Chapter 76

Memories of Tianamen

Memnonkh, Khartal Province

Cardassia Prime

February 20, 2378

Dureena Nafeel was crouched beside a window on the third floor of an abandoned building, taking a moment to rest after having ran from the Jem'Hadar soldiers. It seemed to her that the Ragendorans had decided to wipe out all the Cardassians, or at least those who might put up a fight. The rest, she figured, would go into slave labor and worked to death.

There were others with her, mostly children. They had managed to avoid the troops, but how much longer they could keep up was open for debate. She guessed that they were all between 10-15 in human years, because anyone younger might not have been able to avoid the massacres taking place.

They kept to themselves, and Dureena didn't try and impose herself on them. She would be moving out soon anyway, but there was a part of her that made her feel guilty about that. For the first time in her entire life, she wished she had been able to settle down with someone and have kids. She shook her head and tried to focus on what needed to be done to help Wildstar and his forces, but the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if there would be anybody left to save once they got here.

Once the kids were asleep, she snuck out and managed to make it to a forest without being seen. She'd always been adept at climbing, and the trees on Cardassia would have made the African jungle animals she'd heard about excited with delight. She had no problem going from tree to tree, managing to stay off the ground as troops scattered though the forest periodically on patrol.

As the sun began to rise, she spied a cargo transport that was loading. She quickly found a half empty box with plenty of room for her and climbed inside, switching a label with another large box when she saw on the label that the cargo was heading for the capital. They loaded her box inside and they were off, and she took a chance by taking out the tricorder she had and scanned the ship. The transport carried armaments, ketrocel white, foodstuffs, and other sundries, so she figured she might be headed to a military base or something like that. She felt the thermal grenades she had tucked on her person and hoped she could get off this planet in one piece.

Several hours later, the cargo transport came to a stop and the cargo inside was unloaded. Suddenly, she heard explosions far off, and one of the warehouse people cried out, "The enemy's ships are descending onto the planet! All warriors assemble in the square and prepare for attack!" Dozens of footsteps hurried away as the explosions got nearer and nearer, and she took a chance by opening the box up and getting out.

The place was deserted. She snuck out and got on the roof of the next building over so she could see what was going on. Whitestars were landing outside the capital, and the great bulk of the Yamato was descending onto the planet. Her newly installed keel cannons fired off, and three Ragendoran vessels on the ground were wiped out. Dureena knew that the Ragendorans never thought that their enemies could land ships on Cardassia, and had neglected to place any major weaponry to deal with the ships on the ground. They had phaser rifles, but against the Whitestars and Yamato, there were like yellow jackets stinging an elephant: they did no damage.

She spied some troops heading back to the rear of the encampment, and it puzzled her, because she did not see any ships landing behind the base. The ships were more content with the capital, specifically the government palace. She hopped from rooftop to rooftop, following them as best she could.

She soon found out why they were headed back to the rear. They were dragging out Cardassians into the main courtyard. She could tell right then what their intensions were. A couple of years earlier, Sheridan had told her aboard Excalibur that the fascist President Clark, seeing that he was about to be overthrown, had decided upon a "scorched earth" policy, and had set the planetary defense grid to fire on the planet.Luckily, Sheridan's forces had been able to take it out before the satellites could fire their particle beams at Earth. It seemed to her that the Jem'Hadar had a similar intension.

She hadn't intended to do what she was about to do, but the sight of those frightened children as well as the adults in various states of distress tugged at her heart. She wished she could just look away and stick to what she had to do, but as she took out a grenade and her PPG rifle, she decided that she had to save those people.

They never saw her leap down from the top of the one story building, and were completely surprised when grenades began to land at their feet. The Cardassians began to run when the first grenades went off, sending the Jem'Hadar soldiers into the air in parts or in whole. Dureena threw the grenades and tried to take out as many of the troops as she could. She spied a gate and saw a forest just fifty meters away. "Hurry! To the gate! I'll blow it open!" She hurried over, placed a grenade on the lock, and ran to the side as it blew. She gestured them to hurry through as she threw her last grenades at the approaching troops. Once the last of the Cardassians were out, she raced outside and fired her PPG rifle at the Jem'Hadar, looking over her shoulder to make sure that they made it into the woods. When she spotted the last of them making it into the woods, she turned back to fire, only to be met with a blade to the chest. The Jem'Hadar who had stabbed her looked at her like she was excrement and said, "Fool! You can't stop us!"

It was then she pulled out the last grenade from her pocket, unseen by the assembled Jem'Hadar, who were discussing how to get the escaped Cardassians. When the grenade went off, they never saw it coming.

Hours later, Derek Wildstar and his section of EDF Marines came upon Dureena's head. When he saw it, Derek had to fight the urge to vomit. He saw body parts of Jem'Hadar around and guessed that Dureena had made a last stand of some sort.

The escaped Cardassians came out of the forest hesitantly, so Derek shouted to them in his recently learned Cardassian, "We mean you no harm!" One of the young ones came up to him, spotted the head of Dureena, and said, "She saved us all! She sacrificed herself to allow us to escape! I wish I could have thanked her!"

Derek felt a tear come to his eye as he listened to the innocent child, who couldn't be more than twelve Earth years old, tell him all about how Dureena had saved them.

Aboard the Excalibur, Captain Matthew Gideon watched the last of Wildstar's message informing him of Dureena's passing. He got up, went over to the sideboard, and poured himself a whiskey. He gulped it down and set the shot glass back on the table, then went to the place where the box he hid from the others was kept.

When he opened the Apocalypse box, he saw that one of Dureena's blades was in it. It had never been in it to begin with, and, as far as Gideon knew, she had taken all of her blades with her. "Why her, and not me?" he said to the box.

"You have a destiny. You will meet it soon enough." said the being inside the box.

He closed it up and put it back in the secret compartment where he kept it, dissatisfied with the box's answer. He had gotten it years ago during a card game, winning it from some guy who looked to be on his last legs. The loser said something about being glad to be free of it,
then walked out of the bar. A moment later, he heard a skimmer, the modern version of a car, strike a person and he ran outside to see what had happened. The man, according to witnesses, had jumped out in front of the skimmer and the driver could not stop in time. The man's dying words were, "I'm free at last!"

Gideon picked up the shot glass, filled it with more whiskey and gulped another shot down. He went to throw the glass against the wall, then thought better of it. He set it back down and went over to his bed. As he lay there, tears came to his eyes for the first time in years. He hadn't cried at the loss of the crew of the Cerberus, nor of his own parents, who both had led full lives before they died of old age. He wept because, deep down, he had always wanted to see Dureena find the peace and happiness that the universe owed her, and she would never see it now.

His executive officer paged him, "Sir, Wildstar is sending us a signal. He has more news on the situation on Cardassia."

"I'll be there shortly.," said Gideon, and he got up and put his uniform top back on. He had a job to do, and he'd do it to the best of his ability, but, at this moment, he was damned why he kept on doing it.