Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [38]
But someone had done their job well enough to make the place habitable, if not aesthetically pleasing. The meeting table had been scrubbed, the chairs repaired, and the floor, walls, and ceiling washed.
Looking around at the assorted happy-but-tired-looking faces in the meeting room, Kira wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing here. It was, after all, for the high-ranking members of the rebel army. At best, she was a soldier hardly what anyone would consider important.
And she didn’t want to become important. She’d done enough time-traveling both voluntary and involuntary to know the risks.
Flexing her left arm, Kira winced slightly. The wound from the sword had been long, but not deep, and was proving maddeningly slow to heal. Unfortunately, Deep Space 9 and Julian’s infirmary wouldn’t be built for many millennia, leaving Kira to heal naturally, just like when she was in the resistance. Her tendency to scratch at her wounds and not give her body a chance to heal properly hadn’t changed with age. In fact, she remembered a snide comment Shakaar had once made about how symbolic it was that Kira always picked at her scabs….
Kira had met most of the people in the room only once or twice. The ones she’d gotten to know thus far were Torrna and the tiny, short-haired woman who entered the meeting room last: Natlar Ryslin.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said as she approached the seat at the head of the table. “Please, everyone, be seated.”
It soon became apparent that there were far more people than chairs, by a factor of two to one.
With a small smile, Natlar amended, “Or stand, whichever you prefer.”
Soon enough, many were seated around the table, with the rest standing against the wall. Kira was among the latter Torrna, though, sat in the seat opposite Natlar, at the foot of the table.
Her expression serious, Natlar said, “I hereby call to order the first meeting of the government of the Perikian Republic.”
A cheer, much less ragged than the exhausted one Kira had participated in on the battlefield, met that pronouncement. Periki Remarro had first agitated for independence against the oppressive Lerrit regime years earlier. The nation of Lerrit had ruled the peninsula with an iron fist and a hefty tax burden, and, though she was not the first to desire the removal of their yoke, she was the first to say so publicly.
Periki had died soon after she began that agitating, hanged by Lerrit authorities. Her cause had lived on, and was now, finally, victorious.
I always wondered how the Perikian Peninsula got its name, Kira thought with a smile.
As Natlar went into the details of what needed to be done next, Kira found herself tuning out. She had been to plenty of meetings just like this hell, she’d led meetings just like this. But those meetings were far in the future and, paradoxically, in her own subjective past. She saw no reason to involve herself now.
She stared out the window, seeing the people of the capital city which would no doubt also be renamed at this meeting rebuilding their homes and places of business. The window faced south, so she could also see the docks and the large port beyond the city the true heart of the peninsula. Docked there were several warships, armed with massive cannons, that carried the flag of the nation of Endtree.
Kira turned back to the table just as Natlar was saying, “Admiral Inna, once again, we thank you for all you have done for us.”
Inna Murent, a short, stout woman with salt-and-pepper hair severely tied back and braided, nodded her head. Kira noticed that she gripped the edges of the table no doubt a habit from a life aboard a seafaring vessel where the surface beneath her feet was never steady. “We simply followed the road the Prophets laid out for us,” she said.
Kira’s eyes automatically