The Black Numenorean - Part Three

Posted on Tue Jan 26th, 2021 @ 1:30am by Fleet Admiral Heather Duval

Mission: Mission 105: The Mirror, Shattered
Location: Central Command Offices - Cardassia Prime
Timeline: 0830Hrs - October 8th, 2393

It was early evening in Cardassia City, which spiraled beyond the great oval windows, looking into Legate Voran's office. he sighed softly as he opened the bottle of Kanar, the one he had been drinking since he had gotten the reports from the Cardassian Fourteenth Order, one of the last few warfighting capable units left in the Cardassian military, and half of their entire order had been lost to one single Federation starship in one single engagement. The report had arrived about ninety minutes earlier and was proving to cause a storm of fear and sweep across the capital.

He stood alone with the lights off and gazed at the dim outlines of the capital as he sighed before he finished off his last glass of the last bottle of his best Kanar. 'Might as well finish it all,' he reasoned to himself in silence. 'tomorrow this could all be gone.' he thought to himself. The Kanar had been his only refuge in a world gone mad with the Cardassian's last efforts against the Imperial Federation, going all for naught, their mad crusade to end the folly that was the madness of the Federation had started in fire and looked to now end in blood. Lots of it, and it would be Cardassian blood and treasure that would have been spent for nothing, wasted for the effort.

Central Command and the Obsidian order were both in complete disarray over who to blame for the loss of half the fourteenth order at the hands of that one ship, he was half tempted to send a second force after it, run that ship to ground, take her and get what they wanted to from the prize of the ship and the bodies of her crew. However, neither the Cardassian military had the ships available and the order didn't have the assets available to perform such a task.

With both arms of the Cardassian security apparatus apparently broken, the people were in ann uproar, also the media had slipped its leash and was publicly excoriating the government, the military, and the intelligence services for allowing all of this to come to pass in the first place. Predictably, rather than uniting against the drama and standing together, the Cardassian political elite was busy pushing each other off of the ship of state, murdering each other and slaughtering each other as fast as they could, shedding lakes of blood and emptying each other's veins to prove they were still worthy. It was easy to see why the people were baying for blood and the mob was loose to get whoever it could. 'They will not be happy until they have finished killing us all.'

The door opened and a Cardassian serving girl entered. "Sir, they are ready for you now." she addressed him simply.

Voran regarded the city lights as the sun began to start to dip beneath the horizon. Before turning to depart, he found his way to the meeting place right as the leader of the Detapa council and the head of the Obsidian Order both arrived, the head was a middle-aged woman that Voran did not know. "Very well, since our time of the essence. We need to deal with this issue before the situation worsens into an outright disaster."

"This whole war has been an outright disaster, we tried to attack when the Imperials were busy raping and pillaging the Klingon Empire, their counter-attack bled us white and now they seek to crush us under their massive boot heel."

"The Imperial Federation doesn't exist anymore." Came the sudden response from the head of the Detapa council, a middle-aged male whos name that Voran had no interest in remembering. "We should remember that they have begun to restore the old Federation, back to what it was... or so Empress Yamaguchi intends to do, why don't we take her at her word?"

"Because she has a long memory, her family suffered heavily at our hands... Many Federation line officers suffered as a result of our sneak attacks... Now, they will wish to exterminate us..." The head of the Obsidian order answered.

"They will do one of two things, launch an outright invasion to finish us off or they will demand we surrender to them, the war gained us nothing... We should ask fo terms... Our society is in chaos and our leadership is busy murdering each other in orgies of vengeance and revenge..." the leader of the detapa council argued back.

Voran sighed. "Enough, you asked me to come here to present the figures from what's left of our fleet... I tell you now that we have only enough left to police our own space and ook after our borders, we are physically incapable of fighting any conflict with anyone..." he answered. "It galls me to say it or to even think it... But we must seek terms... Maybe we can preserve the Union, we should ask for terms... Maybe she will be lenient." Voran commented, referring to Empress Yamaguchi when he knew she wouldn't be,m she had no need, this war was as good as lost and the Federation had worn the Cardassians down to nothing whatsoever.

This silenced the other two people in the room, who both knew that Voran was right. "Alright... We'll send a message, asking for terms..." the head of the order comment.

"What of the Romulans?" the head of the Detapa Council inquired.

"They glassed entire worlds, we never did that so let the Federation exterminate them, we owe them nothing..." Voran answered in a dismissive tone. "It's best we act to save what little we have left... Before the mob destroys us all anyway..." Voran added. "Agreed?"

"Agreed." the other two men answered, with that said, it was done and they would save what they could. Now it would be up to Empress Yamaguchi to decide the fate of the Cardassian Union. "Send the message. Don't wait, let's do it now." Voran rose to his feet and departed, he returned to his office as he began to give the appropriate orders to have a message sent to Earth with the intent of saying. "We surrender."