Veritas (post)

Veritas was a cold world.  Cardassians weren't made for the cold.

Drunken Klingons stripped the woman naked, and had her down in the snow... slashing her arms, her legs, her breasts, all over her body; knives in one hand, bottles of bloodwine in the other.  Blood ran across her gray, shivering flesh, puddling in the snow.  Laughing, singing Klingon songs, they held her arms and legs, taking turns on her, ignoring the screams muffled by the tape over her mouth, eyes wide with pain and shock.  When their bottles ran empty, they smashed them on the ground, grinding the jagged edges into her skin.

Another laid nearby, torso smoldering, a flare gun between her legs.  When they pulled the trigger, her chest had lit up.  Around them, the street was a shambles, littered with bodies of dead Cardassians.  The Klingon response to Cardassia's surrender was swift, and brutal.  Others were being arrested, hauled away, lined up before firing squads.  At the end of the block, they were setting Cardassians on fire, watching them stumble about, hands tied behind their backs, until they put them down, swinging their bat'leths, severing limbs and heads, or with disruptors.  Others used fixtures on the few intact structures, Cardassian and Dominion symbols, for target practice.

The conquering army.  Invading heroes.  Spoils of war.  The fact that Cardassia turned on the Dominion in the final hours, or that the Federation commanded no harm to Cardassian citizens... well that was just a formality, quickly forgotten.  Not only there: It was in all the cities, all the streets, on all the worlds of the former Cardassian Union, even proud Cardassia herself.  Victory celebrations.  Rape.  Torture.  Desecration.  Payback, for centuries of Cardassian sovereignty.  It was a free-for-all, that fateful day, for anyone with a grudge, a vested interest in that grudge, or just an excuse: Klingons, Romulans, Bajorans... even the humans and their Federation.  It did not matter who did what, to whom.  No one forgot what the Cardassians did, before the war.

The woman's eyes rolled back in her head.  Before slipping into unconsciousness, she stopped, in a moment of recognition... focused.  On him.  Confused.  Bewildered.  Why was he just standing there?  How could he let this happen?

He was Cardassian.

Midak's eyes opened.  He had not been sleeping.  He could not sleep.  Since the interview... the visit from that Terran, Moros... rest eluded him.  He accepted it with stoic detachment, and just laid there quietly, in bed, alone, staring at the ceiling of his quarters.

Moros, a maker of holofilms, a documentarian, had contacted him from his personal ship, a mobile studio, the Dolphin, seeking a Cardassian's perspective on events – both current and in recent decades: Cardassia's infamous occupation of Bajor... the Maquis contention... involvement in the Dominion War, what it was like in those final hours, and the insurrections which followed, threatening their admission into the Federation.

Sul Midak was not the sole Cardassian on record for denouncing the occupation, nor the only one who fought Maquis before joining Starfleet, under grant of amnesty.  Nor was he, currently, Starfleet's only Cardassian captain.  But he was the only one who had an opportunity, nearly twenty-one years ago, to skip the last two decades of history, as a former crew-member on the Quantum-class, United Federation Starship Arcadia.  Another UFS Arcadia was making waves in the latest bulletins, now, part of the United Freedom Front.  Moros should not have known about that – Starfleet tried to keep it quiet, if not yet classified.  Press detectives had ways of finding out things, no matter how discreet.  Intrigued, hoping to gain information on the documentarian's sources, Midak had agreed to be interviewed.

In the transmission, Moros asked questions, pointed questions, about the occupation, about the current state on Cardassia as a result, rekindling thoughts, feelings, memories Midak thought long suppressed.  Afterwards he discovered a warrant for the filmmaker's arrest, which explained why he contacted Midak over an encrypted channel.  'Press privilege', the Terran had claimed, not wanting other media firms stealing his transmissions.

Midak was not one to dwell on the past.  Yet... where might he be, had he accompanied Captain April and the rest?  They had jumped forward through time, 20 Earth-years, in order to cancel out a temporal anomaly.  He might still be an ensign... perhaps lost, who knew where, with the Quantum-class cruiser, which disappeared months after arriving in 2407.  Midak stayed behind, having no role in the events which forced the relocation.  He was reassigned, and experienced the last twenty years... twenty years which changed him.

If he could take them all back... go back, and do it differently....

~"Captain Midak."~  The on-duty CMO's voice came through his complant.  ~"I'm noticing a spike in your stress levels.  Are you all right?  Would you like something to help you sleep?"~

Doctors.  Drugs: Always their first solution.

"I'm fine," Midak said.  "But I would remind you to refrain from monitoring my vitals again, while I'm off duty."  He didn't like him: One of those holoids... holographic humanoids, a collection of photons and forcefields, given simulated life via mechanized programming.  Midak told his complant to deactivate.  It wouldn't stop the computer from relaying his bioreadings over internal sensors, but at least he wouldn't have to hear from the acting CMO again.

In bed, his muscles twitched.  An urge to get up.  And... do what?  He did not pace, when restless.  He had only served under two other ship captains in his time.  As he recalled, Arcadia's Captain April did that when agitated – not a response Midak felt tempted to mimic.  When something bothered him, he analyzed the situation, collated available information, then proceeded.  But that intimated a purpose; a goal to be executed and achieved.  What goal could there be, now?... prompting his subconscious mind to respond, while leaving his conscious mind dragging to catch up.  What was it trying to tell him?

Midak still saw the woman's face.  His first visit to Cardassia Prime created a lasting impression, with Veritas a waystop.  'Veritas': In an ancient Earth language, it meant 'truth'.  Cardassia never had use for the planet, due to its cold climate, but humans adapted for such conditions had colonized it, over a hundred years ago, before the Cardassians claimed it, part of the recompense which formed the Demilitarized Zone... breeding ground for Federation and Cardassian insurgents, where Midak came up.

Only a teen, frightened by what he had witnessed, picturing the same befalling him, he'd left the street quickly.  In following years, he told himself she must have done something to deserve it.  After all, it was no secret, what Cardassians did to other species, other cultures.  Were they not guilty of the same travesties?  Didn't their enemies deserve revenge?  Part of him took vicarious thrill in it, filled with revulsion at the same time.  The humiliation.  The primal conquest.  The power.  Reading and hearing stories of the Bajoran occupation, he had hated his own people, desired their suffering, and wished every evil, unspeakable horror they suffered upon them, when the forces of the Alpha Quadrant alliance moved in, taking over Cardassia as the Dominion withdrew.

The final hours of the Dominion War were a tragedy in themselves.  But they were nothing compared to the horrors which followed.  Cardassians once honored and venerated were treated like animals... worse, in some cases – without dignity, respect, or the protection of what humans called 'human rights'.  Midak later learned of orders, issued amongst the occupying troops on Cardassia, to not only allow the atrocities, pardon those who committed them, and look the other way... but to actually carry them out.  Stories circulated for years, under the radar, of what Cardassia's 'liberators' did to the people and planet they 'liberated'.  Like most, he ignored them, dismissing them as false.  Hearsay.  Outcries of attention-seekers with a greater agenda, stubbornly refusing to submit to progress.

Progress.  Looking back, now, it took on a different perspective.  The Dominion unleashed a final, all-out attempt at destruction of the Cardassian homeworld, in those final hours of the war... ordered by the female Founder, relayed by the Vorta, carried out by their loyal soldiers, the Jem'Hadar.  One thing the Jem'Hadar never did, on Cardassia, was rape the citizens.  Kill them, if ordered, but they did not prolong their suffering.  They obeyed the will of the Founders.  In the famous trial which followed, the female changeling revealed that she had been infected with a disease, which drove her insane for a time, and lashed out at the Cardassians in response.  Midak saw the broadcasts.  Strangely, the revelation that Section 31 created the disease... would-be genocide of the changeling race... was not left out.  That, too, indicated an agenda.  The Federation Council used the backlash of public outrage to discredit and tear apart Section 31.  Rumor had it 31 was not fully destroyed, but rather went deeper into hiding, and still influenced Federation affairs to this day.  It seemed possible – perhaps by 31's own doing.  Make the public believe you're gone, when you aren't: An effective cover.  In response, the Starfleet faction called Division V had taken up the slack, now acting in a very 31-like way.

Betrayal.  Guilt.  Midak shared in it.  No one was innocent.  In the end, he was as Cardassian as the people he hated.  Moros' questions made him look at himself honestly, for perhaps the first time in his life, and to stop denying what he was.

He sat up, eyeing a model of his ship, mounted on the wall over his bed.  The Bristol.  A destroyer, now patrolling the area of space which had once been the DMZ... anticipating a different conflict.

Officially, destroyers weren't high on Starfleet's priority list.  Starfleet served the peace, a peacetime organization meant to work in peacetime, and to maintain that peace by preventing war.  But the Federation had been in wars, obviously, and these days, more of them.  There had been no formal declarations.  But every week, every month, brought new reports of a skirmish somewhere.  Starfleet was not supposed to be an occupation force, either, yet occupied over a dozen systems: Support of a friendly government... protecting economic interests... any of a number of reasons which were, arguably, excuses... often ending up fighting locals, fanning the flames of hostility and anti-Federation sentiments – a recipe for political suicide, damaging relations across the galaxy.  It felt like the world had gone mad, caught in a raging storm of uncontrollable events; a black hole, a whirlpool, and they were all trapped, getting swept along, until they would get sucked down to the bottom.  What was the Federation's response?  More force.  More military deployments.  An escalation in offensive weaponry.  'Peace through superior technology': For the last three decades, since the Borg incursions and the Dominion War, that had been the motto.  Put another way: 'Peace through superior firepower'.

Unofficially, destroyers were getting what Terrans called 'red carpet treatment', in recent years.  Destroyers almost disappeared from Starfleet's arsenal, after the Khitomer Accords.  For a century, few served actively.  Starships took on most combat vessel roles when needed.  Now the threat of war hung everywhere... wars and rumors of war... with destroyers making a comeback.

And what was the purpose of a destroyer?  To destroy.

Science... exploration... a common defense: That was Starfleet's mandate... why it was founded.  Something had changed... twisted it & inverted it.  The Prime Directive had not gone entirely out the window, but its application was more... particular, these days.

War, in the name of peace.  In trying to uphold the Federation credo and maintain 'peace', they had crossed a line: Forcing peace on people who either didn't want it, or didn't want them around, on their worlds, and didn't invite Federation intervention.

Sul Midak could understand the sentiment.  Such a situation brought his own people into the occupation of Bajor, an event still talked about almost forty years after it ended.  Nowadays, in secret circles – they could never discuss it openly – Cardassians talked about the occupation of their own world.  That didn't get a fraction of as much attention.  Hardliners, separatists from the old days, who argued against Federation membership and favored an independent Cardassian state, were given bad press, denounced, and silenced.

Some went further: Denying the occupation of Bajor ever took place, or that it was not so malevolent as Bajorans made out.  It became illegal on Cardassia to deny the occupation.  Doing so earned criminal charges and imprisonment – just as it was illegal to speak against Cardassia's inundation by offworlders: Klingons, Romulans, humans, and more... and, oh yes, Bajorans, everywhere, and growing in number.  Monuments, statues of the rulers of old, had been torn down.  Shakaar Edon, former Bajoran prime minister and terrorist – who killed Cardassians – stood in the main square of Cardassia City, across the plaza from Corat Damar, the legate who led the rebellion against the Dominion, one of the few remaining statues of a leader from the time of the occupation.  Midak had seen it firsthand... just as he saw what they did to those people, thirty-three years ago.  He wondered if Damar ever realized, in returning freedom to his people, he was trading that freedom for another kind of conquest.  The Cardassian Union's founders were no doubt turning in their graves.  It seemed like a path they could not have escaped.  Once the first link in the chain was forged, they were all bound.

Ironically, he, Sul Midak, who once detested his own people, despised them for what they did in the past, found himself sympathizing.  They had made mistakes... let the military and corrupt politicians steer them into destruction.  How could they learn from that and not repeat the past, in present circumstances?  They would never be trusted to find their own way, independently.  They belonged to the Federation, now... to the former enemies of Cardassia, who would never let them go.  Between the lines, it rang clear: The Federation and its allies feared Cardassia.  They feared Cardassian might, the resurrection of the Cardassian empire... and for that reason, made sure it could never rise again.  Once sprawling countless systems, the Cardassian Union now held only Cardassia itself, and a few surrounding colonies... a shred of its former glory.  Most evidence of the Dominion War had been erased, on the surface – cities rebuilt, visible scars swept away.  But a deep, lingering, psychological scar persisted.  The Cardassians suffered an overriding guilt, force-fed by their one-time adversaries... endlessly blamed and made to feel guilty for what was done to Bajor, by Bajor, and the Federation which acted as its political long arm.  The most sickening aspect was, many Cardassians believed it.  Those who suggested an alternative schema, that later Cardassian generations were not to blame, who did not need to accept the guilt and ought to repeal the past... They too fell on deaf ears.  Cardassians had been made scapegoats.  They made themselves scapegoats, debasing themselves by their very existence for the Bajorans who held administrative authority over them.  Bajor... a dusty planet, with few natural resources (Cardassia stripped them), on the brink of disaster forty years ago, had emerged as one of the most influential members of the Federation.  They controlled Cardassia's economic, military, government and financial resources – Cardassia itself.  And when told to turn on their own, Cardassians did.

After the Arcadia's departure, nearly twenty-one years ago, Midak returned to Cardassia, by reassignment, to the planet's diplomatic office.  He spent little time there, though relished its comforting warmth.  Traveling the worlds Cardassia once owned, he witnessed things he would not have dreamt possible, had he not seen them with his own eyes, yet continually denied... like Glinn Eda, former operative of the Obsidian Order.  Eda aided Damar's rebellion, helping to reclaim Cardassia from the Jem'Hadar, but received none of the accords afterwards... for she also (supposedly) sent Bajorans to their deaths in the occupation – a role the late, great Damar shared.  Like Damar, she was good enough when Starfleet wanted the intelligence she provided... when it served their interests.  But after the war, it became another matter.  Bajorans objected to Damar's face in Cardassian schools, his statue in the central square next to Shakaar's; even his name (though no name was more reviled than that of the infamous Dukat).  Eda earned a far more ghastly fate: After she was found living on Abedor, fifteen years later, she was deported back to Cardassia... taken from her husband, her children... and convicted in a secret trial, by her fellow Cardassians and their Bajoran puppet-masters.  She died in her cell... supposedly mutilating herself before committing suicide.  The results of the autopsy, brushed under the carpet afterwards, indicated she would not have been able to bear children again, had she lived.

That was not enough, at the time, for Midak, whose job was to investigate such things.  Doing his duty?  More of the dirty thrill?  Maybe a little of both.

The holorecorders in Eda's prison, which showed what went on in the cells, were turned off periodically: Plausible denial.  But one, taken on a personal device – not part of the prison report – turned up in the Bajoran archives, which should not have been there.  How it got there, no one knew.  It showed a more telling story.  He saw Eda's face, as they worked on her... as he saw the young woman on Veritas... twisted in shame, and disgrace, and torment.  They forced her to drink poison.  She did not scream or weep... she was too proud for that, and she was Cardassian.  The Obsidian Order trained her.  But they removed her implant – the implant all operatives of the Order received, designed to stimulate release of endorphins – a counteractive failsafe against stress, if they were captured, enabling them to resist torture and interrogation.  Without it, she had only the fiber of her will to sustain her, while the animals...

While they–

Midak's gut churned.  He leaned over the side of the bed, taking deep, relaxing breaths, before biosensors alerted sickbay again, and the holo-doctor could bust in without permission.

All those years... all those years.  The guilty should have been charged as war criminals, but lived on in denial.  Had he gone with the Arcadia, all those years ago, would he have been free of the guilt, or the truth? – employed by the ravagers, hunting down, betraying his own people?

At a thought, Midak stood abruptly, reactivating his complant.  ~Doctor Zhivago.  I'm coming to sickbay.  Be ready to perform a psychotropic scan.~

It took a lot, for him, to make such a move.