Garm Bel Iblis
Commodore
Prologue:
Twelve years. It felt like a lifetime in the eyes of the people of the Federation. Winning the long-fought battle against the Dominion and their allies cost the Federation millions of lives. When the dust settled and the forced surrender was signed, the Alpha and Beta quadrants breathed a collective sigh of relief. Never before in modern times had such destruction been unleashed against the galaxy. Entire worlds were decimated, hundreds of thousands were homeless.
The death on Cardassia Prime, a slaughter ordered in the war’s twilight hours, left a billion dead and a world turned to ash. The resentment towards the Federation had never been as high on Prime as it was in the years that followed. An entire generation was coming into power that blamed not the Dominion and their Jem’Hadar soldiers, but the Federation and it’s allies for bringing their into their homes. Corat Damar ,leader of the Rebellion that fought against Dominion tyranny is a distant memory. A martyr who died to save them all, but who failed the moment Lakarian city was wiped off the surface.
Tens of thousands of Cardassian citizens rose to meet the challenges of the New Cardassia, the free and democratic society instituted by Alon Ghemor and Elim Garak.
Then the Borg came.
Seven thousand Borg ships emerged from their transpatial network deep in the Azure Nebula, wiping out the battle group and spreading to all points in the quadrant. They never reached the Cardassian border, they were stopped ten light-years from Almath, but the damage inflicted upon the Federation was never fully calculated. The official number was sixty billion casualties, but with entire planets been snuffed out, that figure had been impossible to make precise.
Seven years struggled on while the Federation tried to rebuild. Skirmishes and political infighting, along with the brief conflict with the so-called Typhon Pact faced the Federation with new challenges each day.
Meanwhile, Cardassia sat by and watched and relief shipments of food and medicine effectively stopped as they were routed to worlds like Andoria, Vulcan and the key core worlds of the Federation. This did nothing but raise the ire that Cardassia felt for their ‘friends’ in the Federation.
The “democratic reforms” turned towards a strong, militaristic voice, calling for an end to the Federation domination of Cardassian affairs. When the elections were settled, a new victor stood within the halls of state as the new Castellan. Gul Velo Madred. Formerhead of Militiary Intelligicne, Madred set Cardassia’s new course for the future.
A future of power and leadership in galactic affairs. The Third Federation-Cardassian War was at hand.
Chapter One: Embers of Defeat.
It was a day like any other day when word reached the ears of the Federation president. Alexander Kellin had been in office for six months, still picking up the pieces of the debacle of the Bacco Administration. He had nothing against the former president personally, but she’d run an erratic government, trying to lead by force rather than setting an example for the Federation government to follow. Following the Borg invasion back in ’81, her approval rating had been sky-high. Now, seven years later, she was a thankfully-forgotten politician who’d retired back to Cestus III and left the public arena for good.
Kellin quickly finished his breakfast and skimmed the morning’s intelligence report. Admiral DeSoto would be along in a few minutes for the official briefing, but Kellin like to digest the information first before it was structured by the admiralty’s point of view.
The bulleted items in bold were what had made him push the rest of his breakfast away. Before he could even wrap his mind around the potential disaster, the chime sounded.
“Mister President, Admiral DeSoto is here.”
Kellin pushed his chair away and stood. “Send him in, Crystal.”
As the wooden double doors parted, Kellin moved to greet the admiral. “Robert,” he said. “Good to see you.”
“Sir,” DeSoto said with a nod. “I assume you’ve read it?”
Kellin hefted the data slate from his desk. “Three times in fact. What do we know?”
“Nothing for certain,” DeSoto said. “We’ve got the Argus Array fired up and are in the process of realigning it into position. But the Intrepid did confirm the warp signatures. At least fifty Cardassian ships on the move towards Tor Koral.”
“Any word from our sources on the ground?”
DeSoto shook his head. “Com log’s about twelve hours from Cardassia to Earth given our assets limited resources. We should know more tonight.”
“All right,” Kellin said, signing off on the intelligence report. “Get the admiralty together and I’ll round up the brainiacs in Intelligence and Logistics. Let’s meet in main briefing at ten.”
As DeSoto turned to leave a thought came to Kellin. “And get me the ambassador. I’d like to have a word with him.”
<><><>
The entire mess began six weeks prior when a Starfleet Intelligence drone, operating within Cardassian space had picked up a strange energy flux that it was unable to identify. Once transmitted back to the eggheads at HQ, it was quickly discovered.
Isoloytic Subspace Weapons. Banned by every major power in the quadrant, subspace weapons were unpredictable weapons of mass destruction. In the past twenty years only the Son’a had used them, and when the Baku unification began, the Son’a weapons were destroyed by Starfleet.
What the drone had picked up rattled the upper echelons of the Intelligence offices.
“They’ve detonated the damned things on Uneffra,” Captain Kelso Vanick had said, slapping down the data padd on the desk of Admiral Batanides. The commander of the USS Galloway had just returned from a recon mission near the Cardassian border and had followed up on the drone’s findings. “Thirty million people are dead and the atmosphere’s been burned off.”
Batanides had reviewed the data but wasn’t convinced. It didn’t make sense. Uneffra was a Cardassian colony world. Why would they wipe out their own people?
“Religious monks,” Commander Tyler Quintero, Starfleet’s expert on Cardassian society, said at a briefing some time later. “The Uneffra colony was the central hub of the resurrection of the Oralian Way. Apparently the new Cardassian government didn’t take kindly to once again having religious beliefs ‘polluting’ the order of things.”
And that was the sticker. The new Cardassian Castellan was a man Starfleet had trifled with in the past. Legate Velo Madred. Former head of Military Intelligence before the Dominion took over, Madred was the one who got his hands dirty with prisoners of war. He’d tortured countless people in his sadistic little hole in the wall.
Batanides had field the necessary paper work to get the Federation to demand that Cardassia adhere to the Treaty of Bajor and open up their military installations for inspection.
It proved fruitless. The new leaders of the Cardassia military were former operatives of the Obsidian Order. Brilliant spymasters capable of thwarting the inspection teams and covering the trail of the weapons. Even when Ambassador Jentro traveled to Cardassia Prime to present his findings of the destruction on Uneffra, a carefully worded response was dispatched from the Cardassian leadership, indicating a rogue element of old “True Way” soldiers were trying to break the treaty and plunge the quadrant into war.
Three weeks passed until the report trickled in about the Cardassian fleet on the move.
<><><>
Elim Garak was many things. A tailor, a gardener, a spy, and now a diplomat. As Cardassian Ambassador to the Federation, the former Cardassian exile spent most of his days on Earth. The bright blue skies and the temperate weather were a constant reminder of his love of the gray warm skies of Cardassia.
On the day President Kellin received word of the Cardassian fleet’s actions, Garak had been summoned to the chief executives office.
The president didn’t mince words. Fully aware of Garak’s ability to obfuscate, Kellin issued the Federation’s policy as simply as possible.
“If your fleet occupies Tor Koral you will have broken the Treaty of Bajor. On top of that, the evidence of Isoloytic Subspace weapons used against your own citizens will be all the reason the Federation Council needs to forcibly disarm your forces.”
Kellin had had several meetings with Garak. The ambassador was a great debater, and a born diplomat with that silver tongue of his. So when Garak remained silent for several long seconds, Kellin began to worry.
“Mister President,” he said at last. “I officially request asylum within the Federation.”
<><><>
Garak’s troubles went back more than a decade. Outcast from his home and forced to live on Deep Space Nine, he longed for nothing but to return home. When that day finally came, in the final days of the war with the Dominion, Garak at last thought he had found peace. What he actually found was a planetary graveyard with the bodies of a billion souls.
He’d worked over the years to restore Cardassia’s shattered infrastructure and help rebuild a much less aggressive, arrogant people. With the election of Alon Ghemor and the ascension of a democratically elected society, Garak was heralded as the voice of change.
Eventually made ambassador to the Federation by Castellan Ghemor, Garak had helped mend the distrust between the two nations. When Madred had succeeded Ghemor and began a much more hawkish attitude towards the Federation, Garak had been publicly chastised for his words. He knew Madred, had worked with the man in his long-ago youth. And now the man who was such a thorn in the side of the Order was determined to get rid of Garak. With the developments happening now, Garak knew his life would be forfeit when he returned home.
Once again he was forced to choose exile.
<><><>
The president granted the asylum request on one condition.
“You’re going to be my appointed specialist in all things Cardassian,” he’d told Garak. “I need someone that’s been there, knows the layoff the political land, and can help me stop a war.”
Garak offered his hand to the president. “I’ll do all I can, Mister President, however I fear the time to avoid war has passed.”
As it turned out, Garak was right.
Twelve years. It felt like a lifetime in the eyes of the people of the Federation. Winning the long-fought battle against the Dominion and their allies cost the Federation millions of lives. When the dust settled and the forced surrender was signed, the Alpha and Beta quadrants breathed a collective sigh of relief. Never before in modern times had such destruction been unleashed against the galaxy. Entire worlds were decimated, hundreds of thousands were homeless.
The death on Cardassia Prime, a slaughter ordered in the war’s twilight hours, left a billion dead and a world turned to ash. The resentment towards the Federation had never been as high on Prime as it was in the years that followed. An entire generation was coming into power that blamed not the Dominion and their Jem’Hadar soldiers, but the Federation and it’s allies for bringing their into their homes. Corat Damar ,leader of the Rebellion that fought against Dominion tyranny is a distant memory. A martyr who died to save them all, but who failed the moment Lakarian city was wiped off the surface.
Tens of thousands of Cardassian citizens rose to meet the challenges of the New Cardassia, the free and democratic society instituted by Alon Ghemor and Elim Garak.
Then the Borg came.
Seven thousand Borg ships emerged from their transpatial network deep in the Azure Nebula, wiping out the battle group and spreading to all points in the quadrant. They never reached the Cardassian border, they were stopped ten light-years from Almath, but the damage inflicted upon the Federation was never fully calculated. The official number was sixty billion casualties, but with entire planets been snuffed out, that figure had been impossible to make precise.
Seven years struggled on while the Federation tried to rebuild. Skirmishes and political infighting, along with the brief conflict with the so-called Typhon Pact faced the Federation with new challenges each day.
Meanwhile, Cardassia sat by and watched and relief shipments of food and medicine effectively stopped as they were routed to worlds like Andoria, Vulcan and the key core worlds of the Federation. This did nothing but raise the ire that Cardassia felt for their ‘friends’ in the Federation.
The “democratic reforms” turned towards a strong, militaristic voice, calling for an end to the Federation domination of Cardassian affairs. When the elections were settled, a new victor stood within the halls of state as the new Castellan. Gul Velo Madred. Formerhead of Militiary Intelligicne, Madred set Cardassia’s new course for the future.
A future of power and leadership in galactic affairs. The Third Federation-Cardassian War was at hand.
Chapter One: Embers of Defeat.
It was a day like any other day when word reached the ears of the Federation president. Alexander Kellin had been in office for six months, still picking up the pieces of the debacle of the Bacco Administration. He had nothing against the former president personally, but she’d run an erratic government, trying to lead by force rather than setting an example for the Federation government to follow. Following the Borg invasion back in ’81, her approval rating had been sky-high. Now, seven years later, she was a thankfully-forgotten politician who’d retired back to Cestus III and left the public arena for good.
Kellin quickly finished his breakfast and skimmed the morning’s intelligence report. Admiral DeSoto would be along in a few minutes for the official briefing, but Kellin like to digest the information first before it was structured by the admiralty’s point of view.
The bulleted items in bold were what had made him push the rest of his breakfast away. Before he could even wrap his mind around the potential disaster, the chime sounded.
“Mister President, Admiral DeSoto is here.”
Kellin pushed his chair away and stood. “Send him in, Crystal.”
As the wooden double doors parted, Kellin moved to greet the admiral. “Robert,” he said. “Good to see you.”
“Sir,” DeSoto said with a nod. “I assume you’ve read it?”
Kellin hefted the data slate from his desk. “Three times in fact. What do we know?”
“Nothing for certain,” DeSoto said. “We’ve got the Argus Array fired up and are in the process of realigning it into position. But the Intrepid did confirm the warp signatures. At least fifty Cardassian ships on the move towards Tor Koral.”
“Any word from our sources on the ground?”
DeSoto shook his head. “Com log’s about twelve hours from Cardassia to Earth given our assets limited resources. We should know more tonight.”
“All right,” Kellin said, signing off on the intelligence report. “Get the admiralty together and I’ll round up the brainiacs in Intelligence and Logistics. Let’s meet in main briefing at ten.”
As DeSoto turned to leave a thought came to Kellin. “And get me the ambassador. I’d like to have a word with him.”
<><><>
The entire mess began six weeks prior when a Starfleet Intelligence drone, operating within Cardassian space had picked up a strange energy flux that it was unable to identify. Once transmitted back to the eggheads at HQ, it was quickly discovered.
Isoloytic Subspace Weapons. Banned by every major power in the quadrant, subspace weapons were unpredictable weapons of mass destruction. In the past twenty years only the Son’a had used them, and when the Baku unification began, the Son’a weapons were destroyed by Starfleet.
What the drone had picked up rattled the upper echelons of the Intelligence offices.
“They’ve detonated the damned things on Uneffra,” Captain Kelso Vanick had said, slapping down the data padd on the desk of Admiral Batanides. The commander of the USS Galloway had just returned from a recon mission near the Cardassian border and had followed up on the drone’s findings. “Thirty million people are dead and the atmosphere’s been burned off.”
Batanides had reviewed the data but wasn’t convinced. It didn’t make sense. Uneffra was a Cardassian colony world. Why would they wipe out their own people?
“Religious monks,” Commander Tyler Quintero, Starfleet’s expert on Cardassian society, said at a briefing some time later. “The Uneffra colony was the central hub of the resurrection of the Oralian Way. Apparently the new Cardassian government didn’t take kindly to once again having religious beliefs ‘polluting’ the order of things.”
And that was the sticker. The new Cardassian Castellan was a man Starfleet had trifled with in the past. Legate Velo Madred. Former head of Military Intelligence before the Dominion took over, Madred was the one who got his hands dirty with prisoners of war. He’d tortured countless people in his sadistic little hole in the wall.
Batanides had field the necessary paper work to get the Federation to demand that Cardassia adhere to the Treaty of Bajor and open up their military installations for inspection.
It proved fruitless. The new leaders of the Cardassia military were former operatives of the Obsidian Order. Brilliant spymasters capable of thwarting the inspection teams and covering the trail of the weapons. Even when Ambassador Jentro traveled to Cardassia Prime to present his findings of the destruction on Uneffra, a carefully worded response was dispatched from the Cardassian leadership, indicating a rogue element of old “True Way” soldiers were trying to break the treaty and plunge the quadrant into war.
Three weeks passed until the report trickled in about the Cardassian fleet on the move.
<><><>
Elim Garak was many things. A tailor, a gardener, a spy, and now a diplomat. As Cardassian Ambassador to the Federation, the former Cardassian exile spent most of his days on Earth. The bright blue skies and the temperate weather were a constant reminder of his love of the gray warm skies of Cardassia.
On the day President Kellin received word of the Cardassian fleet’s actions, Garak had been summoned to the chief executives office.
The president didn’t mince words. Fully aware of Garak’s ability to obfuscate, Kellin issued the Federation’s policy as simply as possible.
“If your fleet occupies Tor Koral you will have broken the Treaty of Bajor. On top of that, the evidence of Isoloytic Subspace weapons used against your own citizens will be all the reason the Federation Council needs to forcibly disarm your forces.”
Kellin had had several meetings with Garak. The ambassador was a great debater, and a born diplomat with that silver tongue of his. So when Garak remained silent for several long seconds, Kellin began to worry.
“Mister President,” he said at last. “I officially request asylum within the Federation.”
<><><>
Garak’s troubles went back more than a decade. Outcast from his home and forced to live on Deep Space Nine, he longed for nothing but to return home. When that day finally came, in the final days of the war with the Dominion, Garak at last thought he had found peace. What he actually found was a planetary graveyard with the bodies of a billion souls.
He’d worked over the years to restore Cardassia’s shattered infrastructure and help rebuild a much less aggressive, arrogant people. With the election of Alon Ghemor and the ascension of a democratically elected society, Garak was heralded as the voice of change.
Eventually made ambassador to the Federation by Castellan Ghemor, Garak had helped mend the distrust between the two nations. When Madred had succeeded Ghemor and began a much more hawkish attitude towards the Federation, Garak had been publicly chastised for his words. He knew Madred, had worked with the man in his long-ago youth. And now the man who was such a thorn in the side of the Order was determined to get rid of Garak. With the developments happening now, Garak knew his life would be forfeit when he returned home.
Once again he was forced to choose exile.
<><><>
The president granted the asylum request on one condition.
“You’re going to be my appointed specialist in all things Cardassian,” he’d told Garak. “I need someone that’s been there, knows the layoff the political land, and can help me stop a war.”
Garak offered his hand to the president. “I’ll do all I can, Mister President, however I fear the time to avoid war has passed.”
As it turned out, Garak was right.
Good so far-and I assume this is gonna be a long one....
