Night has fallen on the streets of Lakat. A parade of burning torches moves through the city.
Thousands of ordinary Cardassians are on the march. Soldiers, clerics, shopkeepers and doctors. Students, scientists, teachers and tailors. Respectable Cardassians. Well-mannered Cardassians. Cardassians you'd walk by in the street and say good morning to. All wearing armbands showing the hooded insignia of the Obsidian Order. All filled with bitterness and a hatred of alien blood.
Their boots thud over the cobblestones. Far above on the balcony of Enabran Tain's house, the doctor watches as the place he has called home for the past three years descends into hell.
War is coming, whispers the voice in Bashir's head. Anarchy is coming. A new Cardassian dark age from which they won't be able to turn back.
Next to him, Giel leans eagerly over the edge for a better view.
On the gigantic view-screens that dominate the skyline, the swollen figure of Legate Tarn speaks to his people. Bashir and Giel listen as he lays out the new order of things. Behind the mask of a planetary struggle against the Federation aggressors, the regime are consolidating their power. Cardassia is being squeezed into an iron grip.
"Pacifism is heresy!" the Legate proclaims. "Doubt of total victory, treason!" The crowd in the street cheer. "Our glorious culture must be restored! Restored to a time before space travel; before galacticisation; before the outside universe corrupted it, infected it and made it impure!"
The screens cut to the image of a bonfire of books. Giel frowns and bites his lip.
"Sheltering aliens is punishable by death," the Legate continues. "If you suspect anyone of harbouring un-Cardassian sympathies it is vital to the security of our people and our homeworld that you denounce them, immediately!"
"Parmak, listen to me! " From inside the house, Garak's raised voice diverts Bashir's attention. "For the last time, you aren't safe there," the Cardassian says. "They'll search the apartment."
Leaving Giel to his birds-eye view on history, Bashir opens the balcony doors and enters the study. Behind Tain's desk, Garak is speaking to Parmak on a monitor. It's a heated conversation that has been going on for some time.
"I'm a former Legate," hisses Garak. "I'm a threat. They'll come looking for me and anyone connected to me. You have to get out of there."
"I've told you, I will. I'll go to the Cathed-"
"No!" Garak shouts over him in exasperation. "Not to the Cathedral. Not to organise a protest among the Hebitian followers. Parmak, it's futile. There was a Federation Starship above Cardassia! We are going to war. Tarn couldn't back down now even if he wanted to."
Bashir moves closer, passing by Molly who is working at the computer terminal. Absorbed in a frantic search for news of survivors from the Mayflower's crew, she hardly registers him.
"You need to get out of Lakat and into the country," Garak urgently instructs the other doctor. "Take your papers and then the first shuttle to the Ba'aten Peninsula and if you're stopped by the Obsidian Order tell them you hardly know me. That you're my physician and that's all."
"No," Parmak says calmly. "I'm going to protest at the Cathedral. I won't run from them. I won't lie to them."
"You won't lie to them?" The tailor blinks incredulously at the idea. "Then what will you do?"
"I'll tell them the truth."
Garak doesn't like the sound of that. "Which is?"
"That I'm your lover. You make me wish to Oralius that I wasn't sometimes, but I am."
"And?"
"And," Parmak takes a deep breath, "that I oppose this regime and the rounding up of the aliens; that we should not go to war again..."
The tailor puts his palm over his eyes.
"…that militarism has distorted our religion and perverted our science. That I believe in freedom of speech…"
"No," groans Garak.
"… and of thought," the other doctor continues quietly. "That these are natural rights, given in the Hebitian scripture where everything is said and everything is written. And that the Obsidian Order is, and always was, an abomination run by mad men and that I will do whatever I can, short of violence, to stop it."
"Have you gone insane?" Garak gapes at him. "You stand on the cathedral steps saying all that and they'll kill you!"
"Yes," says Parmak, "They probably will."
Bashir sees a flicker of deep, desperate care bubble up through the tailor's mask. It lingers treacherously on Garak's face for a moment, before being quickly buried back below.
"Parmak, be reasonable. Think. Throwing your life away isn't going to help anybody or change anything. There are quieter ways to take a stand, cleverer ways. Ways that don't involve martyrdom. Wait," Garak urges. "Let me contact Alon's daughter, or Kotan -"
"People are suffering out there, right now," says Parmak calmly. "I'll not be silent."
"You'll be dead!"
The crowd in the street is growing louder now; shouts for revenge and glory mingle in to the sound of distant phaser-fire. Elsewhere in Lakat, the Obsidian Order death squads are already at work. The round-ups have begun.
Garak gestures wildly at the noise. "Listen to that! Listen to them!"
"I have to speak out."
"Parmak," hisses Garak. "This isn't the time."
"Yes," he says. "It is." Reaching toward the screen, Parmak's hand hovers over the channel controls. Unearthly green eyes search over Garak and the other, infinitely oblivious doctor at his side. "This is the time when it still matters."
"Kelas -"
Parmak smiles. "If not now; then when?"
The monitor disintegrates into static.
"Kelas!" Garak shouts. But there's no answer; the other doctor is gone. "No!" The Cardassian hits the console in frustration.
Bashir watches him a moment. Then, he makes a choice. I am going out there to help. The medkit he used to treat Giel is still open on the sofa. He edges toward it. If there are protests, there will be injured. Parmak will need help. The choice is impulsive; almost entirely altruistic. Almost.
Because the final part of the puzzle is gnawing away at Bashir. Sisko. The order. The gel. The plot. And he can't find a way out. Vreenak. Us. Them. The Romulans. Biogenic Weapons. Whatever way his mind put the pieces together, he keeps coming to the same answer…
Eurai .
The attack on Eurai used weapons that had a bio-memetic gel payload of unknown origin... He reaches toward the strap of the medkit; and the easiest form of escape.
"Don't even think about it." Garak's eyes register Bashir with a chameleonic swivel.
The doctor's fingers twitch over the medkit.
"You're human. You're alien. They'll lynch you before you pass the first corner."
"What?" Molly's attention is diverted from her computer search for the Mayflower's crew. "Julian, what are you doing?" She moves to him with familial concern. "You can't leave!"
"He won't."
Bashir shoots a poisonous look at Garak.
The Cardassian holds him in a long, considered gaze: probing and sifting through the doctor's tangled psyche, dissecting his outlandish responses and his sapien emotions. "You aren't Parmak," he muses coldly. "You want to be, you try to be. But you're not. Not deep down." He tilts his head, trying to figure the doctor out. "Deep down, you're more like…"
Something clicks in Garak's mind. He realises what Bashir needs; what he's looking for.
"There's no forgiveness to be found out there."
"I…" Bashir swallows. Caught out. Letting the medkit drop to the ground, he sits on the sofa with his head in his hands. Nowhere to escape to, nowhere to run. No one to ask for guidance; to fight his corner, no matter what. Not anymore.
"How many?" he whispers.
"What?"
"I read the reports about the attack but I… I don't remember. It didn't seem important." The doctor looks up at Garak with lost green eyes. "How many people died on Eurai?"
"One hundred and three."
Bashir despairs. "A hundred and three…"
"The Tal Shiar murdered those people," Garak advances toward him. "No one else. They manufactured an incident to investigate; gave the Federation something to panic about."
"But," Molly interjects, "Eurai was a Romulan settlement."
"Yes," answers Garak, "and a particularly troublesome one at that. Packed to the rafters with pro-Vulcan dissidents and undesirable Remans."
"They used bio-genic weapons against their own people?" The Lieutenant is appalled.
"Why not? It's what I would have done," Garak glances at the doctor, "once." He tutors Molly with a grandfatherly air. "Neutralise an internal threat, whilst dealing with an external one. Two birds with one stone. And it follows the golden rule of galactic government…"
"… you can repress, incarcerate or kill as many of your own citizens as you like," Bashir says numbly. "Just pick your targets carefully and be sure to keep it within your own borders. No one will mind. No one will intervene. In fact they'll hardly notice."
Garak studies his old student with curiosity. "I didn't teach you that…"
"No, that I learnt in the Federation. A long time ago."
The doctor takes a deep breath. Pulling himself back up on his feet, he faces Garak and the past directly in the eyes.
"It was Sisko. He was the officer who led the mission."
"Yes."
"And it was me. I released the gel."
"You didn't know."
"I knew it was wrong. I knew that much." Bashir berates himself. "Eighty-five litres of gel; that amount, that fast, in the middle of a war? It had to be for biogenic weapons. It just had to be. And I …," the doctor still can't believe he actually did it, "…I let it go."
"You followed your orders. There's nothing wrong with that."
"Everything is wrong with that!" Bashir explodes with anger at Garak. "How, after all these years do you still not understand? I should have spoken out. I should have made a stand; said no. But because I was frightened and because it wasn't safe -"
"Oh, Doctor, please," Garak groans. "Spare us the Federation piety. Of course you followed your orders! You were a soldier fighting in a war!"
"I was a doctor."
"You were a soldier," says Garak with exasperation. "From the day we first met. You wore a uniform; you carried a phaser and you followed orders. You held an officer's rank - no matter how many times you asked Chief O'Brien to 'just call you 'Julian'".
"I could have done something. If I'd disobeyed then…"
"…you would have been court marshalled and then silenced and you know it."
An expensive-looking bottle of kanar sits on the dresser. Reaching for it, Bashir starts hunting for a glass. There are memories he wants to block out as well as Garak's words.
"You were a soldier." The son of Tain has surfaced now. He coils intimately around the doctor. "Starfleet taught you to kill as well as to cure. I sawyou: the Klingon; the Changeling; many Jem'Hadar. You were good at it. A very good soldier. A very intuitive killer."
"Get the hell away from me."
Bashir moves to the far side of the room, putting as much distance between himself and the Cardassian as he can.
Garak hisses. "Why won't you see the truth? You were no more 'just a doctor' in that war than I was 'just a tailor'."
"I could have stopped the gel. I could have stopped those people dying! I had a choice!"
"No you didn't," Garak maintains. "Bodies stink, soldiers kill and orders are followed. That is the reality of war. Every war, every army and everyempire, from Caesar to the present day. The basic facts don't alter with morality! They don't change depending on whether or not you are 'good' or because your side's cause just happens, this time, to be right."
He advances toward the doctor. "There is always collateral damage. In times of war, innocent people die. Civilians die. Children die and both sides kill them."
"I know that," breathes Bashir with emotion. "I was here too Garak. I saw…," he struggles against the enormity of the memory. "I saw all of that." He looks at the tailor. "I heard them."
Bashir's mind relives that last day. Thousands of bodies rotting in the heat. The shadowed outlines of atomised people blasted on to the walls. The cries from under the rubble. The utter, total, cataclysmic devastation.
"I was part of it."
A reptilian hand gently presses on the human's shoulder. "We both were."
The doctor doesn't pull away.
"There can't be another war," says Bashir after a moment. "We can't let it happen again."
Garak hesitates. "Our best hope," he begins, "lies with the Federation public. We need to get you," he pauses, "and Lieutenant O'Brien here naturally, away from Cardassia-"
"It won't work Garak."
"- and beyond the range of the Obsidian Order censorship signals. If you can contact," the tailor's tongue struggles with a distastefully un-Cardassian concept, "a journalist, they can expose the conspiracy; expose the real reasons for war. Get the people on Earth to vote against their leaders; or at least for more moderate action-"
Giel bursts in from the balcony. "Everyone's going mad out there!" he says, a breathless tornado of limbs and adrenaline. "Something's about to happen."
On cue, the Viddy Screen on the wall flickers automatically to life. After a short blast of patriotic music, an image appears. Knelt on the ground, blindfolded with their hands tied are five humans: the surviving crew of the Mayflower. The hooded insignia of the Obsidian Order is painted on the wall behind them.
"They're alive!" exclaims Molly. "There's Nicholson! And that's Lopez, one of the nurses!"
The set-up is a familiar one on Cardassia. Bashir, Garak and Giel recognise immediately what's about to happen.
"Turn it off," says Bashir urgently in Cardassian.
Giel is nearest the screen controls. "I can't," he says, "it's an executive broadcast."
The doctor grabs hold of Molly's hand, pulling her around to face away from the screen. "Look at me, look at me."
"What's going on?"
"Don't turn around," Bashir instructs. Over her shoulder, he can see two Cardassian soldiers entering the screen. "Just keep looking at m - "
A muffled crack rings out. The sound of a phaser bolt fired directly into the back of a human skull. It's followed by a heavy thud as the first body hits the ground. Giel looks away in disgust. Outside the crowd roars its approval and howls for more alien blood.
Molly's eyes, firmly locked on Bashir's, fill with tears. The noises repeat, inevitably, four more times. She jumps at the sound of each shot.
"They killed them," she says.
"Yes."
"All of them?"
"I'm not sure," Bashir lies. He pauses. "Yes, all of them," he adds softly.
The Viddy Screen bursts into patriotic music again; loud and victorious. Over the banner of the Cardassian flag, the bloated figure of Legate Tarn materialises. He waves magnanimously at his people.
"You fool," Garak spits at him. "You weak fool. You've just signed Cardassia's death warrant. A public execution! Starfleet will annihilate us."
The doctor focuses his attention on Molly. She's shaking with shock and anger. "Are you alright?"
"These people are barbaric. How can you live here Julian? How?"
"You live here too Molly," Bashir says gently. "The galaxy doesn't simply stop at the Federation border."
"This," she gestures outside with revulsion, "is not my world."
Something icy and dismissive comes over Garak's features. "That's right," he says, "it isn't. It is not your world and you could never understand it."
"What I don't understand," snaps Molly "is how you Cardassians have let things get so bad." She advances angrily on Garak. "We gave you democracy. We gave you post-scarcity economics. We gave you aid. You should have joined the rest of the civilised galaxy by now!"
"That's enough Molly," Bashir warns. "Come and…," he trails off, rubbing his temples, overcome by a wave of sudden heat and nausea.
"When the Federation withdrew, this was a stable planet on the road to recovery-"
Garak lets out a contemptuous laugh. "And where, exactly, did you learn that? Starfleet Academy? He sneers. "I was Legate when the Federation casually beamed out of here Lieutenant; I was in charge. And do you know what they left me with? Free elections, half a billion orphans, a handshake and the 'very best of Human luck'."
The room about the doctor is swirling now. Unsteadily, he makes his way to the sofa.
"Oh," Garak wrinkles his nose in disgust, "and sixteen cases of root beer. A truly vile beverage that languished in my drinks cabinet and lasted farlonger than the democratically elected government did."
"I don't feel..." Bashir tries faintly to interrupt. "Garak, I… "
"That out there is not some sickness unique to the Cardassian soul!" Garak says with passion. "That is what war, total war does to a place; what it does to a people. Half of our cities destroyed; a third of our population wiped out in a single day. A single day. That is twenty years of grinding poverty, humiliation and despair!"
"We tried to help you!"
Garak dismisses her, "Your people are clueless, Lieutenant O'Brien. They're tourists."
"Doctor?" Giel is stood close to Bashir now, studying him with concern. "Are you alright?"
Blood thumps in the doctor's ears. In front of him Giel's face starts to blur. Everything in his vision is becoming dull; indistinct; muted. Everything…apart from the Bajoran pendant fastened tightly around Molly's neck.
It shines. Brighter than anything Julian has ever seen.
"What?" he whispers.
The world recedes suddenly like a broken wave from the shore. The fabric of reality rushes sickeningly away from the doctor, abandoning him to the total whiteness of zero-space with nothing more than a soft, apologetic gurgle.
White space.
All he can see is light.
All he can hear is his breathing and the beat of his heart.
The doctor struggles to gain his bearings. But there is no direction here; no distance. Just light. Everywhere. Enveloping, enclosing, omnipresent light. As eerie and terrifying as total darkness. Here, there's nowhere to hide. Here, every part of you can be seen.
"Hullo!" Bashir shouts, expecting nothing back other than his own echo.
He doesn't even get that.
His mind searches for something to anchor his sanity to. Something he can investigate; that he can prove. Ground. He jumps slightly to test it. There is ground beneath my feet. Kneeling, he puts his ear and palms to the ground. He knocks and listens. No vibrations. It isn't hollow.
A baseball rolls across his newly discovered un-hollow ground and into his eye-line.
The doctor picks the ball up and drops it. It falls a few inches and bounces. "Gravity," he announces, pleased with his experiment; "which means in all likelihood at least some of the other physical laws are present. And there are directions because this is down, and this is-"
Bashir's mind finally catches up with what's going on around him. He bolts upright.
There, stood in front of him with a baseball in his hand, is Captain Benjamin Sisko.
Tiptoeing across the study, Giel sneaks to the doorway. I could be a gentleman thief, he imagines, dreaming himself into the exciting world of his Earth books. Just like Raffles in The Ides of March! Or Simon Templar! His footsteps land softly on the Leyik-skin rug and attract no attention from anyone else in the room.
The Doctor is laid out on the sofa, still unconscious. Nearby, Garak and Molly anxiously converse about his condition.
In Standard. Again, Giel notes with bitterness. Excluding me. Ignoring me.
Still, at least they've stopped shouting at each other now…
He lifts the old iron latch on the door. It creaks, loudly. His heart racing, Giel whips around sure that someone, sure that Garak will have heard. His mind works overtime, formulating a convincing story about where he's going, what he's up to…
No need. The tailor is oblivious to everything but his patient; attentively running a medi-scanner over his temples. Beside him, the human woman continues to chatter.
Forgotten and unnoticed, Montag Giel slips quietly out into the Cardassian night.
Molly doesn't hear the door shut. She's watching Garak play at being the doctor and can't shake the feeling he's enjoying the performance.
'Ah," "Hmm." "I see". The Cardassian reacts to each warble and electronic trill of the medi-scanner with an assortment of mutters and facial expressions shamelessly stolen from Bashir.
"Well?" Molly demands. "What's wrong with him?"
"In my professional opinion… he's unconscious."
"Garak"
"My medical knowledge is not extensive, Lieutenant. From what this thing," Garak shakes the scanner in technological frustration, "is telling me, I don't think his life is in any danger."
"But you aren't sure?"
"He's fatigued and hasn't eaten in two days. I am also detecting," Garak reads words he doesn't really understand from the display, "some 'unusual synaptic potentials'." He pauses. "Not to mention, a carelessly high level of Erbium Pentothal recently injected into his system."
Molly is unable to meet the Cardassian's gaze. Her mind searches vainly for a safe topic of conversation. One that is going to fill this long, uncomfortable silence; one that isn't going to re-start their earlier argument.
"Julian mentioned an old friend of his before."
"Hmm, did he?" mumbles the tailor non-committedly.
"Someone from back on the station. I wondered if you knew what happened to him. I think he might have been another Augment, one still in hiding - I'm not really sure. What he was saying… it was pretty garbled."
"Information obtained under torture tends to be." Garak serenely continues to scan. "Did he give you this friend's name?
"He said it was Elim."
"Elim?" Garak snaps off the medi-scanner.
"Yes. I think… I think maybe Julian abandoned him. He said Section 31 interrogated him and were watching him. That they'd put this, this monitoring device in his head and he was worried, if he kept seeing Elim, they'd do it again and -".
Molly stops.
The Cardassian is completely still, staring at his sleeping patient. His sleeping Doctor.
"Garak?" she asks.
"You want to know," he says, "what happened to Elim…"
Hi This is a work in progress. New chapters to follow ( probably about two or three from the end now I think). I'm not a fast writer, so updates are every four to five weeks. If there's anything you'd like to see happen in the story, please do review and let me know and I'll try and work it in. Bluemeany.x.