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

actions had brought some quick, desperately needed relief to Bajoran flood victims. Like Odo, the man she had fallen in love with, Solis usually wasn’t one to place the niceties of paperwork ahead of the urgent needs of people.

But she saw a huge flaw in the general’s logic, and didn’t hesitate to bring it up. “I’m Attainted. I’d be useless to you.”

“Stop listening to the orthodoxy’s propaganda,” he said, military steel flashing behind his voice. “You obviously don’t have a clear picture of how much general discontent there is on Bajor about your Attainder.”

Or about how thoroughly I’ve fractured my people’s faith, she thought, a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Attainted or not, you’re considered a hero by many people,” Lenaris continued. “A hero in war and a hero in peace. And now you can be a hero in a profound cultural struggle.”

She felt anger warm her cheeks. “I never wanted to be anybody’s hero. And I’m not going to be a religious symbol. That’s Yevir’s game.”

He sighed. “Nerys, have you ever had the pleasure of meeting Li Nalas?”

“Of course I have,” she said, frowning as she recalled the day the brave symbol of the resistance was murdered by other men bent on remaking Bajor in their own image. “You know that. We’ve both met him.”

“So we both know that we sometimes aren’t given a choice in these matters.”

Kira was incredulous. “You’re saying it’s my destiny to support the Ohalavaru?”

“Call it what you will,” he said, shrugging. “But we both know that your support would greatly influence whether or not Solis becomes the next kai. Unless you prefer to see Yevir in that position. Remember, he’s a relatively young man. He could be kai for the rest of your life.”

Kira couldn’t dispute the general on most of these points. But it all still felt fundamentally wrong to her.

After taking a long, silent moment to compose her thoughts, she said, “I simply can’t risk dividing Bajor any further. Especially not so close to Bajor’s official entry into the Federation. Until Bajor’s admission, the Emissary’s work here is incomplete.”

It was Lenaris’s turn to appear incredulous. “The Emissary? Benjamin Sisko. Nerys, I have nothing but respect for your former commander, but he is part of the past. You should embrace the future instead.”

“That’s precisely what I’m trying to do, Holem. If the Ohalavaru would simply stand back, be objective, and try to look at the bigger political picture, they might be able to see that now isn’t the best time to open up political rifts. Surely Vedek Solis can understand that.”

“It was Vedek Solis who asked me to speak with you today.”

Kira let out a weary sigh. “Has either of you considered the Bajor–Cardassia talks?”

“As little as possible,” he said with another shrug. “What about them?”

“The talks are stalled at the moment. What chance will we have of restarting them if we’re preoccupied with our own religious squabbles?”

Lenaris was clearly unmoved. “If the talks with Cardassia are stalled, then you can rest assured that the cause is Cardassian intransigence. Nothing that’s happening on Bajor now or in the future will change that one way or the other.”

But Kira knew better. She had already spoken at length about this very topic with Shakaar. And as far as she was concerned, the first minister could make a nice living conducting master classes in intransigence.

“General, I’d like you to speak to Solis for me,” Kira said after another lengthy pause. “Ask him to be a little gentler in pushing the Ohalavaru agenda. At least until the current business with the Federation and Cardassia is resolved. There really is a bigger picture to consider here, Holem. Bigger than Solis. Bigger than Yevir. And certainly bigger than either of us.”

Lenaris rose and set his empty cup on her desk. He looked sad, deflated. “You’ve changed, Nerys.”

She bristled. “Yes. I’ve become a bit wiser about doing what’s right for my people.”

“You worry about dividing Bajor,” he said with a bitter laugh. “But that sinoraptor’s already jumped the fence. That happened the moment you uploaded Ohalu’s suppressed prophecies onto the Bajoran comnet. The only question we ought to be asking now is how best to manage that division.”

“I’ll leave that to wiser heads than mine, thank you.”

“Whose heads?” Lenaris walked over to the painting that hung on her wall, idly examining it for a moment before turning back to her. “Yevir’s? Vedek Scio’s? Vedek Eran’s? The other hard-liners? This ‘division’ you’re so frightened of might actually be the beginning of Bajor’s future unity, Nerys. The start of a transformation into something with more vision than the current orthodoxy has. Something truer to the plans of the Prophets.”

Kira’s thoughts wandered back to the pivotal battles she had fought on behalf of the ancient Bajora after she had been thrown thirty millennia into her planet’s past. She hadn’t hesitated to get involved then. But grappling in the same way with the future seemed an altogether different matter.

“Let history make those decisions,” she said. “Not me.”

His voice rose in both passion and volume. “Nerys, you are history. Wasn’t it you who introduced us to Ohalu’s truth after the vedeks tried to destroy it? Wasn’t it you who created this ‘division’ in the first place?”

“I’m not proud of it. I just did what had to be done to let our people make up their own minds about their faith. To keep Yevir from short-circuiting those decisions by suppressing Ohalu’s prophecies.”

A triumphant smile spread slowly across the general’s face. “You acted to defend prophecies which have turned out to be utterly, perfectly correct. Not just some of them. All of them, Nerys. Given those facts, how could Ohalu’s writings be anything but the inspired words of the Prophets? And isn’t your first duty to them?”

Kira couldn’t avoid the ring of truth his words carried. How easy it would be to simply go along. To use the Ohalavaru as a weapon against Yevir and his ilk. But at what cost to Bajor’s future? Other than her Orb