Cathedral by Michael Mangels (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

“I think we need to talk,” he said as he righted her glass and filled it again, emptying the bottle in the process.

Ro smiled. “Later,” she said, and held out her hand to him. “Dance with me.”

Quark felt a grin spreading across his face and took Laren’s hand. They stepped onto the dance floor together.

Seated behind the large desk in the station commander’s office, Kira didn’t bother to look up from the security report she had been reading until after the door had hissed open and admitted her latest visitor.

She was surprised to see Colonel Lenaris Holem—no, she corrected herself, General Lenaris Holem—striding toward her desk.

The general’s broad smile belied his mock-chiding tone. “Working this late is a bad habit, Colonel.”

“Occupational hazard,” she said, returning the smile. “I’m going to have a very busy day tomorrow.” Tossing the padd aside, she rose from her chair in deference to Lenaris’s superior rank.

His lips curled in a good-natured scowl. “Please. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing colonels leaping to attention in my presence. Especially not you.”

Kira felt her own smile increase in wattage. She had always genuinely liked the large, blunt-featured Militia officer. “Well, if you won’t take a salute, then I hope you’ll accept my congratulations on your promotion.”

He touched the month-old general’s pin on the collar of his gray uniform tunic, as though he thought a Vayan hornfly had just lit there. Kira knew that Lenaris had been promoted from colonel to general in recognition of his accomplishments as commander of the Lamnak fleet during the evacuation of Europa Nova, a non-Federation Earth colony whose population had been threatened by theta radiation a few months earlier. It also hadn’t escaped her notice that she, the overall commander of that extremely complex mission, had received no promotions or commendations whatsoever.

So goes Militia politics, she thought. For the Attainted.

But she knew that Lenaris wasn’t responsible for her shabby treatment, either at the hands of Yevir Linjarin’s plurality in the Vedek Assembly, or from his sympathizers within the Bajoran Militia. She knew that both groups bore little love for her after her official excommunication from the mainstream of Bajor’s religious life. Yet, on the eve of the planet’s entry into the Federation, neither group seemed able to muster sufficient courage to fire her on purely religious grounds.

Still, Lenaris’s promotion served as a depressing reminder to her of how far she had fallen in the eyes of so many influential Bajorans.

“What can I do for you?” she asked, gesturing toward the sofa in the meeting area of her office. She moved over to the replicator, from which she extracted two cups of alva nut tea, the general’s favorite beverage. “And why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”

“I didn’t call ahead,” said the general as he sat, “in case you already knew the answer to your first question. You might have found some convenient excuse not to see me.”

She handed one of the two steaming mugs to Lenaris. “My door is always open to you, Holem. You know that.”

“I do. And I’m grateful for it.” He took a careful sip of the hot, fragrant liquid. Settling back into the sofa, he said, “You know, I nearly turned down this promotion. After Europa Nova, it felt like the High Command was deliberately snubbing you by offering these general’s bars to me.”

“Turning down a promotion wouldn’t have made the Militia any nicer to me, Holem. Besides, you’ve earned it many times over.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know about that. But before I said anything foolish, I realized that I’d have a better chance of changing the attitudes of the old-guard brass as a general than I would have had as a colonel.”

“Maybe,” she said, eager to see where he was headed.

“And that brings me to the reason for my visit,” he continued, gazing directly into her eyes over the top of his mug. “Ten days ago I decided to follow the path of Ohalu. I have committed my life to the tenets of Ohalu’s Truthseekers, and to the Ohalavaru Way.”

Kira nodded. She had heard the rumors of grumblings from certain highly placed Bajorans about Yevir’s heavy-handedness. And that the authors of some of these complaints had, perhaps out of sheer frustration, thrown their support behind the Ohalavaru, the group whose formation Kira had apparently inspired by disseminating Ohalu’s prophecies a few months back—an action that had led directly to her Attainder.

“It’s not exactly a secret,” Kira said. Beginning to wonder when the general intended to make his point, she sipped slowly at the contents of her mug.

“You should join us,” Lenaris said.

Kira nearly spit her tea across the room. “What?!”

He appeared unmoved by her reaction. “It was your actions that catalyzed the Ohalavaru movement. And your Attainder that gave it drive and purpose.”

Lenaris’s reasoning sounded insane to Kira’s ears. “My actions drove a wedge into the Bajoran faith.”

He scowled. “That’s Yevir and his cronies talking. I think Kira Nerys knows better. Besides, are you really prepared to spend years on your knees begging the forgiveness of Yevir and his toadies?”

She felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. “I never asked for any forgiveness. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Exactly. I’m glad you’re prepared to admit that you don’t have to play their game. You have nothing to lose by joining us and throwing your public support behind Vedek Solis, our nominee for the kaiship.”

Kira knew Solis well and liked him quite a lot. A week ago, she had been somewhat surprised by the news that Solis had become the nominal Ohalavaru leader. His sincerity and goodwill could never be called into question; he had always worked hard for the benefit of the Bajoran people, during and after the Cardassian Occupation. Kira would never forget the quarrel she had had with Odo more than a year earlier, after the constable had briefly detained Solis for conducting charitable fund-raising activities aboard the station without a permit. The vedek’s