Gordon Gross
The sweet, pungent odor of kanar filled his nostrils as he took a breath and held it. He could hear his heart racing; its pounding echoed in his ears.
A tiny finger of illumination from the hall wormed its way into the closet and, eventually, through the seam of the false wall which hid him. Heavy footsteps marched up to the closet and stopped, cutting off the light.
Now completely in the dark, Sakal pushed himself back against the wall of the crawl space, hugging his knees to his chest and concentrating on the smell of kanar. He closed his eyes. Kanar was the smell of his father.
“Perfume of the Dominion,” his father had said when his mother complained. “It covers the stink.”
“Damar!” his mother had hissed.
His father only shook his head and refilled his glass.
Of course it wasn’t really his father’s smell. Sakal and his mother had fled from their home to Reykor Saneel’s residence less than a week ago. And Saneel liked kanar more than Sakal liked larish pie.
It was Saneel’s crawl space in which he hid. The smell of kanar was hers, not his father’s.
More footsteps, but the light had not returned. He could hear the shuffling of clothes as the closet was quickly rummaged.
Sakal squeezed his eyes tighter and reached into his pocket to hold his father’s medal. The sharp edge jabbed under his fingernail, but Sakal caught his yelp before it escaped. He stuck his injured finger in his mouth to check for blood. A little yamok sauce, but no salt of blood. His lungs filled with a careful breath of relief.
“The Jem’Hadar are animals, Niala,” Sakal’s father had said to his mother after they thought he’d gone to bed. “Animals. They’re bred for nothing but battle. They can track a blooded enemy by smell over a kilometer away. They care nothing for family. They care only for their Founder masters and the Vorta lackeys.”
Sakal couldn’t hear his mother’s soft response.
“How can we fight them?” his father despaired. “How can we prevail against such odds?”
“I have faith in you, Damar” his mother had said in a clear, calm voice. “If anyone can return the Cardassian Empire to its former strength, it is you.”
If the Jem’Hadar could track a man by the smell of his blood, would they be able to hear his breathing? The sound of his heart beating? Could they smell his fear? The noise in the closet stopped. Footsteps resumed, headed away down the hall.
“Panic kills,” he heard the beginning of his father’s lecture to new recruits. He repeated the words silently until his heart slowed.
Carefully, Sakal slipped his hand back into his pocket. This time he touched the starburst medal without incident. He concentrated on remembering the holo print of the presentation ceremony that had taken place before his birth. The holo stood between those of his parents’ wedding and his parents on the day of his own naming on the small table near the front door.
In his mind’s eye he saw Gul Dukat frozen in a salute. He knew that his father was much younger then, but he could only picture his father as he remembered him now. His father stood proud, the star-burst medal glinting on his broad chest.
The footsteps grew loud again, seeming to move away from the closet. Maybe they’d leave. Sakal rubbed the line of one of the rays on the starburst and then tried without success to decipher the raised bumps of the words that circled the sun by touch. But his father had trained him to recognize sounds, not textures.
“Concentrate, Sakal.”
“I am, Father, but they all sound alike.”
“They sound nothing alike,” his father insisted. “Listen more carefully.”
Sakal looked out over the yard trying to see which Regova it was in the tree singing. Suddenly, two hands covered his eyes, blocking his sight. He tried to struggle but was greeted only with the sound of his father’s laughter.
“No, Sakal,” his father said. “Relax. Listen without looking.”
Sakal stopped struggling and started to listen. The bird trilled again.
“Now, which bird was that? The male or female?”
Sakal thought before answering. “The male.”
“Yes!” The hands came away, and his father spun him around to hug him. “You see? When you concentrate, you can do it!”
Sakal laughed and hugged his father back.
“What are the two of you up to out there?” His mother joined them on the porch, and the three of them sat listening to the Regova and basking in the setting sun.
The air in the hiding space had grown warm. Sakal’s head sagged forward, only to snap back and hit the wall when he realized he’d almost fallen asleep. The noise was as loud as an explosion amidst the quiet, and cold sweat poured off his body as he waited to be discovered. But there was nothing, no footsteps, no voices. The finger of light was back, undisturbed. Sakal counted his heartbeats. After two hundred, he relaxed a little.
* * *
There had been no noise for a long while, nothing more than his new friend Tasma’s wompat howling. No footsteps, no voices, not even his mother’s yells. And she had yelled. Just before the Jem’Hadar had arrived and then some after Sakal had hidden in the crawl space.
His mother had confused him. After she told him to hide, she’d run to the back window of Saneel’s house and shouted his name at Tasma, telling him to run away and hide. Sakal had stopped and gone back to the kitchen thinking she was calling to him, but she only waved him back the way he came. Sakal flew up the stairs, to the safe place Saneel had shown them the night they’d arrived.
He was pulling the closet door shut when the shots began. The wood was warped, and it wouldn’t close all the way.
From inside the closet the shots didn’t sound anything like the noises he and his friends made when they played at war. They even sounded different from the war holos and entertainment programs he’d run. These were short, without any echo. He had held his breath when they started.
Remembering Saneel’s instructions, Sakal used his fingernails to pry the bottom panel at the back of the closet while he pushed to the right. When the hole was big enough, he crawled through it and pushed the false wall back into place. An explosion followed by the crash of the heavy front door scared him back against the wall. Then his mother began to shout, her voice muffled by the panel and the almost closed closet door.
“What are you doing in this house?” she yelled at the soldiers as if they were children. “This is Reykor Saneel’s residence, you fools, a Cardassian scientist loyal to the Alliance. Call your shapeless gods and find out where you’re supposed to be.”
The sound of firing rang out again, and his mother’s scream. Then the footsteps had begun.
* * *
Time passed funny in the dark. The noises that the house made convinced him that someone was inside, but he could hear no one talking, heard no more footsteps in the hall. Sakal passed the time thinking of his father: his father’s smile and pat on the back when Sakal scored well in his academics, his father’s laughter when Sakal imitated Gul Trepar, his father snoring when he’d fallen asleep at the table, glass of kanar in hand, his father standing proud as hundreds of soldiers marched to his commands, chanting “Damar! Damar! Damar!”
The dream chants awoke him with a start. He had fallen asleep despite his efforts.
The finger of light still poked into the darkness, but the air in the crawl space was no longer warm. It felt moist and cool. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been hidden, but the quiet must mean something. Curiosity finally outpaced fear and he slid the false wall over far enough to squeeze into the back of the closet.
He crouched under the uniforms and listened for footsteps. Nothing.
Pushing the closet door half open, he inched into the hallway, ready to dive back into the crawl space. The lights were still on, and the brightness made his eyes water. There were still no sounds in the house other than the creak of the wood beneath his feet.
Finally, after a hundred more heartbeats, Sakal opened the door completely.
The house seemed normal, but empty. Very empty. Several winged lancers fluttered in his face as he went down the stairs as quietly as he could. Sakal batted them away silently. At the bottom of the stairs he saw the front door laying flat on the floor, the doorway open to the night air.
His instincts screamed at him to leave the house before he saw too much, before they caught him. Then he smelled his mother’s sem’hal stew from the kitchen. His stomach cramped with hunger. Turning toward the kitchen he saw the scorched planks of the hall floor, the black edges painting the outline of what looked like an arm, part of a shoulder and neck. But only for a second. Then his mind refused to see the pattern. Before his eyes, it blended with the lines in the wood and the ragged edge of the carpet. Meaningless.
Sakal continued down the hall to the kitchen, his feet avoiding the scorch marks of their own volition.
“You must remain calm and remember, always plan ahead.” Sakal could still hear his father’s voice.
The large pot of stew on the stove was still warm. Sakal took a quick taste with his finger. The rich taste filled his mouth, but he had no time to sit and eat. Turning his back on the pot, Sakal found a fabric bag under the sink and began filling it with fruit out of the bowl on the kitchen table. He added dried zabo meat from the pantry and a jar of yamok sauce. After a moment, he put the yamok sauce back on the shelf.
“Why can’t we bring it on our hike?” Sakal’s own voice echoed in his head. “Without yamok sauce the jerky tastes terrible.”
“It’s very hot out today, Sakal,” his mother’s voice answered from that same distant place.
“So? I’ll carry it.”
“No, Sakal,” his mother’s voice had grown testy. “Your father knows what he’s doing. Now just leave it.”
And his father had known best. It was a long hike in the heat and even without the jar of yamok sauce his pack felt like it was filled with boulders long before they got home. Sakal thought then that it was good that the son of Damar had not had to ask his mother to carry his pack, not in front of so many people. He had made his father proud, never once complaining during the hike.
Sakal went to the back door and snuck a peek around its edge. When he saw no soldiers, he slipped out and crossed the backyard to Tasma’s parents’ backyard. He moved at a steady pace, skirting Tasma’s wompat which lay next to the small, charred silhouette burned into the grass. He hardly paused when it raised its head and whimpered at him.
* * *
Sakal wasn’t sure where to go. No one had helped them when the Jem’Hadar came. Sakal remembered his mother mentioning a house of some kind that she had heard of, one near the amusement park. He wished that she had known its exact location, but if she had, the two of them probably would have gone there first rather than stay at Saneel’s home.
On the first night he passed under an open window and heard the news playing. He crouched down in the darkness beneath the window to listen.
“Legate Broca announced today that the wife and son of the fanatic Damar have been executed as traitors to the Dominion as was Reykor Saneel, the Cardassian biologist who harbored the traitors in her residence. Broca urged the citizens of Cardassia to remain loyal to their Dominion allies and not to follow the cowardly example set by the terrorist Damar.
“Following the news on the front, our Breen allies have secured another victory against the Romulans today …”
Sakal crept away from the house, keeping to the shadows. If he was dead, he thought, then he was like the phantoms in the stories his father used to tell him. He would be harder to catch now.
The phantom Sakal continued on his way to find the safe house. He ate small snacks from his pack trying to make his food last as long as possible. The zabo jerky took the longest to eat. He’d hold a bite in his mouth until his saliva softened it. When the fruit began to smell funny, he threw it away as his mother and father taught him, angry with himself for not eating it first. The jerky wouldn’t go bad. He should have thought of that and saved it for last.
When the jerky ran out, he learned to ask for food. When asking didn’t work, he learned to take food when necessary. After all, he was a phantom now. And phantoms took stuff all the time.
When Sakal got to the city, he headed straight to the amusement park, amazed to see that it was still open. Smiling mothers herded children that pranced like gettle through the gates as if nothing were wrong with the world. Sakal had always wanted to go to the park with his parents. But there had never been any time, not when his father was stationed at Terok Nor under Gul Dukat, or even when he’d returned to Cardassia Prime after the armistice.
Exhausted from walking, Sakal sat on one of the benches by the front gate, not sure where to look first for the safe house. The day was pleasantly cool, and he stole glances at the faces of those who passed him. He couldn’t tell if any of these people were from the place his mother spoke of. They all looked alike.
When his feet stopped pounding, the phantom Sakal got up and began to search the blocks surrounding the amusement park for the safe house. None of the structures looked promising.
When night came, he returned to the bench near the park entrance. The music from the rides carried on the breeze, and the park lights sparkled against the dark. The laughter of the children and parents drove him away.
He walked back through the twisting blocks to a well-tended garden that he’d seen during his search. He spent the night there, curled up under a hedge. The next day he continued his hunt, searching in widening circles, but with few results. None of the buildings looked promising, and he was distracted by the constant influx of news about his father.
Broadcasts had been downplaying any damage his father may have caused, but people began to talk about the Rebel Damar in hushed voices tinged with wonder and not a little hope. Sakal found himself listening to passersby rather than concentrating on finding the safe house.
“I hear Damar destroyed a garrison yesterday. Even the Jem’Hadar could not stop him.”
“Damar isn’t afraid of the Jem’Hadar dogs.”
Then Sakal heard the broadcasts reporting the death of his father, the Traitor Damar. The breath went out of him.
He found his way back to the now hollowed out area under the hedge and curled up in a ball. Dead, the realization echoed in his head. Both his parents were dead. Where did his duty lie if neither his father nor his mother were alive? How could he go on?
* * *
Hunger eventually drove him back onto the streets—hunger and the certainty that his father would be ashamed by his childish display. He stole some melon from a market and hid in the entrance to a nearby alley to eat it. As he gulped it down, he slowly became aware of the whispers of people walking along the street.
“The Dominion cannot kill Damar. He fights for Cardassia.”
He threw the rind away and returned to the amusement park. He heard no broadcast coverage of his father, but rumors of his father’s rebellion multiplied. His father had become a phantom just as he himself had. A phantom who fought for Cardassia.
It was then that Sakal knew where his duty lay. To Cardassia, echoed his father’s voice in answer. Somehow Sakal had to find the Resistance and help free Cardassia from the Dominion yoke. He renewed his efforts to find the safe house. They would know where his father was—they must. And then Sakal would be able to join his father and fight to free his people.
* * *
Sakal still couldn’t find the safe house, but talk of his father was on almost everyone’s lips. His father inspired others to remember their duty to family and to Cardassia.
“He is the spirit of Cardassia.”
“Death to the Traitor Revok. He has the blood of our people on his conscience.”
“Damar will raise another army.”
“When Damar has won and the Dominion has been driven from Cardassian soil, Revok had best flee with them. There will be no home for collaborators here.”
* * *
As the talk of his father grew, Sakal saw more and more Jem’Hadar. While he kept to the shadows when he saw them, he no longer fled. What could shape-shifters or their lackeys do to a phantom? They had not stopped him. They had not stopped his father.
“Damar is coming soon.”
Sakal hoped it was so. He belonged with his father. He wanted to fight to free Cardassia. He would make his father proud.
With the increasing number of Jem’Hadar, nighttime reports of phaser fire and explosions echoed through the city. During the days thick palls of smoke clung to the buildings and hid debris.
Then one night at dusk, the power went out. A hush settled over Lakarian City.
“He knows what he’s doing, that Damar.”
And that was true, Father always knew.
“The Jem’Hadar have retreated.”
“We are free.”
Sakal looked up at the night sky, amazed that the soldiers no longer patrolled the streets. His father was a hero, Sakal thought when the sky show began.