Star Trek: 24th Century Crossover - 014 - The Fall - 02 - The Crimson Shadow by Una Mccormack

Author:Una Mccormack [Mccormack, Una]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781476722207
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2013-09-24T07:00:00+00:00

Seven

Julian,

Have you ever wondered how you will be remembered? I’ve told you how, as a boy, I helped my father-uncle Tolan tend the memorial grounds to our great and good. How I longed that one day a great statue would be built in my memory, to honor me, and to be a physical symbol of all that I had achieved on Cardassia’s account. Latterly, I believed that the alliance might be that. In many ways, I’m still that same boy at heart.

But my reason tells me that none of us are remembered in the end. All our labors are ultimately fruitless. In the end, we’re all ashes and dust.

Garak

—not sent—

* * *

A warm wind, blowing up from the coast and through the city, had cleared away some of the haze, and the sky, bright yellow and startling, could now be seen. But anyone who had spent some time living in the Cardassian capital could have told you what this meant. From Elim Garak to Arati Mhevet, from Commander Margaret Fry up to the castellan herself—they all knew what the last warm wind of the year foretold. Later today the thunder would start: low, dry rumbles without rain. The night would be stifling, horribly hot, and so would most of the day after. Then the rain would come: relentless and red.

But for the moment, you could loosen your mask, and breathe, and be outside. It was a timely respite, allowing the people of the city to make their way toward the place where, once, the old memorial grounds had stood at the heart of the Tarlak sector. Nothing remained of these old triumphal markers that Elim Garak had tended as a boy: great towering monoliths commemorating the long line of guls and legates whose ambitions had brought Cardassia to her knees. Now there was only a single tall stone there, black as obsidian, pointing upward toward the sky like a finger lifted in censure or warning.

“Is this a monument to the particular memory of anyone?” Picard asked Fry, in a low voice.

They were sitting together on a small dais that had been raised near the stone. On Picard’s left side sat Garak and, beyond him, was the castellan. Various other dignitaries sat in the rows behind them: senior Federation figures from HARF and the embassy; other Starfleet personnel; not to mention members of the Cardassian Assembly and numerous other local officials. Picard had not failed to spot Evek Temet, sitting near the back. Altogether, about fifty people were seated here, but in the open ground beyond the black stone, many more thousands had gathered to pay their respects to the dead president of another civilization.

“No,” said Fry. “There’s a separate monument to Corat Damar over by what was once the Veteran’s Bridge, and there’s a stone garden to remember Alon Ghemor over by the new Assembly. But I don’t think that this obelisk was dedicated to a particular figure.”

“It is intended as a cenotaph in the truest sense, Captain,” Garak said.

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