DEJAR

Known former agent of the Obsidian Order

After extensive discussions with the Federations Cardassian liaison, I have at last been given a time and location to speak with the last member of the Cardassian detachment assigned to work on the wormhole relay project.

It’s not every day you find yourself facing sitting down with a known saboteur.

I approach a residential dwelling in central city’s Coranium sector, and knock on the door.

The door opens a crack, and I pass through the PADD I had been provided with evidencing my credentials and purpose.

The door closes. I hear a system being deactivated. It opens again, wider this time and Dejar gestures to usher me inside.

This section of the city still hasn’t had power fully restored, as I follow her down the corridor I wonder whether the dim lighting is an aesthetic choice or logistical requirement.

She leads me into a room that is darker still, PADDs, books and antiques are piled up against the walls. Having clearly been moved in here in a hurry, or just not sorted in quite some time. I get the impression that at some point this was an office, and given the location of the dwelling its occupier must have been of some importance.

As she gestures again for me to take a seat, I’m slightly startled by the light from the corridor catching the face of another person in the room as the door closes. Before remembering that this meeting was conditional on the man, a friend of the Federations liaison, being present for the interview. I was told not to address, or acknowledge him. But that he can decide to end the interview at any time.

Thank you for finally meeting with me.

She nods

As you know, I’m here today to discuss the wormhole relay project and the details, if you’re willing to share them, of how you came to be involved. As well as what happened after. Again, if you’re willing.

She turns her head to the side, bringing the shadowy figure into her peripheral vision. He offers a slight nod. She turns back to me.

Cardassia has always struggled to make sense of the Federations approach to intelligence. Here, access to information must be justified before it is granted. This system means that our people have a record of who has been requesting access to what, a valuable asset when it comes to maintaining order.

In contrast the Federation seems to work by the opposite principles. That information should be freely available unless there is a reason for it not to be. This approach has been a source of long lasting confusion not just amongst Cardassians, but all the other major powers of the Alpha Quadrant. The Romulans have a similar system to us. Where access to Klingon records is usually granted either through extended ritual, or carelessness.

We have never needed to torture an officer of the Klingon Defence Force solely for information, what we have required is usually on their person or has been nearby.

This meant that, back when it was an active force in the Cardassian Government, that the Obsidian Order needed to maintain an entirely separate intelligence office to extract useful information from the Federation.

Where with other powers our approach relied on infiltration and agents integrated into their societies, with the Federation we found ourselves needing to focus more on sifting through the vast quantities of information we accumulated. As with the Wormhole Relay project we found that in most cases, we could acquire anything we were curious about by simply asking.

The Federation’s openness with information with a source of continued division between different areas of our Government. Some, like the Central Command, believed it was evidence of Federation naivety. The Science Ministry believed it was a long play for influence, and ran multiple research projects on the impact of Federation data availability on political views throughout the Empire. The Obsidian Order on the other hand…

She turns her head again, the gesture is met with another nod

Had a begrudging respect for the policy. The Order realised far before anybody else that not only did this information availability drastically increase the reach of Federation soft power, but that it also meant any power interested in the information deemed truly sensitive needed to expend effort not only in obtaining it, but figuring out what the data was in the first place. Which meant we needed to identify what we couldn’t see, before we could devise a strategy to obtain it.

Which I’m guessing is where the Wormhole relay project came in?

The figure leans forward slightly, but makes no other motion.

She pauses for a moment, seemingly waiting. Then nods again.

The Order knew that like itself, or the Romulan Tal Shiar, that the Federation must have a more covert way of operating. When the Federation actively invited Cardassians to participate in joint projects, the intelligence opportunity was too good to pass up. With a single mission, we could not only cut off the impending threat of the Dominion, but get valuable insight into Starfleet communication patterns and practices. Information that unfortunately became of significant value for the Dominion.

But that was the main goal of the mission at the time? To cut off the Dominion?

The initial reports that the U.S.S. Defiant provided on its first mission to the Gamma Quadrant were passed to the Romulans, then by the Tal Shiar to the Obsidian Order. Both intelligence agencies were greatly concerned by the impending threat and began working on plans to collapse the wormhole to cut off the threat.

Both agencies were likewise disturbed by the Federation’s lack of reaction, given the level of threat implied in the reports. A part of my mission was to also ascertain whether there were diplomatic negotiations between the Federation and Dominion, and sabotage them at any costs.

So that’s what the Order thought the relay was, a way to contact the Dominion without sending ships through?

Would the Federation have thought any different, had the roles been reversed?

I suppose not.

It was of equal parts bemusement and frustration to the Order that Starfleet was often decidedly unsubtle, when indicating that their Intelligence apparatus was involved in any operations. Going as far to stamp project documents related to similar initiatives with the same or similar imagery.

My time on Terok Nor was informative in this regard, your engineers had of course updated the security codes on the stations systems. But they were still our systems, and so it was trivial to gain access to extensive detail on how the Federation categorised and ordered it’s information.

It was through the station that I was able to then access the systems on the attached shi-

The figure stands, indicating that the interview is now over.

PROJECT PATHFINDER