by Olivia Woods
“How can I prevent it?” Iliana asked. After weeks of grueling tests and orientation, Entek was giving her a tour of the uppermost levels of the Order, where the trainees lived and worked.
“Through selflessness,” he said. “We must put the needs of Cardassia before our own. Always. Only then are we truly as great as our potential. Too many of our people forget that this was the prime ideal on which Tret Akleen founded the Union. Even our much-vaunted military is riddled with opportunists who believe that serving the State and serving one’s personal ambition are not mutually exclusive.”
Iliana’s thoughts traveled back to that fateful night at the natural history museum. “You mean, like Gul Dukat?”
“You recognized that about him right away, didn’t you?”
“He wasn’t terribly subtle about it. But what makes Dukat worse than any of the other guls or legates who are managing Cardassia’s foreign affairs?”
“Dukat wants what is best for Dukat, especially if it means preserving his ostensibly benign dictatorship on Te rok Nor,” Entek told her. “He’s also well connected, politically, and he can be a formidable adversary. His enemies are as powerful and numerous as his friends, but their greatest mistake has always been underestimating him.”
“The way you talk about him…you almost make him sound like a security risk.”
“He’s a dangerous man, to be sure,” Entek acknowledged, “especially to those who, in his mind, have wronged him. He has no love for the Order…not since the unfortunate demise of his father many years ago. And if there’s anything he’s learned from the Bajorans, it’s how to hold a grudge.
“Still,” Entek went on, returning to his original point, “even such a man as Dukat understands that service to the State is a calling that demands sacrifice-and the will to endure whatever that service requires. You must always act without joy, without remorse, without anger, and without pity.”
“But…”
“Yes?”
“I’m not a Vulcan, Corbin,” Iliana said. “I can’t simply turn off-“
“You won’t need to. Vulcans are no more lacking in emotions than you are, Iliana. They simply don’t allow themselves to be mastered by them. It’s just one of many disciplines I’ll be teaching you.”
Iliana nodded, but was becoming distracted; her footsteps seemed strangely loud as she and Entek navigated the busy passageway.
“Is something wrong?” Entek asked.
“It’s just…It’s so quiet. No one here makes any sound when they move. Another discipline?”
Entek nodded. “A most useful one. Let me show you something.” He led her toward an elevator, and a short time later, they were outside the Assembly building.
The Imperial Plaza flowed around her. She was a grain of sand in a stream of similar particles racing past in every direction: a constant flow of Cardassians moving from one aspect of their day to the next.
“Note the expressions on their faces,” Entek told her, strolling at her side. “How would you describe them?”
“They look dazed” was the first thing Iliana said. Entek looked at her the way he did when he was waiting for her to realize her mistake. She considered the people around her, then amended her answer. “I meant to say, they look focused, but not on where they are, or what they’re doing.”
“And what do you deduce from that?”
Iliana studied a tall man moving toward her. Brown suit, black shoulder bag. He stared straight ahead, his lips silently forming words. Replaying a conversation he recently had, or rehearsing a conversation he intends to have? He turned his body slightly to avoid bumping into Iliana as he passed, but never once made eye contact. Other passers by seemed similarly preoccupied.
“They’re not really aware of their present circumstances,” Iliana concluded, “except to the extent they need to be in order to get safely from Point A to Point B. They’re more focused on their destination than on their journey.”
Entek nodded. “There are perhaps two thousand Cardassians moving through this intersection at any given time, yet they are in large part invisible to one another. Oh, they’re aware of the people around them, but only in the abstract. The details are lost. Unless something atypical happens, later they’ll remember nothing else about the experience. This is the essence of moving unseen, of hiding in plain sight.”
“The ability to merge with one’s surroundings,” Iliana realized. “To mask one’s presence by being forgettable.” She was no stranger to the idea; she’d put it into practice herself on more than one occasion.
“Exactly,” said Entek, sounding pleased. “The way in which we interact physically with our environment is as important as how we interact with it emotionally. We must be as ghosts to those around us.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Iliana told him.
“But my dear Iliana,” Entek said, “you are defined by one.”
The Obsidian Order, Day 69
“I don’t understand her decision,” she heard Kaleen saying. “No, that’s not true. I do understand it. The death of Ataan is something she hasn’t been able to process properly, and she thinks that this somehow constitutes a positive response to it. But it’s unhealthy. You don’t deal with your grief by destroying yourself.”
“Come, Kaleen, that isn’t what she’s doing.” Tekeny sounded exasperated.
“Isn’t she? Our daughter in the Obsidian Order? How can you sit there and tell me this doesn’t concern you?”
“I grant you it’s out of character, but surely this is a positive step for her. We’ve both despaired for years of her ever taking her civic obligations seriously. Losing a loved one is always a life-changing event. And while I wish she could have been spared this hurt, perhaps it’s exactly what she needed to give her a proper sense of duty and responsibility.”
“Then why didn’t she come to us? We’re both well-placed in our respective careers. Why the Obsidian Order? Why not a different service?”
“My contacts in the Order tell me she’s been identified as a promising candidate, with talents uniquely suited to state security. Perhaps we should consider ourselves fortunate; she can hardly come to harm working as an intelligence analyst.”
“You may be satisfied by Entek’s assurances,” Kaleen said. “I am not. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of them.”
“Kaleen, please! Mind what you say!”
“I will not! My heart is breaking, don’t you understand that?” Her words poured out in sobs. “I’m angry, and worried, and utterly disappointed, and it’s tearing me apart, Tekeny.”
Iliana pulled the chip out of her ear and slammed it down on the table. She buried her face in her hands. The cold gray room seemed to press in against her from all sides.
“Is something the matter?” Entek asked, watching her from across the table.
She lowered her hands and glared at him. “Why did you make me listen to that?”
Entek’s gaze on her was fixed and steady. “To make a point. The Obsidian Order has no room for sentimentality. No one is above suspicion. No one is beneath our notice. No one is beyond our reach.”
Iliana looked away. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“That’s exactly why you’ll continue,” Entek said. “It’s not enough to keep your senses alert and aware at all times; you must be able to process input free of personal sentiment. Now put the chip back in your ear.”
“Who listens to your parents, Corbin?”
Entek’s metal chair scraped the floor as he pushed back and stood up. He stepped around the table and swung, the back of his hand striking her face so hard that she was knocked to the floor.
Iliana looked up at him, ignoring the swelling she felt on her cheek. Now that was interesting.
“Get up,” Entek said calmly, “and put the chip back in your ear. Now.”
The Obsidian Order, Day 181
Trapped in a world without light, her hands became her eyes. Memories cultivated in her fingertips from days of repetition
guided her movements as Iliana sifted through a seemingly endless arrangement of decoy parts for the specific components she needed.
Main circuit plate. Superconducting emitter crystal. Rodinium collar. Waveguide amplifier….
Some parts belonged to other systems; some were fractionally off in size; some were made from the wrong materials; some even carried the telltale scent of burnout. She discarded these as quickly as she found them, shrinking her options.
Spiral wave accelerator. Energy flow regulator. Emission unit housing. Control interface….
Once all the necessary components were isolated, assembling them in their proper sequence was child’s play.
Targeting sensor. Memory solid. Isotolinium ampoule. Micro-forcefield inductors. Power cell casing….
The days preceding these exercises had been filled with the study of technical manuals, computer modeling, and performance analyses. Entek never complimented her on the speed with which she processed raw data, or her ability to retain it. But they both knew she was progressing far more quickly than expected.
Coolant module. Safety lock. Handgrip.
As the last component snapped into place, she held out the completed device before her and called out into the darkness, “Done!”
The lights in the tech lab came up at once. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the partial illumination and saw that she was aiming her newly assembled disruptor pistol directly at Entek, who stood on the other side of the room next to a weapons tech who was holding a padd. Both of them wore night-vision lenses that had enabled them to watch her every move during the exercise.
The tech checked his padd and delivered his verdict to Entek: “A new record.”
Her mentor nodded curtly. “Well done, Iliana. You’ve beaten your previous personal best. However, next time-“
“You misunderstand, sir,” the tech interjected. “I meant that Trainee Ghemor set a new record for the organization, not merely for herself.”
Entek said nothing, but that silence spoke volumes. He met Iliana’s gaze down the length of her gun.
“Zap,” she said.
The Obsidian Order, Day 242
They circled each other atop the forcefield grid that made up the floor of the combat room. Entek was stripped to the waist, wearing only a dark green pair of loose-fitting pants that afforded him considerable freedom of movement. Iliana was dressed to match, except that she’d added a white breastband, for modesty’s sake.
They both held duranium composite quarterstaffs, the ends of which were tipped with emitters designed to deliver a dual-effect electrical charge: direct bodily contact with a tip would be painful at best; at worst, a prolonged strike would render a victim unconscious. An indirect attack-stabbing the meter-wide forcefield hexagons on which they stood-would send a signal to the combat room’s computer, which would respond by deactivating the hex that had been struck and opening a drop to a net above the room’s true floor, six meters below. As the exercise progressed, their battlefield would gradually diminish, requiring the combatants to remain alert and agile in order to score a hit, or avoid one, as the grid disappeared bit by bit beneath them.
Iliana hefted her weapon, testing its balance as she studied Entek’s body language, trying to anticipate his most likely moves. She swept her staff back and forth, then began to twirl it, her well-practiced moves transforming it into a blur.
Entek kept his left side toward her, holding his staff at an angle in his right hand. He was far too relaxed, as if he considered victory over her a given. He was probably right.
She decided to make him work for it.
She lunged forward and their staffs met in a sequence of precise thrusts and parries, each strike producing a sharp metallic report that rang through the combat room. Iliana advanced, seeking contact with Entek’s bare gray chest. He deflected her staff easily.
“You need to do better than that,” Entek admonished her.
“And just how often do operatives really fight people with sticks?” she fired back, keeping her own staff between them.
His expression darkened and he suddenly advanced, swatting her weapon aside, forcing its tip down against one of the hexes. The panel vanished almost immediately, leaving a gaping hole on Iliana’s left. She backed off.
“Contrary to what Central Command might have us believe, battles are seldom won by overwhelming force,” Entek told her. “The Obsidian Order utilizes distractions and deceptions. These are key weapons in the war we wage to keep Cardassia safe.”
They started circling each other again. “A war against whom?” she asked. “The Bajorans?”
Entek scoffed. “Bajor is merely a catalyst.”
“Of what?”
“Of questions Cardassians should not ask.”
Iliana moved in and swept her staff upward in an attempt to catch her teacher under the jaw. Entek brought his weapon down to block, and Iliana responded by swinging her staff in the opposite direction, turning her attack into a downward diagonal arc with considerably more power. But again he blocked, and their weapons crossed, pushing against each other.
“Meaning what?” she demanded to know as she tried to hold her ground. “For Cardassia to be safe, the people must be complacent?”
“Not complacent. Resolute. Doubt and uncertainty are the mother and father of dissent, sedition…treason. We must be ever vigilant against such corruption, and against those who would foment it.” He pressed down against her, forcing her back. Entek was bigger, stronger, more experienced; her only hope lay in whatever guile she could muster. She shifted the angle of her staff until it pointed down, then thrust the tip toward Entek’s feet. Her mentor leapt back just as the floor panel disappeared.
Iliana kept circling, giving herself a moment to catch her breath. “So our inability as a society to reach a consensus on Bajor…”
“…is perhaps the single greatest political and social crisis we’ve faced since the formation of the modern Union,” he told her. “As others have noted…how we answer the Bajoran question will define Cardassia forever.”
Iliana stumbled as her last night with Ataan came back to haunt her. They’d both said things that called the cultural psychology of Cardassia into question. Apparently she’d been right to feel exposed. She recovered quickly, keeping her eyes on Entek.
“Rather than allow Bajor to define Cardassia,” she grated, “shouldn’t we instead be redefining Bajor?”
“You ask that with such passion,” he taunted, backing toward one corner of the room.
What is he doing? “And you say ‘passion’ with such scorn,” Iliana retorted. “What about patriotism? Duty to the State? To one’s ideology? What about delivering justice upon one’s enemies? Aren’t those passionate causes?”
“Passion is for zealots,” he told her, and then he broke into a sprint, moving in an arc toward the room’s opposite corner and tapping hexes out of existence as he went, seemingly at random. Iliana moved to intercept him, but was forced to leap when Entek responded by tapping out a panel that lay directly in front of her. He jumped as she did, and she succeeded in tagging his leg as they passed each other in mid-air…but Entek simultaneously executed a backward thrust that struck the base of her spine. The charge coursed through her, temporarily numbing her extremities. It took all her concentration to land on her feet and not let go of the staff. She spun around to see that Entek was watching her intently, clearly no worse for the wear.
“The safety of the State is not a cause,” he said, walking back along the path of holes he’d created and casually knocking out the hexes between them until he’d created a continuous arcing chasm between him and Iliana, completely bisecting the room. “It is survival. It’s a line we draw in the battlefield, a wall we fortify against the enemies of Cardassia.”
Taking one end of her staff in both hands, she raised it high over her head and leapt again, clearing the break in the grid and coming down swinging. Entek, of course, sidestepped her easily, tapping out the hex he thought sh
e would land on-exactly as she expected. She brought down the staff in front of her horizontally and let it fall flat across the new hole, braced by the intact hexes on either side. Iliana channeled her momentum into a somersault that swept her clear of the hole. She landed in a crouch and swept her staff across the back of Entek’s knees, knocking him flat on his back. She was standing over him and poised to strike before he could recover.
“And when your enemy crosses that line?” she asked, one foot holding down his staff.
He looked up from the grid, regarding her with an expression bordering on amusement. “Then you make certain it’s on your terms, not theirs.” He moved his hand suddenly and with surprising speed, as if to make a grab for her weapon. She thrust her staff down, realizing too late it had been a feint, that he was already rolling out of the way, and that she would strike the hex that had been under him. The panel vanished and she lost her balance, pitching forward-Instinct took over and she let go of her staff, pressing her hands flat against the intact hexes adjacent to the gap. Thus braced, she could only watch as her weapon plummeted through the new hole, passing through the safety net far below and discharging sparks as it struck the metal bottom of the combat room. Any second now, she expected Entek to tap out the panels she clung to, sending her tumbling after her staff.
It wasn’t until she felt his weapon between her shoulder blades-experienced the excruciation of its prolonged contact with her skin and felt blackness threatening to close in-that she realized how much she still had to learn about her mentor.
Teeth clenched against the pain, Iliana pushed with her feet and flung herself forward. She cleared the gap and scrambed forward on all fours, trying to build enough momentum to run upright without pausing to stand. Robbed of her weapon, her only hope now was to somehow disarm Entek. She knew she had zero chance of doing so, and as he caught up to her and jolted her left leg behind the knee, she ceased trying to evade him. Iliana sagged against the grid and lay still, panting as she rolled onto her back to face her mentor. He stood over her, the glowing tip of his staff waving back and forth before her eyes.