feign relaxation, it didn’t bother her at all to contemplate Gruner’s innards plastered all over the wall like an insect too sluggish to dodge a swatter. That was what a traitor to the Cardassian Union deserved, after all—and that’s what all Dominion collaborators were. And especially a vile creature like Gruner who actually thought Gul Dukat’s come-hither swagger and wandering eyes were worthy of emulation, as if it made him more of a man.

Then the security feed flashed.

‘Flashed’ was far too overblown a word for it—all it had really been was a subtle increase in the color saturation, almost too faint for the eye to see, a hint that died away almost immediately to be replaced by the same tedious sort of feed that rolled across her screen every hour of every other day.

Maybe if he dismissed her soon enough, the blame for the ensuing mess might fall on him. Maybe the Vorta he so enjoyed kissing up to would be the one to kill him before the Star’hvliyt-çăs got to him—that would be justice indeed. The crimes are treason and flagrant repulsiveness, she thought. The sentence is death: let the trial begin.

Sorabec said nothing, hoping that subtle flicker had evaded the rotund ragoç. That was her first mistake.

“Interesting, that,” Gruner declared in a singsong mockery of amazement. “I do believe a gor is supposed to inform her superior of any signs of equipment malfunction. Now, why would a good little Cardassian fail to do that?”

Sorabec froze. It would even have been better to say the first words that occurred to her—because you’re standing there and saw it too, you idiot—than it was to hold her tongue. That was her second mistake: the fatal one.

“Maybe the good little Cardassian isn’t a good little Cardassian after all.”

Even as she absorbed the knowledge that she was about to die, Sorabec still couldn’t help but be struck by how utterly insipid his ‘rhetoric’ was. Was it possible he thought that pathetic provocation was actually going to arouse her in her last moments? Even a first-day archon-student could write a more creative courtroom condemnation than that. He never had been one for subtlety. Of course, some small part of her rejoiced that the blubberhead was too stupid to think about interrogating her to find out exactly what the threat was.

Gruner raised his disruptor pistol. Sorabec could have sworn that wasn’t the only thing he raised. “What a shame…I had such dreams for you.”

The first casualty of the Lessek uprising died mouthing a curse at her weak-minded, lecherous supervisor and hoping against all hope that stupid as he was, there’d be at least a little time before he managed to involve someone who really could raise chaos against Iymender and the rebels.