Taking Wing - Michael A. Martin [58]
Dakal was familiar with the human expression; he’d heard it at the Academy. “Respectfully, sir, you should have discussed the matter with me privately rather than ambush me as you did.”
Jaza smiled. “The point was to have you deal with it publicly, Cadet.” The Bajoran gestured expansively at the rest of the mess hall. “Look around you, Dakal. Do you really think the people who choose this life are inclined to judge you based on your species? They’re more interested in you than in your accidental relationship to a longtime foe of the Federation. And as you saw during the meal, we’re certainly capable of separating whatever lingering ill feelings we may have about the Cardassian Union from our interest in Cardassian culture, or in one Zurin Dakal.
“But I think you know that, or you’d never have enrolled in Starfleet Academy in the first place. Am I wrong?”
Dakal considered Jaza’s words, reflecting on the long road he had traveled from the refugee camps on the neutral planet Lejonis, the world to which he, together with his parents and siblings, as well as scores of other families, had fled after they had been perilously smuggled off Cardassia Prime five years prior, during the height of the Dominion occupation there. Raised in a culture that revered duty to the state above all other virtues, even familial devotion, leaving Cardassia behind at such a difficult time, culminating in the carnage that had marked the war’s costly end, had felt conflictingly like both treason and patriotism to the refugees on Lejonis. Treason because they had, in a very real sense, turned their backs on their homeworld during her darkest hour; patriotism because the planet of their birth had been distorted by corrupt opportunists and alien invaders almost beyond recognition. But dissidents and conscientious objectors had never fared well on Prime, even in the best of times, so the refugees on Lejonis had resolved to be patient, to preserve and stay true to the values and ideals that had first made Cardassia strong, in the hope that, one day, they would make her strong again.
Cardassia’s billion dead at the war’s end had shaken that hope among the refugees, but hadn’t extinguished it. Most of the families soon returned home to help restore their fallen civilization any way they could. But a small number—young Zurin Dakal among them—had reasoned that there was much good that could come from showing the rest of the galaxy a Cardassian face different from the one that had brought so much pain to the Alpha Quadrant. Those individuals—mostly academicians and artisans of one sort or another—had resettled on worlds throughout the Federation, teaching at universities, joining organizations devoted to the arts, or helping with the postwar rebuilding efforts. Dakal alone had elected to join Starfleet, though he had hoped others of his kind would eventually follow. In all but name those self-exiled Cardassians were Prime’s cultural ambassadors, hoping in some small way to begin healing a rift that they believed had grown too wide and too deep for far too long.
Perhaps Jaza is right, Dakal thought, and these last four years as a solitary Cardassian among all these aliens have made me forget the reasons I chose Starfleet. Perhaps I should not be reluctant to share my heritage with my shipmates, or to celebrate it. How better to prove my fears false? Or to confront any fears I may encounter?
“No, Commander, you aren’t wrong,” Dakal said. “In fact, you’ve helped me to remember a few things I should not have forgotten. Thank you, not just for your interest, but for inviting me to this evening’s Blue Table.”
Jaza smiled again. “It’s an open invitation, Cadet. Join us any time.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Dakal, suddenly experiencing a sense of home for the first time since separating from his family. Perhaps trust can turn worlds as well.
As he entered deck seven’s multipurpose mess hall–cum–recreation center, Ranul Keru tried to tamp down his mounting worries. For reasons he had yet to identify,