Star Trek: Terok Nor 03: Dawn of the Eagles Read Online Free PDF Page B

Veja.
    “But…the Bajoran resistance movement…it is only getting more dangerous,” Natima said carefully. “We’ve practically tapped out the Bajorans’ resources anyway. We might as well—”
    “It’s not Bajoran resources I care about,” Damar snarled. “It’s exterminating the people who live to make Cardassians suffer. I don’t know why we haven’t begun using biogenic weapons in the B’hava’el system yet, but I can tell you that if I were stationed on Bajor, any unit under my command would not fail to drive those terrorists out of the dirty little caves where they squat and scheme. They are a backward and violent people, and their existence does nothing to perpetuate humanoid progress.”
    Natima flinched. He was wrong to suggest biogenic weapons; that would give the Federation cause to finally put an end to the Bajoran annexation. The Union was already walking a fine line between occupation and genocide—a thing that the Federation was very unlikely to tolerate, since they couldn’t seem to prevent themselves from meddling in other worlds’ affairs. But Natima was not comfortable arguing with Damar. It was not only because she understood his personal stake in the matter, but because her own opinions concerning Bajor tended to lean toward the dangerous. Central Command did not always bother to distinguish the subtle differences between mild dissent and high treason. Natima decided to end this encounter; though she might seem brusque in doing so, she had nothing more to say to Corat Damar. “If you will excuse me, Gil—”
    “Certainly,” he said, and turned abruptly away from her to follow the rest of the soldiers to the transport station, where they would be sent home to their families for a night or two before heading off to their next assignments.
    Natima thought, as she watched him go, of the word he had used to describe Bajorans— backward. It may not have been entirely inappropriate, in certain contexts, but weren’t Cardassians also backward, in their own ways? For if Damar and Veja had still wished to marry, to raise a family, why could they not have taken in an orphan child to raise as their own? Natima knew only too well the dire conditions of the orphans left behind on Bajor to fend for themselves in a hostile, alien society—not to mention those abandoned children who lived right here, in the Cardassian Union. But it would have been unthinkable for someone like Damar to defy the social constructs of what was acceptable as a traditional Cardassian family. She had dared to broach the subject with him once, and had always regretted it. Damar was a man who did not take tradition lightly, no matter how irrational it might have appeared to an outsider—or to someone like Natima, who had once managed to glean a sense of her world through the eyes of an alien observer, at least for a moment, and had not much cared for all that she’d seen.

    Of the regularly stationed assignments the Obsidian Order had to offer, the surveillance post at Valo VI was easily the quietest. For those agents who preferred a little solace now and again, a short stint on Valo VI was a welcome respite. But to be sent for more than a few months was cause for concern, especially among the older agents who were not yet ready to turn in their sigil. The long-term post to Valo VI was synonymous with retirement. It may have been preferable to death, but for an Obsidian Order agent who had grown accustomed to a lifestyle of unpredictable chaos, being stationed indefinitely at a static listening facility was as near death as one could get while still breathing.
    Dost Abor suspected that his own circumstances were different. He had committed no error that he was aware of to have warranted his placement on Valo VI for such a very long time, and he was far enough from retirement age that it made little sense for him to have been put out to pasture so soon. His conclusion was that Tain perhaps considered him a threat. Abor