October 1st 2413
"Rear Admiral's Log: Star Date 390249.813. Three years, one month, two weeks and five days ago we had a terrifying encounter with the True Way in the Badlands. An encounter in which they used the Iconian Sphere to create the wormhole that brought us to the Gamma Quadrant. Now we are going to the place where their descendants dwell. The Cardassian Empire has developed a ship called "The Supernova". A doomsday machine that is powered by an actual star and renders planets uninhabitable by blasting energy from the star at the planet. The Cardassian Empire plan to use this weapon in an attack on Bajor as revenge for both the Bajoran Revolution and the Dominion War. The fleet sent to find us were attacked by the Supernova and suffered severe damage. Starfleet Command has of course ordered us to stop this weapons by any means necessary and acceptable by Starfleet regulations. To do that, we are going to use one of the runnabouts on the Romulan Republic Warbird Ravon to sneak up to New Cardassia Prime and steal the designs. Hopefully this mission will go well."
New Cardassia Prime was a large planet indeed. Just a small percentage bigger than Cardassia Prime it had a similar ecosystem and breathable air. But it was also heavily developed, as evident by the many cities all across the planet. Megacities stretched across entire peninsulas and continents and were all visible from space itself. In orbit above the planet with a mild and humid climate was a fleet of twenty Cardassian warships with a single massive ship flying above them. This ship was twice the size of the famous Galaxy-class ship Enterprise and was a fear inducing sight indeed. The Supernova was not shaped like many other Cardassian ships, in fact, it wasn't much of a ship at all, but a palace! The Supernova was in fact an asteroid, the size of a whole city! The top of the asteroid contained a huge dome with a palace underneath it and soldiers throughout the palace that was a coliseum shaped building with a large dome on top. No doubt the Emperor's palace. At the front was a cannon that was glowing a terrifying orange light. It was easy to guess that the star that powered it was right behind the cannon and could fire at any moment. That is if the Captain chose to fire it. All across the Supernova were phaser banks and torpedo cannons that could devastate an entire planet without the help of the main cannon. Or "The Sun Gun" as the Cardassians called it.
As Rear Admiral Ethan Rivers gazed at the Supernova from one of the runnabout's small windows, he wondered how many people it took to build it. Was it hundreds? Was it thousands? Or perhaps even millions? There was in truth no way of knowing, the only answer was pure speculation. He couldn't help but admit that he was also a bit impressed that the Empire had built their ship into an entire asteroid. The cloaked runnabout continued to fly past the Cardassian Fleet at thruster speed so as to not be detected. They had entered the system as full impulse and now were at full thrusters to prevent being detected by the Cardassian ships that looked exactly like the ones back in the Alpha Quadrant. When Captain Jakoro, Captain Anaya and the rest of the Acadian refugees back in the Fleet first joined up with the Apollo, Ethan and the rest of his senior officers learned that the Cardassian Empire had not advanced their technology at all unless it was necessary to their plans of Galaxy wide domination. Ethan had suspected the ships to be highly advanced warships that could destroy a whole fleet of ships in mere moments and could conquer the Federation within hours. But he was wrong. They were still the same old Galdor-Class ships that the Federation had fought against like there was no tomorrow during the Dominion War. Although this made it easier for the now combined fleet of ships to fight three or four Cardassian Imperial ships, it did not change the fact that there were many more ships in the Cardassian Imperial Guard. For in the words of Captain Marcus Kimball "When fighting an enemy with more powerful ships, have more ships. For more ships overwhelms them". Ethan of course agreed with Captain Kimball's words. Even though these ships would now be considered outdated, they were still a formidable force as there were now many of them and all of them were ready for a full blown invasion into the Alpha Quadrant.
Ethan could no longer handle looking at the Supernova and turned away from the window. Every second of looking at it reminded him of the Cardassian Empire's plans of conquering the Federation. He loved the Federation dearly and was fully committed to the ideals of the Federation. The very thought of the Federation being destroyed by an invading power sickened him to the stomach and made him want to vomit. But he kept himself together, knowing that the mission ahead was a difficult one indeed and difficult times called for determined people. Ethan then looked over at Ada, who was sitting in a chair behind the Romulan pilot and co-pilot. As Ethan looked at the two Romulans he thought about how his son, Lucas, was of two species and how the Romulans were the Vulcans sibling species. During the Time of Awakening Surak's teachings of logic in favour of emotion were embraced by the majority of the population. But some people opposed it and fled Vulcan on primitive star ships. They eventually came across the planet Romulus and established their empire. By the time contact was re-established with their Vulcan brothers and sisters, the Romulans had evolved into a new sub-species of Vulcans. They still had the pointed ears, yes. But they also had a ridge on their foreheads shaped like the Human letter V and a greener skin tone. But they could no longer perform mind melds and did not undergo the Pon Farr Like T'Vrell had almost two years earlier.
Ambassador Spock, despite being only half Vulcan, had begun his mission of reunifying the Romulans with the Vulcans many years earlier and had sadly perished before he could see his work complete. That is if it ever was to be complete. When T'Vrell was a child, she believed that reunification with the Romulans would never happen. But after watching one of Spock's speeches regarding reunification during a history lecture at the Academy, she became a full believer in reunification and hoped to see it happen one day in her lifetime. Since the establishment of Mol'Rihan, or "New Romulus", as it was said in English, the Romulan Republic had invited Vulcan settlers to New Romulus and well over twenty million Vulcans had joined the fifty million Romulans and thirty million Remans living on the planet. An additional twenty eight million Romulans had also settled on Vulcan following the Hobus Supernova in which Romulus was destroyed, thus at long last, albeit unofficially, reuniting the two species.
As Ethan thought heavily about this, the pilot of the runnabout turned his chair around and said "We're entering transport range. I suggest Ada change shape to that of a Cardassian." Ada then stood up and said "Alirght, but I'll need a photo or something of a Cardassian." Hiven pressed a few buttons on his console and photos of every angle of a Cardassian woman appeared on the console screen. Ada walked over to the console and carefully looked at each photo. After memorizing all of the details, Ada began to change her shape. Her body quickly began to look like it's usual gelatinous form that it was whenever she shapeshifted and she began to change shape to that of a Cardassian woman. After the shapeshifting was complete, Ada looked like the Cardassian woman in the photo. She had greyish-white skin, scaled snake like ridges, two long ridges above her eyes and an inverted tear shaped ridge on her forehead. Ada then looked back at Ethan and asked "How do I look?" To which Ethan answered with a smile "Like someone about to stop the Cardassian Empire." Ada then gathered all of her courage together, ready to stop the Cardassian Empire before they could unleash the Supernova on the Galaxy and said "I'm ready." Ethan then aimed his hand at the transporter pad and said "Then let's find out how to stop the Supernova."
Ada then walked past Ethan and stood atop the transporter pad. Ethan then walked over to the pilot and said "Set the coordinates for an alleyway where no one will notice her." The pilot obliged and set them for an alleyway with many waste disposal containers across it. As the coordinates were finally set in, Ethan looked over at Ada and said "Remember, try not to do anything suspicious and don't look straight at someone for too long. If anyone notices you looking at the landmarks and buildings strangely, tell them that your new to the Capital and are just getting to know the different parts of the city." Ada nodded her head and said "Yes Sir. Wish me luck then." Ethan gave Ada a nod of respect, looked at the pilot and said "Energise." The pilot obliged and Ada was engulfed in the green sparkles of energy of a Romulan transportation.
As Ada finally materialised in the alleyway, she found herself surrounded by waste disposal containers. Ada immediately found herself attacked by a foul smell that invaded her nostrils and made her wish to vomit. Without thinking, Ada quickly ran forward to escape the horrible smell that was coming from empty food packaging, skins that had been peeled off fruit and just simply the waste in general. After arriving on the street she finally got a good look around and saw the buildings were just like the ones she had seen in the photos of Cardassia Prime. They had curved spikes on top and and some had the emblem of the Cardassian Empire hanging from them. As Ada looked around more she realised that the emblem of the Cardassian Empire was almost everywhere. Every shop had the flag flying above it's door and on one building that could easily be seen from anywhere in the city there was a huge banner that had the emblem and the words "A safe Galaxy," above it and "is a Cardassian Galaxy!" below it. All around Ada were hundreds of Cardassian civilians walking the streets and wearing standard civilian clothing. They looked just like their Cardassian brothers and sisters in the Alpha Quadrant, having not diverged genetically at all thanks to the planet being terraformed to match Cardassia Prime's environment. Ada then looked to her left and saw that at the end of the street was a park square with a statue in the centre. Ada immediately knew that this had to be of historical significance and started walking towards it. Ada looked around at the other Cardassians walking the street and tried her best to mimic their walking style. A few Cardassians noticed Ada looking at them strangely, but brushed it off as she looked away from them as soon as she noticed them looking at her. Little did they know that Ada was one of the Changelings, a species they had been taught to hate.
As Ada arrived at the park square that people walked around on the bronze coloured pedestrianised road that no cars drove across, she saw that in the four corners of the park square were a few trees each and that each tree was three times the size of a Humanoid. The statue was the sight that the eighteen other people in the square seemed most interested in however. It was of a Cardassian man in full military uniform, with a pregnant and loving wife holding their child in her arms who had to be at least three years old. Around the statue were various flowers and memorial wreaths, all seeming to be in honour of whoever was lost here. Ada at first believed that it was a memorial to all who had died while building the colony during it's early years, no doubt being the most difficult of years for their people. Ada saw a plaque on the statues base, written in Cardassian. Ada could not tell what it said however because she had not learned Cardassian writing. So Ada reached under her plain yet comfortable jacket and pressed on her com badge. Back in the runnabout, Ethan's com badge flared alive as Ada said through an encrypted channel "Ada to Rear Admiral Rivers. I've found some kind of memorial in a park square. It's of a man with a pregnant wife and young child. There's a plaque that says something in honour of them, but I can't figure out what it says." Ethan then pressed on his com badge and said "Covertly take a picture with the device we gave you. We'll translate it from here." Ada then carefully pinched both sides of the jewel hanging on her necklace and a photo was taken. The photo was then sent to the runnabout and appeared on the screen of the console in front of the pilot. Hiven looked at the writing and said "Computer, translate Cardassian writing on the image sent by the Changeling known as Ada." The computer obliged and said in it's computerised voice "In honour of the eight hundred million Cardassians who were slaughtered at the end of the War of Disgrace by the barbarians known as the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire and the United Federation of Planets. May they rest well knowing that vengeance is ours!"
Ethan froze in shock as he heard those words and asked "What?" Hiven could not believe it either, but then realised something terrible and said "Wait a minute. Remember how the Dominion and the Breen launched an orbital bombardment of Cardassia Prime that killed that many people? I think that the Cardassian Imperial Government has lied that it was really the Federation Alliance!" Ethan almost gasped in shock and said "They've rewritten parts of history? If that's the case then who knows what else they've rewritten." Just then Hiven thought about the Changelings and said "Wait a minute. If they have scapegoated the Federation Alliance as the ones responsible for the attack, then what have they said about the Dominion?" Ethan realised that this meant something terrible and knew there was only one way to find out. Ethan looked at Hiven with eyes of worry and said "Scan broadcast signals for any mention of the Dominion." Hiven obliged and pressed a few buttons on his console to initiate a scan. After a few seconds, Hiven said "Seven hundred forty nine thousand, six hundred and eighty two results." Knowing full well what to expect, Ethan said "Show me." Hiven pressed a small activation button and the viewscreen changed to show a man in a stadium of some kind. At a stage was a man with his voice booming through speekers, acting like a televangelist as he said "The Dominion, being the distasteful liars they are, abandoned Cardassia Prime to it's fate and the ferocious Federation bombarded the planet with unholy weapons." The crowd around the stadium then cheered the preacher on, fully believing the web of lies they were being told. Another broadcast was a recruitment advertisement for the Imperial Guard that showed thousands of Cardassian Imperial soldiers marching over the rotting corpses of seemingly countless Jem'Hadar soldiers that had been killed and the words "You could be among these glorious soldiers. Enlist today!" were said by a voice as those same words appeared on the screen in Cardassian. The viewscreen then changed again, this time showing a group of Cardassian soldiers fighting a shapeshifting Changeling as a voice said "Only you can defeat the Changeling menace."
Ethan had heavy breathes of shock as he said "Oh God. They've rewritten history to make the people despise Changelings." Ada of course had heard all of this from the planet below and now understood that the planet she was on, the society that surrounded her and even the individual people around her had been taught countless lies about their own past and had been taught to hate the Dominion, the Federation and every other alien race. This society that the Cardassian Empire had built was one of deception and prejudice. One of manipulation and bigotry. It was a society of lies and hate. One that the Federation had to defeat in order to preserve truth and tolerance, the two things that the Cardassian Empire lacked in every way. Including the various individuals who had been indoctrinated to believe the Word of Madred since youth and to not believe anything alse.