Was that the real reason I found life here unbearable after the war?she wondered. Had the scope of Bajor’s unique cultural identity, restored to fullness in the aftermath of the Occupation, so overwhelmed her that she felt like an alien among her own kind?
Now, as she walked down one of the city’s main streets, the weight of Ashalla’s vast memory bore down on her again. Except that this time it seemed to lessen as Ro came closer to her destination, until she realized that this district must be one of those that had been completely rebuilt in the years following the Occupation. Where most of the city was defined by structures so ancient it was easy to think of them as eternal, this part of Ashalla showed little of Bajor’s past. Mostly it was new buildings, although several had been built in a style clearly designed to evoke what had been lost here. To Ro, it made the losses that much more tragic.
It had been Vaughn’s idea that they should meet in this part of town. He had finished early for the day at the evaluation center, and said he had accepted an offer to be given a tour of the Tanin Memorial. The commander hadn’t elaborated, but Ro had assumed that it was one of the dozens of monuments across the planet honoring the fallen of the Occupation. As she drew closer to the site, however, she learned by way of the signage leading toward the memorial that it had been created to honor a single man, a vedek who died here some years ago, just after the Occupation ended. There was no statue, no great spire or majestic abstract sculpture. Just a single broken column, apparently salvaged from an older structure, standing in the midst of a meditation garden.
The other thing Vaughn had neglected to mention was who his tour guide was.
She spotted them from across the street, strolling together along one of several flower-lined paths that snaked through the memorial: Vaughn, his hands clasped behind his back, walking alongside Opaka Sulan.
The former kai of Bajor, her short, unadorned gray hair catching the midmorning light, wore none of trappings of her old office. Dressed instead in the simple vestments of a monk, without the traditional hood, Opaka projected a serenity that was striking. She wore a pleasant smile, one that Ro thought was the most genuine she’d ever seen.
Vaughn, for his part, a head taller than the stout woman beside him, seemed to have his attention completely focused on whatever conversation they were having. At one point, he gestured inquiringly at a bed of esaniflowers along their path. Opaka stopped and stooped to cup one delicate white blossom in her right hand, looking up at Vaughn as she answered whatever question he had asked. Vaughn seemed delighted, and freed one hand from behind his back to help her respectfully to her feet. Then the hand disappeared again, and the two resumed their stroll in comfortable silence. Ro had heard that the commander had come to value Opaka’s friendship a great deal since the Defianthad returned from the Gamma Quadrant. It appeared that the ex-kai reciprocated the sentiment.
Ro caught up to the pair, but had to clear her throat to get their attention. They looked up. “Lieutenant!” Vaughn said. “There you are.”
“Commander, Ranjen,” Ro said, remembering that Opaka had eschewed various lofty titles she’d been offered since her return to Bajor, finally accepting a more humble one that spoke to her only current vocation: that of a monk engaged in theological study.
Use of the title seemed to please Opaka. She smiled warmly at Ro. “It is good to see you again, Lieutenant.”
“Likewise,” Ro said. For all her skepticism of the Bajoran religion, Ro liked Opaka. As kai, she’d given people courage and hope during the Occupation, and her nearly seven years in the Gamma Quadrant seemed to have cultivated that characteristic. Her soft-spoken assurances that Bajorans need not fear to explore their beliefs as individuals had gone a long way to defusing the schism created by the Vedek Assembly’s mishandling of the Ohalu prophecies, which had long been suppressed as heretical.
Vaughn looked around at the memorial appreciatively. “It’s quite moving, isn’t it? When Sulan offered to show me this place, I wasn’t prepared for the tranquility it evoked.”
Ro looked around. It was all right, she supposed. The garden was certainly lovely, but she always became restless in such places. She’d never been the meditative type, and she suspected that she simply lacked the sensibility to appreciate the memorial properly.
Something on the ruined pillar caught her attention: a partial engraving of a Bajoran glyph in the broken stone, still legible. “Was this originally the site of the Taluno Library?”
Opaka nodded. “It was little more than an empty relic by the end of the Occupation, kept afterward out of a desire to preserve as much of Bajor’s past as possible. Not long after the Gates of the Celestial Temple were opened, my friend Tanin Prem, a vedek, lost his life here when a bomb left over from the struggle against the Cardassians detonated, destroying what remained of the building.” She gazed wistfully at the column. “This memorial was just being started when the Prophets called for me to leave Bajor. I’m glad to see how beautifully it turned out. Prem would have enjoyed such a place.”
After a moment, Vaughn said, “Sulan, I must be going. But I want to thank you for a most enjoyable time. I look forward to speaking with you again.”
Opaka inclined her head. “As do I, Elias. Be well. Good day, Lieutenant.”
“And to you, Ranjen,” Ro said.
Leaving Opaka to contemplate her lost friend, Ro and Vaughn made their way in silence across the plaza that separated the memorial from a large park on the other side. As they started to cross a gently sloping meadow, Ro saw dozens of people, mostly Bajorans but a few offworld visitors as well, enjoying the mild summer day. To Ro’s surprise, the commander steered them toward a delicately curved S-shaped bench near a copse of trees overlooking the meadow. Vaughn leaned back and took in the view, watching a group of children working to get an elaborate kite aloft. In the distance, the great copper dome of the Shikina Monastery crowned the hill that rose up from the trees surrounding the park.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Vaughn said. “But it’s such a pleasant day, it seems a shame to waste it in a dreary office, or aboard a runabout.”
“No, it’s quite all right, sir. This is fine.”
“You come from a remarkable world, Lieutenant,” the commander went on, his eyes never leaving the scene before him. “The more I experience Bajor, the more I understand Captain Sisko’s feelings toward it.”
“I’m starting to learn a few things about it myself,” Ro admitted.
Vaughn nodded, then got down to business. “You have a report for me?”
“Yes, sir,” Ro said. She keyed open a file on her padd while she spoke. “I have the current figures on Starfleet’s absorption of Militia personnel.”
“Proceed.”
“Close to one hundred ninety thousand officers and enlisted personnel in all Militia divisions have submitted transfer applications for Starfleet service. We believe the rush has peaked, and that the numbers will taper off over the next few weeks. Civilian inquiries into enlistment and Academy enrollment have already exceeded the mandatory cap.”
“Final estimates?”
“We expect one-quarter million total applications for direct transfer. Two hundred thousand of these will likely sail through, although ninety-five percent of those are expected to require three to six months of retraining and reorientation. Current projections are that ten percent of the remaining direct transfers will be officers. Starfleet enlistment and Academy enrollment are expected to max out with ten thousand new recruits each.”
Vaughn stroked his beard, working through the numbers. “It sounds like I’ll need to meet with something like a thousand duty-ready officers.”