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In the beginning, my people were primitive, uncultured, living off the wasted desert and the meager land. Each year the harvest would come, more bare than the year before. We would gather what we were able, ration our food, and attempt to survive.
Then the Spirits came, light-skinned creatures of magic. They brought secrets, whispered thoughts of how better to build. For many hundreds of years we followed their path. The harvests were stronger, and we gathered and stored them and thrived. Universities grew, and we of Cardassia began to wonder.
Blue-eyed children are lucky, they used to say, children of the Spirits. We are thought to be wise, and to excel in discovery. Many had ceased to believe in the Spirits by the time my great-grandmother was born. But she was blue-eyed, and a believer, and a scientist, and she built the first ships that brought us to Bajor.
I have seen the crash site, and the remnants of the flimsy Bajoran sail-ship. I have walked on their planet, and I have made it my own. These primitive Bajorans were Spirits to our more primitive people, eight hundred years ago. The Prophets are their gods, by which we of Cardassia were not chosen.
*
In the ruins of burning Terok Nor, Major Kira Nerys ran from room to room, searching for the remnant of Cardassians. All were gone. The Prefect's office loomed over the station. Kira knew it was foolish for her to try to secure it alone, but she wanted it, and in the elation of battle had had enough of planning. She wanted to tower over this place, over this Cardassian-built Prophets-damned piece of hell.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark, and another for her to recognize Gul Dukat, the Prefect himself, still seated with his hands folded behind his desk.
"My phaser is set on kill," Kira said. "The station is full of Bajoran militia. Whatever you say or do to me, you won't leave here alive."
"I have no intention of harming you." Dukat stood up, pointedly leaving his weapon untouched on his desk. He picked up a short stack of papers, and walked around the desk, and handed them to Kira. "I have remained simply to surrender the station to you."
Dukat was close, too close, and Kira remembered his hands on her the last time she was in the station. "Put those down," she said, gesturing with her head at the papers, keeping her phaser pointed between Dukat's eyes. "You...surrender," she repeated. It suddenly seemed unnecessary to back away.
"In time," Dukat said, "I will take back everything that I have lost. Everything. But for now, I surrender. Everything that I have, everything that I am belongs to you."
"Surrender." Her face twisted as she enjoyed the word. He spread his hands, open and empty. The doors to the office had swung closed, leaving them alone together, and she exulted in the knowledge that this was possible.
"I surrender," he said.
She moved still closer, until they almost touched, jamming her phaser into the base of his neck. In his eyes there was an absence of fear, and she smiled.
*
I have loved three women in my life, all Bajoran. The first two tried to kill me. The third will succeed. It is for this that I love her. Nerys would never trade her hatred for food and comfort like her mother, nor allow a child's love to overwhelm antagonism like my beloved Naprem. My Nerys will destroy me until I am destroyed, and the clear flame of her hatred is brighter than any love that I have ever known.
I have stood on the face of Bajor, and I have conquered it. I have watched strip mines take the resources from this planet. I have given orders, and watched thousands slain. I have bled Bajor's blood into my hands, and I have cast it to the stars.
A man will give many things for the Spirits he serves. His life. His soul. His virtue. His family. His freedom. And, at last, himself.
*
"You surrender," Kira snarled. She brought her knee up, connecting with Dukat's groin. As he doubled over, she hit him hard, across the neck, sprawling him flat on his back across the floor. "You surrender. Tell that to the victims at Gallitep. Tell that to the people you killed." She kicked him, hard, in the side. He did not move or flinch, and his hands remained open.
She fired a shot, searing a hole into the desk behind him. "What does it take to get to you?"
"You already have," he said.
She kicked him again, this time in the head. She watched a line of blood trickle from his nose across his cheek. "What do you want from me?" she asked.
"To surrender," he said. "To you."
She knelt down beside him, keeping her phaser ready. She touched the alien blood on his face, and brought it to her lips. It was musky, and sweet. "This is what you wanted?" she asked.
"Always," he said.
His closeness, his weakness made her giddy. She shoved her phaser back under his chin. "Take off your armor," she said.
*
The Orbs mock me, each one that I have found. They show me only a Bajoran ship, sail-powered, on its way between the stars. Then the landing, and the Bajoran women who would be our Spirits, and our gods. I watch them walk among the ignorant, primitive Cardassians, teaching them technology in the form of magic. I see their half-breed children, gray-skinned and blue-eyed.
I search the image for a mystery, for something beyond the Bajorans, something worthy of worship. But all I see is the red-haired Bajoran woman who leads them, and the only mystery is how beautiful I find her, though I cannot see her face. She is like my Nerys, perhaps: proud, angry, generous and not kind. How she must have hated us, as she gave us science we could not understand. How she must have despised our worship. How contemptuous she must have been, when we named her a god.
*
Kira supposed it was her right. She had seen Cardassians violate captive Bajorans, male and female alike. And nothing was too wrong for this man. She kicked Dukat again, enjoying the impact of her boot on his exposed stomach.
"I accept this," Dukat said, winded but still clear. "I have surrendered to you."
"Shut up!" Kira said, and hit him with the back of her hand across his face. She watched as he clenched his jaw so as not to respond, or flinch, or turn aside. Good. Then she straddled him, and sat down.
His body was hard under her, as hard as his armor. It felt right to want him like this, helpless under her, powerless, naked, his station gone, his command hers, her phaser inches from taking his life. His chest was warm to her touch, and his breath was ragged, and she laughed.
"I..." Dukat began.
Kira hit him again. "Be quiet," she said, and grinned. With one hand she rearranged her clothing. Then she lowered herself on to him, taking him inside her completely.
*
I was born a blue-eyed child, lucky, a child of Spirits. A half-breed, a part-Bajoran, an abomination that should have been killed at birth. Or never conceived. We are a spacefaring people now, and know the truth. As a child I would walk around the crash site, our place of devotion and shame, and I would know what I am. Nothing remais in which to believe. Our gods have proven false, and there is nothing left.
There is a chosen people on Bajor, a people whose gods speak to them and love them. They worship gods who live, and are strong, and sustain those who worship them. My god is a primitive red-haired woman, who worships a god by whom I am not chosen.
*
The pleasure of having him inside her was almost too much to bear. Kira had fucked Cardassians before, had not been able to avoid it in her years in the resistance. She had never had one spread out naked beneath her, helpless, her phaser on his chest. When he raised a hand to touch her she slapped it away, and drove herself harder down on him. This once-powerful man, now used for her pleasure. It only surprised her, the look on his face, like the beginnings of joy.
As she neared climax, for a moment it felt right, like nothing in the universe could possibly make more sense than having Dukat joined to her. For a moment, and she could not say why, she felt the joy they shared, the exultation of defeat and victory. She clenched around him and threw her head back with an exuberant laugh. She felt his answering laugh in his chest and in her loins. She felt his pleasure as it joined hers, until she collapsed, bending her head, placing her cheek next to the untouched phaser on his chest.
As she relaxed, she felt his hands grab her waist. She moved to push them away but he held on, and before she could reach her phaser he flipped her over. Their legs were still entwined, and he loomed above her, frightening and beautiful. "Never forget that you and I are not different," he said.
*
Bajor was a backwards planet when we came to it, the home of a simple farming people. We have brought you into the space age and brought you the stars. It has taken murder and death, conquest and massacre, strip-mines and prison camps, for us to do to you what you once did to Cardassia, but we have done it.
You are my god, and I shall be yours, a god of creation and destruction. The gifts I bring from heaven are cruel gifts, and I am not kind. You will take your place in the galaxy, and you will curse my name.
We are fire bringers, Kira Nerys, you and I. You have created me and I have created you. You will destroy me and I will destroy you. You will cast me into the pit, and you will follow me there, and between us there will never be peace.