Liberating a Cardassian camp after the Dominion War, a Starfleet officer finds the broken spectres of people she's known.
USS Cayuga in orbit of Lazon II Labour Camp
Cardassian Union 2375
"Twelve minutess," S'har said. "If I have not heard from you, we will sstorm the camp from the surface." The Caitian's teeth glinted.
Sito nodded. She walked up to the transporter platform and stood in front of her team of seven. On her right was their Saurian SI guide, and behind her a squad of marines, five Andorians, a Tellarite, three Caitians, and most usefully, a Horta and two Sulamids. The Horta's ability to tunnel through rock and near-invulnerability were key assets to the operation, while the Sulamids' tentacles and appearance conferred both a physical and psychological advantage. Using the distinct advantages of different Federation species had been one of the great lessons of Marine operations during the Dominion War
Sito knocked her phaser rifle's safety off and flipped down her sensor monacle. "Activate sensor dampers. Energize."
The Lazon II Labour camp was subterrainean, the labour in question being rare mineral mining. They beamed into an exhausted vein far enough away from the barracks to be left unguarded. Lazon had neglected to acknowledge receipt of the surrender orders. Just as well, Sito thought. This way, we free all the prisoners instead of just the ones the Cardassians feel like giving us. No one deserves life here.
The camp was surrounded by a dampening shield that prevented large-scale transports in or out. With tinkering, the Cayuga's transporters could punch through and put the landing party down, but until the shield was deactivated, they couldn't transport the prisoners up except with the aid of transponders.
She "saw" a Cardassian soldier around the corner. She waited for him to come closer, and then sprang, injecting him with a heavy sedative from her hypospray. She was determined to keep the noise level down until it was too late. Behind her, the marines caught a struggling body.
"Mercy!" a broken Cardassian said. "I won't tell anyone, just let me live."
Sito flipped her helmet monacle up, and signaled the marines to relax their grip. "What's your name?"
"Prisoner 24568."
"No- before that."
"Dal. J-joret Dal."
Sito gasped. He was unrecognizable. The gentle eyes she remembered were now filled with fear. "Let him go," she whispered. "Scout ahead three stages. I'll be right behind you."
Joret almost fell to the floor as the marines released him. Sito grabbed his shoulders to steady him. They knelt together, facing each other. He looked up at her in amazement. "But- you're Bajoran. Who are you?"
Sito smiled sadly. "A young Ensign you used to know."
"Sito. You lived! How- what- I'm so-"
She placed a finger on his lips. "We'll talk later. Just one thing- you were imprisoned during the war? Not after we crossed the border?"
"Yes."
"Then I don't regret anything that happened. I'm getting you out of here." She slapped a transponder on his arm, and he disappeared in a transporter effect.
They found the air duct that lead to the barracks without further incident. "You look happy," Sih'ram, the SI operative remarked in her ear.
"Serendipity," she said. "Besides, this is the assignment I signed up for."
They found their way to the soldiers' mess, which, as Sih'ram had predicted, was empty. It was also one of the few rooms not monitored by security, since it was locked when not in use.
"Good. The guard barracks are right next door. Kaliah, Rhan, take care of it. Neuralytic stun grenade, nothing fancy. Do it and move to the armoury. Expanding pulses on maximum in that corridor, and blow the door with photon grenades. If you encounter resistance, fall back here. If you can't, use your site-to-site transporters to return to the beam-in point. Their sensors will detect it in here, but that's life. Sih'ram, take your group to life-support and gas everyone. I collect the command office and move on to the isolation cells. Alright, masks on, and good hunting."
Sito waited for the gas to distribute before heading to the command offices, the only part of the facility with a sealed ventilation system. She met the command staff in gas masks emerging from the offices. She pegged two with tranq darts before they saw her, rolled behind a pillar, and tossed a grenade. She followed up with an expanding pulse from her phaser. Acting on instinct, she sprang from cover to find her path to the door now clear. She selected a corpse and tossed him past the door. As the cadaver drew fire, she somersaulted in, engaging her limited-use forcefield as she came up. Less than five seconds later, she stood with her phaser pointed at the head of the man she had come to meet.
"Gul Javin," she said, "the Alliance wants a word with you. You have not sent your surrender or prepared your prisoners for transfer, as per the terms of the armistice."
"I have nothing to say to you," he blustered. "You and your pathetic Federation will never have authority over me. I hold this planet for the Cardassian people until the day when we are ready to throw you out of our space. I-"
"No longer hold the planet," Sito interrupted firmly. "By now, your garrison is either dead or prisoner, and your slaves are being freed."
The Gul did not visibly deflate. Sito knew the type- the aristocratic, proud Cardassian, unable to bow before any lesser race.
"Gul Javin, I arrest you for refusing a legal order to stand down, for the illegal holding of Federation prisoners- and I think I can add, crimes of war and crimes against sentient life. Under articles 97, 53 and 34 of the Soldonis Convention and other articles of Interstellar Law, I place you in confinement awaiting trial." He suddenly raised his weapon, intending to shoot himself in the head. Sito was ready. She jammed a transponder onto his armour, and he disappeared in transporter effect. The transporter would relieve him of his weapon.
Sito hurriedly deactivated the base's shields. She checked her chrono- she had time to make up. She pounded toward the isolation block, where some of her team were already breaking open the cells.
"The Gul?" Sih'ram asked.
"Safely away. Any hitches?"
"Few- the odd guard here and there. Once you lowered the shields, the Cayuga's regular transporters started to bring up the prisoners. These are the last functional forcefields in the place."
Sito shot out the door and the forcefield on the cell nearest her. The doors were mostly for psychological effect, the forcefields being lethal insurance against escape. She stepped in. "You can come out," she said.
Or rather, she intended to, had not a wiry green form grasped her around the throat. Sito gasped in surprise. The adrenalyn surge of the moment caused her to break the choke almost automatically, guiding the beast's force into the floor. In the light, she saw the palest, sickliest, most pathetic-looking Gorn she had ever seen. Sih'ram quickly tagged him, and the transporter took hold.
They broke open the next cell to find a man wearing a battered and dated Starfleet uniform. Sito recoiled in disgust. She wondered how that pig of an aristocrat Javin could maintain the mental distinction between the imagined glories of Cardassia and this battered, filthy reality. The man rose painfully. "Jaxa?" he asked hesitantly.
Guiltily, she realized she had been staring and moved to help him up. "It's me, Tom," she reassured him.
He stiffened. "Another trick," he muttered. "Has to be another trick. I'm not playing today Javin!" he barked bitterly. "You keep your filthy schemes away from Sito. She's worth more than all your sick Cardassian Empire put together. Leave her out," he said, thrusting Sito away, "or so help me I'll rip out your neckbones and let your guards end this hell for me."
Sito let him rave, waiting until he calmed down and crawled back into his corner. Her heart went out to him. Thomas Riker had had few lucky breaks in his life. Between imprisonment on a forgotten planet and his years in Lazon, she could see the damage done by too much pain.
She squatted down across from him. If she beamed him up in his present state, he would likely go berserk. "Tom," she said gently, "do you remember the last time we shared hesparat?"
He didn't look at her.
She pressed on. "You and Kalita and Ro and I. Out on the terrace overlooking the vineyards. We talked about our hopes for the Maquis, about our plans-"
He cackled insanely. "That's the best you can do, Javin! I've been here five years, and you still play at getting me to talk? Well it doesn't matter, 'cause the Maquis are all dead!" He mumbled, "Sito, Ro, Cal, Macius, Kalita, all gone, all gone." Then he stiffened. "But I still won't talk!"
Oh Prophets, Sito thought. That was a wrong direction. What's the right one? Will he ever let me in? Then it came to her. This man had become strong in captivity- strong enough to block everything out, to harden his heart and endure everything, strong enough never to break, even without hope, because of his friends.
"Let me tell you a story, Tom," she said softly. "Once, on a mission to run supplies to the colonies, I was intercepted by a Cardassian cruiser that had violated the DMZ. They disabled me and left me for dead. I drifted for almost a week, wounded in the gut, without much air, no systems working. I lay there for so long, desperately cold, terribly thirsty, and for the first day I was sure I was going to die. The next day, I felt as though my last few conscious minutes had come. I prayed, and asked that if I was to die, that at least the Maquis could have a little peace. For some reason, I felt a warmth inside me, and then I knew I wasn't going to die there. I saw you bending down over me, even before I knew who you were, and I knew you would save me. Five days later, you did. There was no reason for you to be there. You had a feeling, and you spent a day of your leave steering your shuttlecraft through the middle of nowhere toward me. You saved me. I will never forget that. Don't you ever, either."
"I remember," he whispered, still not looking at her.
"So, Tom Riker, let me ask you. Is the spirit that saved me still alive and free? Or has it been trapped, here on Lazon? The universe needs every good spirit it can get, these days."
"What do you want with me?"
"To take you home, Tom. To take you home."
She moved slowly to touch him on the shoulder. She felt him sobbing. He looked up at her touch, and met her eyes for the first time, or tried to. "Jaxa? You're real? You're not?-"
"Not a ghost. Not yet, anyway."
"Oh, I'm so sorry. I should've-"
"No, shh." She hugged the stinking, bruised, wiry mass of him to her. "You have nothing to be ashamed of Tom. Nothing at all. You've honoured me beyond anything I deserve.
"So, now we've established that I'm not here to take you into the afterlife, will you let me take you back to this one?"
He grinned at her. "Maybe for a little while. Although, as grim reapers go, I wouldn't mind having someone like you to take me off."
Sito caught the gist of the reference and smiled. In someone who had suffered as they both had, the remark was not maudlin. "Sito to Cayuga. Two to beam up."
Sito rang at Riker's quarters the next day. "Come in," said a very tired voice.
She castigated herself. He had obviously been catching up on well-deserved sleep. "Just thought I'd let you know, we're holding this position for another day before we head back to DS9. I'll let you-"
"No," he said, sitting up decisively. He had obviously had his bruises tended to, and had shaved his beard back down to a goatee. "Sleep was about the only thing I enjoyed about solitary. Time enough for that later, I suppose. Aren't I supposed to be in the brig? For that matter, aren't you?"
She hurriedly sat down on a stool beside the bed and grinned. "There was an amnesty, Tom. The Maquis got a pardon to help in the war effort. No one's quite sure whether that covers you or not, but don't worry, no one has the heart to put you in prison after what we've seen at Lazon and the other Cardassian camps."
"Will I have to go back to Starfleet?"
"Would that be such a bad thing?"
"In a way, yes. How did you end up rejoining? Were you imprisoned?"
"No." Sito braced herself. This part was not going to be easy, and she should probably wait, but…"I was retrieved by Starfleet Intelligence when the Dominion came. I managed to send out distress signals to Starfleet, but the Federation Council had already spoken. I forced my pilot to turn around. We extracted most of Ro's cell from the Jem'Hadar attack. We eluded them in the Badlands." She was hurrying now, trying to get it all out before he interrupted. "We tried to go to Starfleet, to shame them into doing something- they wouldn't listen. Finally, we went to the Llalairu, and they took us in. They also helped us find and rescue two more cells, what was left of them, and four colonies. Captain Picard tried to talk to Starfleet, but they wouldn't listen, and Enterprise was in drydock. Will Riker put together a rescue mission, but they only arrived in time to pick up the pieces. The Jem'Hadar murdered everyone they found, indiscriminately."
"But you still went back."
"We went back only when we got a full apology from the Federation Council, and blanket amnesty. They needed us as guides. The Federation was on the verge of defeat. And I couldn't wish the Jem'Hadar on anyone."
Riker was silent for a while.
"Ro's back in?"
"Yep. Full commander now. She's a Federation war hero. But make no mistake, Tom, we are Maquis, not Starfleet."
"Were you ever Maquis?"
"How can you ask that? I recruited you, didn't I? You stole the Defiant, didn't you? Yes, I was working for SI officially, but Ro knew that up front. My mission was controlled by Captain Picard. It was not to pass information, but to try to work toward bridging the gap."
"Ro went in for that?"
"She was skeptical, but knew that, if nothing else, we would have to reach an understanding eventually."
Riker chewed that over for a minute. Finally he grunted. "Well, that's past. If I wanted to just- just leave, would I be allowed?"
"I think so. The war is over, after all."
"So I hear. We're going to Deep Space Nine, you said?"
Sito nodded.
"Good. I can catch up with Major Kira. She was on the Defiant, you know."
"I know. She asked us to say that she's sorry she couldn't come here herself- and to tell you that she kept her word about the Defiant's crew. Most of them are serving in Starfleet fighter squadrons now. I'm just glad that that sil shaviin Sisko has disappeared. I don't know what I'd do if I met him on the station."
"Wait- this is the Emissary of the Prophets you're talking about like you want to wring his neck?"
"No Prophet who selected that murdering slime as their Emissary is any better than a pagh wraith as far as I'm concerned. You were already in prison when he poisoned an entire biosphere just to catch a former officer of his."
Riker whistled tonelessly. "I guess there are Cardassians in every uniform."
The chime rang. "Come in," Riker said.
It was Joret Dal.