“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 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 destinyto 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.”
“Whoseheads?” 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 arehistory. 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?”