Free Star Trek: Terok Nor 03: Dawn of the Eagles by S.D. Perry Page B

be—the Union we can see, in our hearts and minds, the pride of which inspires us toward greatness. We need people who believe that a sound government, a solid economy, and a world we can be proud of is worth the risk of being called dissident .”
    Natima felt a surge of inspiration. She did indeed believe that Cardassia was worth fighting for; she loved her world and she loved her people. It was the tactics of its politicians and soldiers that she disagreed with. Over the years, she’d come to understand that the desperate times before the annexation had warped the sensibilities of the modern Cardassian. The traditions and customs that had sprung from necessity during those lean times, the rigid definition of what constituted a family—Natima would like very much if those definitions could be retooled to better fit the conditions of the present. Not only because she was an orphan, but because of something she had learned on Bajor.
    Natima had only met one Bajoran insurgent, but that meeting had been enough to learn something about the whole of them, she believed. The terrorists had bucked their old social proscriptions, the castes that had once defined their society, and they had bucked the proscriptions imposed upon them by their occupiers. They had done it to preserve something more inherent than tradition—it was a sense of self that they clung fast to, a deep-rooted definition of what it meant to be Bajoran. Natima had been envious when she had recognized it, and she was envious still, for she felt no such connection to her own world—not anymore.
    She longed to revisit it, the Cardassian patriotism she had enjoyed before her time on Bajor. She hoped that perhaps Russol would be the one to resurrect it, Russol and this group of squabbling dissidents. Fifteen minutes ago, it had seemed impossible to her—but now, as she watched the group of people around her, rapt at Russol’s words, she allowed herself to hope that it might be true.

    B’hava’el had just begun to dip in the valley below the foothills, and Li Nalas knew he’d do best to get back to camp before the sun got any lower. It was a long walk to the camp, which was situated in the sparsely vegetated valley below him, and Li didn’t relish the idea of sleeping out in the open. It was warm now, but once the sun went down behind the valley’s rim, it would not be.
    He looked across the narrow ridge for Mart, the teenager who had joined his cell only a few months before. Mart had been awestruck to join the movement alongside the famed Li Nalas, and it was all Li could do to keep from shattering the illusion for the youth, intending to let him down gently, as he had tried to do for most of the others in his current cell. His fame was merely the stuff of legend, rather than the substance, but it wasn’t always easy to dissuade people from believing otherwise. He’d had more than his share of luck, that was all.
    “Li!” called Mart, squatting at the edge of a nearby bluff. The two were concluding the day’s surveillance, even though the Cardassians had not been sighted in this valley for decades. Mart’s panicked expression as he hurried to join Li suggested that the time had come. “There’re flyers coming in this way!”
    Li instinctively hunkered down with his back to the steep hillside behind him, though it did him no real good. What did they want over here? As far as they knew, this was deserted outback. His cell usually camped here in the summertime, moving toward the cities in the winter, when resistance activity went up.
    “Looking for us, maybe,” Mart said. His voice was steady, but his eyes, glassy and green, reflected deep fear—and changed to beseeching as he turned to look at Li. He really believed that Li could keep him safe, that Li Nalas was the folk hero everyone made him out to be.
    Li figured he’d do his best, though that probably wouldn’t be worth much. “Come on, Mart, we’ve got to take cover. It looks like we’ll