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The truth is that you long for a family. You have never had a father to guide you or a mother to nurture you, and this has left a hole in your heart. There has never been anywhere where you have felt like you belonged, anyone who you could truly confide in. It is this connection that you long for above all else – you need people in your life who are worth fighting for, who are worth living for and dying for. You threw yourself at your training in the hope that a love for the state and its people might fill this hole, but you are uncertain if your devotion to Cardassia is strong enough.
But that isn't what the legate wants to hear.
“I fight for the Union,” you declare, proudly and clearly. “I want to serve the great family that is our state to the best of my ability. I want our people to spread across the stars and prosper, I want Cardassia to become a world where there are no orphans, where there is no poverty, where there is only peace and plenty. If I must, I will give my life in pursuit of this dream. There is nothing that I will not give for our Union, legate.”
“Very good, deghilzin.” The fat old legate nods for a few moments, before he reaches down to tap at the screen of his display device. “Henceforth, you shall be known as Gul Tekan and you shall have command of the CDS Onager, CUW-7419, Galor-class.” After a few moments of silence, he glances across at you with a bored expression on his face. “I trust that you have no objections.”
You are stunned. Your highest expectation was that you would be granted the rank of glinn and serve as the first officer of a frigate. You never actually thought that you had any chance of being given command of your own starship, let alone a state-of-the-art battlecruiser.
“Legate, I... don't know what to say.”
“Say that you will accept this assignment. I don't have all day – I have half a dozen more cruisers to thrust into the hands of wide-eyed graduates just like you. I don't know if you have noticed but we are at war, Tekan. Not with a feeble backwater species like the Bajorans or Talarians, but with the Federation, a rival power that would transform our people to one of its many servitor races, devoid of strength or identity!”
“I am aware, legate.” You learned surprisingly little about the United Federation of Planets at the Academy. All you know is that it is a collective of many peoples that seeks to assimilate every species that it comes into contact with. Those who submit to the Federation abandon their old way of life and become little more than mindless drones. They represent an existential threat to the Cardassian Union – it was only a matter of time until war broke out.
“In which case, you must understand that we cannot afford to withhold even an ounce of our strength. We must throw everything we have at this enemy if we hope to win, and if that means throwing our greenest graduates at the front line in our finest warships, then so be it.”
