The Brave and the Bold Book Two - Keith R. A. DeCandido [1]
A group of (now former) Federation citizens of the colonies, as well as a number of Starfleet personnel sympathetic to the cause, formed a group called the Maquis. Tharia had never been too clear on the etymology of the term, only that it was the same name as a similar group in Earth’s pre-spaceflight days. It was also derived from one of Earth’s secondary languages, so it was pronounced “mah-kee” rather than “may-kwiss,” as Tharia had initially assumed.
Before the bomb struck his home, Tharia had been one of the more outspoken opponents of the Maquis. He didn’t think their formation would gain the colonists anything but trouble. True, the Cardassians weren’t exactly living up to their side of the bargain—hounding non-Cardassians, occasionally sending military ships into the Demilitarized Zone—but Tharia didn’t see that as a reason to become terrorists.
The governing body of Beaulieu’s had held an open forum in the community center on the subject of the Maquis, and Tharia had spoken against them there. “Sentient beings should be able to reason out their problems without having to resort to mindless violence,” he had said. “Effecting change from behind a phaser bank is no true change, simply an imposition of will.”
When someone in the audience had pointed out that negotiation was how they got into this mess in the first place, Tharia had said, “One poor example does not invalidate the method. And one does not compound an error by making a bigger one.”
Tharia had been so passionate at that open forum that tears came to his eyes, and all three of his mates congratulated him on his rhetorical skills.
Two months later, all three were dead, their home destroyed by a bomb of Cardassian make.
Three months later, Tharia sold the land on which the remains of their house stood to an Yridian developer who had been making overtures to them for over a year.
Four months later, he was part of a Maquis cell led by an Earther named Chakotay.
Five months later, he killed his first Cardassian, during a raid on a supply depot.
Tharia hugged himself in the bitter cold that greeted him at the cave mouth. In the two hours since the crash, the temperature had dropped by at least twenty degrees.
He hadn’t cared what the name of the planet was, but now he found himself desiring to know it so he could avoid it in the future. He hadn’t paid much attention when they crashed—he was more concerned with getting under cover—but now that he had a chance to look around, he realized that this place was what Tom Paris would have termed a dump.
When Thori in Her Greatness created this particular world, Tharia observed, She obviously was having a bad day. It was as if She couldn’t be bothered to put together a proper ecosystem, so She tossed a few rocks and bushes around a flat, gray surface and hoped no one would notice. The sky was equally gray, and a limp wind blew, barely disturbing the minimal vegetation. Tharia’s antennae quivered at—something, he couldn’t tell what, exactly. All he knew for sure was that this world was dull and gray and he didn’t want to be here any longer than he had to.
As Tharia walked across that hard, flat ground, he found no animal life, and the plant life was poisonous to all of them. Ironically, the plants were edible for Bolians. Obviously, he thought with irritation, the wrong person died in the shuttle crash.
After ten minutes, he gave up. His tricorder—a thirty-year-old