Before the Chair Cools
Posted on Thu Jul 23rd, 2026 @ 5:51pm by Admiral William Riker & Deanna Troi
2,038 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Lanterns in the Dark
Location: Lantern Safehouse, Vannis III
Timeline: 2398
The message arrived through three dead relays and a Ferengi weather buoy that hadn’t reported weather in eleven years.
By the time it reached Vannis III, it had been folded through so many layers of encryption that the first line appeared to be a parts requisition for a Cardassian waste processor. The second was an itemised complaint about the first. The third suggested that Barclay had been involved.
Will Riker read all of it twice before the real message opened.
The Lantern safehouse occupied what had once been the lower levels of a planetary survey station, abandoned when Vannis III’s mineral rights turned out to be worth considerably less than the company had claimed. The old control room still smelled faintly of hot dust whenever the ventilation cycled. Half the consoles belonged in a museum and the other half looked as though they’d been stolen from one.
Most of them had.
Will sat at the central table beneath a hanging light that flickered whenever someone used the transporter pad. A mug of coffee rested near his elbow, warm this time, though that had more to do with Deanna replacing it twenty minutes earlier than any sudden improvement in his habits.
Across the screen, the Cardassian transmission resolved into a short burst of text.
**DAMAR CONFIRMED DEAD. LIBERATION ACTION FAILED TO HOLD PRIMARY OBJECTIVE. SECONDARY TARGETS SECURED. DUKAT ASSUMING COORDINATION OF CARDASSIAN FORCES. GARAK REQUESTS IMMEDIATE LANTERN RESPONSE.**
Will stared at the words until the screen dimmed.
He touched it awake again.
Damar confirmed dead.
There were phrases the resistance used because anything more honest would take too long.
Confirmed dead meant somebody had seen the body, or enough of one. It meant there would be no rescue route, no prisoner exchange, no rumour worth following through three systems and a month of bad sleep. It meant another name moved from the active board to the growing archive of people they spoke about in past tense.
He’d grown tired of the past tense.
The door behind him opened with a low scrape. Mara Venn, the safehouse’s senior signals officer, came through carrying a PADD and the expression of someone who had already read the news and would rather have been wrong.
“Authentication checks out,” she said. “Cardassian military cipher beneath the Lantern layer. Garak’s people.”
“Casualties?”
“Still coming in. They hit Dominion command infrastructure across three districts. Damar was leading the assault on the central relay complex.”
Will’s eyes stayed on the message. “Of course he was.”
Mara hesitated. “They’re calling it a victory.”
“They would.”
“They did take the secondary sites.”
“I read the report.”
She let that sit. She’d worked around him long enough to know when an answer wasn’t really aimed at her.
Will leaned back, chair creaking beneath him, and rubbed a hand over his beard. Damar had been a soldier of Cardassia before he’d become a soldier against the Dominion. There were people in Bajoran cells who would remember the first part more clearly than the second. People on Cardassia would do the opposite. By morning, every resistance broadcast from Cardassian space would have begun sanding away the difficult edges.
Martyrdom liked clean lines.
The living rarely provided them.
“Has Dukat made a statement?” he asked.
“Three.”
That drew his gaze from the screen.
“In how long?”
“Forty-seven minutes.”
Will gave a quiet grunt. “He’s slowing down.”
Mara’s mouth twitched, though there wasn’t much humour in it. “He’s calling Damar a son of Cardassia, a brother in resistance, and the first blade of liberation.”
“Were they close?”
“Not according to anything we have.”
“Then I’m surprised Dukat stopped at brother.”
She glanced at the PADD. “His latest transmission says Damar entrusted him with the future of Cardassia.”
“Did Damar say that?”
“No.”
“Did anyone hear him say it?”
“No.”
“Then we’ve got our answer.”
Will pushed himself out of the chair and walked towards the old survey display on the far wall. It still showed the planetary hemisphere in faded green, though the Lanterns had overlaid it with routes, cells and safe contacts that had nothing to do with mineral deposits.
Cardassian space glowed in one corner.
Red markers showed Dominion-controlled systems. Amber showed disputed territory. A small, growing scatter of blue points marked areas where Damar’s rising had taken hold.
Will studied them in silence.
He’d met Dukat often enough to know what charm looked like when it had learned to wear sincerity. The man could enter a room full of people who despised him and leave with half of them wondering whether history had been unfair.
Sometimes it had.
That was what made him dangerous.
“Cardassian cells are already asking whether we recognise Dukat’s authority,” Mara said.
“Of course they are.”
“They want one voice.”
“No. They want one answer.”
“Is there a difference?”
Will looked back at her. “There usually is.”
The door opened again, more quietly this time.
Deanna stepped into the room without interrupting. Her gaze moved first to Will, then to the message on the table. She didn’t need to read every line.
“Damar?” she asked.
He nodded.
She came further in and rested one hand on the back of the empty chair beside his. There had been a time when Will could tell himself that the losses were exceptional. A bad mission. A war. A crisis that would end once enough good people held the line.
Twenty-three years had cured him of that.
“Dukat’s already taken command,” he said.
Deanna’s expression shifted by very little. “Has he?”
“He’s telling people he has.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
A tired smile touched Will’s face and vanished. “No. It wasn’t.”
Mara looked between them. “We still need to answer Garak.”
Will returned to the table and brought up the Cardassian operational map. Damar’s network wasn’t one thing. It was military defectors, civilians, old intelligence contacts, labour organisers, smugglers, frightened local officials and people who’d only decided that morning they’d had enough. Damar had given them a face they could stand behind.
Now the face was gone.
Dukat understood better than most that an empty chair didn’t remain empty for long.
Will enlarged the routes connecting Cardassian cells to the Badlands. Several passed through old Maquis corridors. Others brushed Bajoran territory or relied on Ferengi shipping that could disappear the moment Brunt started asking questions.
“What’s Dukat requesting?” he asked.
“Formal Lantern recognition. Weapons. Secure relay access. Direct coordination with the Betazoid and Bajoran cells.”
Will didn’t quite laugh. “Anything else?”
“A command channel to you.”
“There it is.”
Mara lowered the PADD. “If we refuse him outright, he may close the Cardassian routes.”
“He might.”
“He could also turn the Rising against us.”
“He could.”
“And if we support him, Cardassia stays unified.”
Will looked at her then, not unkindly.
“Dukat stays unified,” he said. “Cardassia’s a different question.”
The room settled around that.
Deanna remained near the chair, quiet and attentive. Will knew she could feel the tension in Mara, the pressure behind the question, perhaps even the frustration that he wasn’t giving them a clean answer quickly enough.
There wasn’t one.
There hadn’t been one in years.
“What did Garak actually ask for?” Deanna said.
Mara checked the message again. “Immediate support stabilising the cells. Continued access to Lantern routes. Medical supplies. Communications equipment.”
“Not recognition of Dukat,” Will said.
“No.”
“Then Garak knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Will returned to his chair but didn’t sit. He braced both hands against the table, eyes on the blue points scattered across Cardassian space.
He thought of Picard.
Not the statue the resistance had made of him. Not the final captain on the Enterprise-E, holding the line while the ship burned around him. Will thought of the man who hated badly tuned instruments, who could be impatient, proud, stubborn and deeply private. The man who’d made mistakes, changed his mind, and expected other people to do the same.
Death took all that texture away if you let it.
It turned people into whatever the living needed.
Damar would become the Cardassian who’d always meant to rebel. The patriot who’d seen the truth before anyone else. The clean hero.
Dukat would make sure of it, provided the story ended with Dukat standing beside him.
Will straightened.
“Send Garak our condolences,” he said. “Tell him every route agreed under Damar remains open. Medical supplies and communications equipment move immediately. Priority to cells under active Dominion pressure.”
Mara nodded, entering the orders.
“No weapons?”
“Defensive arms already promised go through. Anything heavier waits until we know who’s holding the receiving end.”
“And Dukat?”
Will looked at the blank section of the display where a new command identifier waited to be entered.
“We acknowledge the Cardassian resistance,” he said. “We acknowledge Damar’s sacrifice. We do not recognise Dukat as supreme commander of anything.”
“That’s going to anger him.”
“Yes.”
“Is that part of the plan?”
“No.” Will finally sat down. “It’s just one of the few benefits.”
Deanna’s mouth curved faintly.
Mara didn’t quite manage to hide hers.
“Dukat gets a liaison channel,” Will continued, “three layers removed from Lantern command. Nothing tied to Betazed. Nothing tied to Bajor. He doesn’t see our full route structure, our personnel lists, or any cell that hasn’t already chosen to work with him.”
“What about direct contact with you?”
“No.”
“He’ll keep asking.”
“I’ve survived that before.”
Mara finished entering the instructions. “And if Cardassian commanders start treating him as their leader?”
“Then we deal with the commanders, not the crown he’s already fitted for himself.”
Will reached for the coffee and took a drink. It had gone lukewarm.
That felt more familiar.
Mara studied him for a moment. “Do you think he can win?”
“Dukat?”
“The Rising.”
Will glanced back towards Cardassian space.
“I think the Dominion can lose,” he said.
It wasn’t the same answer.
Mara seemed to understand that. She gathered the PADD against her chest and headed for the door, pausing before it opened.
“What should we call the response?”
Will looked at Damar’s name on the screen.
For a moment he saw another message, another room, another death reduced to a line of text because there hadn’t been time for anything else. Picard. Geordi. Beverly. Martok. Chakotay. Names that had become banners, warnings, prayers and recruiting tools.
He wondered whether Damar had known that was coming.
“Call it the Damar Protocol,” he said. “Keep his people supplied. Keep them connected. Keep them from being swallowed by whoever speaks loudest at the funeral.”
Mara nodded and left.
The door closed behind her.
Deanna waited until the relay console began transmitting before she moved around the table and took the empty seat beside him.
“You don’t trust Dukat,” she said.
“That obvious?”
“To me.”
Will looked down at his hands.
“I trust him to fight the Dominion,” he said. “I trust him to want Cardassia free. I trust him to make sure everyone remembers who freed it.”
“And after that?”
He gave her a tired look. “That’s the part keeping me awake.”
Deanna rested her hand over his.
On the display, the first Lantern supply route shifted from standby to active. One blue line became three, then five, spreading towards Cardassian space.
Damar was dead.
The Rising wasn’t.
Will watched the routes come alive and let himself feel the loss without trying to turn it into something useful. Just for a moment.
Then another message appeared beneath the first.
A Dominion fleet was moving towards Cardassia.
He squeezed Deanna’s hand once before letting go.
“The chair’s still warm,” he said quietly.
Her gaze moved to the new report.
“And Dukat’s already sitting in it.”
Will opened the tactical map.
“Then we’d better make sure it doesn’t become a throne.”
Will Riker
'The Admiral'
Leader of the Lantern Network
Deanna Troi
'The Listener'
Lantern Psychological Liaison
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