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CHAPTER
        1

MAJOR KIRA NERYS stood rigid, forcing her body not
to tremble in suppressed anger and humiliation. It
was all the Bajoran freedom fighter could do not to
leap across the brief gap and throttle the black-clad,
black-helmeted alien "dean" who now commanded
Deep Space Nine... or EmissaryW Sanctuary, as
Kai Winn had renamed it--the same Kai Winn who
had just surrendered the station to the "Liberated,"
as the invaders had called themselves.
    The Liberated said little but the necessary. But
that was a welcome change from the more loath-
some, loquatious representatives of the Dominion,
the Vorta--and from the harsh Jem'Hadar, who
would already have slapped a restraining field on
Kira, the Kai, and the other Bajorans. These un-
knowns were gentle, at least, now that they'd won
the station. Have to change the name to Hot Potato,
thought Kira with a curled lip, the way we're passing
it around from hand to hand. Living among humans
had taught her many old Earth expressions.
    "Courage, child," said the Kai in a monumentally
condescending attempt at raising Kira's spirits.
"The Prophets send tribulations to test us."
    "Did you say that during the Occupation, too?"
The words were out before Kira could swallow them,
but she was secretly glad she'd said it: too many
people, herself included, tiptoed around the blind,
stubborn Kai Winn as if she were a glacier, unturn-
able and irresistible.
    "Yes, child, I did." Winn turned to stare at Kira's
face, bringing a flush of self-consciousness to the
major's cheek. Kira kept her eyes on the invader
dean, who was quietly ordering his troops into
quite an effective occupation of all three Prome-
nade levels. "And at last, we passed that test," said
the Kai.
    Kira clenched her teeth so hard, she felt one of
them crack. There was nothing she could do but
obey the dean's last order to stand still and not
move: Kai Winn, Kira's commanding officer and
governor of the station, had surrendered to the
Liberated, and the Bajoran frigates had backed far
enough away not to be a factor. Not that they couM
have done anything but die gallantly, she thought,
tasting another lump of bile; we were outgunned, out
fought, and out thought. Already, the ghosts of three
hundred Bajoran souls haunted Kira Neryswthe
number lost in the first naval wave sent by Bajor to
reinforce the Emissary~ Sanctuary and its governor,
the Kai.
    Kira snuck a glance to her right. The Kai wore a
sweet smile, the vapid mask of "serenity" that Kira
had learned hid a capable and determined middle-
aged woman, a true leader of her beleaguered people.
Kira fought the illusion that Kai Winn projected.
The major struggled to remember that Winn could
be as bloodthirsty and dangerous as any Resistance
fighter, no matter how much or little she might have
done during the Resistance. We fought in different
ways, Kira caught herself thinking; now my way is
futile... couM the Kai Winn route still be viable?
    The futility of fighting had been demonstrated to
Kira a few scant minutes after she and the Kai met
the alien dean on the Promenade three hours ago.
Then, Kira had been her angry self, coldly confront-
ing the dean and demanding, demanding... what?
Everything: that the prisoners be treated gently, that
the station integrity be respected, that the Liberated
apologize, beg forgiveness, and get off Deep Space
Nine/But Kai Winn passed on an opportunity to
back up her executive officer, offering only that the
name of the station was Emissary~ Sanctuary now.
    Furious, Kira turned on her Kai. "That's it?
That's all you can say?"
    Winn smiled gently through the tirade, irritating
Kira even further. "Child, the Way of the Prophets is
not the child's blind resistance to authority. I'm sure
our new masters will be kind to the Bajorans, who
freely offer to share the Orb, the far-seeing anom-
aly." Kai Winn turned to the dean. "Won't you?"
    "Bajorans will not be harmed," said the universal-
translator implant in Kira's head, the clicking and
buzzing of the alien's actual speech an annoying
background noise.
    "And what about those who aren't Bajorans?"
asked Kira, beginning to tremble as she held back a
wall of rage. "Jake Sisko, and Nog, and--and Gar-
ak." Did I really just say that, fretting for the safety of
that butcher? "And what about our freedom? Is that
just another casualty of war?"
    She was shouting at the dean, but her fury was
directed more at Kai Winn for her betrayal. Drop-
ping her hands to her side, Kira's thumb brushed the
combat knife she still carried. She had of course
surrendered her phaser rifle and hand phaser, but
she had conveniently forgotten about the largely
ceremonial "kolba~ tooth" commando knife, which
she had worn all through the Resistance. Then,
though used only once to kill, it had come in handy a
thousand times to open a food pack or cut a fishing
line.
    Without thinking, her hand curled around the
wooden haft. She slid it from the sheathe, silent as
the grave, and concealed it up behind her forearm.
Kira glanced at the Kai... but she could never turn
her wrath on one annointed by the Prophets, no
matter what the betrayal. Kai Winn will never get a
knife in the back from me, whatever the provocation.
     At that moment the alien dean turned his back to
 order a complete search of all buildings on the
 Promenade. Kira had a single chance and took it.
 She leapt the short distance, thrusting directly for-
 ward with the blade in a brutal and efficient lunge.
     Evidently the Liberated boasted significantly
 quicker reaction time than Bajorans. The dean bare-
 ly glanced back over his shoulder as he hooked his
 foot up and slightly deflected Kira's lunge, which
 missed wide. Giving her a gentle push in the direc-
 tion she was already moving, he flung Kira to the
 ground with disturbing ease. Then he picked up his
 conversation where he'd left off. Meanwhile, three
 other aliens dogpiled on Kira's back, wrenching the
 knife from her grasp and nearly breaking her wrist in
 the bargain.
    The black-clad invaders were anonymous, their
heads in tight-fitting, opaque helmets, or so Kira
originally thought. Close up, she saw there were no
helmets. Their faces were featureless cyphers, and
she felt her stomach turn despite long exposure to
disgusting aliens. Sensory organs buried inside, she
realized; built to withstand terrible punishment. Feel-
ing the hardness of the bodies pinning her, she
understood with revulsion that they wore no armor,
as she first imagined: their outer skin was an insect-
like carapace covered only with a layer of metallic
clothing. They needed no suits or helmets, not even
to cross the abyss of space between their ships and
the station, nothing but what looked like some kind
of foil, to protect them against the background
cosmic radiation. Perfect killing machines.
    And they let her up. Her captors helped Kira to
her feet and didn't even bother binding her hands.
They even gave her back her knife. Burning with
humiliation, Kira shuffled back to stand alongside
her Kai... who throughout her attempt had never
stopped negotiating diplomatically with the dean.
I'm not the slightest threat to them, Major Kira
realized. I'm a chiM with a toy sword.
    Hours later she still felt the dull ache of useless-
ness, the same claustrophobic feeling of horror that
had driven her to join the Resistance at such a young
age. Today, however, there was no outlet. Kira's
shoulders slumped, and she could barely work up
the energy for verbal defiance.
    One certainty echoed through her head: despite
the Kai's seeming surrender, she knew that Winn
had no intention of giving up either control of the
station or hegemony in Bajor, that she would never
voluntarily turn over so much power.
    Kai Winn must have a plan, some plan, some
amazing, unexpected plan that would cast out the
tide and reclaim the dry land! If Major Kira could
only control her temper and work with Kai Winn,
together they still had a chance--many chances--to
unspill the water jug.
    ú.. Or at least, any other thought was intolerable
to the major. Bajorans, and most especially Kira
Nerys, could not live without hope. And the most
burning desire in Kira's stomach, she admitted to
herself shamefully, was to live through the ordeal--
to survive.

    Light-years away, on a strange and different world,
Security Chief Odo sat rigidly on an overturned
barrel, puzzling over the sheaf of documents Tivva-
ma, daughter of hereditary Mayor Asta-ha, had just
shoved into his hands.
    Odo pored over the pages she had scrawled on in
her childish hand. At first, he humored her: he began
a suitable period of study, to be followed by a pat on
the head and some encouraging words.
     But as he read section after section, Odo became
 so enthralled he forgot even to simulate breath.
 What Tivva-ma had pushed into his indulgent hands
 was less a manifesto, as she had claimed, than a fully
 developed constitution for a complex trade republic;
 it included a declaration of rights and duties that
 balanced so nicely, Odo thought the United Federa-
 tion of Planets might want to take a look.
  "Tivva-ma, where did you say you got this?"
     The girl put her hands over her eyes, shyly refus-
 ing to answer.
    "Did your mother work it out?" She grunted,
meaning No. "Owena-da? One of the away--one of
us officers?"
    "Uh-uh." Abruptly, the waif threw her arms wide,
exposing a huge grin set against her pale blue hair
and alabaster skin. "I did!"
    Odo slowly lowered the pages into his lap, re-
straining the pulse of excitement that whirled round
his mind, which was his whole body. Easy, easy.
Maybe she didn't understand the question. Maybe
she g lying or mistaken. Choosing his most imperi-
ous schoolmaster tone, he began to question Tivva-
ma about specifics and particulars. But at every
query, he was satisfied: the tot knew the proposal
backward and forward, at least. And in her squeaky,
little-girl voice, she defended the provisions from all
attack, whether the tricameral judicial legislature,
the ceremonial and functional presidents, the selec-
tion and evaluation criteria for government officials,
or the minimalist nature of state authority. After a
quarter hour of discussion Odo was reeling from her
observations, calling into question as they did every-
thing he had ever believed anent the value of law in
guiding good behavior.
    Odo rose, holding the pages carefully. He wanted
to scan them into a computer and compare them to
the constitutions of thousands of societies in the
Federation memory banks... but a more impor-
tant task loomed. "Child, what you have created is
brilliant. You are a shining star. But we cannot set up
a government until we have a society at least--a
community!"
    Tivva-ma gasped; her eyes showed she had been
stunned by Odo's critique. "ThaFs what I forgot! I
knew I forgot something, but I couldn't remember
what it was." The girl turned and sped like a
lightning discharge back toward the temporary
camp. She paused, just before the scattered trees
that hid the shelters. "I'11 be right back! Wait .... "
Then she grinned sheepishly. "Actually, it might
take a couple a days." She dashed away; if Odo had
blinked, he would have missed her exit.
    Suddenly freed from the darkness of techno-
utopia, the Natives, as Commander Dax called
them, had lit up as though suddenly electrified. They
had been living their lives unchallenged, with noth-
ing to tax the brain beyond a few peripatetic raids of
one village by another, and the simple act of destroy-
ing the hemisphere's power grid had energized them
like the spark of life. The socially infantile Natives
flickered suddenly at the threshhold of intellectual
puberty.
     How far will they go? wondered the constable,
 looking nervously back over his shoulder at the away
team's own camp. How soon will the Tiffnaki surpass
us?And what will they do then, when we're no longer
useful to the them? He snorted, taking refuge in
sensible cynicism. They were still the same Natives:
Mayor-General Asta-ha had once again changed the
name of her villagers, the third time in the ten days
since Captain Sisko, Odo, and the rest of the away
team had blown the power generators: from Tiffnaki
to Tivvnaffi to Vanaffi, and now to Vanimastavvi. So
what if their IQs were already cruising past 200
on their way up? Their personalities had hardly
changed--and that was a better measure of who one
was than raw brain power. Or so the constable and
the rest of the away team had told themselves at
every opportunity.
    He heard a terrible, hacking cough from Chief
O'Brien. Odo felt a twinge of guilt that he alone of
all the team members didn't experience the asthmat-
ic agony produced by microscopic, poisonous algae
in the atmosphere. Captain Sisko had concocted a
slapdash antitoxin from his own emergency Medi-
Kit, but it couldn't compensate for the algae any-
where near as well as Dr. Bashir's original had. We
must return to the Defiant, thought Odo. But the
Defiant had disappeared from orbit and was not
communicating.
    The constable heard a wild patter and someone
screaming semicoherently. He leapt to his feet, al-
ready annoyed even before he recognized the owner
of the bare feet pounding in the latinurn-laced mud
toward the constable. But he was struck dumb at the
sight of mad Quark, naked save for a large, palm-like
frond wrapped around his midsection, dashing like a
frog monster toward Odo's "courthouse stump."
The Ferengi's eyes were wide and wild, his skin a
livid pink-tinged orange under the ruddy sun.
    "Do something--do something! You--you--just
do something, by the Final Accountant! Or I'll..."
The Ferengi heaved and panted, gripping his frond,
simultaneously enraged and humiliated.
    "Oh dear, Quark. Mind snapped at last?" Odo tsk-
tsked and turned back to Tivva-ma's astonishing
constitution.
    "I've been robbed! By force!" Quark mumbled
something under his breath.
    "What was that last part?" asked Odo, half-sure
he knew what the Ferengi had said but wanting the
pleasure of hearing it aloud.
    Quark closed his eyes, took a deep breath, facing
up to the latest outrage against his Ferengi sensibili-
ties. "I said, I've been robbed by force--of fraud."
    "Force of fraud? Is that what you call it?" Odo
smirked, a talent he had perfected through long
years of dealing with the Ferengi bartender. "In
other words, your little Native friends, whom you've
been swindling out of everything they owned before
you came here--oh, I have notes!--and I'm going to
file quite an interesting report when we get back to
the station... your friends have now turned the
tables on you, Quark, and beaten you out of every
slip and strip. And from the look of things," Odo
stretched his finger out to poke nastily at Quark's
bare chest, "you've been kind enough to let them
have the shirt off your back. How generous of you!"
Quark paced up and down nervously, waving his
arms in agitation; the mauve-colored palm frond
slipped and almost fell. "You raise them, you try to
help them, teach them everything you know--"
    "And they turn around and out-Ferengi the Fer-
engi. So you, too, are discovering the full mental
abilities of our Native friends, eh, Quark? Now that
we've kicked away the crutch of new tech." Odo
threw the sheaf of papers down on the barrelhead.
"Forget your petty losses for a moment. You see this
formative document? It puts to shame the constitu-
tions of every planet in the Federation and, not
incidentally, all my own research on the ideal gov-
ernment. And it was drafted this afternoon by an
eight-year-old child."
    The constable shook his head, speaking more to
himself than his audience. "With all the changes
around here, the Natives decided to put together
a workable society to deal with the Cardassian/
Drek'la invasion and the sudden loss of their mag-
ical technology. I helped them a little with some
sociological information and some organizing docu-
ments... and I get back this."
    Constable and Ferengi sighed in unexpected har-
mony, to Odo's chagrin. Quark sat gingerly, holding
the frond carefully to prevent undue financial expo-
sure. "I wonder how Commander Worf is doing?"
    After a beat, the Ferengi grinned wickedly. Only
the iron will of Constable Odo prevented him from
doing the same. The image of Commander Worf
trying to "instruct" a class full of inquisitive, so-
cially inept military geniuses raised his spirits ten-
fold.
    Elsewhere on the planet, the Cardassian prisoner,
Gul Ragat, walked in front of Julian Bashir like a
man already dead whose legs had not yet gotten the
message. Jadzia Dax followed somewhere far behind
and to the side, so that she and Julian would not
drift close enough to make a single target. I wish we
could talk, thought the doctor. But speech would
have informed the prisoner that they were Federa-
tion, and Dax wanted to hold that information in
reserve.
    The Gul had recovered somewhat. The doctor
quietly scanned him while he rested and determined
that Ragat had no serious injuries--minor burns
and abrasions, smoke inhalation, bruises, and other
blunt-force trauma, but nothing life-threatening.
The diagnosis was a relief. Had Gul Ragat required
medical treatment, not all the wild splitheads on
Sierra-Bravo 112-II could have stopped Bashir from
doing his medical duty, and their cover as "Natives"
would have been blown; Ragat would then realize
that Starfleet officers had infiltrated the Cardas-
siardDrek'la occupation.
    So what would that mean? wondered Julian;
what's he going to do, publish it in a news clip? Still,
the lovely Jadzia (who had insisted upon command
prerogative) had gone to great lengths to guard that
secret. The Cardassians and their Drek'la crew evi-
dently believed that the Deftant had crashed and
burned in the ocean--when in fact it lay submerged
in shallow water, intact, under the command of
Ensign Joson Wabak and a couple other junior
officers, waiting to lift off when the Cardassians and
Drek'la were cleansed from orbit. So long as no
 soldiers of the Empire knew that the Defiant still
 lived, they wouldn't waste time searching for her.
    So maybe Jadzia is right after all, Bashir tenta-
tively concluded. Still it was a pain: they couldn't
talk for fear the Gul's "universal translator," or
whatever the Cardassians called their version, would
warn Ragat that Julian and Dax were speaking a
Federation, not Native, language. They couldn't
show their faces--or even let Ragat look back at
them for fear his sharp, Cardassian eyes would
penetrate the disguise.
    But nothing stopped the Gul himself from talking,
which he did without concern for their stony silence.
"They couldn't take my title. The house was far too
old for that. But they took everything else. Stripped
of all rating. No command, no authority, no face. Do
you know what it's like to enter a room and hear
only silence? I knew Legate Migar and Gul Dukat
personally. I was on the list--on the list, I say. I was
to be legate, legate! Until... she came and dashed
the cup from my lips. She spilled it on the ground--
my honor, my promotion, even my governorship. I
was a governor, that's what I tell you. But there were
those, those--don't think I didn't know who they
were! Neemak, now he was the one to watch. He was
the one who waited, any slip, a weakness. And she
gave it to him in a silver chalice. She, she, she. Don't
mind me--I'm an old man now, I run on. You know
what it's like? It's entering a room and hearing all
conversation cease, the music, dead silence. Do you
know?"
    Julian Bashir continued to walk silently behind as
they headed toward the hidden skimmer; there was
only one left now, the other having long since run
out of fuel and been abandoned. The ex-Gul rattled
on, an old man with a new, fresh ear for the first time
probably in decades. He told them more than they
wanted to know about his pain and suffering, his
banishment. He never mentioned the name of the
woman who had done him wrong (a failed love
affair?) save that she was his sister, or perhaps a
friend close enough to be called Sister.
    Jadzia didn't so much as glance at the prisoner.
The doctor felt pangs of guilt. Ragat had made some
sort of terrible mistake long ago, something involv-
ing a woman, and had been stripped of all his
positions and power. No wonder he had fled the
Empire and tried to stake out a life far across the
quadrant. To a Cardassian, losing face was infinitely
worse than losing one's life.
    But Bashir and Dax's own problems were more
pressing than understanding the enemy: they had to
find Captain Sisko and link up. He didn't know that
the Defiant was still on (actually under) the surface,
or that they were waiting for his signal via old-
fashioned radio waves, which neither the Cardassi-
ans nor the vicious, automatic planetary defenses
were likely to monitor. Dax, Bashir, and the junior
officers back on the ship needed to know what the
captain intended, fight or flee; either an attack on the
Cardassians and their Drek'la allies or abandon-
ment of the mission would have to be coordinated
between Sisko, Dax, and Wabak back on the Defiant.
    The day was hot and steamy, the ground broken,
the sun reflected from brittle crystals in the latinum-
laced soil. Gul Ragat fell to his knees without
warning, palms loudly slapping the baked mud. The
old man had had it for now. But they were near
enough the hidden skimmer that they could stop for
the night, and mount up and ride in the morning. If
we're chummy enough, thought the doctor, I suppose
it can carry the three of us.
    Commander Dax caught Julian's eye; she gestured
at the ground, then formed a triangle with index
fingers and thumbs. The doctor was puzzled for a
moment, before he connected the gesture with the
stylized image of a tent: they didn't have one, but the
idea was clear: camp here for the night.
    Julian sat down, surprised at how tired he felt. It
took even more energy to remain lithe and graceful
(as a genetic freak should, he added to himself) than
merely to march in the bright, red sun. Jadzia, with
no reputation to protect, had the easy job.
    Gul Ragat continued to talk. He spoke of the
invasion of Sierra-Bravo, speaking with repugnance
of the "aborigines," how primitive and savage they
were, how disgusting, what a perversion of men. His
bigotry was bright but blunted by impotence: there
was nothing Gul Ragat would ever be able to do
about the Natives again, and he knew it. He could
curse them freely now, for he was himself free of
responsibility: having surrendered to the two of
them, he could at last also surrender to his bottled-
up rage, humiliation, and prejudice.
    After several early attempts by Ragat to turn and
look at his captors, the Gul had got the message; he
kept his back to the Starfleet officers as he lay on his
side, breathing too deeply. Worried, Julian again
scanned Ragat from behind. I'm not sure, he
thought, but I think some internal bleeding may have
started up. Julian decided that during the night,
while Gul Ragat slept, his ghoulish doctor, like a
reverse vampire, would slip some life into the old
fellow.
    The ragged breathing provoked an empathy in
Julian Bashir that burned beyond the Hippocratic
oath. He gently laid a hand on the Gul's shoulder
from behind, squeezing gently.
    Ragat cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said.
"Good night, doctor."
    Alarmed, Julian stared at Dax; but the Trill
frowned and shook her head. Probably just an hono-
rific, Julian nodded, then lay back to look at the
stars.
    Just before drifting into a troubled sleep, Gul
Ragat raised his voice again to a throaty whisper,
which was all he could still manage. "And good
night to you too... Commander Dax."
    Julian grinned, unwilling to look the startled and
probably stunned Jadzia Dax in the face. All that
care, the silence, the face masks/And all along, the
damned Cardassian had known exactly who his
captors were.
    With a quiet chuckle, Julian, too, drifted into the
shadowlands, too exhausted even to consider eating.

CHAPTER
        2

COMMANDER WORF had his hands full of mayor: he
was holding the "mayor-general," Asta-ha, the
mother of Tivva-ma, in a pressure hold from which
she struggled desperately to escape.
    The Klingon was surprised by the female's in-
genuity: she independently invented several hold-
breaking maneuvers that Worf had not even taught
yet. A brilliant pupil! Unfortunately, her lithe but
weak body was not up to the level of her tactical
brain. Finally, Worf allowed his hold to be broken by
Asta-ha's third attempt: creativity in combat must
always be encouraged in a student.
    "You have progressed adequately," he praised;
"but the weakness of your body holds you back. You
must reapply yourself to a vigorous calisthenics
program until your muscles respond."
 Owena-da, a constant irritant, stepped forward.
Worf prepared to bellow the man into silence; but
unexpectedly, the Native "tech-master" came to
attention and saluted... a first for Owena-da. "Sir,
request permission to speak freely."
    "Request denied. You will use all proper forms of
address as you speak." Owena-da already took too
many liberties, and Worf was not about to give him
more.
    "Aye, aye, sir. Sir, this recruit recommends a
change in the PT program."
    "Oh. You do? I am sure the Klingon Military
Command Council will be eager to hear your sugges-
tions."
    "Thank you, sir! This recruit has prepared an
anatomical kinesthetic analysis of the physical-
training regime, sir. Including suggestions for in-
creasing the efficiency and speed of bodily responses
through nondestructive hormone therapy." From
nowhere, Owena-da pulled a sheaf of paper, which
the villagers had lately invented. From where Worf
stood, he could see that it was covered with a dense
thicket of crabbed writing in the language used by
Starfleet--a language the Natives had learned in five
days.
    The Klingon sighed, accepting the pages and
handwaving Owena-da back into the ranks. Worf did
not look at the paper... not yet. "On your faces,"
he said quietly, but with absolute authority.
    The Natives dropped quickly to the standard
push-up position. "Down, up," began Worf; "down,
up, down, up, down, up ... halfway down." Worf
held them halfway through a single push-up, waiting
until he heard groans and saw them beginning to
collapse before resuming the count.
    An hour later, safely ensconced in his makeshift
bivouac tent, the Klingon read through Owena-da's
analysis with mounting irritation and frustration.
He keenly felt the slap to his authority--a raw
recruit, telling Worf of House Mogh how to teach
physical training! It was a deadly insult to his
military bearing, his honor, and his house. And the
most humiliating factor was that Worf would have to
implement Owena-da's training recommendations
immediately, because they were brilliant and in-
sightful and training time was horribly short.
    Worf brooded for too long after finishing the
paper. Honor dictated that he would even have to
submit the paper to the Federation journal for
immediate adoption throughout Starfleet and the
civilian milieu.
    And Worf's honorable role in defending Sierra-
Bravo against the Cardassian/Drek'la invasion
would forever be subsumed under the Natives' mi-
raculous tactical and training innovations. For gene-
rations, their genius had been blocked by instant
access to all the "new tech" their hearts desired.
Now, under the stress of having to fend for their own
lives, the native intellectual capacity was bursting
forth like the human war goddess Athena erupting
from the head of Zeus in Worffs favorite human
myth, taught him by his foster father.
    And who would draw the lesson for the Federation
itself?. "And who was it who warned of this danger?"
he asked aloud; the wind supplied no answer. No-
body would remember. Worf's honor had been
snatched by Klingon thieves, won back at enormous
cost... and now was about to be buried under the
casual brilliance of a race of supergenius dilettantes.
    The situation was intolerable. But Worf was a
Klingon, and had a duty to perform, so the intolera-
ble would be tolerated. He rose; the squadron would
have set up their spring traps by now, ready to be
tested. The Klingon grimaced as he ducked through
the tent flap, dreading the marvelous innovations in
booby trapping he was about to see.

    Major Kira lay on the deck on Level Four, held
prone by a heavy foot planted on her cervical
vertibrae. She made no attempt to struggle; she
already knew it would be useless. Of course, the
whole damned thing is useless, isn't it? Through
overlong familiarity, the thought barely bothered
her anymore.
    She listened at the corner of her ear to the dean:
"You are not worthy of trust. You must be re-
strained. You will wear the collar of slaves."
    The Kai's voice sounded offstage, faintly chastis-
ing without provoking. "As you were restrained by
the Dominion?"
 A long silence. "Yes, as we were."
    "I see." Kai Winn's tone would have chilled a
winter river.
    Kira, however, could hardly imagine caring less
than she did at that moment. The station was lost.
The brave Bajorans had accepted surrender. Even
the vaunted Federation was stymied... there had
been no further reaction to the seizure of Deep Space
Nine. She was yanked to her feet and held immobile,
while a binding plastic collar was locked onto her
throat.
    Bitterness tasted sweet on her tongue. Kira stood
when they released her, not even glancing at the
piece of catwalk railing she had battered over the
dean's head, striking from ambush with every New-
ton of force she could gather. The power of the blow
had knocked him to his knobby knees, but that was
the only effect; when he stood up, he was unhurt.
    "You must receive a demonstration of the power
of the collar of slaves," recited the dean, his curi-
ously uninflected voice nevertheless conveying a
subterranean river of emotion. He made no overt
signal, but the collar tightened, cutting off Kira's
windpipe.
    They had caught her after an exhalation. Within
seconds, her lungs screamed for air. But she stood
absolutely still, eyes closed, not letting herself gasp
or double over and keeping her hands at her side.
The collar tightened further, and Kira felt con-
sciousness ebb. Cutting off blood to my brain, she
thought dully.
    She felt a sharp pressure against her cheek, but it
didn't seem important; the blackness welcomed her.
Then her head ached, suddenly washed with agony.
She was drowning in a lake, coughing up bitter-
tasting water onto what must have been the sea-
shore. But the beach felt too hard, too cold.
    She lay on the deck of maintenance tube 19, Level
Four, while a pair of insectoid invaders sprayed
bitter-tasting water on her face. "You now see the
authority of the collar for slaves," buzzed the dean.
"You must obey the rules for prisoners or the collar
will be used to execute you. There is a limbic
integrator. It senses violent impulses and acts auto-
matically."
    The offstage voice again, surely the Kai's. She was
speaking to someone, one of her special team. "How
are you coming with the project I set for you, finding
the Orb?"
    "We are nearly done, my Kai," said a man whom
Kira vaguely recognized from Ops duty during the
initial battle.
  "You will finish in time?"
  "We will."
    'Ms I instructed, you will tell me when you find
where the rebels hid the Orb, and I will send Kira to
fetch it." It seemed odd for the Kai to emphasize the
first three words, but Kira had other needs.
    Dimly, she sought the anxious figure of Kai Winn.
How curiously motherlike she looks! "Was I--uncon-
scious?" croaked Major Kira.
    "Yes, child. I think the collar cut off the flow of
blood through the artery." The Kai leaned close,
speaking for Kira's ears only--though Kira pre-
sumed that the insectoids heard every word, either
using audio-amps or because they had exceptionally
keen hearing. "There is a time when we who walk
with the Prophets must learn that humility is an
important virtue. Trust me, child. I surely know
what I'm speaking about. It seems the end of the
world, but really, it's not: what you can tolerate, you
can endure."
    The major's lips flickered for a momentary smile.
The words fi'om the psalm: tolerate and endure. "I
will struggle no longer," said Kira Nerys. "You will
watch me become a model slave." She allowed
herself to be led in purest docility back to the access
corridor.
    A model slave... and astonished, Kira realized
that she meant it. The insects had taken over the
station, and there was nothing that anyone could do
about it. Not yet, she appended dully. Struggle was
futile; she proved it to herself alone in her cabin,
deliberately working herself into a fury, only to feel
the collar tighten by itself as it had on the dean's
command.
    "I'm just trying to lull them into a false security,"
she told herself; but it was hard to believe it. Many
times over the next days, she "woke" to realize she
had been serving the dean and the other invaders for
several hours without noting a single, militarily
useful weakness, nothing to use against the enemy.
Do I slip so easily into a slave's role? she wondered,
lying awake in terror half through the night.
    She caught the Kai watching her through lazily
lidded eyes, a knowing smile on Winn's lips. Kira
felt the seduction of acceptance, and the thrill it
produced set her body to shivering. How deep into
this "cover" can I go and still escape?
    "What will you do during this Resistance, child?"
asked Kai Winn unexpectedly the next afternoon.
    "Resist," said Kira, hearing the echo of a previous
conversation. But she meant she would resist temp-
tation to succumb to her fate. Prophets, she prayed,
it's so damned easy to make a big show and resist,
defiant, like a teenage girl in Shakar~ cell during the
Occupation. She bent, lowering her head as the dean
approached; she waited for him to issue orders...
they were never difficult or humiliating, which made
it worse. But it's a hell of a lot harder to resist with
bowed head and a soft voice. Help met Don't let me
lose my temper or lose myselfl. If the Prophets
answered, Kira couldn't hear Their words.
    Kira's duties were to run messages to the Kai and
other Bajorans, demonstrate the use of station con-
trols (the dean never asked Major Kira about weap-
onry), reprogram the replicators, and bring the
ceremonial first and last meals to the dean (though
he served himself, for which Kira thanked the
Prophets). She was to finish each task and return to
the dean, unless he contacted her over the com-
system to give further orders. But Kira perfected the
art of dawdling, which she'd never mastered before,
taking as long to complete each project as she could
reasonably pretend to need. She walked slowly, in a
stately manner, killing even more time: every ten
minutes slain was one fewer task before she could
crawl into her rack.
    Kira Nerys shrank and shrank, until at last she
found her irreducible core. Her spirits contracted
into a sharp ice-blade that pricked her breast and
irritated her stomach. After the rest of her pride,
efficiency, courage, recklessness, and bravado had
boiled away, Major Kira found at last the pure will
that would finally drive away the new invaders. And
she found a new respect for Kai Winn, whose own
will must have been mighty indeed to sustain her
through so many years of silent, hidden resistance--
with a bowed head and a soft voice.
 Kira's eyes began to open. She began to see every
crack and weakness, every overlooked line of attack
in the invaders' profile. Their sleep was too sound,
almost comatose. When eating, they neither talked
nor looked around. They needed special suits out-
side the hull to withstand cosmic background radia-
tion. The "insects" were too individualistic, tending
to go wildsiding through the station, and the dean
could hardly reel them in at times. They were
nevertheless terrified to be alone and always roamed
at least by threes.
    Kira easily accepted that they had been Dominion
slaves, probably as completely dominated as the
Jem'Hadar. But they had been used for other pur-
poses, and Kira probed to discover what exactly
they'd done for the Founders (while she bowed and
answered, "Yes, most gracious dean; instantly, great
one"). The Founders, Kira knew from personal
experience and conversations with her friend Odo,
liked specialization. They used the Jem'Hadar for
war and the Vorta for diplomacy; what could the
Liberated do for shapeshifters?
    One curious incident puzzled Kira, and she fret-
ted endlessly about what it could mean. It occurred
early in the occupation of--of Emissary's Sanctu-
ary, two days after the dean and his crew seized
control.
    At first, Kira made a point not even to mention
Keiko, Jake, and the other children and civilians in
the eight bombardment shelters around the main
Promenade level. She still hoped, absurdly, that the
occupation would be brief, and Keiko and the kids
could come out after a few days. Keiko played her
part well: she laid low, as she would have said,
neither communicating nor trying to leave, doing
nothing to reveal her presence.
    But after several hours, the dean stopped and
"stared" at Kira. In fact, she had to infer the stare,
since his face was a featureless mask. "There are
beings not accounted for in the inventory," he said,
his actual voice behind the universal translator
sounding so disturbingly like the shellclickers of
Bajor that Kira shuddered.
    "I don't know what you mean." She was still in
her sullen phase then, and in no mood to cooperate.
    "Our scans reveal there are 237 beings in this
enclosed environment who are not listed on the
prisoner manifest you gave us. You must find them
and return them to their places."
    Kira said nothing. She was well aware that the
aliens would swiftly locate the other "prisoners,"
but that didn't mean she had to help. But Kai Winn
answered in Kira's place. "My friends, the rest of the
personnel are in the shelters on this level." The Kai
gestured around her; she was standing directly in
front of the Klingon restaurant, which was across the
circular hallway from one of those very shelters.
Winn turned and pointed at it. "There are eight of
these structures. The rest of the... the residents
here are secured inside."
    Kira had a momentary urge to leap the distance
and break Kai Winn's nose. But she pressed her lips
together and said nothing, contenting herself with a
look that should have frozen the marrow in the old
woman's bones.
  "They are secured?" repeated the dean.
  "Yes, my most gracious host. They are safe."
    The dean turned away. Kira heard no words, but
an alien moved to stand in front of Bombardment
Shelter Six as if guarding it from attack. Looking
along the Promenade in both directions, the major
saw that guards were taking up positions in front of
alternate shelters. But since they made no effort to
enter, Kira slowly forgot about it. Keiko seemed
safe--for the moment.
    Several more times, Kai Winn asked one lieuten-
ant or another as the occupation progressed about
the "special project," which evidently was to find
the Orb. How odd, thought the major; how could she
possibly not know where itg hidden? It was incon-
ceivable that the Kai would not be able to put her
finger-ends on the Orb at a moment's notice. But
seemingly, those she sent to hide it had succeeded
beyond anyone's wildest imagination. Buying time?
Does she still hope for rescue from the Federation?
    Two days passed, and Kira began to worry, howev-
er. The last time she had talked with the botanist,
Keiko had promised to stay secured for two or three
days. But how long could she wait? Clearly, the
aliens were not leaving anytime soon.
    They continued their sentrylike marching up and
down the Promenade, looking like military beetles
on parade. Every time Kira shuffled through the
Promenade, she felt a little more nervous about
what would happen when somebody, Keiko or one
of the other civilians in a shelter, decided to go stir-
crazy and break out.
    She didn't have long to wait. The first casualty of
claustrophobia was not Keiko; it was Jounda Mar,
an archeologist from the Riis Valley on Bajor. At
last, Jounda couldn't take the isolation--she was in
a shelter with only twelve people counting herself--
and she cracked the seal and yanked open the door.
Major Kira, slave collar now in place, was attending
the dean while he sampled food from a Bajoran
noodle house. "Attending" in this case meant sitting
next to him, eating whatever dish he ate first to make
sure it wasn't poisoned.
    When the door to Shelter Two popped, hissed, and
swung open, and Jounda stepped outside trembling,
the dean's reaction was so startling that Kira
dropped a plate full of malibon on the deck, where it
shattered. The alien leapt to his feet with such
alacrity that he knocked over the table, clenched his
fist (which Kira had determined activated his com
circuit), and began shouting "Emergency, emergen-
cy, breakout on Deck Nine!"
    The aliens swarmed the location, led by the dean
himself, and they pulled the door all the way open
and mobbed the shelter. Jounda screamed once, but
then she fell bitterly silent.
    Kira rushed over to mediate, to prevent the aliens
from panicking or the Bajoran civilians from putting
up a futile resistance that would only get someone
hurt. Prophets, she thought, I'm turning into Kai
Winn.t Jounda's once-white jumper was stained with
two days of grime and sweat, and the dozen of them
smelled like they hadn't bathed, naturally enough.
Kira was shocked to see how quickly the civilians
fell right back into their "occupation daze," obeying
the aliens' gestures and incomprehensible com-
mands-for none of the civilians had a universal
translator, of course.

    "My lord," said Kira, pushing herself in between
the dean and Jounda; "don't let your anger get the
better of your judgment. These people are civilians,
not warriors--they pose no risk to you!"
    But the dean paid her no attention, merely pulling
her aside gently. "Replace them," he said to his men,
"quickly, lest we lose one or more than one."
    And while Kira stared, stupified, the aliens pro-
ceeded to return the civilians to the bombardment
shelter. Jounda Mar's pleas were in vain, and neither
would the dean listen to Kira. "You don't need to
put them back!" shouted the major. "They won't
attack you--they're as trustworthy as the rest of us."
She was uncomfortably aware that that, actually,
was saying a lot: when shove had come to tumble,
the grand, independent, passionate Bajorans on
Emissary~ Sanctuary had become as docile as a herd
of curlbeasts.
    But it made no difference. Without even listening,
the aliens returned Jounda Mar and the other eleven
civilians to Bombardment Shelter Two and resealed
it. And there they stayed.
    Over the next two days, there were similar "break-
outs" from each of the other shelters. Jake's was next
to try to leave, followed by the other six: three the
same day, then two more the next, then the last,
Shelter Five, containing forty-one assorted civil ser-
vants brought up to the station by the Kai. The
aliens' behavior was identical in every case: they
treated the incidents like a prisoner breakout,
swarming the "escapees" and returning them forci-
bly to their "cells."
 Kira understood why: somehow, the dean had got
it into his carapace that the civilians hiding in the
shelters were prisoners confined involuntarily to
cells, and he chose, for whatever reason, to continue
their sentences. But why? What had made him think
that? Kira shook her head, still not understanding
when the final secretary was pushed into the last
shelter already full of Kai Winn's bureaucrats, a fate
almost worse than death. A thought tickled Kira's
hindbrain: for some reason, she knew that this was
an important--even critical--piece of information,
if she could only figure out the reason for the
aberrant behavior.
    Why? Why would they make such an absurd mis-
take? But the Prophets, Who knew all, chose not to
whisper in the major's ear, and she remained in
ignorance.

    Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax was awake
before the sun, pacing in the chilly predawn, devel-
oping a plan. When she glanced at Gul Ragat, she
was startled to find him watching her, his black
Cardassian eyes enigmatic but hard. Julian had not
yet stirred.
    Ragat sat up, pulling his rough blanket around his
frail body. His trapezius muscles, stretching from
neck to shoulder tips--huge and powerful on most
Cardassians--were instead thin and limp, sagging
pathetically; the bony ridges surrounding his eye
sockets were dark gray, and his dull eyes were
sunken into deep flesh.
    "I didn't expect you to wake for another couple of
hours," said Dax. The charade was over; Ragat
knew who the both of them were, Bashir and Dax.
     "Old men don't sleep well," he said, shrugging.
 "Even those of us made old long before our time by
betrayal and dishonor."  "What tipped you?"
    At first, the Gul simply smiled, dark and mysteri-
ous, like Garak telling lunchroom tales to the doctor.
Then Ragat slumped, letting his head sink. He tried
a self-deprecating smile. "You swore when you
couldn't shoot me. You said 'oh, hell.' The aborigi-
nes don't have any concept of heaven or hell. So you
were Federation--Starfleet."
  "From that you knew our names?"
    Ragat looked up at her. "We knew only one
Starfleet ship in orbit around this planet, the U.S.S.
Defiant. With all the trouble our two peoples have
had, you'd imagine we would make an effort to
memorize the crew manifests of ships we're likely to
encounter. Wouldn't you?" Dax said nothing.
    "You are a high-ranking female. You certainly
weren't Major Kira; I can smell Bajorans. So I took
the chance that you were the Trill."
    Jadzia cocked her head at Bashir and raised an
eyebrow.
    Ragat snorted, sounding almost like their own
Constable Odo. "Who else but Julian Bashir would
be sneaking behind me with a medical tricorder?"
    Dax nodded. "Anything else we should know?"
She leaned dose. "Any reason I shouldn't kill you
now, before Julian wakes up?"
    He blanched, turning his face away. "The best
reason in the quadrant: I know something you need
to know but don't."
  "That being?"
    "I know the story of the aborigines. How they got
here, why they have such technology but are so
primitive and uncivilized."  "Why?"
    The Gul shook his head slowly, wincing at the
pain. "Release me to my men and I'll tell you what
you need to know."
    "Tell me what I want to know, and I won't release
you from this life."
    For an instant, Dax was sure she saw terror flicker
across the Gul's face. He's a man used to living in
fear, she intuited. Then the Cardassian mask fell
across it once more. "We, ah, appear to be at an
impasse, Commander. Will you kill me before even
finding out what information I hold?"
      She stood straight and contemplated the prostrate
form for a beat. "No. I won't. Not yet, anyway."
  Bashit awoke.
    Gul Ragat struggled to his feet and picked up his
pack in weary resignation. "Don't look so tortured,"
she said, feeling little pity but much repugnance.
"You don't have to walk. We have transportation."
The Gul relaxed visibly, and Dax was sorry she had
told him so quickly.
    She stared at his back as he waited. He does know
something, she concluded. At the least, he's found
electronic or even paper records. If it's a main com-
puter, then maybe we can reprogram the planetary
defenses to let the Defiant pass!
    It was a charming thought--whose reality de-
pended on nothing but the whim of an ancient
Cardassian Gul, unusually cynical and manipulative
even for that species. Or is he really that old,
chronologically? She shrugged; he was ancient in
mind if not in body. Jadzia Dax throttled back her
racing thoughts and began scooping her belongings
into a pack. At least, considering Gul Ragat's condi-
tion, he wouldn't be making any quick breaks for the
border.

CHAPTER
        3

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO stayed unobtrusive, leaving
day-to-day contacts between Federation and Natives
to the other away-team members. He tried to perfect
his own antitoxin, and it got better. Still, I don't
know how much longer we can last, he thought,
hypospraying himself with the latest experiment.
    Captain Sisko was particularly pleased at the
progress Commander Worf was making on the mili-
tary side and with Chief O'Brien's work with
Owena-da to develop home-grown "new tech" to
replace the fantastic devices the Natives had relied
on for millenia, but that no longer worked. They
don't work anymore because I stopped them, he
thought for the thousandth time. No matter what the
others imagined, Sisko was increasingly aware that
making such a terrible decisionmcutting off all
power to the northern hemisphere--didn't get easi-
er with time. He still stewed over the dilemma,
second-guessing everything he had done.
    He took a deep breath. Some of the ache was gone.
The new serum did in fact work marginally better.
    "They are learning," he told O'Brien, injecting the
chief; "but are they learning quickly enough? Will
we be able to repulse the next Cardassian attack?"
    "I think it likely," said O'Brien, who continued to
cough. Sisko couldn't tell yet whether he had im-
proved. Of course, he'll say he has, regardless, real-
ized the captain.
  "Spears and arrows against disruptors?"
    "People confuse not being state-of-the-art with
being obsolete," said O'Brien; "especially us engi-
neers. But you know, old-fashioned radio still works
as good as subspace over short distances; and you
can die just as easily from an arrow in the gut today
as you could two thousand years ago, sir."
    Sisko stroked his chin, looking at the three wood-
plus-local-steel devices the chief had placed before
him on a fallen, blue-gray log. Owena-da's first
design was what O'Brien had called an "arbalest"
but looked to Sisko like a crossbow, a "steel" arch-
er's bow mounted on a shaft, with a trigger to loosen
the string. The second, invented the next day during
lunch by Colonel-Mayor Asta-ha (cut down from
mayor-general) was a pair of miniature, hand-held,
angled catapults, each of which fired a small, cast-
metal ball split in half, the two halves connected by a
two-meter length of cable: after firing, the halves of
each ball would separate, pulling the cable taut, and
rotate at a high speed, wrapping around the legs and
arms of anyone unlucky enough to be standing in the
 way. A two-shot, automatic bola pistol, thought Sis-
 ko, awed.
     The third device, also by Owena-da, was more
 complex, a technological leap in two days that had
 taken humans a thousand years. The weapon resem-
 bled a tube with a trio of metal bulbs growing out the
 rear end. Cocking the device by operating a pump
 lever several times compressed the air in the bulbs;
 the compressed air then fired a needle-sharp poison
 dart that O'Brien estimated could pierce Cardassian
 battle armor in a square shot within twenty meters
 range. Owena-da dubbed it the "Viper's Kiss" (at
 least that's how the universal translator rendered the
 name).
    As Sisko gingerly fingered the Viper's Kiss, he
heard a dull explosion outside and down the hillock
to the east, in the area Worf and O'Brien had
selected as a munitions proving ground. The
colonel-mayor, her daughter Tivva-ma, and Owena-
da were experimenting with the Sierra-Bravo ver-
sion of gunpowder, though they hadn't yet learned to
control the gas expansion. The Captain shuddered
slightly; have I built a Frankenstein's monster? On
whom would the erstwhile Tiffnakis, now called
Vanimastavvi, turn once they had rid their planet of
its Cardassian infestation?
    As least O'Brien had stopped hacking, and his
color looked better. The captain was encouraged.
    "Chief," he said, "could you ask the rest of the
away team to step into my tent?" While O'Brien
beetled away, Sisko paced, hands clasped behind his
back, trying to frame his argument. "Gentlemen,"
he greeted the team when they arrived, injecting
each man except Odo. "We are in a tricky situation
here. All... this." Sisko gestured expansively, indi-
cating the Vanimastavvi all around them.
    Everyone seemed to understand what he meant.
"The Natives are progressing much faster than any
of us expected," said Worf.
    "I told you about the constitution," said Consta-
ble Odo, visibly piqued. "If you ask me, they're
moving too fast."
    "You're right. The question is what to do about
them."
    "By the time they finish," bragged O'Brien with
a wicked grin, "they'll have such weapons, the
damned Cardassian bastards won't know what hit
'em!"
    "I want my clothes back," insisted Quark in a
quiet, angry voice. He looked particularly oafish
wearing animal skins and wooden clogs.
    "Gentlemen, we are in the fight of our lives here.
The Defiant is gone, and who knows when it will
return. Our food supplies are dwindling, and we still
can't eat the native plants or animals."
    "Sir," interrupted Chief O'Brien, "maybe we can
get the Tiffnakis, or whatever they're calling them-
selves now, maybe we can get them to invent a food
reprocessor?"
    Odo snorted. "Oh be serious, Chief. They don't
even know the first thing about food chemistry. All
the intelligence in the quadrant can't turn lead into
latinurn!"
     "Why don't we let them read a Federation chemis-
 try textbook?"
 "Did you happen to bring one along, Chief?.
Captain, can you please continue?" Odo turned his
back on the chief and folded his arms defiantly.
    Sisko had kept quiet during the exchange, using
his lack of interest to make the point to O'Brien.
"Thank you, Constable. We must raid the Cardassi-
aris again. They have the only food we can eat, the
only water we can drink. I'm tempted to take the
Vanimastavvi on the raid, or allow them to perform
it themselves."
    "May I interrupt, Captain?" Without waiting for a
response, Worf turned to face the entire group and
continued. "I do not advise that we raid the Cardas-
sians."
    "How are we supposed to eat?" demanded Chief
O'Brien, who was beginning to look a little thin and
stretched, thought Sisko.
    "Up until now," said the Klingon, "the Cardas-
sians have been entirely or/the offensive. They may
be aware that the power is offline, if they have
attempted to use captured native technology. But
they will not associate that with the passive, ah,
Natives." Worf paused, waiting for response.
Sisko nodded. "We're listening, Commander."
"The Cardassians have attacked many Native
villages. In every case, the Natives have responded
with panic and ill-prepared and ineffective defenses,
allowing themselves to be overwhelmed in a matter
of moments."
    "Wolf," snapped O'Brien, holding his stomach,
"we already know all that."
    "But as soon as the Natives go on the offensive,
especially if they are effective, the Cardassians will
be alerted to the changed situation. They will re-
spond. Although they are not Klingons, they are still
determined and clever warriors. We do not want
merely to bloody their noses. If we are going to tip
our hands, we must do so decisively."
    "Never do your enemy a small injury," quoted
Sisko.
    "That is well said, sir. You raise his ire but do not
cause him to fear you."
    "I take it you are suggesting, Mr. Worf, that
instead of a small raid, we launch a war."
    "That is what I recommend as chief military
advisor."
  "Does anybody disagree? Gentlemen?"
    Odo frowned, opened his mouth, but closed it
again. O'Brien didn't respond. But Quark cleared
his throat.
  "May I say something, Captain?"
    "We already know you want your clothing back,
Quark," said the constable.
    "Mr. Wolf, Mr. O'Brien," said the captain, "Begin
preparing plans for a full-strength assault on the
Cardassians. Odo, go aloft as a local bird and scout
out where the biggest body of invaders lies. And
Quark .... "Sisko hesitated, finally turning to look
at his troops. The Ferengi was good at negotia-
tionswbut tactical planning for a military opera-
tion?
    "Mr. Quark, why don't you go: bargain for your
clothes back. Team dismissed; I have reports to
begin drafting." And many dark and ~ightening
thoughts to explore, he added to himself.
     Dax sat in the shade watching Gul Ragat, the beat-
 up skimmer parked beneath a scrubby blue tree. He
 stood rigidly in the high sunlight, stiff as a board,
 hands clasped behind his back in a motion that
 would have looked regal on a fellow not wearing
 rags.
     "Gul Ragat," said Bashir, "get into some shade,
 for heaven's sake. We have water--Cardassian wa-
 ter."
     "I do not require water," said the Gul. "Thank
 you, Doctor."
     Dax smiled. She closed her eyes, resting. "Mad
 dogs and Cardassians go out in the midday sun," she
 said, more to herself than to Bashir.
  "Why does that sound familiar?" asked the doctor
anyway. "I'm sure I've heard ...."He trailed off in
silence, for Dax wasn't listening.
    She pondered Ragat's offer: information for free-
dom. Fundamentally, it was a good trade. The last
thing in the world I want is to be dragging a prisoner
around with me, especially a flail, young-old man.
But there was the problem that Ragat knew who they
were, which so far the rest of the Cardassians did
not. She relied on that ignorance. If the Cardassians
realized there was a Starfleet away team on Sierra
Bravo, they would move mountains to hunt them
down and kill or capture them all. We're their only
natural predators, she said to herself.
    "Julian," she said in a voice almost too soft for
him to hear, even sitting next to her. "If we can
figure a way to keep Ragat off the board for the next
week or so, I see no reason not to let him go."
 "I was just thinking the same," said Bashir. "If
he's telling the truth about the information, that
might be much more beneficial to us than a pris-
oner."
    "I doubt the Cardassians would trade much for
his carcass. To hear him talk, there won't be too
many statues erected to Gul Ragat on Cardassia
Prime."
    "His troops seem loyal," said Bashir, but he
sounded dubious even as he said it.
    "His troops are a bunch of renegade brigands. His
XO would probably pop the cork on some expensive
Cardassian Champagnemif there is such a thing--if
we told him Ragat was a prisoner."
  Bashir nodded. "Then let's accept his offer."
    "We can dump him in the wilderness," suggested
Dax.
    "With water and provisions," said the doctor,
giving Dax a hard look.
    "Of course. Enough for a couple of weeks... eas-
ily long enough to hike back to a Cardassian en-
campment, if he doesn't get lost."
    "As you say," said Bashir, still sounding as though
he were trying to convince himself rather than Dax,
"the information is more valuable than the man."
  "If," said Dax, "he's telling us the truth."
    Gul Ragat turned to stare directly at the pair. "Of
course he's telling you the truth," said the Cardas-
sian. "We came across a nodule that I believe is a
terminal of some sort, connecting directly with the
main planetary computers, wherever they are. We
have been able to access part of it... the historical
records."
  Dax fell silent in astonishment. Beside her, Bashir
was likewise speechless. "You really have it?" she
said, quite unable to keep the eagerness out of her
voice.
    Ragat sighed, stepping into the shadows at last.
He was sweating, Dax noticed, a strange, bluish
perspiration, whether natural for a Cardassian or
from the planet, she wasn't sure. "I will take you to
my glorious imperial camp," he said with lip curled.
"You will be able to query the computer yourself.
We can also reprovision there. I want four weeks
worth of rationsrain case I do get lost."
"How many guards?" asked the Trill, warily.
"But two," said Ragat. "Not recognizing your
presence, I took all but two junior noncoms out on
the Wild Hunt." The bitterness in his voice almost
made Dax feel pity. Then she remembered the
butchered village, and she pressed her lips together
to hold back the fury. "Yes," continued Ragat, "we
had just left the camp when you attacked us. It's no
more than, um, four or five of your kilometers
distant."
    Dax leapt to her feet, so eager to see this alien
computer "nodule" that she couldn't bear to rest any
longer. "Lead on," she commanded. Anticipation all
but drove the rage from her mind... until later.
Until it would be needed.
  Bashir groaned. "Jadzia, that's--"
    She held up her hand, stopping his objection.
"Yes, Julian, I already know that's not the line from
the play. Let's get across this damned gully and find
that deserted encampment. We'll leave the skimmer
here," she added as afterthought; "your engines are
so damned noisy, it would be like calling ahead for

an appointment." They set out across the sand,
trekking toward their rendezvous with an alien
brain.
    Deserted the camp was indeed. In fact, Dax was
quite astonished to discover the Gul had told the
truth: there were only two Cardassian guards at
home; one was relaxing out of sight, suggested
Ragat. "Julian," said Dax, "take care of the sentry."
    Bashir took down the sentry with no muss, a
single shot on stun laying him gently to the dirt. The
three-man team approached silently, ghosting up to
the fallen enemy. "What now, Jadzia?" asked the
doctor. He frowned, starting to dig in his heels.
  "No need," said Dax, holding up her hand.
  "The liquor ruse again?"
    She shook her head. "Nobody would believe it a
second time. But I have another brainstorm. Julian,
can you inject something into his heel that will cause
his foot to swell up and itch?"
  "Itch? How much?"
  "A lot."
    "And why? You don't think he's going to tell us
anything in exchange for the antidote, do you?"
    Dax laughed. "Come on, what could a corporal
possibly tell us? Do you think Gul Ragat confides in
his noncoms?" The Gul affected not to hear the
reference, and Dax continued. "But when he comes
to and tries to figure out what happened, if he finds
what looks like a weird bug-bite, don't you think
he'll put two and two together?"
    Bashir smiled. "All right, Jadzia; one itchy bee-
sting coming up."
    While the doctor mixed the potion, Dax scouted
the compound with Gul Ragat in tow. "If you make
a sound," she promised, "it will be your last. There's
no Julian Bashir here now to get in the way." She
looked significantly at the Gul, who swallowed and
tried to look nonchalant. But she could see he was
shaken. He knew, of course, how many lives she had
livedrand that some of her incarnations had been
rather more bloodthirsty than the typical Starfleet
officer's. Gul Ragat said not a word as they crept up
on the remaining guard.
    They caught him sleeping on a couch, a regs
manual lying open on his chest. He snored lustily,
obviously out for some time. Dax returned to
Bashir, who had just finished anointing the uncon-
scious guard's foot. She dragged the doctor into the
library, where he hyposprayed the sleeping guard
with a sedative that would keep him out for three
hours or more. "He's already asleep," said Dax.
"He'll just assume he was tired."
    Gul Ragat snorted, sounding almost like Consta-
ble Odo. "How clever you can be," he said, nodding
approval. "I see your long contact with the Empire
has rubbed off on you."
    "Computer," said Dax, all seriousness again. Try
as she might, she couldn't get the image of the
Native massacre out of her brain. Nothing Ragat
said seemed at all cute or witty when superimposed
as voice-over to that internal video feed.
    The Cardassian curled his lip as if smelling some-
thing distasteful. "Of course. Let's get down to
business."

0

CHAPTER
       4

DAX MADE RAGAT walk in front along the corridor
and kept a phaser trained on his back. She trusted
that her own reactions would be faster than the old
man's, even if he had a head start from plotting
beforehand: he wouldn't elude them or sound any
sort of alarm. Bashir searched all about them with
his medical scanner, looking for life signs; Cardas-
sian, Native, or anything else.
    But the Gul was in no mood to fight. Looking
terribly bent over, like a question mark, as if he
really were oldtbut he wasn't!--he padded
through the prefabricated corridors that had been
thrown up in a day by the Cardassian Corps of
Engineers, and led them to a steel door secured by a
complex lock. Dax examined it closely, saying, "Jul-
ian, I think even Chief O'Brien would have trouble
bypassing this security protocol."
    She caught hold of Gul Ragat's arm and pulled
him to the lock. "You'd better be able to open this, if
you want to live to rejoin your friends."
    "Don't look at me for relief," said Bashir, as the
Gul flicked his eyes at the doctor. "I'm not in
command here." Julian doesn't look pleased,
thought Dax. He doesn't like the whole hostage
game. Well, hell--neither do I.
    But Gul Ragat at least understood the rules. With
a great sigh, as if leaping a threshhold he never
thought he would cross, he poked and beeped the
touchpad until the door reluctantly ground open.
    Air hissed around the edges as the seal cracked.
Dax sniffed as they entered: she smelled not only
ozone but the curiously wet and fresh smell of cold
nitrogen, quickly replaced by Sierra-Bravo's metal-
lic atmosphere. Her eyes were immediately caught
by the alien nodule... an apt description, she
thought. It was a silvery ball, much smaller than she
expected, no larger than her fist. It floated in an
antigray field, or else it generated its own.
    The Cardassians had surrounded it with a dizzy
collection of dish antennas and electronic probes--
none actually touching the nodule, but arrayed
around it in a meter-wide sphere. The Gul crossed to
the nearest console and screen, ignoring the nodule
itselfi He touched a single control, and the screen
flickered to life.
    It was filled from edge to edge by Cardassian block
lettering. Bashir leaned close, reading as best he
could, while Dax kept her eye on Ragat. Surrounded
by as much equipment as was in that room, she was
nervous lest he activate some sort of alarm, causing
an entire regiment to beam into the compound from
one of the ships in orbit.
    She glanced at Bashir: the doctor was so engrossed
with what he was reading, he had completely forgot-
ten everything else in the room. His mouth stood
open in astonishment. At last, he came to some sort
of end. He pressed the screen-down button several
times, then stepped back, shaking his head and
blinking moisture back into his irritated eyes.
     "Well," he said, his voice soft and shaken, "I guess
that answers a few questions." "What is it, Julian?"
    Twice, Bashir started to respond, then closed his
mouth again and thought. The third time, he made
it. "Jadzia--Commander--you weren't too far off
in some of your speculations." His lips were evi-
dently too dry; he licked them, but it didn't seem to
do much good.
    "Yes?" she said, revolving her hand as if to say
speed it up/
    "Jadzia... this entire planet is a gigantic social-
science experiment."
    An icy, invisible fist gripped at the commander's
bowels. "Conducted by whom? To discover what?"
    Julian Bashir sat on a blue chair, stroking the
console and thinking. "A long time ago--that seven-
million-year timeline you calculated for the hut hit it
on the head--the Natives' ancestors grew interested
in the question of whether technology and society
were inseparable. So they... God, this is so horrif-
ic. They found a planet amenable to their biology
and terraformed it--I suppose they also genetically
engineered the animals for consciousness and intel-
ligence, but the scraps I read weren't clear on that
point. Maybe that's natural for those animals on the
Natives' home system, Native Prime I guess you can
call it."
    Dax waited. "Julian, are you going to tell me? Or
do I have to learn Cardassian and wait for the
novel?"
    "All right. They sprinkled the planet surface with
a random sample of their technology, which was far
in advance of our own. Then they raised about a
hundred million of their own children in complete
isolation from any adults, any elements of culture or
society, even from the language the Native Primes
themselves spoke."
    Nobody said a word; a solid minute of silence
passed, punctuated by the clicks and hisses of the
Cardassian air recirculators. "God is the right
word," said Dax at last. "That's exactly what the
Native Primes were playing. And a bored and deca-
dent God at that."
  "Then they took these kids--"
    "I can guess the rest, Julian. The Native Primes
took the kids, as soon as they could walk, and
transported them down to the surface of Sierra-
Bravo, all alone--no mother, no father, no culture,
no community, nothing but each other and a world
filled with enough 'new tech' to allow some of the
kids to survive. Julian, what was the death rate?"
    He shrugged. "Well, there were a hundred million
to start, and today, seven million years later, the
population appears stable at eleven million. I would
guess that most of the deaths occurred within the
first year."
    Dax felt nauseated. "That's a death rate of 89
percent of their own children. And they let the
experiment continue!"
    "They surrounded the planet with defenses in-
tended to keep everyone away. I suppose the Native
Primes must have died out or lost interest millions
of years ago, but they never terminated the experi-
ment as long as they lived. The eleven million
Natives left on Sierra-Bravo probably wouldn't be
enough to be self-sustaining, except for the technolo-
gy that provides food, shelter, clothing, entertain-
ment, and everything else they need."
    "Julian, I hope you're wrong, dead wrong about
that."
 "About what?"
    "That the Natives won't be self-sustaining, now
that we've..." She didn't need to finish. She was
sure Bashir understood the catastrophic, unlivable
guilt they would all feel if a ham-fisted attempt to
save the Natives ended up killing them all instead.
Eleven million ghosts dragging me to my grave.
CouM I ever live with myselj? She fought down
existential terror. Even three centuries of life hadn't
prepared her to shoulder such a weight of culpa-
bility.
    Bashir's face paled. "Here's to being dead wrong,"
he toasted, raising an imaginary glass.
      "Well," said Dax, still trembling, "I guess they
proved one point."  "They did?"
  "Civilization and technology are separable." She
laughed, more from nervousness than mirth. The
cold metal computer banks surrounding her looked
so much like Deep Space Nine, she felt a great
longing to get the hell off the planet and back
home--a home she would probably never see again,
now that Kai Winn had her clutches on it. "I guess
Worf was right after all, all those warnings he gave
about technology not being enough to sustain a
society."
    Bashir shrugged; he didn't seem interested in
Worf's philosophy of technology. "So now what?" he
asked.
    "Well, it eliminates one worry." She paused. "At
least we don't have to fret about violating the Prime
Directive. There is no natural evolution to disturb in
this demonic social experiment." She stepped for-
ward, taking Gut Ragat's arm. "Okay, you gave what
you promised. Let's get on the hump. We've got
some flying to do." Somehow, the bloody crimes of
Gul Ragat didn't seem so significant to Dax at the
moment, against this new landscape.
    Then they left, Ragat shutting and sealing the door
behind them. They exited the way they had come,
hiking the three klicks back to the remaining skim-
mer. Again, they sandwiched Gul Ragat between the
two of them, Dax driving, and set off across the
desert.
    The landscape below shimmered in the heat-
induced turbulence. Dax was quiet for the moment,
thinking about the Native Primes, the children, the
experiment. At last she spoke. "I'm going to dump
him off about a hundred and fifty kilometers from
the nearest Cardassian base," she shouted over her
shoulder.
    Bashir nodded, also distracted. Only Gul Ragat
seemed unconcerned about the atrocity they had
read about. Of course, he had had several days to
think about it already. And of course, he's a Cardas-
sian, thought Dax bitterly.
    At last, she veered away from her phaser-straight
northeastern course when she saw a bluer glimmer
on her right. It turned out to be a large saltwater
lake.
    She landed, turned to Ragat, and said, "end of the
line, partner."
    He startled as from a dream of long ago. "What?
Here? There's nothing."
    Dax bared her teeth. "Take a hike. Way back to
your compound is a century and a half that-a-way."
She pointed back along the course they had come. If
the GUl couldn't find his way back, she decided, that
was his own problem. "Keep these mountains close
on your left. You'll get there."
    Gul Ragat pulled a stiff upper lip, Cardassian to
the end. Must be a noble house, she thought, under-
standing but unimpressed. He spoke, seemingly to
no one, or to himselfi "Perhaps it's for the best. I
have always had my Neemak Counselor."  
"What kind of counselor?"
    Ragat shook his head. "Now it's a changeling. One
of those." He stared at her with intensity, speaking
like a lost soul in an endless nightmare. "They spy
on me," he explained, enunciating clearly, as if for a
hidden microphone. "Now they take the form of
 Cardassians and infiltrate my organization. Was
 Neemak a spy, do you think?"
     "I don't have a clue to what you're talking about.
 And actually, I don't care."
     Ragat smiled knowingly at Dax, smiled and
 winked. He bowed with slight mockery but real
 courtliness. "It's not important to anyone but me."
    She pulled a pack from the saddlebag, twenty-
eight days worth of Cardassian provisions, as de-
manded, lifted from the compound. "You'll pardon
us if we don't wish you luck," she said. Then she
started the engine, yanked the skimmer into the air,
and took off, leaving the pathetic, hunched figure of
a man standing by the lonely shore of the lake. He
was looking, not the way they had come, the way he
would return, but at the sinking sun--almost as if he
saw his own life falling toward its horizon.
    Then he was gone, and Dax couldn't even see him
in the rear-viewer. Bashir leaned close. "You drive
for a while," he said, "then it's my turn. I don't want
to stop for the night. Let's put some distance be-
tween us and .... "
    She nodded. I know exactly what you mean, my
friend.

    Kai Winn settled painfully into the overly austere
chair in the Emissary's former office, behind the too-
plain, too-small desk overlooked by barren walls and
unornamented ceiling. The Emissary was the elect of
the Prophets, but he had much to learn about the
majesty of office. Perhaps he would have made a
good ran fin or monk, but he would have served very
unwell as Kai. May the Prophets forgive me, she
appended with half her heart.
    She let her head droop into her arms. There was
nothing more tiring than wearing The Face, bowing
and scraping to a "master" who must not under any
circumstances understand how much one loathed
him or that one sought any method at hand to end
his plans, career, life. Winn smiled behind her arms;
Nerys was surely discovering this very fact at exactly
the same moment. The child, Kai Winn's secret
protege (a status unknown even to the major her-
self), was finally beginning to grow toward adult-
hood: the major is attaining majority, O joyous day.
And her secret mentor, Sister Winn, was nervously
anticipating Gul Ragat's raid on the Riis spaceport,
hoping that the young boy Barada Vai had under-
stood Winn's cryptic message and warned the Re-
sistance cell not to ....
    No, no, that was years agogdecades.t I am Kai
now. Or am I still a vedek? Is Opalca still among us?
No, I'm sure she is gone and I am Kag but I'm just
too weary to get up and check.
    The memory-dreams were coming more fre-
quently, striking Winn in her waking moments, not
only at night. It's because this whole adventure has
turned into a waking nightmare, she concluded. It
was supposed to be so simple, so triumphant. Bajor,
in the person of Kai Winn, was to assume control of
the Cardassian eye that had orbited the planet for so
long, watching every move of the Bajoran people.
She would rename it to remove not only the stench
of Cardassia but also the shame of Federation rescue
 when Bajor could not free itself. Once Terok Nor,
 then Deep Space Nine--now the station was Emis-
 sary's Sanctuary, a Bajoran name for a little piece of
 Bajor--defacto as well as de jure now.
    That scheming little blasphemer Shakaar, having
weaseled his way into appointment as First Minis-
ter, tried to add the title of Governor of Emissary~
Sanctuary to his plate. But Kai Winn made sure the
Council considered all its options and choices; in the
end, "it was decided" that the station would be
better in the hands of a proven religious leader,
already so favored by the Prophets as to have been
elected Kai. "It was decided"--by me. And I must
confess, I enjoyed that little exercise of authority.
    There really was nothing wrong with Shakaar. He
was a good fellow, had been a loyal soldier during
the Resistance. But the Prophets had had so few
victories of late in the thoroughly secularized Bajor-
an government. It was good to win one for righteous-
ness, for a change.
    Not every popular indulgence or every move
toward tolerance was good for the people--even if,
childlike, they enjoyed it. A child would enjoy candy
for dinner, too, and a man might enjoy intimate
time spent with that poor Bajoran Dabo girl in
Quark's Place. But enjoyment didn't make gluttony
or adultery acceptable.
    There was always duty. Duty called to everyone,
from the farmer in the field to Kai in the Sky.
Brothers and Sisters of faith had great duties laid
upon them. Winn knew her duty; it had been writ
clear from the moment the opportunity presented
itselfi she had to get the holocam with its precious
images to the cell, to any cell. The information was
so urgently needed for ....
    There I go again, down the snakehole of old
memories. Well, if the Prophets will hint so strongly, I
must yield to their will.
    Consciously relaxing her face, her shoulders and
thoughts, Kai Winn drifted into a dark, fretful
temple where she was faced with four ways to fail: if
she lacked the badge of valor, she could throw the
holocam into the bushes and forget all about it; if
she missed the stone of wisdom, she could confide in
the wrong man and be denounced; if she lost the
bowl of compassion, she could condemn another,
such as Barada Vai, diverting suspicion from herself.
And if Winn misplaced the needle of reason ....

THIRTY YEARS AGO

Heavenward Prayer Spaceport, the "Palm of Bajor,"
was a marvel of obsolescence in an age of modernity;
Sister Winn loved it beyond all its fellows. Though
the Cardassians had renamed it--with typical bu-
reaucratic inventiveness--CoUection Point One, all
the Bajorans still used the original name (and if the
truth be told, so did nine-tenths of the Cardassians.
Tradition imbued every building, floating walkway,
roadway, and launch pad in the place: the passenger
terminal, for example, now used for large-scale Car-
dassian troop transportation as well as for ferrying
Cardassian notables and Bajoran untouchables to
 Terok Nor, included not a single slidewalk. Instead,
 passengers shuffled along on foot past murals depict-
 ing the Nine Stages of the Prophet Amadan, the
 Beginning, the Apotheosis of Ramn, and the Gather-
 ing. That is, the Cardassian legionnaires and Bajor-
 an prisoners walked; high-ranking Guls, legates, and
 other dignitaries simply "beamed" from the entry
 checkpoint directly to the VIP lounge, having little
 apparent interest in Bajoran religious artwork.
    Sister Winn, crouching in a muddy ditch on the
outskirts of the landing field itself, squinted against
the afternoon sun, which burned her eyes even
through her polarized, UV-protection, "frog-eye"
sunglasses. In her discomfort, she considered the
Cardassian innovation of beaming, disassembling a
body into molecules or atoms or subatomic particles
or whatever, firing it through the ether at some
unholy speed, and miraculously rebuilding it at
another spot, and decided that she would rather
suffer an eternity of foul-smelling mud and an
endless supply of mud-chiggers than ever allow
herself to be atomized like the bug-spray she used in
her tiny garden. I will never, ever, ever voluntarily use
that horrific method of transportation... surely it
strips body from soul and leaves the latter behind
    She pinched to death another chigger that had
happily begun to gnaw on her ear. Winn had only
herself to blame for her discomfort: she had led Gul
Ragat to this awful vantage point, whence he could
"spring his ambush" on the unsuspecting Resistance
raid. He expects to net an entire cell, thought Sister
Winn grimly, and who ~ to say he won't be right? She
prayed yet again to the Prophets that the young lad,

Barada Vai, had understood her secret message and
convinced the cell leaders of the lurking disaster; if
prayerful repetition alone were sufficient to move
the Prophets, then Winn had prayed enough to
invoke Their physical presencemhigher than the
tallest launch tower--on the landing field itself.

CHAPTER
       5

HEAVENWARD PRAYER was the forefinger of the Palm
of Bajor, laid against the Kimbila Stream, the largest
tributary into the Shakiristi River. It lay nearly ten
Bajoran kilometers from the city of Riis proper,
which itself sat at the "wrist," where the swollen
Shakiristi threw itself through the final pass in the
foothills of the Lakastors into the Cold Sea.
    In the summer, the rolling hills would be brown,
the moist hollows deepest green. Streams and rivu-
lets collected from the Lakastor Mountains and
from the sharp buttes of Granite Prayer, and chuck-
led down the hills, barely slowing across the valleys,
until they flowed into the thundering Shakiristi.
    But now it was deep, cold winter. Riis never grew
cold enough to snow, but the chill wind picked at
Sister Winn's bones and made her joints ache. She
pulled the priestess habit tightly around her ample
flesh, wishing she had listened to her inner nag and
worn long underwear. Gul Ragat appeared impervi-
ous to the weather. He was so intent on catching his
rabbits he was practically salivating.
    The spaceport itself was laid out like a gigantic
kami board: a circular causeway surrounded the
landing field, raising it above the swampy lake of
dark-green water on which the rest of Riis floated.
High ramps, reinforced now for Cardassian heavy-
tracked vehicles, drove like spokes from the "wheel"
of the causeway to the field itself at the hub. An
access road spiraled from ramp to ramp, tighter and
tighter, closing on the center of the field like a spider
web.
    The buildings were arched and porticoed, colored
in muted greens and pastel pinks. They lay low,
hugging the dry elevated land. Except for the tower,
not a building rose higher than four storeys. The
controlling tower was a pyramid that thrust sky-
ward--heavenward--five times that height, domi-
nating the landscape. From the top, where a
revolving vegetarian restaurant was a customary
tourist watering hole, Sister Winn discovered she
could see all the way to Kimbilisti, forty kilometers
away. At night, the lights topping buoys on the lake
and dotting the surrounding countryside between
the Thousand Rivers of Riis looked like nothing so
much as a heaven full of stars reflected on land and
water--hence the name Heavenward Prayer.
    "Where are they?" said Gul Ragat, so softly that
Winn wasn't sure whether he was talking to her or
himself.
 "Your pardon, my lord?"
    Ragat turned on Sister Winn the angriest face he'd
ever shown her. "Where are they? Your little reb-
els... what are they waiting for?"
    Winn tried to look nervous, which wasn't at all
difficult. She licked her lips and discovered her
tongue was just as dry. "I... uh... perhaps
they're--delayed?" Her face flushed with the lie,
and she hoped he would give the reaction a different
interpretation.
    "Perhaps," said the Gul, "they're not coming at
all. Perhaps they know not to come."
    "Give me--give them more time, my lord! They
may yet come." She crouched away from the window
of the inn Gul Ragat had taken over. Winn buried
her face in her forearms and prayed.
    Her words were a flat lie: Sister Winn already
knew there was no chance whatsoever that the rebels
would show up and attack the spaceport. Jaras Shie
was the most punctual man in the entire Resis-
tance-that was almost the only thing Sister Winn
knew about him. If Jaras missed an attack at dawn,
it could only be because he had no intention of
attacking at all. Winn's prayers were not a request of
the Prophets--they were words of thanksgiving.
    But I do beseech the Prophets, she corrected her-
self. She was spared the horror of having collabo-
rated with the Cardassians... but she still had a
holocam full of pictures to deliver. If she failed to get
the camera to Jaras's cell, then all the lives she had
put at risk, including her own, would count for
nothing.
    "Their eyes will see every part of you," said
someone from--from inside Sister Winn's own
head. She looked up, sucking in a sharp inhalation.
She had never "heard voices" before! For a moment,
the priestess felt dizzy; a senseless fear stole across
her face. Am Igoing mad? she wondered. Then, just
as quickly, she understood: Prophets, he~--they're
about to search met
    Winn stood, mouth open. Gul Ragat had never
searched her, not once in the four years she had (as
he thought) served him. He rarely had anyone
searched, violated--never a priestess. But she knew
at that moment that Ragat was going to do the
unprecedented... and he would find the holocam.
He couldn't help it... her trick bootheel wasn't
that clever.
    Whose voice was that? Flustered, she pushed her
mind away from the contemplation of forbidden
mysteries. Who could it have been but... Winn
shook herself, rose, and walked with anguished
stateliness to the comer farthest from the Gul and
his personal bodyguards. She felt a pair of reptilian
eyes tracking her movements. Turning, she beheld
Counselor Neemak staring intently at a spot a little
to Winn's left. Keep watching until your eyes fall out,
she thought. IfI have nothing else, I have the patience
to wait for my time.
    Winn perched herself precariously on a pile of
Cardassian field packs. She folded her legs like a
knotted bow, resting each hand on the opposite
boot. From this position, it would be but the work of
a moment to twist her right bootheel and drop the
holocam into her palm--and then what?
    Where in the world can I possibly hide such a
suspicious object as a camera? Several minutes of
thought failed to produce a plan, even a germ of one.
Instead, she methodically attacked the problem
from the opposite side. What, Winn asked herself,
could the Cardassians find in a trick swinging heel
that would not cause them instantly to execute her?
    That's easy, she thought. What else wouM an
innocent Bajoran wish to conceal from prying eyes
and clutchy hands but money? She nodded, hum-
ming to herself. Wherever she found to stash the
holocam, she had to replace it with a thick wad of
cash in her bootheel. Great. Now I have two miracles
to pull off in place of one!
    She decided to work on the money problem first,
hoping that her backbrain would continue mulling
the primary puzzle of what to do with the holocam.
Where, she pondered, would a Bajoran priestess get
her hands Bajoran money, she thought; a Bajoran
with a wallet full of Cardassian currency would
doubtless be executed for robbery.
    Once again, inspiration stepped forward and in-
troduced itselfi the only person in the Gul's entou-
rage who would probably carry Bajoran bills was the
half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian Neemak Counselor,
who made a career of playing both sides against the
middle and pocketing the squeeze. A brief smile
flickered across Sister Winn's face, almost too quick
even for her to catch it. Neemak had already lost
interest in her, his own patience long since ex-
hausted.
    It was time, decided the holy one, to put to good
use some of the tricks a lonely, friendless seminary
student had practiced while her fellow students were
laughing and socializing and ignoring her. It's been a
long time since I slickered anyone's pocket... if the
Prophets love me as I love Them, let Them guide my
hands now.
 "Winn!" shouted Gul Ragat.
 "Yes, lord?" said Winn, jumping to her feet.
 "Come here. Now."
    Winn never waited to be told twice. She rushed to
the side of her Gul, who still stared out the window
at the controlling tower, a quarter-kilometer from
the inn. "I am here, M'lord Ragat, to be com-
manded."
    He turned to face her, looking for the first time
like a real Cardassian. His jaw clenched like Legate
Migar's. His trapezius muscles, absurdly prominent
as on any Cardassian, were as rigid and hard as Gul
Dukat's. His fist clenched like Colonel Akkat's had
just before he had struck Winn in the face at the
bulletin tea, four days and a thousand years ago.
Ragat had intervened on Winn's behalf then; now he
looked as though he would cheer her hanging.
    "Barada Vai," whispered the Gul, as if not trust-
ing his voice not to break. Winn said nothing,
wearing the mask of serenity she had long ago
developed; a professional facemexpectant, calm,
but slightly puzzled. "Your brother. You do remem-
ber your brother, don't you?"
    "Yes, of course, m'lord. What about Vai? He's just
a child."
    An evil presence loomed behind her. Without
turning, Sister Winn knew the breath of Neemak.
But Ragat seemed not to notice.
    "Even a child has a mouth," said the Gul, words
winding about her neck like a squeeze-snake. "So I
begin to think."
  "Oh, no, surely not, most gracious lord!"
    "But he could have talked," said Ragat in a
perfectly horrid, quiet voice; "couldn't he have? If,
that is, he somehow guessed that we planned a raid.
What a lucky guess!"
    Neemak, irresistibly drawn by secrets and whis-
pers, began to edge toward the pair, surely stretching
both his ears. Winn carefully kept her eyes exclu-
sively on Ragat, though she itched to see how close
Neemak was going to getmand to begin a visual
search for where the counselor kept his ill-gotten
bribe-money. Best not to give the Gul any excuse to
find me insubordinate.
    Ragat turned his back on Winn, but she knew
she still had his full attention, even as he stared at
the sleepy, unexploded controlling towermas un-
touched, as unattacked as it had been yesterday and
would be tomorrow. It was the symbol of his humili-
ation, and possibly his ruin, if Neemak were but to
put two threes together and get six. After a moment,
Sister Winn bowed deeply, backing away with hu-
mility.
    And with half-lidded eyes expertly scanning the
half-man to her left. Neemak did not notice; he was
too busy trying to penetrate Gul Ragat's open-faced
frustration. Winn was suddenly surprised to feel
talents she had long since renounced flooding back
through her brain and hands. She had immediately
seen the pocket that bulged beneath Neemak's black,
leather overcoat ....

    It had been a long time ago, back in the seminary.
Winn was not the most well-liked religious student.
In fact, she was held in disdain by the fashionably
agnostic crowd. When she'd fallen sick with a nerve
disorder, a few visited her dorm room out of a sense
of duty, but nobody came in friendship.
    So Winn, in a perverse moment of her life (never
since repeated), studied and practiced the simple art
of removing a wallet from a pocket... more to
restore manual dexterity than for any criminological
reasons. After several months of illness, Winn got
quite expert at the obsolete talent... enough so
that she could play a few practical jokes on her
"friends," slipping valuables into a pocket that
would fall out when the mark reached for his hand-
kerchief.
    She knew she was good. But never before had she
found occasion to slicker a pocket for real. It pro-
voked a heavy feeling of stage fright, now that she
was lightening the pockets of the counselor--evil
incarnate.
    Neemak was no soldier, but he always wore his
greatcoat unbuttoned for quick access to the pistol
he kept in a back-draw holster. He was distracted.
There was no better moment... certainly none
before it would be too late for the priestess, so her
inner certainty told her.
    Before Winn could think twice and perhaps talk
herself out of it, she stretched out her hand as she
continued to back past Neemak Counselor. Her left
hand caught the edge of the thick, stiff greatcoat,
drawing it back. She stepped behind him, placing
her right hand near his right hip pocket, finger-ends
lightly touching the billfold. Now all I need is a
distraction, she thought... prayed.
    "Barada �ai," said Ragat, definitely to himself
this time. "Barada damned Vai!"
    "Barada Vai, M'Lord Gul?" repeated Neemak,
probing.
    The reaction from Ragat took Winn's breath
away. Never a granite-face, never one to wear the
mask, the Gul whiffed to face his counselor-spy with
an expression of guilty astonishment, a thief caught
with his hand actually inside the lockbox. His face
drained, and his mouth opened and closed. Prophets
above, thought Winn, he had no idea the silent-footed
Neemak was skulking behind him. No clue whatso-
ever/
    And Neemak, no fool in the wiles of intrigue,
knew he had struck a vein of purest ore: guilty
secrets were lifeblood to Neemak. He smiled, step-
ping forward eagerly to confront Ragat inside his
personal space with the terrible secret he had just
learned. Winn stepped quickly, so he wouldn't feel a
tug on his greatcoat. "Barada Vai," said Neemak,
calculating, "the child you spoke to in the square.
Where you waited... as if waiting for Barada him-
self."
Ragat said nothing, but he slowly shook his head.
"As we wait here now! How many times, m'lord,
have you glanced out that window at the tower? As if
you were... waiting for something to happen."
    Gul Ragat giggled like a schoolgirl. Neemak
brought his hands together as if washing them. And
holy Sister Winn clipped the folded bills between
forefinger and middle finger and slickered them as
smoothly as a carny. Heart pounding, she slowly let
the greatcoat close again, then stepped back farther
into the opposite corner, sitting once more on the
teetering pile of Cardassian field packs.
    The voices of Gul and counselor dropped to a
whisper, and both glanced back at Sister Winn. She
waited until Ragat began to sweat. He backed away
from Neemak to restore his space, and the counselor
stepped forward, "chasing" the Gul in slow motion
around the room. How familiar that is, thought
Winn to herself, smiling. She had been in Gul
Ragat's very situation at a seminar once, slowly
pursued by vedek Dasa, intent upon making some
obscure philosophical point, until she was rescued
by vedek Opaka and vedek Marinasa.
    The Cardassian-and-a-half had completely forgot-
ten she was even there, so intent were they upon the
dance of spider and fly. She fanned the bills... too
much, far too much. No Bajoran would have as much
money as Neemak carried. She quickly discarded all
the biggest bills (and all the Cardassian money) into
her palm, keeping only as much as a thrifty priestess
might have saved over a few years.
    She glanced again at the pair of intriguers. Then
she swallowed a lump of dust, crossed her legs again,
and twisted her heel open. The holocam tumbled
out, and she caught it, barely preventing it from
thumping on the floor. Fumbling the bills into the
secret compartment, all her dexterity suddenly van-
ished. She swung the heel closed again and breathed
a sigh of relief.
    But a moment later, her heart jumped as she
realized that now she held a camera full of classified
 holos in her hand, a hand that shook with palsy. She
 stared around the hotel room, desperate for another
 inspiration from the Prophets--anything!--telling
 her what to do next.
    Dresser. Liquor cabinet. Wardrobe. Wash basin.
Sink. A bed for the rugged Gul while his legionnaires
camped in the old grazing field. A comm screen, a
writing desk. Her eyes were drawn back to the
wardrobe, then to Gul Ragat's own field pack. Why,
by the Prophets, does he carry that, when he sleeps
in a luxurious spaceport hotel? He never even un-
packs it.
    The words rustled through Winn's head like dried
leaves along a concrete walk: He never even un-
packs it.t
    Thought became deed in the wink of an eye. She
rose, crossed to the walk-in closet, and dropped the
holocam into a side pocket of the field pack. After a
moment's thought, she gently pressed the pocket-
flap closed, where the fuzzy-hooks held it shut.
Then, hearing the discussion slowing, she sat in the
nearest seat, a hard, cold, "proper Cardassian
chair." She sat at attention and once again put on
the mask.
    Minutes later, as a grim-faced Gul led them out of
the hotel room and into his household's camp in the
grassy field that once had been a grazing pasture, she
found no difficulty casting away the excess currency
that she was still palming, the large denominations
and all the Cardassian bills, even with Neemak
Counselor breathing down her neck like a wild beast.
It never occurred to him that anyone would throw
away money, and he did not notice what he could
not see. Let the wind hide my deed, thought Sister
Winn.
    Gul Ragat waited, quietly fuming, in the hotel
lobby, accompanied by his increasingly worried
personal priestess and his gloating counselor. The
sun crawled across the sky, then began to walk, and
finally sprinted through the last few hours. Sister
Winn sat on a couch watching Cardassian news
bulletins--nothing interesting, but she wasn't pay-
ing attention anyway--until she looked up and it
was night. There was no attack; Heavenward Prayer
Spaceport bustled as it always did, shouting with its
usual cacophony, stuffed as full as ever with Bajor-
ans and Cardassians from here to there and back to
here. A moment later, Winn found herself with the
unwanted but undivided attention of three Cardas-
sian legionnaires and her own personal Gul.
    "Yes, my--my lord?" She allowed a note of fear
and uncertainty to color her words.
 "I never thought it would be you," said Ragat.
    "Me?" Winn's voice sounded tiny and childlike,
even to her own ears, and she didn't need to fake it.
    "To betray me!" Gtfi Ragat's face grew stony and
gray, and he spoke through a jaw clenched tight.
Winn saw every muscle in the young Gtfi's body
flexed. Behind his Cardassian eyes, she saw ob-
sidian.
    "I? Betray your grace? Prophets forbid I shotfid
ever betray anyone to whom I owe my loyalty!"
Winn squirmed off the couch and fell to her knees,
prostrating herself before the furious Gul. "Please, I
beg you--do not blame me, m'lord! I don't know
what happened, why they didn't..." She let her
 voice trail away. Looking up, she stared between Gul
 Ragat and Neemak Counselor, between rage min-
 gled with its own fear and a triumphant smirk
 shaken with a drop of nervous confusion: Neemak
 knew that he knew something, but he didn't yet
 know what he knew.
    But Gul Ragat, like Sister Winn, would know that
once the half-breed got his yarpi-teeth into a dirty
secret, he wouldn't let go until he had swallowed
every drop. And Ragat knew it might ultimately
prove his ruin... he had withheld information, and
by his negligence (and his trusting of a Bajoran)
missed the opportunity to capture one of the most
effective cells of the Resistance. Cardassia Prime
was not forgiving of stupidity.
    He mouthed a single word silently at her: Barada,
it was. Winn said nothing; what else could the Gul
think? He doesn't even know how right he is, she
thought with little satisfaction.
    "Take her," he said abruptly. "And if she resists or
attempts to escape--kill her." Winn sighed, sitting
back on her rump. She could see that the words
tasted bitter to Ragat... yet still, he had forced
them out. Congratulations, she thought, you have
just ordered your first murder. You are now a full-
fledged Cardassian.
    She rose quickly and went with the sergeant and
the two private legionnaires, giving them no excuse
whatsoever to carry out the Gul's conditional order,
for some Cardassians were only too eager for red-
work. She paused only long enough to look back at
the young man, barely even twenty-one, and to allow
a single tear to roll down her cheek. "M'lord," she
said, "I thought you knew me better." Then the
unsentimental soldiers yanked her toward the re-
volving doors and hustled her faster than she cared
to walk toward the encampment.
    Winn stumbled twice on the cobblestones between
the lobby door and the grassy pasture. As she was
shoved through the camp, the Bajorans who had
relied upon her for so much of their spiritual needs,
their hope, their lives as anything but slaves, turned
their faces away and pretended not to notice. They
gave her no support. One young Bajoran boy yelled
a rude rhyme at her implying she was a woman
of small virtue, but a woman cuffed him and he
shut up.
    They reached the tent that would be her desig-
nated prison. As the sergeant yanked open the tent
flap, a Cardassian was blocking their way. With a
gasp, Winn realized it was the same sadistic guard
who had seen her drop off the edge of Surface 92.
The corporal's own mouth fell open in shock...
Winn was the Gul's favorite! How could she be in
such trouble? But then he recovered. He spread his
feet, hooked thumbs in his belt, and began to bray.
"Well, well, well! Look what we have here! So it
looks like I wuz right after all that, and you're a
traitor just like I--"
    Without pausing or missing a step, the sergeant
grabbed the bullying corporal by his breastplate and
jerked him out of the way and onto his posterior.
The sergeant shoved Sister Winn into the tent with-
out a backward glance. The corporal sputtered and
leapt to his feet, shouting slurs in Cardassian against
the sergeant's manhood and loyalty, words that
Winn barely knew--and would never admit to
knowing.
    Only then did the sergeant turn. He stared silently
at the bully, saying nothing, just looking. The corpo-
ral's voice faltered, then he struggled to silence.
Without a word, the sergeant grimly drew his thumb
across his own throat in a gesture as universal as it
was chilling.
    The corporal grew distinctly ashen, confirming
what Winn had long thought about such sadistic
thugs. Then, with a sick smile, he backed slowly
away. Sister Winn prayed she would never see him
again... but fretted that she would.
    The sergeant turned back to her. "Search her," he
said without emotion. "Strip her clothes, her boots,
her bag. and catalog everything. Then we will pre-
pare for the interrogation."
    Winn offered no resistance. She had the patience
to wait for her time.

$

CHAPTER
        6

Klic~ a'uE SLAVe watched quietly for her chance.
From Kai Winn she was starting to learn the pa-
tience to wait for her time. At last, three days
following the last "prisoner" roundup, the dean
ordered her to the Promenade to talk to Garak: the
aliens had decided that all the captives should wear
uniform clothing, and they chose the tailor, natu-
rally enough, to design and replicate it.
    It was a strange feeling for Kira, being so anxious
to speak to a Cardassianmand in particular, this
Cardassian. But Garak had been in the Obsidian
Order, and much as he still turned Kira's stomach,
she needed that expertise.
    "There is something completely wrong about the
way they're acting," she whispered to Garak, in
between conveying the dean's uniform-design in-
structions. She looked around nervously: with Kai
Winn's inexplicable help, the aliens had repro-
grammed the computer to eavesdrop on their cap-
tives throughout the station using hidden audio
pickups.
    Garak instantly put his finger to his lips. He went
around his shop, starting several cloth-cutting and -
attaching machines. Then he touched his ear and
drew his finger across his throat. Kira interpreted
Garak's signal as telling her the noise from the
machines would interfere with the computer's abili-
ty to eavesdrop... in fact, thought Kira, I'll bet he
designed them that way deliberately. A Cardassian,
especially this Cardassian, trusts no one.
    But that was the very expertise she needed.
"Which peculiarities have you noticed?" asked Gar-
ak, with the faint, I-know-more-than-you smile Kira
despised more than anything else about him.
  "Well, they refer to us as prisoners--"
  "We are."
    "Instead of captives or hostages," she finished,
glaring at Garak. "And then there's the episode with
the civilians in the bombardment shelters." Garak
raised his brows questioningly, and Kira explained
what had happened. Meanwhile, the Cardassian
worked on a sketch of the proposed uniforms, and
he and Kira pointed to various sections and re-
worked them, in case the aliens had installed spy-
eyes as well.
    "I would think they were soldiers," said Kira, "or
even police officers. Except for what they call them-
selves."
    "Yes, few police renegades would call themselves
'the Liberated.'"
    Kira gave Garak a hard look, but she didn't bother
asking how he had come by his knowledge. He
would never tell her anyway. After a moment, Garak
continued. "But our quasi-cops certainly appear to
be driving police-style ships." Kira blinked. "They are?"
    "Well they're certainly not military vessels, or you
would have them in your security database. Oh, I do
beg your pardon," said Garak, bowing. "I should not
have implied that I have access to your security
database. I was only extrapolating from the fact that
your do not seem to recognize the ships, yet I'm sure
you consulted the database the moment they at-
tacked the station."
    The major fumed. It was obvious that Garak did,
in point of fact, mean to imply exactly that .... but
did that mean he had or hadn't broken into the top-
security Starfleet intelligence database? Was he just
playing games, or did he really know?
    "They didn't have the kind of weaponry that has
been used against us before," she said, thinking out
loud, "these, what did you call them? Quasi-cops."
    "Or there would be little left of Terok--my apolo-
gies, of Emissary~ Sanctuary. But tell me, Major
Kira .... "Garak hunched closer on the pretext of
redrawing a section of the sleeve. "Why didn't you
use those wonderful quantum torpedoes of yours,
those that your Captain Sisko used so effectively in
the recent unpleasantness involving Cardassia?" He
smiled without guile, by which Kira knew he was full
of it.
    "There were technical difficulties." I'll be damned
if Fll tell him anything, she promised herself.
    "It's almost as if... as if you didn't have the
authorization to fire them. Or some such problem.
Why, can you be telling me that the vaunted Federa.
tion doesn't trust you with the access codes? Tsk,
tsk." He shook his head sadly. "They're getting more
devious and suspicious with every passing day. I
daresay, the Federation is almost starting to get
Cardassian on us."
    Kira curled her lip, feeling an overwhelming urge
to slam her fist into his Carassian face. But she knew
any violent impulse would be detected by the slave
collar she worewin fact, it was already beginning to
tighten. Ten bars of latinum says the bastard knows
all about the collar, too.
    It was a bet she quickly won. "Well," said Garak,
"at least I ought to be able to help you with that."
His eyes flickered briefly to the torc, pressing into
Kira's flesh.
    "Can youmdeactivate?" she said, gasping for a
thin, reedy breath.
    The Cardassian nodded, smiling and studying the
uniform design. "A small piece, a sliver in the right
place, can short out the entire mechanism. We've
used similar devices ourselves. I'll work on it and
slip it to you when it's ready."
    She controlled her breath, calming herself. There
was no alternative to working with Garak the Spy.
"So we have police cruisers driven by quasi-cop
aliens who call themselves the Liberated. And
they're desperate for an Orb--don't tell me you
didn't already know that."
 "Major!" Garak looked scandalized.
    "But why? What the hell do they want with it?
Why would any non-Bajoran race want to speak to
the Prophets?"
    The instant the words were out of her mouth, Kira
gasped, not even remembering to hide the reaction
from any lurking spy-cams. Garak smiled; the
thought had already occurred to him, she was sure,
but now she knew as well... and no need to risk
being overheard by saying it aloud.
    Why would any race want to speak to the Proph-
ets, the "wormhole aliens," as the captain used to
call them before he became Emissary? Because the
Prophets were a dangerous unknown. Kira didn't
think it possible that the Prophets could be turned
away from Bajor, but another race might not know
that. Even the thought that the Prophets might
abandon Bajor was blasphemous. But blasphemies
have come to pass before, she thought cynically. That
the aliens might succeed in subverting or perhaps
even harming the Prophets was a chance she Could
not take.
    Somehow, she had to warn Kai Winn. It was vital,
desperately vital, that the alien dean not get his
hands on an Orb under any circumstances. The fate
not only of Bajor but of the entire Alpha Quadrant
hung in the balance.
    But the Kai was surrounded and constantly
watched by the aliens, as if they knew, like Kira, that
Kai Winn was the key. Since the moment of the
Kai's surrender of the station, the aliens had not
allowed the two women to be alone together for a
single moment. And how, wondered Kira, thinking
 of a Cardassian game of strategy she had studied as a
 young soldier, how to pass through a fortress of stone
 to whisper the word in the ear of the queen?
     But she wasn't to get the chance. Garak's door slid
 open without a preceding chirp, and two of the
 quasi-cops strode into the tailor's shop. "May I help
 you, gentlemen?" asked the Cardassian. "Have you
 come about the uniforms? I have the preliminary
 designs right here. I've been working hard on them."
    Kira admired his smoothness. Her own heart was
pounding in excitement. The bugs ignored Garak
and walked straight to the major. "You will come,"
said one of them. "The dean requires your presence
in the cell-block control center."
    "And where is the cell-block control center?" But
the aliens did not answer, each taking one of Kira's
arms and hustling her toward the door.
    They dragged her to the turbolift, entered, and
said nothing. The lift moved on its own--up to Ops.
The Kai, the dean, and several other Bajorans and
aliens were arrayed in a parabola, waiting for her.
    The moment she entered, the dean made a flat
statement that he meant as a question: "You work
with members of the military unit called Starfleet."
Kira uncomfortably noticed she was at the focus of
the parabola.
    After a slow, shuffling moment, during which she
pretended to have difficulty understanding the ques-
tion (she had quickly relearned the traditional Ba-
joran game played against occupying forces), she
nodded. "Yes, sir. I know some people in Starfleet."
"Please observe the forward surveillance moni-
tor," said the dean. Kira obediently turned and felt
her stomach roll silently. Sitting dead in space
relative to the station, but inverted, since it had its
own gravity of course, was a Galaxy-class Federation
starship, the U.S.S. Harriman. It was sending a
hailing message to the current "owners" of Emis-
sary~ Sanctuary... considering that possession,
Kira remembered reading somewhere, was nine-
tenths of the law.
    "This is Admiral Taggart, captain of the Federa-
tion starship Harriman, speaking to the' Dominion
force currently holding Deep Space Nine. We have
received a plea from a former ranking officer of this
station--" Kira winced, feeling the Kai's glare of
betrayal burning the back of her neck--"that you be
removed from the premises immediately. You have
ten minutes to commence evacuation, or we declare
an act of war and initiate counterforce to recover our
possession."
    Major Kira shrank within her uniform at the
words, as ill-chosen as they possibly could have
been. Not only at the arrogance of this Admiral
Taggart, proclaiming that Ernissary's Sanctuary was
a "possession" of the Federation, but even more at
his extraordinary inability to predict the most obvi-
ous response from a group of terrorists holding
hostages on an occupied military base. What the hell
does he think they're going to do?
    Kira heard no order to open a channel, but the
dean began to speak a response. "I am dean of the
Liberated. You have ten minutes by your time to
depart from the range of these scanning instru-
ments. If you do not depart, we will execute one
prisoner every five minutes. To show our resolve, we
shall execute two prisoners immediately."
    Kira said nothing, her throat constricting so tight,
she probably couldn't have spoken if she'd wanted.
Kai Winn was likewise silent. Both leaders had been
through such "displays" before... during the last
occupation of Bajoran territory. They knew the
drill. It was the hardest thing Kira had ever had to
do in all her years in the Resistance: to stand still
and watch friends and battlefield comrades mur-
dered rather than yield and betray the rest.
    But she almost lost her fragile grip when the dean
issued the command to his troops. "Take two female
prisoners from cell-block Shelter Seven to the trans-
porter chamber, execute them, and transport their
bodies to the bridge of the vessel Harriman."

    "The problem with Cardassian skimmers," said
Dax, shouting over Bashir's shoulder against a hor-
rific wind, "is that they're Cardassian."
    The doctor said nothing, but he thought a few
words and phrases he was too much a gentleman
ever to say aloud, even to a centuries-old Trill.
Speech was an annoyance: Bashir was too busy
cranking and straining against the controls of the
two-man cycle-like skimmer that had suddenly, two
hours before, grown a mind of its own. It had
wrenched itself off course and veered sharply to the
right.
 "Julian! Get this thing under control!"
 "Perhaps you'd like to try it," he snapped. Not-
withstanding what could have been considered an
offer, Bashir continued tugging on the handlebars
for the simple reason that he happened to be sitting
in front. "What is this blasted thing doing?"
     "Julian, I think somebody whistled and it's going
home." Dax sounded worried. "Um... Gul Ragat?"
    "Are you kidding? That old man can't be more
than ten kilometers from where we left him, fifteen if
he's highly motivated. And he doesn't have a com-
municatormI searched him myself." She was quiet
a moment, then drew the same conclusion that
Bashir had already drawn. "It must be a general
recall... something has happened, and the Cardas-
sians are retreating to regroup."
    Bashir pursed his lips. The obvious conclusion to
leap to was that the "something" was Benjamin
Sisko. But he hardly needed to suggest the possibility
to Jadzia Dax, the captain's "old man."
    The doctor stopped trying to physically wrench it
back on their previous course and settled back,
panting. "Commander, if this skimmer is heading
home, then it's heading..."
    "Straight into the arms of a Cardassian expedi-
tionary force," she said, her voice barely audible
against the whistle of the wind and the whine of a
siren that had started up when the skimmer made a
sharp right turn. "Julian," she said, leaning over the
side and staring downward, "how high would you
estimate we are?"
    "I'm not a pilot, Jadzia. But I'd say were fifty me-
ters?"
  "What would happen if we~"
    "Splattered across the desert like a pair of broken
eggs." He sighed, staring at the console before him:
the touchplates and buttons were all completely
dead; he had already tried them. Whatever broad-
cast command had turned the sled, it had taken
complete control.
    Dax was still leaning over, but now she started
monkeying with the engine. "I wonder," she said.
"Julian, do you have something long and thin, like
a--like a..."  "Probe?"
"Yes, that's perfect. Hand it over, Doc."
Balancing on the wobbly skimmer, Bashir fished
in his medical pouch, extracting his oldest and least
delicate plastic probe, ordinarily used to separate
tissue from a wound for visual inspection. He
handed it to the commander, who began poking at
the high-speed, high-power turbine assembly. "Urn,
Commander... if you jam a probe in those blades,
assuming it doesn't yank your hand off, wouldn't it
just--"
    With a Klingon war cry, Dax thrust the probe as if
stabbing a d'k tahg knife into an enemy's innards.
The scream of metal almost burst the doctor's
eardrums, and the skimmer commenced bucking
and sashaying. He wrapped both arms around the
handlebars, and Dax grabbed his slim waist in a
death-lock that forced all the air out of his lungs.
    The skimmer began to fly apart in mid-air. Shards
of metal were ejected at high velocity, one of them
slashing through Bashir's pants-leg and razoring his
shin with a horribly painful cut to the bone. But he
had neither time nor breath to shout, for as the
skragged engine dropped from the frame the skim-
mer assumed the aerodynamic characteristics of a
brick.
    On the plus side, he regained control of the now-
nearly-useless flight surfaces. The skimmer fluttered
in a flat spin. There was one chance... if the spin
acted like the blades of the ancient helicopter, which
Bashir had flown in one of his spy-simulations with
Garak, it might slow their fall enough for them to
survive.
    The spin increased. Rather than fight it, he did
everything he could to encourage it. After a moment,
he realized he was dangling from the handlebars,
near the axis of rotation, as if gravity were now
directly behind them. He clenched his teeth against
the acceleration, straining his abdominal muscles to
keep the blood in his head from rushing to his feet. If
I black out, he thought dizzily, I let go and we both
die.
    But straining made little difference. They were
experiencing probably five Gs of acceleration, and
without the anti-G suits worn by pilots back in the
twentieth century, they hadn't a hope. Bashir felt
Dax's arms suddenly go limp and knew she had just
lost consciousness. He caught her with his legs, but
he couldn't hold on long. If only they would hit the
ground; then it would all be over, one way or
another. Goodbye, cruel world, he thought--my last
stupid joke.
    He felt something start to slip from his side--my
medical bag! Letting go the handlebar with one
hand, he grabbed the bag just as it was torn from his
shoulder. Instead, he felt his other pouchmfull of
 useful survival equipment--fly away to be lost in the
 desert sands. But he knew his priorities: the princi-
 ple of triage worked in many surprising places.
     But the single hand with which he held on was not
 strong enough for both his own and Dax's weight.
 The post was wrenched out of his hand. Dax disap-
 peared; he couldn't even remember when she
 slipped out of his leg clamp. The world was a black-
 and-gray swirl, and Bashir's head spun so he had no
 clue as to which way was down.
    Somebody punched him hard in the stomach,
cracking two ribs and leaving him gasping and
struggling for oxygen. He couldn't see, couldn't even
tell whether his eyes were open or closed... but
luminous blackness filled his "vision," or his visual
cortex, at least. Oh God, here comes the headache, he
just had time to think before the pain struck. It was
so intense, it forced an involuntary grunt out of him,
and he knew he was alive and on the deck.
    Nausea overwhelmed Bashir, and he lost every
undigested scrap he had eaten in the past twelve
hours. When he finished, he blinked his eyes open.
They were blurry, but his normal visual acuity soon
returned. Shaking, tears and mucous dripping down
his face, Bashir rose to his knees and looked for Dax.
    She was lying on her side about a hundred meters
from his position. He tried to move, but the pain in
his chest stabbed him, and he inhaled raggedly.
Punctured lung, he realized. Gallantry told him to
ignore it and walk, crawl, whatever it took to get to
Dax's side. But the intelligence that had often fright-
ened him as a child (after his "treatment") began to
speak inside his head in calm, emotionless tones:
you'll be a lot better help to her, it said, if you're in
good health yourself. Repair your own injuries first.
    He hated the voice of reason, but as usual, he
could find no fault with it. "Have you," he gasped to
himself, "ever tried--to fix--your own broken--
ribs and puncturedmlung?" The answer was no, but
Bashir discovered to his surprise that it was pos-
sible. ~. assuming one were as flexible as a monkey.
He played the tissue restorer across his chest a dozen
times before his breathing settled; it took longer to
knit the bones, but he was finished with everything
in less than three minutes.
    He pushed to his feet, ignoring the remaining
tenderness, and stumbled across the pebbly sand to
Dax. Trill luck had worked as advertised: Dax had
fallen first, when they were still too high, but she had
landed in a soft sandpit. She was unconscious but
still breathing, rasping so loud that Bashit decided
she had a fractured skull even before he used the
medical tricorder. The skull fracture wasn't serious,
but she had a compound fracture of her radius that
required immediate treatment before she bled to
death (and she already had a head start).
    After fifteen minutes of very basic emergency
medicine, the commander moaned and shifted to a
less uncomfortable position. Her eyes opened. She
looked at the torn, bloody sleeve of her native
costume, then at the exposed arm with the charac-
teristic pink splotch of regenerated tissue. "Miracles
of modmmodern medicine," she said, mumbled
actually. Then she fell into a deep sleep... partly
due to fatigue, partly the mild sedative Bashir had
hyposprayed into her shoulder.
     He allowed her to sleep for two hours while he
 scavanged everything useful from the wreckage of
 the skimmer. He clawed his way into the onboard
 computer brain and found the transponder, smash-
 ing it to rubble so the Cardassians couldn't use it to
 locate the crash site. Then he returned to Dax,
 squatting over her.
     "You look so peaceful when you sleep," he said. "I
 toss and moan like a patient with a fever." Bashir
 sighed. Then, setting practical judgment above med-
 ical wisdom, he gently shook her awake.
     Dax sat bolt upright, gasping in terror, eyes like
 saucers. She gripped his wrists painfully hard, star-
 ing past him at the lengthening shadows of the
 desert of Sierra-Bravo. Then she blinked, coming
 fully awake. "What--whatmwhat a nightmare,"
 she said, shuddering.
    "Nightmare? Don't Trills thrash around when
they dream?"
    Dax shook her head, clearing cobwebs, not re-
sponding to the question. "All right, Julian. Now
what?"
    "At least we're not headed for the last roundup
with the Cardassian cowboys."
    She lowered her brows, studying him. "You say
very strange things sometimes. How much time do
you spend in Quark's holosuites, anyway?"
    Bashire smiled at the old Dax. "I'm a student of
history. Come, let's start walking and find some
shelter for the night. From the sand dunes, I'd guess
we might get some wind when the sun sets."
    They charted a course for the nearest range of
hills. But before they could reach them, the breeze
kicked up, as Bashix had prophesied. Soon the sand
was blasting their faces, stinging like a swarm of
angry bees. Through the painful, dangerous sand-
storm, Bashix thought he saw a faint luminescence in
the distance.
    "Lights!" he shouted. "Maybe it's a Native vil-
lage!"
 "Where? I don't see anything."
    "Trust me, it's there," he said. The curse of seeing
twenty-fifteen, he thought; nobody ever believes you.
    As they got closer, the light increased until even
Dax could see it. Soon, Bashix could see clumps of
houses and other buildings looming in the blackness,
and they cut close to minimize the sand damage to
their exposed flesh. But none of the buildings were
lit, and they all looked deserted. The light he had
seen from two kilometers distant was a tiny, star-
light lightglobe at the top of a striped pole in the
center of town. A hexagon of pavement surrounded
the pole. Probably a bandstand of some sort, he
decided.
    Near the bandstand was a garage-like building
whose doors were not locked. Dax helped him
wrestle the sliding door up--there was probably a
button that would have raised it automatically, but
they hadn't time to hunt for it. They ducked inside
and began to shake out the sand. The doctor fished
some facial cream from his MediKit, and he and
Dax repaired the sand lacerations.
    "Do you have a light?" he asked. "I lost everything
but the medical gear back on the skimmer."
     Dax fumbled in her jacket, checking all the inter-
 nal pockets. "Damn," she said; "my hand torch is
 gone. Wait, I have something." From what Bashir
 could see in the starlight that filtered through a
 window in the ceiling, it was a tube a quarter-meter
 long, two centimeters in diameter.
    Dax took it in both hands and made as if she was
trying to break it. Bashir heard a pop, and a faint
green glowing mess swirled in the center of the tube.
Dax shook it violently, and the entire tube glowed
brilliant green, lighting the room.
    "One of Quark's," she said, smiling. "I filtched it
from him during the first away-team mission." She
held the glowtube aloft and gasped. "Oh, my," she
said breathlessly.
    "What is it?" Bashir turned to look. He saw some
peculiar object hulking in the deep shadows at the
back of the building.  "Oh, my!"
    "Dax, what is it?" He began to see the outlines of
a large, rectangular compartment with seats, storage
areas, and a pair of controls that looked like hospital
exercise bars hooking over the front seats and dan-
gling down about hand height.
  Bashir's mouth fell open. "Dax, it's..."
  "Julian, it's a--"
    The Native aircar taunted them with its nearness.
Even if they had fathorned its inner workings, there
was no way they could take off and fly in the dark in
such a storm. "Sleep well," said Bashir, more to the
aircar than his companion. "I have a feeling it's back
to basic pilot training in the morning."

0

CHAPTER
        7

JADZIA DAX forced herself to lie down, she even
closed her eyes, but she positively refused to listen
to her inner worm and sleep. She lay more or
less immobile for the five hours until morning,
not wanting to wake Bashir (assuming the good
doctor wasn't likewise feigning sleep to avoid both-
ering her). But the moment the sun east its first
tentative rays through the still swirling dust, a
natural searchlight illuminating the curious Native
car, she was up and inspecting the bizarre piece of
equipment.
    Bashir was at her side in an instant. "So you were
faking it," she said.
    "Sleep?" said he. "What's that? I don't believe
I've had a wink since we bubbled up from the
Defiant."
  "Let's see," said Dax, ticking off her fingers. "We
 fought a sea monster, were ejected from a destroyed
 runabout, swallowed half the ocean--"  
"Well, you did, at any rate."
     "Stole a pair of skimmers and dumped one, took
 out an entire Cardassian strike team, kidnapped a
 Gul and dropped him in the middle of nowhere,
 crashed the other skimmer .... "
    "And found out where the Natives came from,"
said a quiet Bashir. Dax trailed into silence, abrupt-
ly uninterested in her own witty repartee. Remem-
bering the ghastly experiment in which ninety
million Native children had been allowed to die, just
to see whether civilization would spring magically
from technology, had sobered her mood.
    "Commander," said the doctor, "are we ready to
get this--air-buggy moving?" Dax nodded, leading
the way to the vehicle that was slowly becoming
visible in the dawn light.
    The passenger compartment was enclosed by a
roll-cage, but the seats were bare blue metal--the
"exercise-bar" steering linkages were slightly stiff to
Dax's touch. Any looser and they'd be impossible to
hoM steady, she realized.
    There was no obvious engine. Storage boxesm
trunks--occupied the entire space behind the seats.
Other than the linkages, the boxes, and the seats, the
rest of the air-buggy was empty space enclosed by
bars. The contraption sat on landing skids instead of
wheels; it clearly was intended never to move along
the ground.
    "Maybe we'd better climb inside, Jadzia," said the
doctor. Dax was dubious about the missing engine,
but there was nothing else to do except set her eyes
on the horizon and start marching.
    "I really don't want to walk a few hundred kilome-
ters," she said, provoking a puzzled glance from
Bashir.
    She clambered inside, ducking her way through
the cage bars and squirming into a seat that was just
slightly disproportionate to the Trill frame. "So how
do you make it go?" she asked; "or how would you
make it go if there were an engine?" Experimentally,
she took hold of the overhead crane-like steering
link with both hands and pushed forward.
    The air-buggy leapt up a meter in altitude, then
lurched forward like a runabout on maximum
thrusters, hurling Dax back in her seat with bone-
cracking acceleration. With a horrible, metal-on-
metal, wrenching sound that tore at Dax's ears, the
buggy shattered the back of the garage, shredding
bits of steel like tissue paper. Panicked, she let go of
the link, and the air-buggy slowed to a stop. But it
didn't settle back on the ground; it remained a long
step in the air. There was no sound of turbine or fan
or even the hum of Federation-style antigravity
units. Whatever science held the buggy aloft, it was
silent as the grave.
  "Jadzia! Are you all right?"
    Dax didn't answer. She was too busy scanning
three hundred and sixty degrees around them, look-
ing for an energy signature.
  "Commander? Did you find something?"
    "Julian, this car isn't running on broadcast pow-
er."
     "Is there an internal power source? I thought you
 said there was no engine or energy-storage cell. If it's
 not broadcast, then what?"
    "I said it wasn't broadcast power. Julian..." Dax
looked up, silently analyzing the bizarre and contra-
dictory tricorder readings. "Julian, it's running on
broadcast potentia, not power. An uncollapsed state
vector that is sent around the planet instantane-
ously, at infinite speed. Because it's not real, it's not
bound by special relativity."
    "Broadcast potential energy? That's the most
unheard-of thing I ever heard of." She barely re-
membered reading about broadcast potentia herself,
and that was in a speculative engineering-fiction
magazine, long ago.
    "Well, the buggy must convert the potentia into
actual power somehow. Then it just--moves. In any
case," she said, feeling practical, "we've got our
wheels--well, so to speak."
    Bashir tried out the linkage, pushing it ever so
slightly. His more-than-humanly delicate touch
allowed the car to accelerate slowly. Twisting the
linkage left or right steered the buggy, and pulling
back stopped it, or reversed it if it were already
stopped. The simplest possible control, thought Dax.
    "And where does Madam wish to go?" asked
Bashit, trying to sound like a butler in a old English
holoplay.
    She smiled. "Believe it or not, I had time to
analyze the path that Cardassian skimmer followed
when it was summoned. If we're right that the
Cardassians are regrouping--and that Benjamin is
the causemthen I think I know where he must be,
judging from the Cardies' position."
    "I don't understand how you get from A to B to
D," said Bashir, sounding almost petulant. "What-
ever happened to C, the relative position of the
captain and the Cardassians?"
    "Look," said Dax, holding her hands like a fighter
jock describing a low-level, impulse-engine dogfight,
"if Ben's here, then the Cardassians would be here;
so if they're here, then he must be there!"
    Bashir sighed and pondered the information. He
didn't seem entirely to believe it. Well, thought Dax,
he's right; half of her "analysis" was really a wild-
eyed guess. But three-hundred-year-old intuition
was not to be dismissed out of hand. "All right," he
said, frowning dubiously. "Ah, lead on, MacDuff."
The doctor winked at her.
    "Julian, there's hope for you yet." She showed
Bashit the course, and he set off across the plain, the
air-buggy rising and falling to keep a steady altitude
of one meter-plus off the deck.

    The Natives advanced behind the column of away-
team members. Sure, they're called Vanimastavvi
now, thought Chief O'Brien, stepping nimbly, de-
spite his bulk, over fallen logs, goopy quicksand, and
ducking low branches. It was damnably hard keep-
ing track of all the names Colonel-Mayor Asta-ha
concocted every few days. Annoyed, O'Brien de-
cided to stick with Natives, the most descriptive
name.
 He followed Commander Worf, who followed
Odo, who flapped on ahead as a local hawk, as he
had before when scouting Cardassians. But the chief
kept his eyes on the captain, looking for a special
command.
    Finally, after nearly six hours of double-timing
through the forest and marshland, Sisko caught the
chief's eye and flicked his gaze rearward... the
signal O'Brien had waited for. Nodding, the chief
began to drift to the rear. He drifted farther and
farther back along the column until he found himself
walking rear-guard next to Quark. After another half
hour, long enough not to arouse suspicion, Captain
Sisko joined him, followed fifteen minutes later by
Worf.
    "I instructed the colonel-mayor to continue fol-
lowing the riverbed," announced the war-worthy
Klingon. "But perhaps I should remain at point and
at least get them started correctly in battle."
    Sisko sadly shook his head. "You have your or-
ders, Worf. Win or lose, the Natives must experience
what real battle tastes like. They must hate and fear
it, even as they accept its terrible necessity."
    Worf muttered something dark in Klingon, but
O'Brien didn't catch itmand if the captain did, he
ignored it.
    The chief remained close enough not to lose
contact with the entire column of two hundred
heavily armed Natives, each man and woman carry-
ing a weapon designed and built entirely by Native
ingenuity, technology, and sweat. The column
stopped so abruptly that O'Brien, straining his eyes
left and right for an ambush, ploughed into the back
of a woman whose name he didn't even know.
Minutes later, Tivva-ma, daughter of the colonel-
mayor, skipped gaily back to explain what was
happening.
    "Mom thinks--I mean, Colonel-Mayor Asta-ha
says this is the bestest place to put in some of the
pratfalls Owena-da designed."
    "Pitfalls," corrected O'Brien absently, though he
regretted it an instant later: kids said the cutest
things, and there was plenty of time later for correc-
tions.
    Tivva-ma nodded soberly. "She wants to know if
Colonel-Captain Sisko and Colonel-Commander
Worf think that's all right. Izzit?"
    The captain's mouth twitched, but he suppressed
the smile that O'Brien could not. "The colonel-
mayor has command. There is no need to ask
permission... we are along as observers, only."
    Tivva-ma disappeared without another word, rac-
ing back up the column to pass along the approval
(or lack of disapproval). A quarter of the Natives
ghosted into the woods, whence the chief heard
sawing and banging and bizarre grinding noises. The
rest of the column resumed its march, leaving the
engineer-sappers behind as reserves. Clever, thought
O'Brien. They've only read but one work on military
tactics, something Worf was studying.
    As they approached the fine edge of the blue trees
that marked the boundary between the forest and
the wide pastureland surrounding three rivers, Odo
came flapping back. The bird was ignored as he
stepped behind a large bush. When the constable
emerged, however, the Natives crowded around,
wondering at the "new tech" that had brought him
so far in the wink of an eye.
    Odo hurried to Captain Sisko and conferred.
Then the captain called a general meeting. "Gentle-
men," he said, "we are about to make contact with
the enemy. The Cardassians appear to have scanned
the approaching Natives, and they're mobilizing for
an assault."
    "Sir," said the chief, "are they sending anyone
toward the nearest power relay station?" The chief
was asking, in a roundabout way, whether the Car-
dassians had yet figured out that the power was
already out.
    Sisko shook his head. "No, Chief, they're not; I
believe we all understand the significance of that
point."
    Worf nodded. "There will be no surprise among
the enemy. They already know they will encounter a
different breed of Native. But perhaps they do not
know how different."
    "Let us hope," said the captain quietly. Let us
pray, added O'Brien to himself.
    Asta-ha did not have a trioorder, of course. But
she sent a pair of the Vipers of Vanimastavvimthe
new name for the commando brigade, replacing the
Terrors of Tiffnakimup tall trees, where they
watched for the enemy approach. O'Brien had noth-
ing to do but sit and wait, his least favorite activity.
    Sitting, thinking, fretting, his sang-froid melted
like frost in the morning sun. Soon he was trembling,
but whether with excitement or fear he couldn't tell.
The Natives seemed unaffected by the long wait.

Bastards probably don't even know enough to be
scared, thought the chief ungenerously. God, but I
wish I were back with Keiko and Molly. I wonder
whether these damned latinurn-laced tree trunks will
stop a Cardassian disruptor?
    He was about to find out, for at the very moment
he was wondering about trees and distruptors, the
lookouts whistled a warning--and the rest of the
brigade promptly began the bizarre chorus of slither-
ing whistles they used in place of applause. "Quiet!
Quiet, damn you! This is an ambush, not a circus
act!"
    Eventually, they settled down, lying in wait as
they had along the road during the training exercise,
as the Cardassians approached slowly. The trees will
give partial cover for the numbers, calculated the
chief, but the Cardies will definitely know some-
thing's up... especially since they have a Founder
leading them. Unbeknownst to them, or so Odo had
reported--and O'Brien had no reason to disbelieve.
    The Cardassians paused on the blue grass a hun-
dred meters from the ambush to confer. From the
disdainful looks they gave the forest every now and
again, the chief decided they weren't too worried
about the Native "wildlife" running berserk and
attacking them. Then they formed a Cardassian
Square: the front ranks dropped to their knees and
aimed their disruptors, while the rear row aimed
over their heads.
    "Fire!" shouted the obviously "Cardassian" lead-
er, who doubtless was the changeling. And fire they
did. Sixty Cardassian energy weapons leaped the
intervening distance like a spark jumping a gap,
igniting explosions of splintered wood and sending
flaming trees collapsing across the anticipated am-
bush, spraying dirt into Native faces--and directly
killing nearly a dozen commandos whose cover was
insufficient to protect them.
    When the barrage ceased, the Cardassians stood
and smugly returned their disruptor rifles to port-
arms to inspect the damage.
    "Shoot back!" shouted Asta-ha... and the Na-
tives remaining alive obeyed without hesitation. A
dozen angry gasoline explosions assaulted O'Brien's
eardrums from every direction. He squeezed as flat
as he could, wrapping his hands across his head in a
futile effort to protect himself from errant gas mus-
ketballs. The muskets used compressed gasoline
vaporma slight modification of the compressed-air
blowgun of three days and several centuries ago--to
fling round metal balls across a hundred meters with
deadly accuracy and bone-shattering kinetic energy.
    Simultaneously, a pair of flanks that had crept
forward, forming a horseshoe-shaped line surround-
ing the Cardassians on three sides, opened fire with
their own weapons. Tubes belched jellied gasoline,
what used to be called napalm, at the uncompre-
hending Cardassians. Before the enemy could think
of taking cover themselves, twenty had been slain,
either cut in half by the twenty-five-milimeter mus-
ket balls or, even more hideously, burned to death
by "Greek fire," as Sisko called it, that could neither
be extinguished nor even scraped off the flesh.
    The Cardassians screamed with rage and anguish
and started to panic. But the leaderrain the shape of
a Cardassian colonelwshoved them forward instead
of backward with a flurry of punches and well-aimed
kicks. "Charge! Charge, you bloody fools, if you
value your miserable lives!"
    Cardassian training reasserted itself, and the
troops rallied and ran forward, firing their disrup-
tors in wide, sweeping arcs as they came. O'Brien
swore lustily as one of the beams sliced through the
top of a rock behind which he was crouching.
    Now it was the Natives' turn to panic. They
jumped up and bolted pell-mellwand the Cardassi-
ans cut down forty or fifty from behind, literally
slicing them in half with full-power beams.
    With a last glance back over his shoulder, O'Brien
leaped to his feet, yanked Quark by the elbow, and
ran back the way they had come.
    But now a few of the Natives, probably the flank-
ers, had turned and shot another volley at the
charging Cardassians, mowing down another five to
ten of them with the muskets... which were now
empty, since they carried only two shots: the Natives
had not invented autofeeding magazines quite yet.
The troops around O'Brien flung their now useless
muskets aside in order to run faster. Which they
proceeded to do, passing the chief and Quark on
both sides.
    "Pump those legs, Quark, unless you want us to be
in the very rear of a rearward advance!" The Ferengi
didn't need to be told twice. O'Brien began to puff
and wheeze, wishing he had spent more time in the
gym and less time playing darts and fighting holo-
suite battles with Julian Bashir.
    My God, he thought, Tivva-ma/O'Brien pulled up,
letting Quark run on ahead, and frantically searched
for the little girl. Had she even survived? He felt
such a physical blow in his stomach that he almost
thought he might have been hit by some shrapnal.
But then Owena-da dashed past, with Tivva-ma
clinging to his back like a baby chimpanzee. Re-
lieved, the chief resumed his tactical rearward ad-
vance, though now he was separated from everyone
he knew. Quark had vanished into the forest as only
a frightened Ferengi could.
    They pushed deeper into the forest, and the Car-
dassians began to have problems: they were heavy
shock troops, built not for speed but first impact.
They stumbled over obstacles, both natural ones and
those thrown down by fleeing Natives to slow the
Cardassians' progress. The heavy battle armor the
enemy wore worked to his disadvantage now, drag-
ging him down in the swampy marshes and exhaust-
ing him in the pursuit.
    O'Brien began to recognize a few landmarks.
Suddenly remembering what the reserves had been
doing, setting up deadly "pratfalls," he slowed to a
walk, gasping for air and trying to spot anything that
might be a trap. He was grabbed by one arm, and
almost lashed out at his attacker, but then recog-
nized her as Colonel-Mayor Asta-ha, Tivva-ma's
mother and leader of the Vipers. "Come this way if
you don't want to die," she said, matter-of-factly.
Then she dragged him along an invisible ant-trail
that she had no trouble following.
    "Wait here. Let's see what new tech the girls and
boys came up with, yes?" The middle-aged woman
winked and loudly clicked her tongue, human-like
gestures performed without the context of human
subtlety, so that they looked stagey and out of place.
    Grateful, O'Brien collapsed to his hands and
knees, easily able to follow the Cardassians' progress
by the bear-like thrashing through underbrush and
low-hanging branches. Closer and closer they ap-
proached, to somebody's certain death... their
own, or perhaps that of the Vipers of Vanimastavvi,
or of five trivial Federation observers who very
much hoped to live to observe another day.

CHAPTER
       8

As THE CARDASS1ANS CHARGED, they began to disap-
pear, one by one, like doves at a human magic show.
Quark watched dumbfounded for several seconds,
before he caught sight of a Cardassian soldier falling
into a hole, squawking and flapping in indignation.
Indignation that soon turned to shock and terror:
the ground erupted with Natives on all sides, pop-
ping up from covered trenches and opening fire with
their firearms at point-blank range.
    Quark gagged and ducked, not wanting to see the
results of a chemically propelled projectile striking a
living (for the moment) body. "Rule of Acquisition
Thirty-Five," he said to himself, "War is good for
business." It didn't help; he was still terrified.
    But a very un-Ferengi-like curiosity got the better
of his sense of profit. I've lived among the hu-mans
too long, lamented Quark. He couldn't help peeking
over the edge of the chopped-down log behind which
he cowered.
    A huge tree-trunk swooped down from nowhere,
dangling from a pair of cables. It swooshed over
Quark's head--far over, but he ducked anyway--
and smashed through the ranks of Cardassians,
hurling dead and dying bodies fifteen meters
through the air. There was a moment's awed silence;
then the war resumed, and disruptor fire tore
through a few defenders who had stopped to gawk at
the carnage caused by one of their traps.
    With a howl of outrage, a passel of Cardassians
broke through the knots of Native fighters and
charged directly toward Quark's position. The Fer-
engi curled up into the tightest cringe he could
manage, desperately hoping they would recognize
his surrender before killing him.
    The scream of a blood-maddened Cardassian was
enough to kick Quark into a hurried prayer to the
Final Accountant... then the lead Cardassian
broke through the brush and leapt over Quark's
log--and directly over the small form huddled be-
neath it.
    One after another, five soldiers dove across the
tog, not even one of them noticed the Ferengi.
Astonished, Quark turned to watch them recede.
They broke free and fled. They had no intention of
renewing the fight, not this day!
    Back in the fray, a series of horrible shrieks riveted
Quark's attention. It sounded like a demon or mon-
ster of some new variety, and indeed thak-like
shapes flashed through the gloom of the forest, about
waist high to a Cardassian. Whatever the foul mon-
sters were, they cut through the troops like twisty,
crackly lightning bolts. It was several seconds before
the Ferengi caught on that they were nothing but
metal cables that had been attached to trees, and the
trees bent double, so when released, they'd snap the
cables like whips through the ranks.
    Quark wrapped his arms over his lobes, desper-
ately trying to shut out the ghastly sound of a
hundred dead and dying. This isn't what I signed up
fort All I wanted was a little latinum, just a stake, a
few hundred--I mean, a few thousand bars, just
enough to show that bastard Brunt of the FCC that
I'm a real Ferengi after all....
  Just make it stop/Make it stop[
    Quark slowly opened his eyes, unwrapping his
arms. Profound silence filled the glade. Even the
metallic croaking of the Sierra-Bravo birds had
ceased. Late sunlight sliced through the torn over-
head foliage, spotting the field of corpses with gold
and blood-crimson, but nobody in all the clearing
moved.
    Quark rose shaking to his feet. He was terrified at
the thought of being all alone among so many who
had tallied their accounts and balanced their books,
maybe even more than he had been at the tumult of
battle. But it was over... wherever enemy attackers
and Native defenders had taken their grudges, it was
out of Quark's hearing.
    "Did I pass out?" he asked aloud. It didn't seem to
him that enough time had passed for them all to be
so far. "Where is everyone?"
  "Well, I, for one, am right behind you," said a too
familiar voice. Quark whirled to find himself con-
fronted by an unruffled Constable Odo. "And no,"
said Odo, "you didn't pass out. You continued
begging for mercy and cowering in true Ferengi
fashion. The Grand Nagus would have been proud."
    Quark wasn't sure what to make of the constable's
response. His words were paying Quark a compli-
ment, but the voice held an edge of sarcasm. "Uh,
thanks, Odo," said the Ferengi, uncertainly.
    "Quark," said Captain Sisko, pushing silently
through the ferns and branches, "you did just fine. I
certainly hope none of the away team actually par-
ticipated in the battle. Did you?"
    From nowhere, Worf and O'Brien materialized,
each denying that he had done anything but hide
and observe. Catching the flow at once, Quark
smoothed his vest and jacket and agreed. "Of
course, Captain. I carefully refrained from any fight-
ing. The Cardassians will report seeing only Na-
tives... ah, assuming any are still alive to report
anything." But his voice still hid an unacceptable
tremor.
    As the away team moved around the glade, taking
stock of the Native casualties, they slipped into and
out of shadow, sometimes in direct sunlight, other-
wise in blackness more complete because of the
contrast. There were no Cardassian wounded or
dead; they had taken all casualties with them when
they retreated.
    Sisko frowned, shaking his head. "There is ample
credit for us all. And enough blame to put us on a
prison colony for life. No, no," said the captain,
waving his hands, "I am the only one at risk. None
of you had a choice but to follow orders in time of
war."
    "Captain," said Worf, snuffing the ground like an
animal, "the Cardassians left a trail a blind man
could follow, and the--the Vipers are in pursuit.
Shall we follow?"
    Sisko was silent. Quark was surprised to see the
imperturbable, immutable captain massaging his
temples, wincing with pain. "No. Let them learn."
Sisko looked up, staring along the trail. "We must
leave soon--if the Defiant ever returns to orbit--
and the Natives must look to their own defenses.
    "The plan worked. There are at least thirty fallen
comrades here, and another ten or fifteen back on
the plains. We have taken some twenty percent
casualties, not counting the walking wounded." The
intensity of Sisko's glare made Quark turn his head
and shuffle his feet.
    "Then we have been successful," said Worf, nod-
ding in satisfaction. He didn't appear to notice
Captain Sisko's bitterness.
    "My God," said Chief O'Brien, staring at each
tall, lean, twisted corpse. "My God, doesn't it ever
end? How many damned wars do I have to fight?"
He sat down on a severed tree stump.
    "Gentlemen," said the captain, gesturing them
close. "Let us follow at a distance. When the Cardas-
sians turn at bay and drive the Natives back, the
survivors will flee into our arms, and we can doctor
them as best we're able."
    "And debrief them," said Worf with a peculiar
pride. "And help them understand that they have
become true blooded warriors at last." He grinned,
and Quark suffered the hallucination that the Kling-
on's teeth were all filed to points, not beetle-biters
like a Ferengi's, but huge and savage, like a human
cannibal's.
    The team pushed forward along the stomped and
trampled underbrush and muddy swaths thick with
bootprints. As Worf had said, even a Ferengi bar-
tender could follow the path of pursuers and pur-
sued-who would soon enough switch places yet
again.
    Quark dropped back even with O'Brien. "You
know, Chief, you have a point." O'Brien said noth-
ing. "It never does seem to end," said Quark,
sighing.
    They pushed on through dark mud, ducking from
bright to dark. Somewhere at the back of the Feren-
gi's mind, he was vaguely aware that the very soil
was thickly sprinkled with latinum. But--frighten-
ingly--he no longer cared.

    The dean erupted from the parabola and stalked
forward, catching Kira by her biceps and propelling
her to the turbolift shaft. They waited in silence until
the turbolift returned, having disgorged its quasi-
police passengers onto the Promenade. The dean
and Kira entered, and without any words spoken,
the turbolift dropped, then surged forward along one
of the connecting tunnels from the core to one of the
large transporter rooms. They rode in silence until
the dean suddenly said, out of the blue, "No, do not
take the ungrown prisoner. It may have been born in
prison and never convicted."
    Kira gasped, realizing that the dean must have
been responding to a private communicationmand
she just happened to be standing close enough that
her universal translator implant picked up the quiet
response. He had just given Molly, at least, a re-
prieve; but what of Keiko?
    "Dean," said Kira quickly, "if you will save the
ungrown one, you must also save the female she
clings to. She's the child's mother."
    The dean turned his faceless head toward Kira,
and the major felt a shudder that began in her
bowels and finished in her heart. Then she heard a
faint clicking, too soft for the universal translator to
pick it up. Prophets, please don't let him choose her,
Kira thought... then flushed with guilt, realizing
that she had just inadvertently prayed for the deaths
of two other Bajoran civilians.
    As the turbolift whispered to a halt, and they
stepped through the sliding doors of a circular
corridor across the way from the transporter room,
the final puzzle piece fell into place. Convicted...
he said Molly may never have been convicted. t With a
flash of inspiration, every bizarre aspect of behavior
of the "Liberated," every obscure reference, every
incomprehensible misunderstanding became clear
as cut dilithium.
    The Liberated were former Dominion prison
guards.
    No wonder they fled, she thought, her mind racing.
Knowing the Dominion's love of using certain races
for specific tasks, they probably spent their entire
lives in prison--though they'd never been convicted
or sentenced--guarding those who had.

    Everything fit: Prison guards were very much
quasi-cops, as Garak had put it. And the misunder-
standing about the "prisoners" in the bombardment
shelters--they must have thought they were in pun-
ishment cells. No wonder they put them back when
they "escaped'7
    And these ex-prison guards were holding the en-
tire station hostage... aliens who had lived their
entire lives behind bars with only murderers and
other felons for company. The thought chilled Kira's
skin and made her scalp crawl. She said nothing,
only following the dean, her knees feeling weak, and
dreading what horrors she would see in the trans-
porter room.
    When they entered, two women that Kira recog-
nized from the "jailbreak" stood on the transporter
platforms. One demanded what was going to happen
to her. The other, more realistically, was sobbing
uncontrollably, on her knees begging for mercy. Kira
remembered one of the girls, both younger than she,
as one of Quark's Dabo dealers, Dalba Sin; she was
the one on her knees. The other wore the uniform of
the hydroponics division that Kai Winn had set up
to replace the replicators, deemed too decadent for
proper Bajorans. But Kira didn't know the young
lady's name.
    The executions occurred so fast Kira almost
missed them. One of the prison guards reached
down to the sobbing Dalba Sin as if picking her up.
His hand briefly touched the back of the girl's head,
and she pitched forward and lay unmoving. At the
same time, another guard spun the demanding farm-
er around back to front, touched her cranium with a
small, black-metal marble in his hand, and she, too,
collapsed.
    It was that swift. Kira didn't even have time to
draw breath before both girls were being laid onto
the platform, their arms crossed behind their backs.
No torture, no joy on the part of the Liberated--un-
less it was the joy of remorseless efficiency. In the
wink of an eye, two young girls had been murdered
almost at Kira's feet... and there was nothing the
major could do--or could have done--about it.
"But--but you..." Kira fell silent; nobody was
listening anyway.
    A tide of hate such as she hadn't felt since the days
of the Occupation seized her midbrain. She took a
quick step toward the dean. "You son of--" It was
as far as she got before the torc choked off her rage so
strongly, she was certain her head was going to be
sundered from her body.
    Just before losing consciousness, Major Kira saw
the dead bodies dematerialize from the transporter
platform. Now you know, she thought, not sure to
whom.

    It took all ofKai Winn's self control not to shake,
or cry, or pick up a knife and attack the nearest
Faceless One, h la her young protege Kira Nerys.
Control the mind, she remembered, and the heart
will follow. Where had she heard that?

Control the breath, and the mind will follow
Control the mind, and the heart will follow
Control the heart, and peace will come upon you.
Come, breath. Come, peace.

    Something something beats in tandem, puffing
across the face of Bajor. A song, a poem, she had
once . . .
    Winn forced open her own eyes, willing herself to
witness the deaths in the transporter room: she owed
at least that to her flock. She didn't know the two
young women by sight--there were so many--but
she owed them at least a witnessing.
    Then the bodies vanished, in that disconcerting
way that Kai Winn still detested, though she had
found occasion to violate the long-ago oath she'd
sworn never to allow herself to be transported for
fear she would leave her soul behind. The split-
screen viewer still showed the Harriman on the right
and the transporter room on the left, though the ship
had not moved in several minutes and there was no
more activity on the pad... only another Faceless
One picking up Kira's limp body and removing it
from the video frame.
    Winn was certain her prot~g~ was still alive.
Nevertheless, the Kai prayed to the Prophets to
shield young Nerys from harm.
    Winn looked at the immobile Federation starship.
Now you know, she thought without satisfaction.
Well, perhaps a little. She watched the Harriman
steadily, blinking so rarely that her eyes dried out
and ached, then blurred, so she had to close them
and wait for tears to moisten her vision back to
clarity. She did not look round even when the dean
returned to Ops to await response from Captain
Taggart.
    The Kai had patience. Besides, she was quite
certain she knew what the response would be. The
man was, after all, not a Bajoran. He simply was
unprepared to deal with the "facts on the table," as
the unbeliever Shakaar so bluntly put it after the
Occupation.
    The captain's face appeared so abruptly on the
screen, so fast upon the heels of Kai Winn's own
thoughts, that she inhaled sharply and took a step
back. "This--this is an act of--of barbarous savage-
ry," said the shaken captain. His face was distinctly
pale, and sweat beaded his upper lip. Winn, like all
grand negotiators and politicians, was an astute
student of psychology; she would have counseled
Captain Taggart to wait a few more minutes, master-
ing himself, before making his communication.
    Taggatt paused, but there was no response by the
dean or any of the Liberated. The captain continued.
"This is not over... not by a long shot. I protest in
the strongest possible terms! This is unheard of,
unconscionable. Have you, at last, no decency left?
No regard for intelligent life? You call yourselves the
Liberated, but you have no respect for anyone else's
liberty. The entire quadrant is watching, and they
will know you for beasts if you continue this--this
murder. I demand an immediate end to these execu-
tions... don't you understand the first rules of
negotiation?"
    "Your time has expired," said the dean of the dead
at last. "We shall now execute another pair of
prisoners."
    Captain Taggart's transmission ended before the
man could be seen reacting to the threat. Winn was
not in the least surprised to see, a few instants later,
the U.S.S. Harriman back hurridly away from the
station. The ship dwindled until it was a gray dot,
then a black point, then gone altogether, its gigantic
hull too far away to be discerned by the viewer on
normal magnification.
    Not in the least surprised, but angry: angry at a
tenuous, vague, ambiguous Federation that spent
more time dithering and wringing its hands than it
spent pursuing comprehensible policy objectives.
Angry at this arrogant man who had inserted him-
self into a delicate situation, grabbing hold of a
fragile flower hard enough to crush it and then
simply dropping it to the ground like a guilty child.
Bitter at a duplicitous, quadrant-wide authority with
no real hegemony, an authority that turned its back
on its own agreements whenever they became incon-
venient. Despairing of another year of peace for
Bajor, and fearful that the Prophets were angered by
all the secular wrangling of Shakar and his ill-
mannered revolutionaries and by the diminished
faith of the modern Bajoran.
 "The starship has departed," said the dean.
    With a wrench, Kai Winn realized he was talking
to her. "Yes, m'lord. They have left."
     "We require only the portable, far-seeing anom-
aly. We have no desire to execute more prisoners."
  "Yes, m'lord. Your restraint buoys our spirits."
  "We have searched for the anomaly, what you call
  the Orb. We know it is on this station. Bring us the
  Orb, and we shall depart, and you shall once more
  enjoy liberty, as we do."
    "I have located it, m'lord. There are certain...
political difficulties. But I..." Winn paused. Oh
Beloved Prophets--dare I go through with it? She
swallowed hard. "My lord, I would do anything to
save my people, my flock. Anything. I will--" she
forced the words through her throat--"I will bring
you the portable, far-seeing anomaly, the Orb, with-
in the day." May the Prophets forgive my lie. But
what else can I say?
    She turned a furious visage to the dean. "Then
you will leave. You will leave us alive and in peace.
You will never return." Winn betrayed no particle of
duplicity; but the dean would never, she vowed, get
within touching distance of an Orb.
    The dean rotated his head in a circle. "We accept
your terms. Bring us the anomaly, and we shall leave
immediately."
    Feeling a wave of nausea--stress, she decided--
Kai Winn left Ops for the turbolift. She had a
desperate need to return to her stateroom... and
her dark and desperate dreams: for the Prophets had
a story for Winn to hear, and she must not disap-
point.

0

CHAPTER
       9

THIRTY YEARS AGO

BEING STRIP-SEARCHED was not high on Sister Winn's
list of fun things to do of an evening. On the
contrary--it was the most bitterly humiliating thing
that had ever happened to her. The only thing that
made it bearable was the sly knowledge that the
Prophets had whispered prophecy in her ear, and
she had already dumped the holocamera--into Gul
Ragat's own backpack. As the Cardassian carried
the pack (or had a noncommissioned officer carry it
for him) merely for show, and never actually dug
into it for anything, Winn was reasonably confident
the camera would not be found. But if it were, it
would mean her swift but painful deathmor else
transportation up to the new orbital torture cham-
ber, Terok Nor.
    She turned her gaze within, upon her own soul
and her omnipresent Guides and Avatars, the
Prophets; she was not even in attendance upon her
naked and humiliated body. Two corporals of the
guard and one private soldier, none of whom she
knew, led the search, and of course they found the
trick bootheel and the money she had stashed there.
They made no comment, merely dropping the Bajor-
an bills into a plastic, self-sealing, evidence bag for
subsequent interrogation. The rest of her clothing
was free of any incriminating evidence. They re-
turned her priestly robe, torn and stretched, and
handed her back the jacket she wore, inside-out.
They did not return her shoes.
    Without a word, she reassembled her garments
and sat barefoot on the hard ground of the tent floor,
trying to look miserable, waiting for "her Gul" to
return and decide what to do. Looking wretched was
not difficult in her present circumstance. But she
held tight to the lifeline of memory: the holocam is
safe, the pictures of the control room and military
codes are well hidden.
    Exhaustion overwhelmed Sister Winn. She let her
head fall upon her folded arms and dozed fitfully.
Dreadful nightmares befouled her rest: she was a
hunted hare, driven to the ends of the earth by long-
ranged hounds with gigantic trapezius muscles.
    She awoke hours later to find herself lying on her
side, curled into a foetal position, shivering with the
cold. She had no blanket. The Cardassians had left
the priestess unbound, but a guard stood outside the
tent flap, and the material of the tent itself was some
artificial fabric that was breathable but uncuttablem
even if she'd had a knife.
 Winn was puzzled for a moment. What awakened
me? Then she heard the voice she most dreaded at
that moment, speaking in Cardassian.
    "Wise if you'd just leave off and take another
watch, Mata."
  "If I leave my post..."
    "I will take full responsibility. You're in my chain
of command, so you have no choice"
    Winn sat up slowly, so as not to set her head
spinning. She recognized the voice of the bully-
guard, the corporal who had been humiliated by the
sergeant--and one of the guards who had stripped
her.
    Winn stood, dreading the worst. The tent flap
opened, and a grinning goblin entered.
    The corporal was tall for a Cardassian; he had to
hunch over to duck his head under the tent flap. His
eyes were unintelligent, sadistic marbles of black.
Winn could not even see the white around the
pupils; they were solid, like a reptile's. He kept his
hands low as he crouched, and his finger-ends
dragged along the ground for a moment, leaving
tracks.
    Winn backed away from the apparition, but her
shoulders swiftly brushed against the tent wall.
There was nowhere to go, no way out but through
the ghostly guard.
    "I believe you know what happens next," he said,
a peculiar grin on his lips that at first Winn didn't
recognize. Then she realized that it was the same
look a man gives a loose woman he's about to
debauch. He ran a swollen, pink tongue across his
lips, moistening them.
 Winn said nothing. Her mind was blank. A fist of
fear squeezed her heart until her whole chest ached.
Her own lips were dry as old bone.
    "If you scream or yell," added the corporal unnec-
essarily, "you will not enjoy the consequences."
    He clenched his fist so hard, the knuckles cracked.
Winn tried to swallow, but she had no saliva. She
noticed he had a knife, a ceremonial Dagger of
Maqatat. He could not have earned it himself, not
being a gentleman nor even a commissioned officer.
It must be his father~ or grandfather2, she thought,
wondering why the thought should be important
when she was about to be beaten, violated, or worse.
    "The Gul won't like it if you damage me," she
said. It sounded unconvincing even to her ears, but
she persevered. "He's furious at me now. Thinks I
betrayed him, but I didn't! When he comes to
himself, I'll be his favorite again, and he won't like it
that you, you, you hurt me, especially if you leave
me dead!"
    The corporal laughed like brass knuckles against a
mouth full of Bajoran teeth. "Dead? I would never
slay such a beauty as yourselfi"
    The corporal took two swift strides and caught
Winn by the sleeve of her habit. He had a scar across
his forehead, bisecting the spoon-shaped bone ridge
that gave Cardassians their Bajoran epithet. Winn
exerted all her will power not to flick her eyes
downward at the Dagger of Maqatat; she knew
where it was without looking.
    The Prophets guided Winn's hand. Feeling Their
hands on hers, she deftly plucked the dagger from
his belt-sheath, even more spritely than she had
slicked Neemak Counselor's pocket. The corporal
realized in a flash what she had done, and he leapt
back almost too quickly for her to follow. Rapist he
may have been, but he was a soldier first.
    "Well, I see you have a bite! But truly, what can
you do with one little knife?"
    Winn's mind raced faster than ever it had before.
She knew she could not possibly hope to best this
brute in single combat. His bare knuckles and feet
would disarm her in the moment she attacked, and
he would truly hurt her then. So what was she to do?
What was Their plan for her?
    The corporal edged forward, extending his left
hand while keeping his right in reserve. He was
reaching slowly, inexorably for the dagger. The
priestess had but one moment to act, else she would
be disarmed and at the mercy of a merciless, enraged
pain machine.
    Then the rest of the plan popped into her head,
fully formed, like Benetheas springing from the belly
of her father, M'theo Niisil. SiSter Winn stepped
away from the monster and pressed the blade sharp-
end first at her own breast, directly above her heart.
"No, my lord," she answered, voice barely audible
past the fear. "My plan is much darker. If you take
one more step, if you don't leave this tent immedi-
ately, I'll kill myself."
 "What? What the--"
    "I'11 plunge this dagger into my heart. Everyone
will recognize the Dagger of Maqatat. The private
knows you were here. He'll tell Gul Ragat. The
sergeant will remember what you said. No one will
believe that you didn't do it."
 His mouth worked, but no words came out. He
stared, dumbfounded, struggling to comprehend
this damned peculiar turn of events.
    "You think you can simply pluck the dagger back
and run from here. But they know you were here.
They'll perform microscopic analysis on the wound
and find traces of metal; the metal will perfectly
match your dagger. You won't be able to escape,
Corporal."
  "You--you--!"
    "Nothing to say? Then I'll say it for you. They'll
say you murdered me, and the Gul will blame you
for everything. He'll say your mindless homicide
prevented him from questioning me himself."
    Winn had regained control of her voice, but she
lowered it nearly to a whisper, grabbing the corpo-
ral's attention as a shout would have lost it. She kept
her eyes on her enemy, but his own gaze flickered
uncontrolled from Winn to the tent flap and back to
the dagger. "You know what they can do," she
continued, smiling. "You've been to Terok Nor.
You'll get to go back... but as one of us this time.
Now get out of here."
    The corporal stared, doing nothing. He was frozen
between consternation and fear for his own career,
even his life. He had been up; he did know what
"they" could do.
    Winn clenched her teeth and shoved the dagger
into her own chest, just a touch, a mere finger's
width. She gasped at a pain more savage than
anything she had ever felt before. The agony should
have stopped her, but the Prophets had seized con-
trol of her mind and hand. She was resolved. "I am
not blurting," she said, choking. "If you don't get out
this instant, in the next, I shall be dead with your
bloody dagger in my breast."
    He started to back away toward the tent flap, but
not fast enough to suit the priestess. "Go.t" she
screamed, startling him out of his torpor.
    With an unintelligible stammer, he turned and
fled.
    He was gone, and Sister Winn could collapse to
the floor, pressing her hand over her bloody, bleed-
ing chest. She held onto the dagger, but the corporal
never returned.

    Jadzia Dax tried bitterly hard to keep a smile on
her lips; behind it, her teeth were clenched so hard
her jaw began to ache. She tried not to grip the sides
of her seat too obviously. Surely, Bashir knew his
own piloting abilities, but she marveled at the speed
and dexterity he showed. I wonder what they're
teaching in medical schools nowadays, she thought,
as the doctor continued his ambitious maneuvers
with the Native skimmer.
    Bashir seemed to relish putting the car onto the
deck, foot-dragging distance off the dirt, and whip-
ping right through shallow, winding canyons, leaving
rooster-tails on the small rivers that carved them,
and then, without slacking speed, sailing directly
into sparse, gray-blue forests, sometimes even right
under large tree branches... all at speeds that Dax
insisted on imagining as half-impulse or even warp
one, though they probably were no more than fifty or
sixty meters per second. Fast enough! She thought
twice that her heart was going to stop, if it ever
dropped back down out of her throat.
"Nice--nice--nice day for a leisurely strollmeh,
Julian?" she said.
    "Don't distract the pilot when he's driving. I'm
sorry, what did you say?" Bashir turned his head to
look fully at Dax.
    "The tree! Julian, look out.t" But Bashir swerved
expertly around the tree, having already mapped it
in his mind before pulling his little prank on her.
Dax sighed deeply, resigning herself to being splat-
tered to assuage the doctor's ego. "All right, Julian, I
apologize for the A, B, D thing. It's just that I know
Ben better than any of you, and as Curzon, I fought
with my Klingon swordmates against the Cardassi-
arts more times than I can count, and I just know
how they'll line up--I can't explain it any better
than that!"
    "Oh, I know," said Bashir, again watching where
he was going. "I'm not angry, Jadzia. I'm just
nervous about the captain and the rest of the team."
Bashir frowned, and for a moment Dax forgot to be
frightened; something was truly worrying him.
    "I'm sure they can synthesize something or other
to help against the cyanogens in the air," she said.
"And they're not stupid enough to drink the local
water or eat the food. They'll do the same thing
we're doing, steal from the Cardassians."
    Bashir pressed his lips tightly together. An inter-
nal battle raged, and Dax had no idea what was
going on behind those dark eyes. After a protracted
period of silence, he spoke. "I never expected us to
stay this long in the atmosphere of Sierra-Bravo,
Jadzia. The--my compound--Dax, nothing the
captain could whip up can fully protect from the
cyano-mutagenic damage for very long. Nothing I
could manufacture would do it, not without a full
medical lab and a few years more research."
    "What are you saying? What's your diagnosis,
Doctor?"
    "For us humans, Trill, and Klingons, there is a
limit to the time we can spend on this planet--I'm
sure Odo will be fine, and I don't know about Quark.
After that limit is reached, irreversible pulmonary-
tissue damage begins. The lungs can be replaced...
but within a short period, just a few hours, after the
lungs start bleedingmallowing unmediated cyano-
gens into the bloodstream--cardiac and neural
damage will occur."
"You're saying we could be--brain-damaged?"
"Loss of motor skills and nausea are the first
symptoms. Eventually, vision becomes difficult, the
patient sees flashes and auras. Cortical shutdown
and memory loss, finally death... after a certain
point, there is nothing modern medicine can do
about it."
    Dax inhaled sharply. She could not stop herself
from performing a mental "level-three diagnostic"
on her own cortical functions, imagining the worst.
She held her hand out, looking for trembling, and
felt a wash of panic when she saw that she was
unable to hold it steady.
    "Oh, don't be so melodramatic," said Bashir
angrily. "Don't you think I'd know if you were
suffering from the breakdown yet?"
 She flushed guiltily. "Sorry, Julian. I can live with
a lung or heart replacement, natural or artificial. But
when you start talking about neural damage, my
you-know-what clenches."
    Bashir took the skimmer up a little higher, risking
detection by Cardassian scanner crews. "I'm sorry,
Jadzia. This has been weighing on my mind for some
days now. I'm .... "He looked at her again, but they
were above the ground terrain, and Dax was more
relaxed. "I'm not casting aspersions on the captain,
but I don't think his jerry-rigged cyanogen-
protecting compound is going to be as effective as
mine. And that means the away team's time limit is
closer than ours--they're farther along the destruc-
tion cycle, I just don't know how far."
    "And what is this time limit you keep talking
about? How long do we have, how long do they
have?"
    Bashir shook his head and turned back to his
driving. He dropped back down, whipping into
another snakey canyon, another gut-tightening series
of twists and turns. He doesn't have a clue, Dax
thought to herself; and if Julian doesn't know, no-
body knows.
    "This neural damage," she said after a few mo-
ments; "how much warning do you get?"
    "If you spot the symptoms, a couple of days,
maybe as many as four. But Captain Sisko doesn't
even know what to look for."
    Dax nodded silently, no longer grudging Bashir
his not-so-excessive speed.
    "Dax," he said, after his own long pause, "the
other thing I wanted to mention was that--"
The Native skimmer abruptly dropped from the
sky. Dax screamed, while Bashir's face was frozen in
shock at the sudden loss of power and imminent
crash. The commander braced herself against the
impact.
    It made no difference. They were skimming
through a gorge, twenty meters off the ground, and
when the power cut off, the craft veered precipi-
tously, following a ballistic path into the mud along-
side the sluggish river. Dax was thrown clear
instantly, yanked out of her seat as if by a giant's
hand. She struck the mud heavily, sliding for such a
long distance on her belly that she actually had time
to think she might be able to regain control. At that
moment, something caught her arm and set her
rolling.
    She lost count of how many complete revolutions
her body made before finally sliding to a stop, feet
first, against the wreckage of the Native skimmer.
Bashir was still in his seat, pinned by the exercise-
bar motion controller. Even from her prone posi-
tion, lying on her back and looking up dazedly, she
could tell that he had a fractured leg. A compound
fracture, with a piece of white bone sticking right up
through the fleshmthrough the cloth of his pseudo-
native costume--and smirking wickedly at her.
    Her head still spun, and only the fact that she was
facing the sky told her which way was up. Dax tried
closing her eyes, but that was worse: her head spun
like a Dabo wheel, and she whimpered and opened
her eyes again.
    Several seconds passed before she could stand. All
the while an urgent voice shrieked in her head to
hurry, hurry, Julian was bleeding to death! But when
she finally struggled to her feet to examine him, he
wasn't bleeding all that badly. His breathing was
raspy, but he was conscious and holding his hand
over the wound, exerting pressure.
"Dax," he croaked; "Dax--are you--all right?"
"Julian, I'm fine, I think. Wait .... "She twisted
her head left and right, up and down, in a circle; then
she probed her belly and sides with a stiff finger,
hunting for a sharp pain that might indicate internal
injuries. The mud-sliding had saved her: she was
clean, but filthy. And filthy rich, if I never wash these
clothes, she thought dazedly, remembering the lat-
inum content of the soil.
    Gingerly, Dax took the doctor's hand away from
the wound. It still didn't bleed heavily. The bone
shard only stuck a centimeter and a half through the
skin, and it looked relatively clean, no splinters.
"Julian," she said, tiptoeing around the delicate
subject, "I have to, ah, set this, don't IT'
    Bashir winced in pain, unable to speak. He nod-
ded raggedly.
    "1 hate to tell you this, Julian, but you're going to
have to talk me through it. I've done some doctoring
in my time, mostly Klingon blood brothers who got
a little rambunctious after hours, but I've never dealt
with a compound fracture of the--the tibia?"
    "Femur," said the doctor through gritted teeth.
"You haveinto grab belowmknee--pull. Hard.
Really~really hard."
 "Are you, um, going to pass out?"
 "Probeprobably."
 "Then what?"
 "Makes it--easier. Keep pulling. Pull straight.
Keep pressure--keep pulling--pressure. Oh God."
Another spasm of pain tore across BashiFs face.
    Act fast, said the voice in Dax's brain, while he~
already hurting. Let him go out fast!
    Moving quickly but precisely, she took hold of the
doctor's leg and with a swift but smooth pull, tugged
it outward. Julian BasMr moaned, and as advertised,
passed out from the agony. Dax continued to tug,
taking advantage of the respite. She pulled with her
right, while the fingers of her left hand pulled the
torn flesh and cloth aside and pushed the bone back
through the wound.
    Her stomach clenched at the sight. She had
dressed many a bat'telh slice, none of which had
affected her much. But the sight of white bone
sticking up through raw, red meat nauseated her so
much that when Dax finally felt the bone rotate back
into place, she leaned away and lost the undigested
remnants of her last meal. She was thankful she had
eaten only a light breakfast.
    After evacuating the contents of her stomach, Dax
sat back and continued to pull on the leg, keeping
the bone ends from grating against one another. The
foul taste in her mouth nauseated her further, but
she had nothing left to lose.
    After five sweat-soaked, sour-tasting minutes,
Bashir finally limped back to consciousness. He
raised his head, trying to see his leg.
    "It's still there," said Dax in a bitter humor; "I
didn't have to amputate."
    "My bag," said the doctor. "Orthopedal stimula-
tor. Looks like--saltshaker~teal."
Dax scanned the ground with her eyes, finally
spotting the doctor's shoulder bag. Stretching out
her left arm while still holding tight with the right,
she retrieved the open bag. There were only two
medical instruments left; one was a hypospray, and
the other did not look like a teal saltshaker.
    "Urn, Julian, I think we're in trouble. Will this
thing help?" She held up the unknown item, which
was a dark-blue thimble.
 Bashir squinted, then sighed, shaking his head.
 "What's in the hypospray?" she asked, hopeful.
    "Anti--viral, antibacterial--all purpose--anti-
septic. Give one amp."
    Catching her tongue between her teeth, Dax
sprayed the antiseptic directly into Bashir's leg, just
above the wound. "All right, you're not going to get
gangrene. Now what?"
"Find the ortho--orthopedal stimulator."
"Julian, there's wreckage scattered across a square
kilometer of canyon! There's no way I can find it in
less than a full day, and you need help right now.
Come on, kiddo; think back. How did the ancient
doctors fix broken legs in the premedical age?"
    Bashir said nothing for a solid minute, and Dax
was afraid she'd lost him again. Then he grunted.
"Splint," he said. "Get two sticks. Thick. Something
to tie them with."
    Finding sticks wasn't difficult. There was plenty of
kindling scattered among the trees at the bottom of
the gorge. Dax gently lay the doctor's ieg down on
the opposite seat of the skimmer, feeling a wash of
guilt as Bashir hissed in pain. She scurried off,
rustled up several likely candidates for the splint,
and rushed back.
    At Bashir's instruction, Dax carefully laid the
sticks on either side of his broken leg, the bottom
ends actually sticking down below his foot by six
centimeters or so. Then she tied the splint tightly
with cords pulled from her own Native-style cloak,
one cord below the foot, the others at various places
up the leg. By this time, Bashir was sitting up and
helping, though it didn't take a Betazoid to feel the
doctor's pain. Dax still winced every time she
looked at the angry, red wound just above Bashir's
knee.
    "What happened to the power?" asked the doctor,
startling Dax out of her nauseated reverie.
    "Huh? Oh." Her tricorder had miraculously sur-
vived, probably because she had dissipated so much
momentum by sliding along the slick mud. She set
the pickups to detect power potential instead of
actual power and scanned 360 degrees around.
    "Nothing... and nothing. There's no power po-
tentia anywhere." Dax was silent for a moment,
remembering the last time she had observed such a
phenomenon. "Julian," she said at last, "you know
this is exactly the typical Cardassian attack: first
they kill the local power, then they strike against the
helpless, dumbfounded Natives who can't figure out
why all their new tech has suddenly stopped work-
ing."
    Bashir bit his lip, then mastered himself again.
"Can you scan for Cardassians, Jadzia?"
    "Already recalibrating, even as we speak." She
repeated the slow scan all about the compass, not
liking what she saw.
 "Nothing. Nobody. Nowhere." She sat, thinking
about being stranded, starving to death, her bones
someday being found leaning back against a rock,
the leg-bones crossed nonchalantly. "Well, Julian,
what now?"
 "Find the--orthopedal stimulator."
 "One ortho-stim, coming up."
    But it didn't. Days passed, and Dax never did find
the stimulator, or much of anything useful and
undamaged except the Cardassian food and water
still strapped to the remains of the passenger cage.
    Dax tried to keep track of the time, but she grew
confused, unable to remember whether she had
scratched a mark on the rock each morning or not.
It's been at least ten days, she remembered thinking
one evening. When all there was to do was talk, one
day or one night seemed much like another.
    She wanted to move, to head toward Benjamin
Sisko--or where she thought he might be--however
many hundreds of kilometers that was. They had
crashed in a direct line between the observed Car-
dassian spoor and where she extrapolated Sisko's
position, so there was some hope that he might be
coming closer to them, assuming the captain in-
tended to take the battle to the enemy. She wanted
to join up with Sisko before the battle, so they
wouldn't be caught between hammer and anvil.
    But Julian couldn't move, not yet. A few more
days, she promised, keeping a nervous eye on the
food, and especially the water. "Damn," she
groused, "I wish I hadn't let you talk me into giving
that bloody Gul four man-weeks of supplies."
 "Well, who knew we were going to run out of gas?"
said the doctor. His spirits seemed up, and he was
itching--literally--to try hobbling on a crutch.
    Then, on a day she had seriously considered
taking Julian for his first practice stroll--his raw-
meat wound looked much better, definitely unin-
fected-she chanced to stand on a rock and make
another slow, 360-degree scan.
    "Whoops," she said, "company. Well, that was
inevitable."
 "The Cardassians?"
    Dax nodded. "A couple of hundred or so. Thata-
way." She indicated by pointing. "And moving in
our direction. Why now? Why not next week, when
we wouldn't even be here?" Bashir rightly guessed it
was a rhetorical question, and didn't answer.
    She continued. "Oh, and while we're at it..."
She recalibrated once again and scanned for hu-
man/Ferengi/Klingon DNA. "Yes, of course, that
figures! Looks like we finally found the captain and
the away team, and a whole mess of Natives, about
nine kilometers yonder"--she pointed in the oppo-
site direction--"and heading in fast."
    Dax snapped off the tricorder and tucked it back
in its padded case. "Good news, Julian: your leg is
better. We were just going to leave, but instead we're
about to be standing at ground zero of Armageddon
between the forces of good and the forces of evil."
She smiled brightly. "At least we're not going to be
lonely." She sat heavily next to the doctor, chin in
hands, wondering how she was going to manage this
reunion without the pair of them becoming Cardas-
sian trophies.

0

CHAPTER
      lO

A FURTIVE MEETING. Darkness in the corridor...
Major Kira brushed past the station tailor without
so much as a sideways glance. She felt nothing.
ShouM I have? But Garak coughed delicately after
they passed, and Kira hoped and prayed. Darkness
again, and solitude. The moment passed--and
hours would pass before Kira could return to her
stateroom (her "cell," as the dean would have it) to
rest--rest and feel gently in her pocket to find what
she hoped was the offspring of that furtive meeting
in the dark, lonely corridor.
    Just a sliver, the merest speck of metal. But using a
mirror, she fit it perfectly into the slight, hairline
crack between the edges of the torc, the slave collar.
    She thought to test it, but thought a second time.
Alarms, perhaps. A diagnostic message broadcast to
the Liberated, the prison guards who controlled
Emissary's Sanctuary, which Kira was already in her
heart gloomily calling Deep Space Nine again.
    The sliver would remain untested, nestled inside
the collar, waiting for the ultimate test. My life is in
the hands of that bastard spoon-head spymaster, she
thought. May the Prophets help us all/

    The summons bell chirped in Kira's cell, rescuing
her from a sleep so deep, a dream so dire, that she
could remember nothing, despite being interrupted
in the middle... nothing but the horrific sense of
billions of kilos of water pressing upon her from all
sides, crushing her young body like a bug between
two palms. She swam awake, leaping to her feet with
such alacrity that she shamed herself. "Kira," she
said, coughing up saliva that went down the wrong
way.
    "You will come to the central command center,"
said the dean without preamble. The transmission
ceased. What explanations need be offered to a
slave?
    When Kira rode the turbolift into Ops, she was
shocked to see Kai Winn standing at the monster's
left hand. The woman looked old, head bowed, lips
pressed together in tight surrender, the peaked mitre
on her head drooping, as if even the cloth itself were
tired of resisting. Winn stared at the deck, not even
glancing up when Kira stomped from the turbolift.
She can't face me, realized the major in wonder. Oh
Prophets, what have you done, my Kai?
    "The portable, far-seeing anomaly has been lo-
cated," said the dean--this was more than was
strictly necessary, but he had come to trust his slave.
His black, featureless face looked at Kira, and a
shiver danced along her spine. "You will retrieve it.
The chief of prisoners will tell you where."
    Kira edged closer, stepping from the platform,
passing Chief O'Brien's engineering well, coming to
rest just by the science console, her fingers lightly
touching the cool plastic. "Kai?" she asked, voice
trembling, "is this true?"
 "I have offered, my child. There are lives."
 "It's an Orb," said the major firmly, with finality.
 "It's a hundred lives, child. More."
    Bile exploded up Kira's throat. She swallowed,
feeling herself so close to tears that she turned her
own face away, lest they actually fall. Her mind
refused to function. What was there to do? The offer
had been made and accepted. If Kira didn't run
fetch the Orb, another would... and to what avail?
    "May the Prophets forgive us," said someone--
was it Kai Winn or Kira herself?. The major could
not be sure.
  "Child--"
  "Where?"
  "Child .... "
    She wants to be forgiven, this Kai. Rot in hell before
you gain sanction from me, traitor! "Where is it, Kai
Winn?"
    Winn stood silent a long moment. The dean
displayed infinite patience, perhaps realizing the
depth of emotion that tore the two women. "Down,"
said the old woman at last. "Down as far as you can
go. Among the engines and reactors--I don't under-
stand the machinery, and I don't remember exactly
where I was told it was hidden. But you will find it,
child. You've seen it many times."
    "I have seen it in the temple, Kai." Kira stressed
the word perhaps overmuch, but she meant it to
burn.
    "Please bring it to me here in Ops. I will give it
with my own hands to the dean. The Liberated will
leave, restoring the station to Bajor and leaving us in
peace."
"You will leave now," commanded the dean.
Kira was about to comply when the rage, long
suppressed by the collar and the self-censorship it
enforced, burst through the stopcock in Kira's
throat. "You will die now," she said, matter-of-factly
and without audible emotion. She spoke with the
certainty of a Prophet.
    With no more ado, Major Kira reached across the
science console to a ratageena mug that had lain
Unregarded since the occupation began. She took it
by the handle; as yet no one--not the dean, the Kai,
or any of the guards--had parsed Kira's last proph-
ecy.
    Kira held the cup firmly and punched it into the
edge of the console. The breakproof plastic shattered
nicely, leaving her holding a jagged shard attached
to the handle. She stepped forward briskly, and at
last the assembly began to react.
    "Kira, child!" exclaimed Winn, stepping back in
startled alarm. The guards lurched forward, caught
off balance by the smoothness of the strike.
    Even reaction time half that of a Bajoran's
couldn't protect against a complete surprise attack.
The dean himself stumbled backwards, bumping
into the communications console and raising his
hands in obvious consternation. So they can be
defeated, she thought dully, taken by surprise and
scared.
    No one anticipated her attack. No one was close
enough to respond on the fly. Before another breath
could be drawn by any of the parties, Kira had
pressed the sharp, jagged piece of plastic against the
dean's throat, taking him by the breastplate to
prevent escape. "You will die," she repeated, "if you
touch this Orb. You will die if you do not release us.
You will die if you do not get the hell off my station,
this instant."
    Kira's heart was pounding like a tiny bickett with
fear and rage... but the collar, she realized, was
inert; Garak had done his job well. She could not be
stopped. The dean must only now be realizing he
had lost all control.
    If he was, he was also doing a good job of hiding
that realization. The dean made no move, no at-
tempt to wrestle the jerry-rigged knife from her
grasp; nor did the two guards take more than a single
step toward the pair before stopping, presumably at
the dean's silent orders, and withdrawing to the
periphery of Ops.
     "I'm not bluffing," said Kira, staring into the inky
 blackness of the dean's alleged face. Is it his face? Or
 is it a helmet after all? It looked too glassy to be flesh.
     "We anticipated this sign of independence and
 ingenuity," said the dean quietly, without emotion.
 "We have prepared escape insurance. Behold."
  Some force of certain knowledge made Kira turn
her head, careful not to let the knife slip from its
target. The turbolift had vanished. But a few tense
moments later, it whispered back into Ops.
    The lift held five passengers: one guard, Jake
Sisko, and three Bajorans. All prisoners but the last
wore terrified expressions and a large, red nodule
taped to their throats. Jake stood behind them all.
    "Please inform Major Kira what has been done,"
said the dean.
    Keiko looked too horrified to make a sound. Jake
swallowed hard and spoke, his voice sounding a lot
calmer than he must have felt, from what Kira could
see. "These--these things are explosives," he said.
"That's what the guards said. They say they'll blow
our heads offif you don't do whatever they tell you."
The last words created such a look of disgust and
self-loathing on Jake's face that Kira's heart broke.
What could the poor boy--the young man--do? He
was stymied.
    "We shall execute the prisoners if you do not
disarm yourself and retrieve the far-seeing anom-
aly."
    Kira's hand began to shake, from inner tension
and from the physical letdown. She had hungered
for the final battle, only to have the chair yanked
away when she sat at the victor's table. After a long,
silent argument without words, Kira's arm fell limp.
She dropped the makeshift knife to her side...
then dropped it completely onto the floor. She did
not let go of the dean's armor; indeed, she could not
will her fingers to relax. But one of the guards strode
forward and yanked her away.
 "There must be punishment," said the dean, "or
other prisoners will riot." Then he stepped back, out
of the way, while the two guards moved close to
Kira.
    She knew what was coming. Still, the first blow
was a surprise, a short jab to her solar plexus. It
punched the wind right out of her lungs, spasming
her diaphragm so she could not even draw a breath.
Then the real beating began.
    Kira Nerys had been beaten before; nobody in the
Occupation could have completely escaped physical
torture at the hands of Gul Dukat and some (but not
all) of the other Cardassians. But this brutal punish-
ment was as professional as anything ever dished out
by the Cardassian goons of Terok Nor.
    Kira tried to tense her muscles and cover her head
and chest as best she could, but the Liberated were
experts at finding the weak point, the unguarded
spot, and driving their shell-hard fists into the wom-
an's flesh. They did not allow her to lose conscious-
ness, never striking where she would be knocked out
or killed. A stomp from an armored boot broke most
of the bones in Kira's left hand. She lost a tooth to a
particularly vicious finger-strike.
    The pain was exquisite. Her eye was swollen shut,
and she never did recover her breath. She resolved
not to make a sound; but that pious hope was
quickly dashed, and she heard herself whimpering
like an animal, unable to stop the bleating: the alien
prison guards knew exactly which buttons of humili-
ation to push to break her down farther than mere
pain could have done.
 They didn't ask her a single question; but after a
number of blows disoriented her, she started mum-
bling her name, rank, and province, alternately
aware of where she was and believing herself to be
back on Bajor during the Troubles. The Liberated
paid her words no attention. They were interested
not in information but in punishment.
    But at last it was over. Broken and sobbing, nose
running, it took Major Kira ten minutes at least to
pick herself up again, first to knees, then to her feet.
She looked first to the hostages: Jake's face was
frozen in a mask of hatred so deep, he looked more
like his father than did Sisko himself. Keiko's was
turned away; she couldn't look. Molly had buried
her face in her mother's side.
    I survived. I will survive. I am survival. Without
asking again, Kira stumbled up the platform to the
turbolift. "Lefel--lefel thir'y-fife." The very bot-
tom, where six reactors squatted, three of them
currently live.
    It was hard to talk around the missing tooth and
the blood in her mouth. The turbolift dropped
silently, uncaring, through the bowels of the station,
heading for the three bound suns that ran Deep
Space Nine and the heavily shielded room that
contained them, where the bulkheads were so thick
that even sensors could not penetrate to find the
small box with a window to the Prophets.
    Winn was right. It had been the perfect hiding
place. Too damn bad, thought Kira, holding onto the
railing to keep from falling to the floor.
    Edging from the turbolift into the generator room,
the throbbing from the hulking reactors shook Kira,
an ogre grabbing a knee in each hand and yanking
rhythmically twice a second. Her head pounded in
unison, though the Liberated guards had mostly
avoided it during their "extrajudicial punishment,"
striking her face only a few times, mostly by acci-
dent. Even her remaining teeth rattled with the
whump, whump of the huge fusion generators.
    Dropping slowly to knees and one hand was a
relief, justified by the need to find the Orb. She
crawled along the floor, hampered by her broken left
hand, eyes still tearing in reaction to the brutality,
lips swollen and split, oozing blood. At last--too
soon.t--she found the familiar box with the cabinet
door. For several moments, lying on the floor and
feeling the pulse of unimaginable power rock her
and throw off the balance so fragilely regained, she
contemplated the blessed Orb. She needed to rest;
she needed time to think.
    There was no way out, no loophole by which she
could fail to retrieve the Orb and prevent anyone
else from bringing it back, even Kai Winn herself. I
had my shot. I failed. Perhaps the Kai's way is best,
after all. At last, Kira reverently gathered up the box
in a one-armed hug of unbearable tenderness, feeling
the twice-each-second vibration as the pulse of the
Prophets.
    But as she rose, something tickled the back of her
bruised brain, something not quite right. Something
felt wrong. Even the box of Orb itself felt wrong;
everything was wrong.
    But Kira was just too sick and tired to fight, fret,
or fume about certain negligible differences in the
Orb she had loved before. Rising unsteadily, Kira
stumbled back aboard the turbolift and headed back
up to Ops, cursing as every passing level brought the
holiest of holies closer to the hands of profane
barbarians.

    Chief O'Brien, weariness personified, sighed deep-
ly and rose from his perch atop a severed tree stump.
    "No Cardassians," he reported. The captain
grunted in reply. "And the Natives went thataway."
    Worf snorted. The last was perfectly obvious
without the scan, even to a confirmed non-Native
nontracker like Miles Edward O'Brien. Undaunted,
the chief continued his scan. On a whim, he turned
the probe antenna straight upward and expanded
the focus to search right up through the atmosphere.
The energy readings flew right off the scale, forcing
him to recallibrate.
"Captain, I think I've got something here."
Sisko ambled close, waiting silently until O'Brien
could analyze what he was seeing. The energy was
utterly unlike the fields of electromagnetic potentia
that had earlier blanketed Sierra-Bravo... and
they'd kicked them all offiine anyway, at least in this
hemisphere. Instead, the readings looked more
like--
    "Energy discharges," he concluded. He looked up
to find himself the center of attention of four pairs of
eyeballs. "Captain, there's a bloody war going on
above our heads!"
    Sisko frowned, then hissed through his teeth. "A
battle? Is the Defiant involved?"
    "Can't tell with this blasted thing," said O'Brien,
frustrated. "Now, if I had access to a ship's sensor
screen, I could tell you anything you wanted to
know."
    "My God," muttered the captain, so softly that
O'Brien felt like an eavesdropper. "What is happen-
ing? Where is my ship?"
    The chief scowled, noticing a faint modulated
signal beneath the savage energy discharges. He
fiddled with the built-in filters, trying to bring up the
subspace transmissions. Listening for a moment, he
thought he had caught the drift. "Sir," he said,
feeling a nervous flutter, "I just picked out a message
about the Defiant."
    "Well? What's happening?" Sisko shot forth a
hand to grip the chief by the shoulder.
    "It's... mind, I'm not certain of this; it's just an
inverted echo inside the general weapons fire. It's
not all that clear."
 "Spit it out, man!"
    O'Brien pursed his lips. "They're saying--some-
thing about the Defiant, they know it by name, being
shot down and... crashing into the ocean. De-
stroyed, they're claiming. Many days ago. But I've
known them wrong plenty of times, sir."
    Despite the desperate need for military intelli-
gence on the battlefield, the chief suddenly felt
awash in guilt for relaying what was really little more
than a speculative reconstruction of message frag-
ments. But what couM I do? What the hell couM I do?
he demanded, finding no answer but the obvious.
    The captain massaged his forehead directly above
the bridge of his nose. "Keep monitoring, Chief
O'Brien. Alert me to any changes."
    Ensign Wabak sat in the command chair, resisting
the temptation to fold his legs up; too much like a
little kid, he told himself. He forced himself to sit
like a Klingonmwith knees spread wide, clutching
the armrests and scowling at the forward screen.
    "Joson," called Ensign Weymouth, her voice qua-
vering. At Wabak's glare, she corrected herselfi "Sor-
ry... sir, I think you should see this. Picked it up
on a short-range scan into the upper atmosphere,
about a thousand kilometers orbit."
    Wabak sat back, curious as to what was worrying
Miss Weymouth now. The lines of force she was
projecting onto the viewer made no sense to Wabak
at all... something in a sensor scan? "Analyze,
Ensign," he ordered, praying to the Prophets that he
would understand her analysis and not be forced to
ask for an explanation of the explanation.
    He needn't have worried. "Sir, it's a space battle.
The Cardassians are taking a pounding from some~
body!"
    Abruptly, the cryptic swirls and colored surfaces
on the viewer swam into focus as he realized what he
was looking at: Weymouth was right; if anything she
understated it--the Cardassians were suffering a
right royal thumping. Already, three ships were
damaged almost beyond repair, and the rest were
withdrawing as fast as they could to a high orbit. But
the offer was not accepted. The attack continued.
    "N'Kduk-Thag," he said, "what the hell is hap-
pening up there?"
    "It is my belief that the planetary defenses have
finally concluded that the Cardassian ships are a
threat. They no longer will allow the Cardassians to
stay in any altitude orbit. The Cardassians are
withdrawing--perhaps we can pick up some of their
message traffic."
    Wabak sat on the edge of the chair, looking from
Ensign Nick to the viewer and back to the utterly
unemotional Erd'k'teedak science officer. Nick
twisted his head to an impossible angle (for anyone
but an Erd'k'teedak). Then at last, he was ready to
report.
    "Sir, they are leaving orbit. Their ships are already
leaving orbit and jumping to warp. They are aban-
doning whatever Cardassians remain alive on the
planet surface. Correction, there has been one beam-
aboard."
    "A beaming?" demanded Weymouth; "from thir-
ty thousand kilometers?" She sounded incredulous.
    "Nick, what about this beam-out? Who, the com-
mander of the group?"
    "Negative. Evidently he beamed himself out with-
out help from the Cardassians. They are surprised
by his appearance."
    There was only one possible explanation. "Hah,
he was a Dominion agent, maybe even a change-
ling!" Wabak sat back, smirking. "My friends, I have
just realized we're going to win this stupid war."
    "We are?" asked Weymouth. "How can you be so
sure?"
    "Because, Ensign, no matter how much we may
distrust the Klingons or even the Romulans, we're
nowhere near the point of sending spies into our
allies' ranks." Wabak wiped the grin from his face,
struggling for sternness once more. "But what about
the Gul-in-charge? What's happened to him?"

    For a long moment Ensign Nick did not appear to
notice the question, but Wabak knew he was waiting
until he had positively located the precise element of
the traffic that would detail the GIC's fate. After a
solid minute, Nick turned to face Wabak, seated in a
chair that was becoming altogether too comfortable.
"The Gul-in-charge has vanished, and none of the
attackers seem particularly concerned that they're
leaving him behind with the rest of the soldiers."
    "Ditching him? Yet another reason we're going to
win."
    "They do not appear to like Gul Ragat very
much." said Ensign Nick as sort of a summary
appendix. "There is no sadness nor concern as to his
fate. Sir, the last of the Cardassian ships has left
orbit. Whoever is left on the surface is on his own
now."
    Wabak couldn't resist another face-splitting smile.
"Perfect, Nick. Just the sort of odds I like."

0

CHAPTER
      11

DR. BASHIR LEANED BACK against the brine-dark can-
yon cliff, wishing the throbbing in his leg would
cease, cursing the chap who invented the alleged
analgesic in the hypospray, struggling not to frighten
Dax by letting his inner grimace appear on his face,
wondering how many charges were left in his Car-
dassian disruptor--and ignoring, as best he could,
the savage, overpowering urge to cough... the early
symptom of a very serious case of cyanogen poison-
ing, a small prelude of what was to come and a only
tiny morsel of what the members of the away team
must already be suffering.
    Ten meters downstream in the canyon, Dax lost a
similar struggle. She began to cough, and it turned
into a choking match that left her out of breath and
red-faced. She regained her composure after a battle.
But even from where he sat, unable to move because
every shift sent a spasm of agony through his
splinted femur, Bashir could see the trickle of blood
down Dax's chin. The deadly, atmospheric toxins
were taking their toll. And there's not a damned
thing I can do about it. Isn't modern medicine
wonderful?
    "They're coming," said Dax, her voice hoarse,
nearly a whisper. She held up a hand with fingers
spread wide. "Five minutes. Ready. Wait for my
order."
    Bashir nodded, not trusting even his own en-
hanced will enough to speak aloud. He practiced
extending his gun hand a few times, seeing if he still
had the mobility and stability to shoot without
burning the lovely Jadzia by accident. He realized to
his amusement that he could take advantage of his
infirmity: he could rest the muzzle of the disruptor
against his splint to create a stable gun platform.
Dry-lipped, he sweltered and waited.
    The latinurn-tinged soil of the canyon floor re-
flected the sunlight and intensified the heat--which
gives the Cardassians rather the edge, he thought in
grim resignation. Bashir, despite being raised in the
desert, felt sweat beading on his forehead. The
moisture would not evaporate; the humidity was
much too high for such a blessing.
    This planet has the most insane weather patterns I
can remember. The wild mood swings from cold to
hot, dry to humid, high to low pressure reminded
him of nothing so much as the myriad subcultures of
the Natives, an anarchy of opposites. As Dax de-
scribed them, the Tiffnaki, or whatever they called
themselves now, were open-handed and generous,
pacifistic, full of enthusiasm. But the aged Gul Ragat
had spoken bitterly of black-hearted, vicious predator~
villages, full of bloodthirsty Natives, that might have
inspired Bram Stoker and other vampire writers of
the Victorian Age.
    The five minutes passed as one. Dax silently
counted them down with her fingers, but each
seemed only a few seconds long. Bashir's sensitive
ears began to hear the high-pitched yawn of Cardas-
sian skimmers and the scrape of metal-shod boots
on the rocky floor. He trained his disruptor on the
agreed-upon target: a shatter of broken granite at the
top of a narrow defile. Dax, presumably, aimed at
another a few meters farther on.
    The first Cardassian scouts peeped into view. If
they were using infrared, Bashir understood, he and
Dax would be sitting ducks. But they relied upon the
Cardassians' observed arrogance and evident dis-
dain for their primative, ignorant enemies. The
scouts rolled along, riding their skimmers with lazy
ease, perfect indifference.
 "Julian," warned Dax. "Now?
    The doctor reacted as one would expect from his
enhanced muscles and nerve clusters. But even so,
Dax beat him to the punch. The pair fired into the
respective shattered tops of the canyon walls.
    At first, the Caradassians stopped, staring in every
direction with suspicion and betrayal. Disruptors!
The troops were being attacked in the field by their
own men! It took some seconds for the confusion to
clear and for the Cardassians to begin returning
fire.

But the damage to the cliff face was irreparable and
catastrophic.
    With a scream like dive-bombing harpies, the
rocks tore themselves loose from the wall, caterwaul-
ing downhill and crashing into a heap directly ath-
wart the Cardassians' attack. As a low rumble shook
the ground, the doctor's leg jerked off the rock it was
balanced on and thudded to the ground. An icepick
rammed into his thigh, or so it felt. He dropped the
disruptor pistol and leaned over to clutch at his
splinted bone, tears dotting his eyes from the relent-
less pain. But after a few moments, the main bunch
of Cardassians, trapped by the pair of avalanches,
retreated to plink over the rocks toward Dax's and
Bashir's position. The skimmers, of course, moved
along smartly, rising up over the rockfall and swoop-
ing forward.
    If they weren't using sensors before, they surely are
now, thought Bashir. He abandoned all hope of
remaining unknown... as he had long ago accepted
with equanamity that he would someday die--and
what difference would that make to the world? He
was not afraid of what would happen to him in the
battle. This made him a deadly opponent indeed.
    Quickly thumbing the disruptor down the scale to
heavy stun, Bashir began to shoot the skimmers out
of the sky. Dax was no match for his synthesized
aim and manufactured speed; it was as easy as
beating Chief O'Brien at darts. She herself only
managed one hit, and that against an already
stunned Cardassian in a skimmer that settling gently
to ground, the pilot having ceased giving orders.
    When the last flying Cardassian had been blown
out of the sky, Dax struggled to her feet and crept
closer to the fallen bodies. Sheg making sure they're
not feigning unconsciousness, he concluded. It was a
wise precaution, but unnecessary: Bashir knew what
he had bagged.
    She pulled the transponder-pack from each cycle,
preventing the bulk of the Cardassian regiment from
calling the skimmers back. Then the commander
scurried back to the relative safety of the tiny natural
caves, pursued by disruptor blasts. "0ooh rah!" she
exclaimed, pumping her fist in the air. "Mission
finished. We've got 'em boxed in for half a day at
least. When it gets intolerable, we'll hijack one of
those skimmers and get the hell out of here."
    The estimate proved optimistic. The Cardassians
had no sooner parsed the loss of their skimmer-
scouts but they decided they needed intelligence--
which Dax shouM have predicted, thought Bashir,
considering what we all know about the Obsidian
Order and the Cardassian obsession with spycraft.
Bashir had, in fact, predicted the attempt. He whis-
pered to Commander Dax: "Jadzia, they're going to
try to penetrate at both ends of the rockfall simulta-
neously. They're also going to set some soldiers
scaling the walls of the canyon to drop on us from
above." The skimmer was always an option, but as
long as they could keep the Cardassians pinned,
Bashir was as reluctant as Dax to flee the scene.
  She nodded.
    Bashir was wrong on one count, as it happened:
the Cardassians tried only one breakout around the
 rockpile, not both ends, as the doctor himself would
 have done. Bashir and Dax waited until the luckless
 vanguard was across the artificial ridge and part-way
 down before dropping them under heavy stun, so
 they would roll onto the Federation side of the
 avalanche. If they fell back among their comrades,
 they could be revived by a cortical stimulator.
     Bashir began to drag himself forward to make sure
 they hadn't sustained injury rolling down the jagged
 rocks. But Dax held him back. "Julian, don't." Her
 face was pinched, taut with suppressed emotion.
     "Jadzia, I'm a doctor. I have to tend the
 wounded."
    She shook her head. "Not during combat... not
when we have no facility for stashing prisoners."
    Dax again got ahold of the tricorder. "I'm picking
up a sensor echo of about half a dozen Cardassians
skulking along the rim of the canyon."  "About?"
    She shrugged. "The minerals in the cliff face
blocks a precise scan." The doctor swallowed and
readied his stolen disruptor.
    Nine soldiers dropped into the ravine, relying on
their natural Cardassian strength to land safely after
a twelve-meter fall. They hit the ground on their feet
but were momentarily stunned. Moments later, they
were thoroughly stunned.
    "Now," said Bashir, "they will parlay." Dax nod-
ded, agreeing with the assessment.
    Five minutes of silence elapsed while they waited
to see who would win. At last, a magnified voice
called across the rock wall--in Federation Standard.

"Commander Dax, how nice to discover you have
survived the crash of your ship. And the doctor, too!
We are quite overjoyed at such good fortune."
    Dax poked at her tricorder for a moment. It was a
simple trick to modify it into a bullhorn; even I could
do it, he thought, little though I know about commu-
nications circuitry. But when she began to speak, it
wasn't her own voice, but a booming, Godlike
presence that rattled the remaining precariously
balanced stones high above and echoed around the
skull. "Cardassian prisoners, you will be treated well
in a Federation war-prisoner colony. Do not fear for
your lives. What you have been told about the
Federation is a lie."
    The Cardassian voice laughed, a spritely elf. "Oh,
come now, Commander! Do you not think we have
scanned you and know there are but two, yourself
and Doctor Bashir? We also know there is a mob of
aborigines approaching with pitchforks and useless
nonworking Native technology, and we are prepared
to deal with them swiftly. Do not expect rescue."
    "And do you not think," said Dax with a grin,
"that we don't know that your ships are gone, you
have no reinforcements, and you have been aban-
doned to your fate by your cowardly comrades?"
She monkeyed with the tricorder again. "Surren-
der," she concluded in her normal voice, "is your
only option."
    Bashir lowered his thick, black brows, puzzled.
How does she know the Cardassian ships have left?
After a moment's thought, the answer leaped into
his brain. Obviously, if their ships were still here, they
couM have been beamed from the canyon right into
our laps.t Ergo, they were alone, abandoned, com-
pletely cut off.
    After a long pause, the Cardassian voice resumed,
now assuming a tone of let's-all-get-together-for-our-
own-good. Cardassians are so predictable, thought
the doctor.
    "We appear to be in the same phalanx, Command-
er. We are indeed marooned, as you have deduced.
And you are two of how many survivors, stranded
alone so very far from your Federation home? I
wonder which of our respective governments will
return the quickest?"
    Bashir smiled, reaching for the tricorder. After a
moment's raised eyebrow, Dax surrendered it to
him. Bashir had his own deductions with which to
impress the Cardassian, who was most likely noth-
ing more than a lieutenant, one rank above high
sergeant. "My good friend," he said, "I think we
both know just how long it will be before a Cardas-
sian ship comes to the rescue of Gul Ragat the
Banished. Renegades, masterless men--who cares
whether you live or die?"
    Bashir could almost hear the sigh in the Cardas-
sian centurion's voice. "Well, it appears you know as
much about us as we know about you. A pity we
seem unable to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and face
this harsh environment together--which may well
turn out to be our home for the rest of our lives.
Which may not be too long. You are aware of the
cyanogens?"
    Bashir said nothing, and the centurion continued.
"But of course you are, Dr. Bashir. However, we
have something you do not, I suspect. We have a
 complete chemical roadmap for scrubbing the cyan-
 ogens from the food supply, using only native ani-
 mal life. If we can solve the long-term food problem,
 Doctor, then together we can carve a life here."
     Dax took the tricorder megaphone back from
 Bashir. "But you are forgetting... that unlike you,
 we aren't renegades. The Federation knows where
 we are, and they will come looking for us. In fact, I'd
 venture to bet there will be a Federation ship on the
 ground here in just a day or two." She smiled and
 winked at Bashir.
    "So there is another alternative to stumbling
around until we cough ourselves to death," she
concluded. "You will surrender. You will throw your
weapons over the rocks and we will destroy them.
Walk out with your hands on your heads, fingers
interlaced--and we will put in a good word for you
when the ship arrives."
    "Ho! Then it appears," said the mystery voice,
"that we have reached an impasse. Commander,
Doctor, a good day to you both. Let's see who will
crack first, and whether you choke on your own
blood before that wonderful starship arrives!" Then
both sides fell silent.
    "They're going to launch one more attack," said
Bashir; Dax nodded agreement. "And then, perhaps,
they may talk settlement... if we can convince
them that a Federation ship is really here." If we can
get word via radio that we need the Defiant. If she's
ready to fiy. If we're willing to chance the planetary
defense screen to intimidate a couple of hundred
Cardassian troopers. If she2 not shot down halfway
from the ocean to here--if if ifi.

    "The Natives are only a few hours away," said
Dax, studying her tricorder readings. "And I'm sure
they know there's an enemy here and intend to
engage, for they haven't deviated from their straight-
line course since I first spotted them." She smiled,
sending all sorts of inappropriate feelings flooding
through the good Doctor Julian Bashir. "Just keep
your fingers crossed that the Cardassians don't de-
cide to turn Klingon on us and launch an all-out
assault to break out."
    He grunted in pain. It was nothing Dax had
said... just the analgesic wearing off.

    Per the captain's instructions, Constable Odo flew
high overhead playing "native hawk," keeping a
topside view of the Native troops as they roved into
battle. Natives... ridiculous name. So typical of
Commander Dax to peg the natives with such a
cognomen, lapped up with eager mirth by the away
team. And then she disappears from orbit into the
depths of the ocean without so much asm
    Odo cut the dreadful thought off at the pass. The
last thing in Sierra-Bravo he wanted to think about
was the rumored demise of Jadzia Dax, everyone's
exasperating favorite. Her death, or Jadzia's death
anyway, would come soon enough; it did for all
solids. The captain would die, Doctor Bashir,
Garak, Quark... well, every dark cloud has its
latinurn lining. They would all die, everyone Odo
had ever known. But he would still live on, alone and
friendless. Even Major Kira would--
    "No!" With a wrenching effort, the constable
forced his attention back to the ragged but steady
progress made by the native prodigies across the
trackless, roadless terrain. They had hastily thrown
together a dozen rattletrap jalopies (to use an old
Earth term Odo had picked up from centuries-old
police blotters), and were puttering their way at forty
kilometers per hour toward a rendezvous with the
largest Cardassian force so far encountered. Chief
O'Brien's tricorder readings pinpointed the enemy,
and Colonel-Mayor Asta-ha was on fire to lead the
charge personally. So Odo flew overhead to make
sure the Natives' newly invented "strategic military
imposture" didn't degenerate into an attempt to
herd cats.
    Is she alive? Is she dead? Is there a ship to take us
home, or are we stranded here until somebody in the
Federation, remembers to go looking for us?And will
that be before or after everyone but me dies of
cynaogen poisoning? Try as he might, Odo couldn't
keep his brain from returning to the overwhelming
question: was Dax alive or smashed to small bits in
the wreck of the Defiant?
    The hardest part, if the worst were true, would not
be the grief and loss of losing a friend, nor even the
impossible task of replacing Dax. It would be ex-
plaining to Nerys how he--Odo--had allowed her
to die on his watch. That thought was frightening
enough to make him momentarily lose his shape.
    Flapping far overhead, Odo made a number of
modifications to his basic bird body--adding tele-
scoping eyes, increasing his overall length for better
gliding, and bumping up wingspan-to-mass ratio by
thinning his wings.
    He peered below and zoomed in on various jalop-
ies, packed to their ragtop roofs with a snowballing
mob of Natives. With the power grid down and the
Natives thrown upon their own resources, they had
progressed so remarkably that the constable was
frightened. Small clusters of Natives--under the
ultimate direction of Owena-da and a new recruit,
Ang-Nak Pungent Halflife Potato-Eater (the univer-
sal translator was having a field day)--were develop-
ing new secret weapons, even as the column crawled
across the brittle living carpet of Sierra-Bravo fern.
The carpet fared and scuttled out of the way as best
it could (several of the plant species on Sierra-Bravo
had developed mobility, the ability to step up out of
the soil and march away to better times and dimes).
    Odo zoomed in to fifty power but was still unable
to pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding the Natives'
work. Having discussed with Worf a grand treatise
from the last century on "black ops," the one by
Snorri Thwackum, the Natives had gone crazy for
secret projects, intelligence gathering, and encrypt-
ion. The upshot was that nobody on the away team,
not even the captain himself, knew what the Natives
would unleash upon their enemies. Still, Odo knew
his duty. He panned and zoomed and tried for
different angles, hoping that one of them had made a
mistake. None ever did, of course.
    The constable gave it up and decided instead to go
high and higher, searching out the enemy to warn
Captain Sisko--who, along with the rest of the
team, was staying nearly a full kilometer back of the
massed might of the colonel-mayor. Odo pumped
his mighty wings, grabbing air and propelling him-
self so high that had he needed to breathe, he would
have been in serious trouble.
    At this height, Odo again shifted his shape, volu-
minously expanding the wingspan and adding a
natural pair of slats to extend and thicken the wings
as necessary. He trained his eyes on a distant defile,
so far below that even with the maximum magnifica-
tion his eyes would allow (he had copied them from
the Vib Sokorath of the Claudius colony) he still
could barely make out anything with a "footprint"
smaller than four square meters.
    But as he flapped his way closer, Constable Odo
saw what he had anticipated with simultaneous
eagerness and dread: an entire two-hundred-soldier
battalion of the last remaining Cardassians, now
stranded, as their ships had left, and without their
MIA leader, the local Gul. Dipping low, Odo saw
that they had been stopped by a recent rockslide ....
Sabotage? But there was no army on the other side of
the rockwall.
    It would take the Native "cavalry" less than an
hour to make contact with the enemy. And then we'll
see how useful these so-called Doomsday weapons
really are.
    Odo made a careful count, spied what he could of
the Cardassian weaponry, and discovered several
rows of dead or unconscious Cardassians on the
other side of the rockslide, laid neatly into rows and
columns by a considerate but invisible enemy. And
then, on his third and final pass through the canyon,
Constable Odo caught one last piece of intel that by
itself would have made up for everything else being
lost. On Odo's last pass below the cliffs that defined
the defile, he caught sight of two evident Natives.
And then, upon higher magnification, he realized
that the pair were not natives, but two people that
the constable knew well: Julian Bashir and Jadzia
Dax! The former had his leg in a splint, but other-
wise the two were unhurt.
    Wheeling about at breathtaking Gs (had he had
any breath to take), Odo flashed away. For once in
his life, he got to play bearer of good news. Dax was
alive, Dax and Bashir! It would be cause for celebra-
tion among the oft unseemly and overly emotional
"solids" of the away team. Even Constable Odo
allowed himself a short moment of delicious relief.
    But all the emotionalism rather begged the main
question, which the constable had been asking him-
self ever since seeing the two: how in the world did
Dax and the doctor get offa crashing starship? Odo
snorted, recognizing it was going to be a long, long
time before he prised any answers out of those two.

0

CHAPTER
      12

KAI WINN stood utterly still, rooted to her spot in
Operations, staring at the dark stains on the floor
where her protege had been assaulted. Standing still
and silent, she thought, had been the hardest thing
she had ever had to do in a lifetime of hardship.
Winn hadn't realized until that moment just how
much Kira Nerys meant to her... and to Bajor.
    She is the new Bajor, thought the Kai. I am not the
future, I am the past. NeD,s is the future. If she dies,
Bajor dies. Winn had no idea what Kira's connec-
tion to the planet and the Prophets was, but she
knew it was real and deep.
    When at last the Kai could swallow without gag-
ging and speak without screaming, when she had
mastered herself, she glided across Ops and sat down
in a chair by the science console. She could not keep
all of the disgust out of her face, but that was all
right: the dean would expect a certain loathing after
she witnessed the punishment.
    The dean began to speak. "When the prisoner
brings the far-seeing anomaly--"
 "Don't talk to me," said the Kai.
 "You will demonstrate its use to--"
    "Don't talk to me." The force of her simple
imperative so caught the dean by surprise that he fell
silent.
    Kai Winn closed her eyes, feeling in need of
spiritual and physical cleansing... prayer and a
bath. She blinked once, twice--

THIRTY YEARS AGO

--shaken awake by the emotionless sergeant to see
her Gul standing over her, his gray face positively
ashen. "By your own Prophets," whispered Gul
Ragat huskily, "what have you done?" "My lord?"
    "I... did you .... "Ceasing his futile attempt to
find words, Ragat handed Sister Winn an order pad.
Dizzy and confused, she sat up inside the cold tent,
took the pad, and touched the Cardassian logo in its
center.
    The grisly visage of Legate Migar faded into
existence in the center of the pad. He spoke in
Cardassian, but Winn, who had the gift, spoke the
language as well as the young Gul. "Gul Ragat, you
will return instantly via transporter from the Gener-
al Lyll Military Academy in North Riis. This morn-
ing, one of my guards was discovered drunk on duty.
He has been disciplined. But before the punishment
was administered, the traitorous wretch attempted
to mitigate his sentence by telling us all a story about
a certain young priestess.
    "Mr. Kulakat told us that on the day of the
bulletin tea he was walking his rounds near the alpha
code room. He heard a strange noise and went to
investigate. He found the door to the code room
itself unlocked and unlatched, still open a crack. He
found a Bajoran priestess in front of the door, where
she told him she had, and I quote, 'pushed it open
and looked inside.'" Migar frowned grimly on the
recorded message. "That priestess was your servant
Winn. She is now considered an enemy of the state
and is wanted for questioning as a hostile witness.
You have three hours, Gul Ragat."
    The message ended, and Sister Winn handed the
pad back to her own Gul. She sat with resignation,
waiting for the Prophets to speak into her ear again,
as they had when the lustful corporal had threatened
her. What do I do? How do I get the holocam to the
Resistance?How do I live? What do I do? But nothing
came to Winn, not even a whisper. She was alone.
    "Get up," said a voice from behind the Gul. Winn
recognized it, but she bent to look around Ragat
anyway. Neemak Counselor was grinning, staring to
the left side of the priestess, and rubbing his hands
as if washing them. "M'Lord Gul Ragat, I should be
delighted to escort this prisoner back to the legate's
headquarters. If you will permit?"  "No," said Gul Ragat.
    "Then ! will happy to... what the hell do you
mean, No?" Neemak stared beligerently at Ragat.
 He would never speak that way to a Gul unless he
 knew that Ragat was on his way out and down,
 thought Winn.
     "I mean No, "said the Gul, insisting. "She is mine.
 She has been with me for many years, serving loyally
 not only me but my father as well, before he died. I,
 not you, will take her to Legate Migar's villa."
    Neemak glowered. At last, the counselor executed
a perfect and grace-filled bow that nevertheless
spoke eloquently of his contempt and detestation of
his nominal master. There had been persistent ru-
mors, and Sister Winn knew them as well as any.
They say Ragat~ uncle is the true head of the
Obsidian order, she remembered, and the other Guls
have resented Ragat his whole life for it. Whether he
became a political pawn in the struggle between the
Cardassian regular army--under Gul Dukat--and
the spymasters, Gul Ragat's career had just ended.
Never again would he be trusted, invited to the
bulletin tea, never would he have the ear of a legate
or a Gul as powerful as Dukat. By allowing his
servant--his priestess--to dare so much, peeking
into the holiest of Obsidian Order holies, the al-
mighty code room, even if they never discovered her
true treachery, Ragat had proven himself an embar-
rassment to his father and a disgrace to his house
and the Empire. He will pay, by the Prophets, will he
be made to pay.
    And of course, she also knew that they would
discover her ultimate treachery... for they would
question her. Gul Dukat himself would question
her--and when he was finished, there would be no
"her" left to hold a secret. Not even a secret that was
a certain death sentence. In fact, the Cardassians
could be so unpleasant that she might scream out
her confession early to stop the pain and end it all.
    But for the moment, there was no reason for Gul
Ragat to know anything. So when he crouched
down, looked Winn in the eye, and said, "Tell me
what happened, Sister Winn," she looked him right
back and lied through her teeth.
    "The door was open, my lord, and I did look
inside. I was curious. I didn't even know what the
room was... I didn't know it was a code room!
There was no sign on the door, for the sake of the
Prophets." She allowed a single tear to roll down her
cheek. It dropped to the floor of the tent and made a
tiny stain.
    Gul Ragat sighed deeply and shook his head. "Oh
Winn, Winn, Winn. What can I do with you?" He
appeared truly upset, saddened, in pain. But would
he feel a thing if I were an anonymous Bajoran he
didn't know? I doubt it.
    "My lord, I know what is going to happen. I know
what they must do to me. My life will be forfeit--"
    "Winn! It should never come to that, if you're
innocent of any mal intent."
    She smiled wanly. "I will be given to Gul Dukat,
for he is the expert in these sorts of things. In his zeal
to drag out of me secrets I don't possess, he will
become over-enthusiastic. My Lord Gul, I'm not as
young as I look, and I'm not in the best of health. My
heart. I doubt I shall survive." Winn looked up at
the young man--boy rather--who was pathetically
convinced that she had served him loyally for years.
There was, in fact, nothing whatever wrong with her
heart (that she knew off). "Lord, I wish only to serve
you myself on this final journey. You are.,. a good
man, Gul Ragat."
    Playing the scene for all it was worth, Sister Winn
lowered her head as if shamed. Queerly, she felt
shame--illusory, but nonetheless painful. "I know
how you feel about us. I know you have high hopes
for Bajor's ultimate progress into full citizenship
within the Empire."
    Neemak couldn't help snorting in amused disbe-
lief, but whether at Ragat's peculiar beliefs about the
future of Bajor or at Winn's preposterous loyalty to
the Gul, who would be sending her to certain,
painful death, she could not determine. "I'll listen to
no more of this," said the counselor with a sneer. "I,
at least, have work to do for the Empire."
    Winn and Ragat shared a glance. Both knew what
that work was: Neemak Counselor reported back to
some superior somewhere all that he saw and heard
in the Gul's household, and right now the oily
snitchmwho could never meet a gaze full on--was
scurrying off like a roach to do just that.
    "Let me dress and prepare you, my lord," she said
when Neemak slapped the tent flap aside and
stomped away. "Let me have that one last honor."
    Gul Ragat closed his eyes as if fatigued. He shook
his head, but then nodded. "Fetch my breastplate
then, and my First Class jacket, gloves, and knife."
    Winn nodded in resignation. "The baton," she
added, "and the field pack. Your sash and ribbons of
honor."
    "Yes, everything." He smiled with an attempt at
ruefulness. "Indeed, you are not the only one to fear
the meeting with the legate. Migar will have my head
for breakfast."
    You arrogant, self-blinded egotist! she accused. Do
you really compare your career setback with the
torture and murder of your favorite Bajoran slave?
Prophets save your soul, for no one else seems to care
a whit about it, especially not you.
    Ragat waved the guards away when they tried to
take her elbows. He shook his head, shooing them
back to the rest of the camp. "Make ready," he said.
"I shall need an honor guard after we reach the
academy."
    They returned to the observation post where the
Gul had left his pack, where Sister Winn had left her
vital holocam. There was no trick to retrieving it:
She picked up the pack, the gul turned his back, she
removed the camera and restored it to her sleeve,
and then put the pack on Gul Ragat's back. The
autostraps locked into place. Simplicity itself, with
no one watching.
    All right. Now what?There was no answer. But one
virtue Sister Winn had learned, over many laborious
years of Cardassian occupation, was the ability to
wait endlessly for her moment.
    Despite outward resignation, Winn plotted furi-
ously. The path to the General Lyll Military Acade-
my was not long, skirting the floating section of Riis
and winding basically northward, through the Street
of Many-Voiced Vegetables (called "the Voice" by
the residents), passing close on the Blue Order
Lodge, the old farmers' exchange, three temples to
the Prophets, the historic Barak Nai House (home of
the First Minister of two centuries past), and the
Hall of the Legion of Prophets (where Barada Vai
had been sent, in Winn's elaborate ruse, to get him
away from the putative bombing that never oc-
curred), before at last crossing the Swiftswa spur
that looped off the Shakiristi River and rejoined it
after sliding over a waterfallwand leading to the
Academy.
    General Lyll had led a small expeditionary force
against a group of Anti-Prophets seventy-eight years
ago. His victory was elusive and ambiguous, but he
either had a patron in the prefecture council or else a
good PR man, for he ended up eponym to a military
academy and several public squares. The Cardassi-
ans, in a show of "respect" for their conquered
victims, had kept the old name while expelling all
Bajorans and taking over the school for the scions of
Cardassian captains, admirals, and generals. They
installed transporters, mindful of the crowded
schedules of dignitaries who needed to give com-
mencement speeches... thus, it was the nearest
Cardassian facility whence to transport back to
Legate Migar's compound.
    Growing desperate, Winn visualized each of the
major buildings en route to the Academy: they were
generally smallmBajorans did not need palaces or
fortresses, unlike the Cardassiansmand surrounded
by open spaces filled with innocent civilians who
would surely be hurt or killed as Winn broke for
freedom and her guards opened fire. So intent was
she that she didn't even notice when the Gul, his
prisoner, and his honor guard actually set out, and
her brain was so filled with imagined escapes that
she had no room to be afraid.

    She shuffled along the cobbled street called "the
Voice," seeing not where she was but where she
would be in a few minutes. More and more, it
appeared that she would have to make her break in
the midst of a mob, and trust to the Prophets that no
innocents were cut down by disruptor blasts. If it
were only my own life, I wouM willingly sacrifice it
rather than put others at risk, she told herself. But the
holos are vital to the Resistance; they must survive.t
She wondered whether it were true or just a damn
good rationalization for cowardice.
    She hesitated at the first temple, a fine affair with
colored-light murals, cushioned benches, and a laq-
uered cabinet to hold the sacred texts. Winn at-
tended services there the last time she was in Riis, as
a recent graduate of Seminary. But something
crouching inside her stomach warned her that the
High Temple was not the place for her final act of
worship. Just as she resumed walking again, the
impatient sergeant behind her shoved her forward.
    Taking advantage of the momentum, Sister Winn
hurried to Gul Ragat's side. "My lord," she said,
trying for hopeful anxiety, an easy emotion to proj-
ect, "the next temple is a particular favorite of ours.
It is rude and classless, but not without charm. It
was erected a thousand years ago by Kilikarri, the
Emissary to the Prophets, after he founded Riis on
the Shakiristi River where he had cast his net and
caught exactly one hundred fish and the third Scroll
of Prophecy."
    Ragat said nothing, trudging onward, his gaze
fixed forward on his crumbling future. But Winn
thought he turned his head slightly, stretching his
ears to what might be the last request she would
make of him.
    "My lord, I should like to spend a moment
worshipping in the Temple of Kilikarri before we
continue over the river."
    Rather than answer her directly, Gul Ragat turned
to his Captain of Foot. "Major Duko, what is the
time?"
    "It is thirteen minutes past the thirteenth hour,
Gul Ragat," said the laconic major.
    "My priestess has been with me for a long time,
Major. We shall stop and refresh ourselves for five
minutes at the Temple of Kilikarri." "As you command, sir."
    They passed the Blue Order Lodge, a square,
solid, four-storey house done all in shades of blue. It
lay open, as it always did to members of the journal-
istic order, but there was hardly anybody present at
midday, the members mostly being at work. Just
past the Lodge, Winn saw the unprepossessing
wooden temple, only one storey tall with neither
door in the doorframe norglass in the windows.
    The procession paused beside the wooden colon-
nade, Gul Ragat still not looking directly at Winn.
But the wary eyes of the sergeant and his crew
followed her intently as she stepped laboriously
down the short stairway, careful not to slip and fall,
her ample flesh working against her. Struck by an
inspiration from the Prophets, though not yet aware
of what They planned, Winn stopped at the bottom,
clutched her chest with one hand and clung for dear
life to the railing with the other. "Ohhh..." she
breathed, feeling her face go white--either a magnif-
icent acting job she didn't know was in her, or else
the hand of the divine.
    "Winn," said Ragat, shocked out of his aloofness,
"are you all right?"
    "I'll--be all right--in a--moment, my lord." She
sat on the bottom step to recover from the nonexist-
ent heart seizure. Then she stood, grim-visaged, and
marched resolutely into the temple. The Cardassian
guards followed her, not allowing Winn to vanish
from their sight for even a heartbeat. She buried her
hands in her sleeve-pockets and took hold of the
holocam, she knew not why.
    She had never been inside the Kitikarri before.
The interior of the temple was warm and soft, the
umber-stained woods polished to a sheen, the
benches unpadded but oddly comforting to the eye.
As she walked down the center aisle, she could not
help thinking, this may be the last temple I see...
this couM be the last time I bow to the Prophets...
this might be my last glimpse of the sacred texts. The
thoughts were not only unworthy of a vessel of the
Prophets, they interfered with scheming a way out.
    An old man was walking up and out as Winn
trudged down and in. He was gnarled and bent, so
that he looked at the ground as he placed his
sandaled feet carefully, lest he lose his footing. He
didn't see her and walked right into Winn's midsec-
tion.
    She could have stepped out of the way--when the
priestess wished, she could be remarkably agile, as
she had proven at the long-ago bulletin tea that
started all the nonsense. But a whisper at the back of
her mind told her to let the old man bump her.
  "Clumsy Bajoran cattle!" she snarled--in Cardas-
sian. The man smelled strongly of fish... as Kili-
karri did? she wondered.
    Even her own guards were taken aback. She heard
one of them gasp. The old man stopped cold, not
moving, waiting, with a serenity Winn could only
dream about, for whatever the Prophets had in store
for him that afternoon.
    Sister Winn savagely yanked her hands out of the
sleeves, grabbed the bent, old man's belt, and rudely
shoved him out of her way. Her fingers were never
surer. She found his coin purse, prised it open with
two digits, and dropped the holocam in it from her
palm. It could have hit the lip of the purse and
clattered onto the floor, but it slipped in noiselessly.
    The ancient could have cried out when he felt the
sudden weight, but he said nothing. The guards
might have seen... but the first one was blocked by
Winn's body, and the second was screened by the
first. She could not close the purse in the instant she
had, but no one chose to look inside. The shriveled
fisherman groveled until she was past, then he re-
sumed his ancient footsteps past the sergeant and
out. A minute after he passes, not a single soul will
remember he ever livedmexcept me.
    Winn bowed, made the opening salutations to
Those, and prayed as she never had before. She
prayed for wisdommnot her own, for she needed
only boldness, but for the ancient fisher prince, that
he might recognize what she had slipped into his
pouch and understand its import... and that he
might be old enough, yet not too old--old enough to
remember Bajor before the Occupation, but not too
old to remember how to contact the Riis cell.
    When she had said all the prayers she thought the
Prophets could stand to hear at one sitting, she rose,
exited the temple with bowed head and lethargic
step, and rejoined the parade. Gul Ragat nodded,
and they recommenced their stately, measured tread
toward the crescent-moon bridge across the Swifts
and the last, upward slope to the redstone walls of
the General Lyll Military Academy.

CHAPTER
      13

JADZlA DnX eyed the rock wall uneasily. Something
was wrong. She could feel it--somewhere. Some
slight noise, below conscious hearing? A nagging,
illogical doubt.
    The knife-pain in her lungs twinged sharply. The
pain was almost constant--the cyanogens in the air,
Dax knew--and the only reason she wouldn't cry
out was that she knew the doctor was suffering as
much and more.
    Behind her, several meters away, lay the charming
Julian Bashir. He preferred the solitude, since his
pain-killer had worn off, and he couldn't quite hide
the agony of his broken and engineer-mended fe-
mur. Dax hunched over, gripping her knees in a
desperate hug. She felt guilty beyond beliefi I was in
command--the crash wasn't my fault, but it~ my
responsibility! I did the best I couM doctoring the doc.
But my best wasn't good enough. My crewman, my
friend, is suffering, and I damn well take it hard.
    She choked down her urge to scuttle across and
hover solicitously over Bashir. But she wouldn't
allow her own insecurities to strip the man of his
dignity. As a doctor and Starfleet officer, he wouldn't
see eyeball to eyeball with Dax's stubborn interpre-
tation of command responsibility. But she had every
right to hold herself accountable, nobody was going
to take it away from her.
    Her stomach had begun to ache, and her joints,
and she felt dizzy... in fact, she was exhibiting
every symptom Bashir had told her she would feel
(and every other symptom she had imagined) as the
cyanogens slowly, inexorably destroyed her body's
cellular structure. And there would be a point of no
return, after which treatment could slow but not
stop her final death. She had no idea how close she
was to that point, if indeed she hadn't already
crossed it. But at the moment there was nothing she
could do about the situation, and she had other fish
to scale.
    Wait, this time I heard--I thought I heard.... She
closed her eyes and tilted her head, almost hearing a
faint scrape at the base of the rockpile. Dax listened
intently, crawling right up to the base of the slide
and leaning against the dark, raw split of stone
broken off by the disruptor beam. The razor-sharp
shards of crystal sliced her palm, but she didn't even
notice until her hand slipped in the leaking blood.
    Dax pressed her ear against the stone, and she
heard, sure enough, a regular grinding noise, the
sound of Worf sharpening his d'k tahg blade against
 an old-fashioned grinding wheel. Or the sound
 of ú . .
     Bashir groaned. Before she could even think, she
 whispered, "Quiet!" The grinding stopped. But it
 had been a grinding like--
     Dax leapt to her feet. "Julian, get the hell out of
 here... they just drilled a hole in the rocks and
 they're probably planting an explosive device!"
    Wincing, the doctor pulled himself to a kneeling
position, his splinted leg sticking out in front of him.
Dax crossed the distance in two long-legged strides,
grabbed Bashir under the arms, and jerked him onto
his one good foot. "Go that way--now. I've got
something to do!"
    "Jadzia," gasped Bashir, "the prisoners .... "But
she was already gone, for that had been her second
thought as well.
    The two of them had sent eleven Cardassians into
the Land of Nod. Dax pelted to the "boneyard," as
she had taken to calling the spot where they'd lain
the sleeping souls, and skipped to a halt. She was
very big for a woman, but the Drek'la troops were a
hell of a lot bigger, and they wore battle armor.
There's no way I can take more than one at a time,
she concluded, with a detached rationality that
surprised her, even after seven lifetimes. Oh well,
war is hell.
    She grabbed the nearest snoring soldier, slid him
across her shoulders in a paramedic's carry, and
tottered off after Bashir. She had not gotten more
than twenty meters when the sky fell on her, the
earth rose up to kick her in the jaw, and the
catacombs of the dead opened beneath her.
    By the time she got oriented again (ground is
down, sky is up, canyon walls are--), the ringing in
her ears had subsided enough that she could barely
hear the screams behind her. She vaguely remem-
bered toting a Cardassian somewhere for some rea-
son, but he was gone. Turning to look behind her, a
wave of dizziness knocked her to the ground again.
But she saw the most peculiar sight: the rock wall,
which she had reckoned would have blown inward
on top of Bashir and herself, was instead kicked
backward, dumping across the first few rows of
legionaires. Why? Did their sappers screw up?
    An instant later, Dax's questions were answered,
as a flaming ball arced across the sky, a miniature
sun passing from dawn to dusk in six seconds. When
it struck, long past the Drek'la soldiers, it exploded
with fury, gouging a three-meter crater in the canyon
floor and propelling dozens of Drek'la forward into
the remnants of rockfall. It also wrecked the skim-
mers--their only means of escape from the bom-
bardment. For an instant, she almost forgot the
tearing pain in her lungs, so awed was she by the
power of the ancient, primitive weapon.
    "Julian!" she shouted, "look at that!" She winced
when she realized the absurdity of her command. As
if he could hear her over the tumult--as if he'd been
looking anywhere else!
    The world turned upside down. The fireball was
followed by a dozen more, and Dax scuttled crab-
like backwards to Bashir, almost running over his
bum leg in her haste. The pair cringed back against
the rough granite wall of the defile. Dax plugged her
ears with her thumbs while desperately trying to
shield her eyes from the steady rain of dust shaken
loose above her by the concussions. The dust was
filled with sharp grains of latinurn that could easily
scratch a cornea if they got underneath an eyelid.
    The Drek'la soldiers hadn't stayed shell-shocked
for long. Their Cardassian lieutenant shouted them
into some semblance of cover beneath the landslide
that Dax and Bashir had caused so long before. And
after a few moments, whoever was lobbing balls of
fire either got tired of the game or else ran out of
ammunition.
    Heads began to peep over the edge of the cliffs
twelve meters above. Hooded faces stared down into
the canyon... and the quick-witted lieutenant bel-
lowed the order to fire. One Native dropped scream-
ing to the canyon floor, dead before striking ground.
Instinctively, Dax grabbed for her tricorder before
realizing it was gone, left behind somewhere during
the confusion of the sudden battle. Damn, have to be
sure to remember to retrieve it. Memories of Starfleet
Academy and the infamous Iotian catastrophe
washed her brain.
    She cautiously removed her thumbs from her ears,
as the explosions had stopped. But then, without
warning, the most horrific racket kicked up from the
bluffs above, loud enough that she yelped and
clapped her full palms over her ears, scrunching up
even smaller against the cliff and Bashir.
    Puffs of dirt and chips of stone flew up from the
section where the Cardassian lieutenant cowered,
too rattled even to return fire. After a moment, Dax
realized that the cacophony decomposed into chem-
ical explosions, metallic pings, and the whistle of
pellets cutting the air faster than the speed of sound.
"Firearms!" she said, howling at the top of her voice
for Bashir to hear; "they're shooting bullets at 'em!"
    What in the world had happened to her peaceful,
cow-like Natives? The answer returned in a moment,
in a single word: Sisko. "It's Benjamin! Julian, it's
Benjamin and the away team--we're saved. t"
    "If the rescue doesn't kill us!" he shouted back,
barely audible behind the gunfire.
    The battle between the activated Natives and the
increasingly demoralized Cardassians lasted for-
ever--that is, eight minutes by Dax's detached,
objective count; and the pair of commanders had a
ringside seat for the whole show. The Natives
sprayed the Cardassians with more gunfire, and at
last the soldiers shot back with disruptors... that
is, until the Natives hurled a thin, uncoiling wire
across the enemy defenders. It unrolled blackly
against the bright sky, looking almost like oil drop-
lets strung together into a lasso; but within the coil
where it fell, disruptors shorted out and melted
themselves into slag, taking a few Cardassian paws
with them.
    The Natives began to drop into the ravine, their
puffy, black clothes billowing out like mini-para-
chutes, slowing their fall just enough to enable
them to land unstunned on their feet. They quickly
organized into small, four-person Einsatzgruppen
comprising two people with unwieldy blue-black
crossbow-like weapons, one with a device that
looked like a hand-held satellite dish with a speaking
tube near his mouth, and a chap with a big flour sack
in his arms. Dax stared in open-mouthed astonish-
ment at the mopping-up procedure: the dish-
antenna man ran foward, whistling into the speaking
tube; those Cardassians in the cone of his dish
clapped hands over their ears and fell on the ground
writhing.
    Then one of the crossbowmen stepped forward
and fired from ten meters. A black glob streaked
through the air, expanding into a fisherman's gill-net
en route and falling across the soldiers, tripping
them to the ground as they tried to escape.
    Finally, the fourth man ran right up to the strug-
gling Cardassians, scooped a big handful of flour
from the sack, and flung it across them. The strug-
gles grew weaker and more lethargic, until at last the
Cardassian legionaires lay still... whether dead or
stunned, Dax couldn't tell. [ hope like hell it's the
latter, she thought, dreading the image of Natives as
bloodthirsty as Cardassians.
    In eight minutes, the battle ended. The only
Cardassian left standing was the lieutenant, who
raised his hands slowly, staring dumbly from one
hooded Native face to another. Dax could read his
bitter, astounded expression: this invader was des-
perately trying to understand how a mindless, gut-
less, decadent slave-race had leaped from helpless
pets to ingenious masters of conflict in five weeks.
    Dax smiled, shaking her head. Yeah, I'd like to
know that, too. Then her face turned hard again, as
she remembered the massacred Native villages and
the butchered old men, women, and children
 Then it was over, and the Cardassian taken into
custody. Dax struggled to her feet. The pain in her
innards, which she had entirely forgotten about in
the heat of battle, returned with a vengeance.
    She was just helping Bashir to his foot when a rope
snaked down the cliff. A familiar, stocky form ap-
peared, sliding down the rope to land directly next
to the pair. "Chief," said Dax, nodding calmly, "so
what took you so long?"

    "Quark!" bellowed Constable Odo, ferreting out
the Ferengi from where he was attempting to scoop
some latinum-sparkling reptile eggs into several
evidence bags he had borrowed without the consta-
ble's knowledge. Irked, Quark held back his re-
sponse until it became obvious that the changeling
had grown subtlely, peering down among the Na-
tives until he found his man.
  "Yes, what is is now, Odo?"
"The captain wishes to see you. Immediately."
As he pushed his way forward through the mob,
the constable spoke loudly to his back: "Oh, and I
will add a count of disturbing a planetary ecosystem
to your staggering dossier for this trip alone. Have a
nice day, Quark."
    By the time the Ferengi had reached Sisko, he had
already located, in his brain, the ambiguous and
vague Federation statutes he intended to rely upon
in his defense. "May I direct your attention to
Section 282-32 of the... I mean, may I help you,
Captain?" With an obsequious grin, Quark rubbed
away the sweat that had just formed on his lobes.
    Sisko said nothing for a moment, staring enigmat-
ically, disconcertingly. "Quark," he began at last,
"you will speak to the Cardassian prisoner about a
method they have devised for scrubbing the cyano-
gens out of our systems."
    Quark looked closely at the captain and was
shocked to realize just how terribly the minor poison
had debilitated him. My profits, Ferengi children
learn to tolerate much more active poisons than that
in small-count school! It was just one more example
of the frailty ofhu-mans... and evidently Klingons
as well, he judged from a quick glance at a sick and
coughing Commander Worf.
    "Um... why me?" Quark really had no objec-
tion; it was a pro-forma complaint.
    "Because you are the away team's ambassador-at-
large. Since the split-heads negotiation, where you
argued so strenuously for that honor."
    The Ferengi scowled. He didn't recall the thrust of
the conversation to be anything like the captain's
version... but he is the captain, and that means he
can tell Worf to pound me into the priceless soil up to
my upper lobes. "All right, I'll do it. But I don't have
to like it." The divine Ferengi right to kvetch having
being defended, Quark toddled off to find the bro-
ken, demoralized Cardassian.
    The man sat comfortlessly on the broken shard of
a boulder, leaning forward, his wedge-shaped trape-
zius muscles hanging limply from his neck. He
stared at a patch of ground that didn't look any more
interesting to Quark than all the others, subvocaliz-
ing an incessant diatribe about something. The only
phrase Quark caught was "fission artillery," which
almost sent him right back outside the mob to take
his chances with Odo.
    "My, my," said the Ferengi, "you do seem to be in
a bad position here. An unaccustomed position,
having to beg a Starfleet hu-man to be allowed to
live."
    The lieutenant jerked his head up to stare in cold
fury at Quark. "I'd sooner hang than beg anyone for
my life?
    Ignoring the response--all Quark had cared about
was that he got one, not what it consisted of--he
continued. "Still, as the Ferengi say--it might end
up a Rule of Acquisition if the FCA gets around to
debating it--it's better to live on one's feet than die
on one's knees."
    The Cardassian lowered his brows and stared, a
gorilla trying to cypher out a balance sheet. "No,
you've got it backwards. It's better to die on one's
knees--"
    "And if you're going to live on your feet, you'd
better think of something quick. Hurry! Something
you can use to bargain with the humans. Much
better to strike a deal than beg for charity."  
"I mean, to die on one's feet--"
    Quark nodded sagely, as if the Cardassian were
saying something intelligible instead of gibbering.
"Yes, yes, I understand your concern: you think,
because you were captured alive when all your
command chose instead to fight to the death, that
you have nothing left to live for and nothing left to
bargain with. None of that inconvenient honor, no
men, no latinurn." In fact, half his command was
alive, intact, and in custody, but Quark skipped
lightly over the discrepancy. "But a saying of
mine--which will surely someday join the en-
shrined Rules--says: when you have absolutely
nothing, keep it in your pocket; you get a better deal
for nothing sight-unseen."
    "I don't even know what you're talking about!"
The Cardassian leaped to his feet, fists balled, at-
tracting the attention of not a few Native soldiers in
addition to Commander Worf, recovered from his
coughing fit. Seeing how outnumbered he still was,
the captive slowly settled back to his seat, hands
raised to prove he was still unarmed.
    "But you do have something," said Quark, leaning
forward in conspiracy like a lawyer with a mobster
client. "And I happen to know the hu-mans will pay
a pretty price for it... maybe even your life. They
want to know how to synthesize that cyanogen-
blocker you told Dax about."
    The lieutenant froze in mid-rant. His eyes nar-
rowed, and he smiled cruelly. "Oh, at last I under-
stand! I finally detect the point of this pointless
discussion. Well, my squat little Ferengi friend, I
would rather die myself watching the rest of you
croak away your last hours than tell you how to save
your miserable lives."
    Well, this complicates things, thought Quark. But
what kind of a profitless Ferengi wouM I be if I let a
little setback bankrupt a deal? "I quite understand.
I've made a study of Cardassians, you know. Opera-
ting a bar on... on Terok Nor gives a man plenty of
opportunity to observe his neighbors. You're a
proud soldier, and you wish you'd been killed in
battle rather than captured by these disorderly,
ragamuffin Natives."
 The lieutenant groaned and stared at Quark's
weskit. Encouraged, the newly minted ambassador
continued. "But a deal is like a--a big sword: it cuts
in both directions. You think hu-mans don't have
secrets, things they don't want anyone to know? You
have them bent over the beetle-snuff vat... they
have to pay your price, whatever it is."
    The Cardassian prisoner looked much too old to
be a mere lieutenant as his pendant indicated. A
long-term noncorn who was kicked upstairs beyond
his ability? The man glanced up, trying to parse what
Quark had just said. "Any price?"
    "My friend, we've got them right where we want
them. You struck latinum with that brainstorm,
realizing that you could demand any price, any
secret at all, in exchange for this one!" Quark
couldn't help rubbing his hands with glee. Of course!
He should have realized straight away that Cardassi-
ans, being a naturally secretive people, are fasci-
nated, even obsessed, with otherpeople's secrets. The
poor lieutenant, a natural sergeant booted beyond
his ability, couldn't possibly resist the deal now. All
Quark had to do was close, which meant finding
some secret that the soldier desperately wanted to
know before he died.
    "So let's not skimp on the price we get for our
little secret. After all..." Quark looked back over
his shoulder, then leaned close for the lieutenant's
ears alone. "After all, our little piece of intelligence
literally means life and death to the hu-mans. Now,
if you could ask just one question, if you could
summon up area question-answering spirit thing
and ask it just one question only, one last thing you
want to know, what would it be?"

    The old lieutenant closed his eyes and sighed.
"The last thing I need to know is..." He took a
deep breath, moving his lips silently. Then he
opened his eyes to stare directly at Quark, cold as
Brunt auditing a set of books. "I want to know what
happened to Gul Ragat, the--the Gul in command
of this whole expedition. Find that out, little man,
and I will pay your price, giving you the means to
prolong your worthless lives." The Cardassian
grinned wickedly. "The technique will bring much
joy to your Federation friends, if I know anything
about them."
    "Uh..." Quark licked his lips. "I'11 be right back.
Don't go anywhere."
    Scuttling hurriedly off, the Ferengi started for
Captain Sisko, then thought better of it. Quark was
absolutely sure they had not encountered the Gul, so
the trip would be worthless. There was a slim
possibility that Dax and Bashir had information
about Gul Ragat. While he tried to find one of them
on the off-chance that he actually knew, Quark
began devising an elaborate tale of the Gul's heroic
last stand, just in case.
    Bashir was too busy to talk, trying to synthesize a
slightly more potent version of his snake-oil hypo-
spray. When Quark smelled the odor of the doctor's
open jars and dishesrathe best he could do without
a full-scale medical labsthe Ferengi's stomach did
a slow roll and he almost lost his lunch. Small loss,
he conceded; none of them had eaten anything but
Cardassian emergency rations--"dire rations," as
Quark called themmfor nine days. He backed away,
trying to reassure himself that it was just the stench
of Bashir's concoction, and not the cyanogens affect-
ing his own titanium stomach lining.
    He knew instantly where to find Dax. As usual,
she was deep in conference with the captain, Worf
standing protectively by her side.
    "--By radio waves," she was saying. "They've
replicated an antenna that can receive them, and
they're standing by for your orders."
    "Radio waves?" demanded an incredulous Cap-
tain Sisko.
    "All right, I'm sure Chief O'Brien can jerry-rig
something in a few minutes. Worf, start the ball
rolling."
    "Aye, aye, sir," said the Klingon, stalking away
with all the dignity of an operatic hero.
    Sisko finally noticed Quark's insistent hand-
waving and held up a single finger, meaning hurry
up and wait. "Jadzia," said the captain, "was it your
idea to plunge into the ocean and play dead?"
  She nodded slowly, frowning.
    "That," said Sisko, "was a plan worthy of the
Emperor Kahless himself--the real one, I mean. I'm
going to put you in for a commendation." Then he
grinned. "Commendation, hell. I'm going to put you
in for a medal!"
    Dax tried to hide her emotions, but the Ferengi
could tell she was so proud, she almost burst her top.
Too bad, thought Quark with regret.
    "Now, Quark," said Sisko, "what did you want to
tell me?"
    "Nothing. I have to ask Commander Dax some-
thing." She barely even noticed Quark, still fixated
as she was on a success that wiped out her supposed
"failure" at the beginning of the mission. Quark had
never felt quite so small and insignificant as he did
just then, but he got over it quickly and back to his
old self. "Jadzia," he said, appealing to the friend,
not the commander, "the prisoner wants to know
what happened to Gul--Gul--"  "Ragat?" she asked.
    "Yes, that's it. How did you know?" Quark
winked. "I think we can get the formula out of him
for curing this cyanogen damage. Wouldn't that be a
kick in the seat to Dr. Bashir?"
    Dax drew back a step. "He... wants to know
what happened to Gul Ragat?"
    It's always a bad sign when you ask a question and
they repeat it back to you, thought Quark nervously.
"You actually know this Gul?"
  "Well, in a manner of speaking."
  "What do you mean, in a manner of speaking?"
     "I mean Yes, I guess. I do know him, and I know
what we did--what happened to him."
  "Uh-oh. Tell me he's not dead."
  "He's not dead."
    Quark sighed. "All right, then tell me what hap-
pened to him."
    She was hiding something. Quark noted the dis-
tance she had gotten between them, the way she
rubbed her forefinger against her thumb, licked her
lips, glanced away from Quark, as if lost in thought,
but really unable to meet his gaze. "I, uh, don't think
your lieutenant is going to be dancing for joy when
you tell him what... what we did. What I did.
What Julian and I did, but it's my responsibility."
 "Well, Old Man?" demanded the captain. "Are
you going to tell us, or should we wait for the
holoplay?" He was being humorous, but Quark had
a suspicion there was also some real consternation.
  "We marooned him, Benjamin."
  "Marooned him where?"
    "In the desert. With some water and food. He can
walk his way outtif he lives."
    Quark's jaw fell open. "Mar... mar-ooned? You
left him all alone in the middle of a bunch of sand
dunes, a thousand kilometers from the nearest wa-
ter? And I'm supposed to trade this for a formula to
save your miserable hides?" Angrily, shook both fists
as her. "Commander, you just don't know how lucky
you are that I'm a Ferengi businessman, because any
other kind of ambassador would have thrown him-
self on a Native petard about now!"
    He crunched back toward the prisoner, feeling the
fortune in latinurn squish past his boots. Why can't
everyone else be as simple and easy to bribe as a
Ferengi, he thought, instead of an incomprehensible
joint account of insanity, honor, spite, and greedless-
hess?

0

CHAPTER
      14

Water was seeping up from somewhere. It conspired
to send Quark sprawling, but he kept on his feet only
by an economic miracle. It infiltrated his boots and
infested his pants legs. The perfect metaphor for the
mess he found himself mired in: persuading a sharp
Cardassian lieutenant to swap the life-giving bio-
chemical information he had for the horrible, horri-
ble story Quark possessed~
    When the Ferengi saw the prisoner, still stuck to
his rocky stump as if glued, Quark had the inspira-
tion to forget all about the marooned Gul and tell
instead his own brilliant concoction, the heroic last
stand of Gul Ragat the Bold but Very Unlucky. But
some nagging voice stopped him. Am I growing a
conscience? Profits, what a handicap for a successful
businessman! But fortune smiled, and Quark, upon
deep reflection, decided it was the voice of skepti-
cism, instead.
    What if the lieutenant, who was not exactly stu-
pid, figured out that Quark was lying? There were so
many details to get wrong, so many ways the mark--
the customer--could realize he was being lied to by
the vendor. There simply were too many uncertain-
ties in the transaction for proper product placement.
Visions of what an enraged Cardassian could do
before being brought down by phaser fire made him
swallow hard.
    Quark, feeling trapped and quite the fool, was
forced to tell the truth--because anything else, no
matter how plausible, was as likely to expose him as
cover his backside. heavy-lobed The Ferengi opened
fire on the Cardassian with all his ammunition of
argument and dickering, setting the deal in concrete
before revealing even one speck of actual informa-
tion: the lieutenant was not going to be able to slither
out of his end of the deal.
    Quark knew going in what he would gain and lose;
if humans were unpredictable, Cardassians were all
too predictable. In the end, by a tortuous path of
negotiation, bargaining chips, covert hints, and
overt threats, they ended at a straight-up swap, story
for story... exactly as Quark had expected.
    And one final indignity: "But you go first," said
the Cardassian, curling his lip and snorting like
Odo... is that where the constable got it j~orn, all
those Cardassians who raised him? "I would never
trust an honorless Ferengi to keep his side of a
bargain."
Quark sighed. He had anticipated that, too. But he
put on a show of beaten resignation.
    "Honorless! Was ever a people more put-upon
than we?" Quark shook his head at the heavens,
where the Cardassian ships had recently engaged in
some terrible battle, if Chief O'Brien were right.
"Odo, Sisko, Brunt, and now you! Does everyone in
the quadrant have to impugn my integrity? Has it
become the intragalactic sport? Fine. You may not
trust me, but I, the most trusting man in the Alpha
Quadrant, will even trust you, a Cardassian prisoner
of war." Shaking his head at the folly of the universe,
Quark told the sordid tale--the truthful one--the
sad, wretched tale of the Gul who was sent packing.
    When he had finished, he took a step back, prepar-
ing to duck, dodge, and run like hell as the lieuten-
ant digested the fate of his commander and reacted
according to his conscience. At first the prisoner
looked down at the ground. Then he caught himself
and his low-class posture and straightened up, his
expression still unreadable. But by the time he
turned to face Quark, the "neutral, haughty stare,"
as the Ferengi termed the default Cardassian face,
was beginning to crack, the bright shimmer of a faint
smile peeking through.
    Cold creeps coiled in Quark's stomach. It was
insane, but... the Cardassian lieutenant was actu-
ally grinning like a loon at the ignominious end of
his commander.
    The still-anonymous prisoner burst into loud guf-
faws. Desperately, he tried to stifle the unseemly
display, but it was out of control. Before Quark
could extract any information about the process, the
prisoner was doubled over in hysterical but muzzled
laughter. "Oh, I wish, I wish, I could have seen his
face when you marooned him by the lake!"
    Putting on his bartender's cap, Quark joined in
the joke, slapping the prisoner on the back and
laughing his altruistic head off until the man calmed
down. Then he started asking questions, sliding
them in between laughs as loud and inarticulate as
the yelps of the female split-heads when "Arrk fly."
    The Cardassian was generous, more than Quark
would have expected from that normally tight-
lipped species. In fifteen minutes, Quark extracted
the formula for protecting them, once and for all,
against the deadly atmospheric contaminants. His
only worry, as he licked sharp, pointed teeth and
rubbed his hands together, was that the technique
would so horrify Captain Sisko and the rest that they
might just possibly not be able to bring themselves
to implement it--though it made the Ferengi's
mouth water and his wallet long for Ferenginar,
visions of fresh Huyperian beetle-snuff dancing be-
tween his lobes.

    Chief O'Brien tried desperately not to think of the
dilemma that faced them. He found as many bits
and pieces of Dax's tricorder as he could--it had
been blown to bits, along with the Cardassian skim-
mers, more the pity, when she left it behind as the
Native shelling started. He helped Odo, Worf, and a
detachment of Natives bury the Cardassian bod-
ies... that, at least, O'Brien could do with a clear
conscience and a song in his heart, after the horrors
he had seen them commit: the invasion, the massa-
cres, even the murder of children hardly older than
Molly. Sure, I'll be having no nightmares tonight, he
promised grimly. The sheep had turned tables, and
nobody would weep for the wolves.
    But he had begun coughing up blood. His intes-
tines burned with terrible gas pains that brought him
to his knees twice during the burial. Even the cones
in his retinas had ceased to function, as Bashir
explained, restricting the chief's vision to an eerie
world of dim black and white. It was harder to think,
to concentrate; thoughts slithered around inside his
skull like leaves swirling in a windstorm, and he
grabbed for them with both hands: I'm dying, was
one such thought .... Another--they can save
us... but a third came--we can't take one to save
another.
    He grunted as a Native tried to push him out of
the grave he was digging in the swampy, latinum-
thick soil. A group of them had taken a few minutes
to invent a back-hoe, and they wanted him to step
aside so they could dig the holes more efficiently.
Through the midday gloom of his own eyeballs,
O'Brien saw the Natives were already rolling the
Drek'la corpses into the graves two or three at a
time, with no more ceremony than one would give a
fish buried for fertilizer. The prisoners sill alive
showed no more concern for their own dead than
did the Natives.
    He didn't object to the anonymous burials...
these butchers deserved it. But he desperately
needed the physical labor, to think through the
moral morass: Should we grind up the blessed lizards
and eat them?
    To a moral man like Miles Edward O'Brien, father
and warrior, builder and destroyer, the idea that he
could save his own life only by killing an innocent
sentient being was abhorrent. But he was a father,
and a husband, and a builder, and a warrior. People
needed him. They relied upon him. Without me, he
thought, blushing at such seeming egotism even
within his own mind, there~ a lot of folk will die in
this war that wouldn't be likely to if I'm there. His
engineer's mind compelled him to speak the truth--
even to himself.
    The news brought by the grinning Quark had
stunned the entire away team. The only way discov-
ered by the Cardassians to protect against further
deterioration of their pulmonary and nervous sys-
tems-the dying of the cones in O'Brien's eyes was
only the most "visible" sign of a deteriorating
brainmwas to grind up the Praying Lizards, as the
chief dubbed them, and extract a long-chain bio-
polymer that scrubbed the system of cyanogens, at
least in the concentrations produced by breathing.
('It won't save your life if you eat the native food,"
added the Cardassian lieutenant cheerfully.)
    The problem, of course, was that the lizards, like
every other form of semi-advanced life on Sierra-
Bravo, were sentient. According to Dax and Bashir,
who had seen information ripped from a Cardassian
tap into the planet's core computer system, intelli-
gence and consciousness had been genetically en-
gineered into the species for some horrific, Frank-
ensteinian experiment. The whole damned planet is
an experiment... another fluttering-leaf thought
that the chief managed to catch and hold long
enough to understand it.
    Actually, the biopolymer could be extracted from
any "animal" more advanced than those lizards...
but they would be even more sentient--closer to full
humanity than the Prayers. And all the less ad-
vanced creatures were just as susceptible to the
cyanogens as were humans, Cardassians, and other
invaders: they simply lived such a short time that
most died of other causes long before the contami-
nants could kill them. Nonlaboratory rats rarely
died of cancer either--because they didn't live long
enough to contract it.
    Chief O'Brien looked around and discovered Cap-
tain Sisko in conference with Dax, Ode, and Worf.
The chief blinked; he had no idea when the last two
had left their grave-digging jobs. But straining his
failing brain, he vaguely remembered the captain
asking him to join the conference some time ago...
a minute? A day? I said something about coming as
soon asmas I finished--digging something. Some-
thing? A grave, as soon as I finished digging another
Cardassian grave.
    Sighing, O'Brien stood and stretched his aching,
stooped shoulders. He laid the folding shovel next to
the hole and allowed Owena-da and the overly
muscular Rimthe-de to pluck him from the hole.
The back-hoe roared behind the chief, tearing a
scream from his throat before he remembered that
he had seen it before... just a few minutes ago, in
fact.
    Oh, God... I am in bad shape. My mind is almost
gone/Fear pricked at his spine, and made him pick
up his feet and hustle to the conference.
    Quark was missing; he was rounding up as many
Prayers as he could... in case they decided to use
the Cardassian formula. Dax and Bashir were des-
perately trying to synthesize the biopolymer, using
samples from the cackling, giggling prisoner. It was a
hopeless task without a complete ship's medical lab,
the nearest one being at the moment submerged on
the Defiant, days of travel distant even by Native
trucks. Bashir's best judgment was that they would
not survivemnot even Worf, who was finally himself
sucumbing to the cyanogen's cellular destructive-
ness. Only Quark, the prisoner, and of course Odo
(who had no biology) would likely make it back to
the ship. For some reason, the Ferengi anatomy was
much less susceptible to poison or contaminants.
Probably from thousands of years of practice, thought
O'Brien.
    Too bad about the skimmers, he thought; they
might're spared us the moral dilemma.
    When he staggered into the circle, Worf immedi-
ately grabbed him by the arm and injected him with
some hypospray. After a few moments, O'Brien's
head cleared somewhat--at the expense of his pulse
and heartbeat racing, blood pressure soaring, and
waves of anxiety and panic coursing through his
veins: Worf had shot him full of epinephrine, caus-
ing a burst of adrenaline to flood his circulatory
system.
    "People," said an equally shaky Captain Sisko,
sounding not much like his old, confident self, "we
have only a short time left to decide. Julian... Juli-
an tells me that if the brain damage is extendinga
extensive enough, it won't matter whether we get the
bio--biopolymer. We'll be diminished per-ma-nent-
ly."
    The captain closed his eyes, and a tear rolled
down his cheek. The thought that even Benjamin
Sisko was deteriorating mentally and emotionally
sent a fresh and stronger wave of terror through
Chief O'Brien. God, if he goes, we're all bloody
doomed/He knew that his own emotions were under
siege. But far from reassuring him, that only made
the panic worse. He fought it down, pushing harder
with his own will than he ever had before.
    Sisko appeared to bear down on himself, regaining
some control from his damaged neurons. "We must
decide now, men. I have Bashir's and the Old Man's
opinions, and I'm keeping them in my pocket until I
hear what the rest of you say."
    O'Brien couldn't shake the absurd image of Jadzia
Dax in one of the captain's pockets and the doctor in
the other. It distracted him... but it was better
than the artificial feeling of panic. "Sir," he said,
speaking too quickly because of the epinepherine,
"how do we know when we decide that we're not just
letting dead brains and bodies full of adrenaline
make the choice?"
    Worf snarled instead of speaking. The epinephrine
brought out violence instead of fear in the warrior.
"I will make no decision based on some chemical in
my blood!"
    "Silence, Worf," said Sisko. Even in his condition,
the command tone caught the Klingon's attention.
"The chief raises a valid concern. But the time for
guilt and worry is after we decide--not before."
    "Captain," said Constable Odo, "the first rule for
any animal species is survival."
    "But we're not animals!" said O'Brien, feeling a
surge of irrational fury at the changeling. "Or we're
beyond animals, whatever you call it. This is an
intelligent species we're talking about killing and
eating."
    "Technically," said Odo, retreating into lecture
mode, "we would not be eating the Praying Lizards.
Bashir would terminate them, pulverize their bod-
ies, and extract the biopolymer for injection via
hypospray."
    The chief wrapped his arms around a head that
suddenly burned, as if a red-hot bowl had just been
slapped over his skull. "I don't know as I can eat an
intelligent life-form to save myselfi" He realized he
was screaming, and struggled to calm down.
    "Perhaps," said Odo, oddly sympathetic, "consid-
ering the moral implications, each person should
choose for himself whether he is willing."
    "No," said Sisko, eyes closed. O'Brien held his
breath. "I will make the decision for all. It is my
responsibility."
    The captain doesn't want there to be any confusion
at the inquest--and there will be one. He's going to
take the medicine for us, every swallow.
    Dax squatted, wrapping her arms around herself.
After the chief himself, she was the most affected,
either because she had swallowed Sierra-Bravo sea-
water, or maybe because she was a female. Or maybe
Trills are just more susceptible, thought O'Brien, his
perforated mind wandering. Wonder why Ferengi are
so little affected?
    Captain Sisko took a long look around at each of
his team: Commander Worf, struggling to shrug off
the effects, ignoring the pain, but unable to stop the
shimmy in his hands, the trembling in his knees;
Commander Dax, hurting, unable to stand, equally
unable to complain or give in; "Ambassador"
Quark, doubtless glad to be a Ferengi but looking
worried, as if nervous about what bloody thoughts
the rest of the team had for him--and about wheth-
er he, too, would soon begin to suffer the physical
and mental deterioration of the cyanogens; his nem-
esis, Constable Odo, shuffling uncomfortably, surely
fretting at seeing so many friends on the point of
death or permanent brain damage, but already
thinking, O'Brien was certain, of what he would
have to do to rescue some or all of them if they
collapsed on the way back to the Defiant; poor,
apologetic Dr. Julian Bashir, the superior man ren-
dered helpless, angry, distraught by a tiny molecule
that eluded even his genetically enhanced brain, eye,
and hand.
    "And poor, sick me," added Chief Miles Edward
O'Brien, vocalizing half-aloud. The fighting man, the
warrior, the strong man who is brought lower than
any of the others, even Dax. Whatever shreds of
masculine pride the poison had left O'Brien were
blown away like pollen by his oversensitive reaction
to it.
    "Quark," said Sisko, his voice the croak of a frog,
"I've decided. We're going to--"
"Hold on, Captain." Dr. Bashir put in. He was
holding Chief O'Brien's tricorder. "I've run an anal-
ysis on the polymer that makes up the cyanogen
scrubber. The Cardassians would have had no way
of knowing this--and I'm a little surprised to find it
out myself--but it's the same polymer some of the
plants are made out of, at least in part."
    "You mean," Sisko said, "that all this time we've
had the answer and didn't know it?"
    "Yes," the Doctor said. "That's what I'm saying.
Funny how things work out sometimes, isn't it?"
    Quark said, "Just curious, but what decision had
you made? Was it us or the lizards?"
    "It must be the mental impairment," Sisko said,
smiling, "but I'm afraid I can't recall."

CHAPTER
      15

THIRTY YEARS AGO

CRESTING THE long, high, steep, slippery bridge
across the Swifts, Sister Winn paused. Grand spires
laughed in the shimmer, binding a red-peaked roof,
except where missing tiles had been replaced by gray
Cardassian preforms. Walls bulged outward, sagging
beneath the weight of four centuries, next to a lawn
half-dead but stubbornly maintained, the same los-
ing battle fought when Raid Mirana ruled the roost
as president of the General Lyll Military Academy,
before Winn's grandmother was born. The Cardassi-
ans, out of respect for a soldier, had not renamed the
school.
    The iron sky brought out the dark, precious-green
trees--blue or azure would have drowned the muted
color. How somber a tone, thought the sister, for a
step-off into the arms of the Prophets.
 "My chest," she gasped, clutching herself. The
vision of the pain was so vivid, she almost felt it.
"Let me sit, my gracious lord." Not waiting for a
response, she plumped down on the railing of the
bridge.
    Gul Ragat said nothing, but he stopped and
looked away from her. She watched him without
being observed herself. Ragat was a youngster, bare-
ly into his twenties, trying hard to be a man older
than his time. Grayness set about his skin like
powder makeup, dusting his cheeks with pallor, his
eyes with dimness, so they had no sparkle of life. He
knows, he senses that his career is at an end, she
thought--and she felt nothing, not a twinge of
conscience.
    Gul Ragat was not a man well-liked by his fellow
Cardassian generals. Migar tolerated him because
the legate had grown up with "the old Gul," Ragat's
father Ragat First. But Migar was an eggshell blown
clean of its contents. Soon he would crumble in
upon himself, and Gul Dukat, master of Terok Nor,
the station of death that had proven itself so effec-
tive in the few years it had been in orbit, would step
into Migar's place.
    Dukat despised Ragat. He despised Ragat's fam-
ily, his easy grace, his youth, his class. Everyone had
heard the rumors about Dukat and Bajoran wom-
en-even the Bajorans. There was even talk of a
child somewhere, a mix, a half-breed... but Sister
Winn found the thought so profoundly disturbing
that she refused to credit it. Powerful though Dukat
was--and he controlled the Cardassian army of
occupation the way Migar never had--he would
never be accepted in a society that accepted Ragat.
    Ragat was Old School; Dukat was the New Car-
dassian. And I have just handed Dukat my lord~
head in a golden chalice, thought the priestess with a
grim smile and not a shred of guilt. Having been
caught at the open door of the code room, Winn
would be executed--even if Dukat, by some bizarre
twist of destiny, actually believed her lie that she had
never looked inside. And as she had been Gul
Ragat's closest Bajoran servant, her blood would
leave an indelible stain on Ragat's career. Nothing
so crass as a court-martial, just the low whisper in a
stretched ear, the frown, the glance away, the too-
stiff, too-formal politeness in Ragat's presence, and
the smirk behind the back of a hand... enough so
that Ragat would be finished--and he knew it.
    He knows there~ nothing he can do about it. I
wonder how bitter he feels? Enough, she thought,
seeing the first ray of light, that he might give way to
compassion?
    She sat on the wall of the crescent, now called the
Colonel Gorak Mahak Bridge. Beneath her, the
waters of the aptly named Swifts rushed and swirled,
flying over rocks and rolling boulders by night.
Chubby priestesses were not generally known for
being excellent swimmers... but most hadn't
grown up hard against the Shakiristi River, as Sister
Winn had.
    A young Gul could be excused for making the
mistake of underestimating her. So many others
had.
    The thoughts may have come direct from the
Prophets; certainly Sister Winn would forever say
they had, assuming forever were longer than the
time it took to drown. But the guts, she knew, were
her own, a remnant from her wilder days as a child
at the convent school, when she got into so much
mischief that the Mother Superior, Sister Opaka
before she made vedek, threatened to endow a
special punishment chair in Winn's name.
    Clutching her chest and gasping in what must have
seemed like astonished agony, Winn opened her eyes
as wide as saucers and allowed her face to turn
distinctly white. Gul Ragat turned--how could he
not?mand asked, in some alarm, "Winn, Winn,
what's wrong?"
    Slowly, Winn allowed her head to fall backward.
She had never seen a person die from a heart attack,
but she had an excellent imagination. She put it to
good use.
    Before any of her guards could react, Sister Winn
toppled backwards off the Colonel Gorak Mahak
and into the Swifts. The river was cold, and for an
instant, she thought the shock really would kill her!
The rush dragged her under, catching her robes of
office with ice-hands, wrapping snow-arms around
her ample circumferance, pulling her to the bottom
of the flow with chains so cold they burned her flesh.
    She had caught a good breath, and she knew how
long she could hold it--on solid ground at room
temperature. Tumbling along the frigid bottom of
the Swifts, she lost her lungfull in moments, but she
refused to surface. Instead, damning modesty, she
slithered out of the clothing that held her fast.
    Winn forced open her eyes; the river was not so
deep that it became opaque, and she could see well
enough for a few swim-strokes in every direction,
 despite clouds of sand whipped into a froth by the
 water's churn. She knew what to look for and soon
 found it: a stand of broomsticks growing along the
 bank, marching right into the water.
    Seeing stars flashing against the blackness of her
vision, she pumped for the reeds. Drums beat and
roared in her ears--my pulse? It sounded as if it
would burst the sides of her head in a moment.
    The Swifts cooperated, throwing her into the
broomstick stand with a vicious chuckle. She
grabbed an armful, halting her tumble and nearly
wrenching her arms from their sockets.
    Winn's lungs were heaving. It took every molecule
of will not to open her mouth and suck in riverwater.
With faltering strength, she tried to snap the largest
reed off at its base.
    Forget it... don't be an ass/It ~' much too thick for
you, even for a muscular young man. Never one to
argue with reality, Winn, obedient to the voice,
chose a much thinner reed and broke that one
instead, clamping her hand quickly over the bottom
to minimize the water she would have to swallow.
    Holding onto a small clump of broomsticks with
her twined feet, she twisted face-up and wrestled the
reed into place over her mouth, jamming it past her
lips. It was a nightmare forcing herself to swallow the
water inside before taking her first breath. But she
had long experience suppressing her natural reac-
tions. She was, after all was said, a spy for the
Resistance.
    The first gasp of air tasted sweeter than cake. The
second, third, tenth calmed her nerves. By the time a
minute had elapsed, she was aware enough to won-
der whether Gul Ragat's men would swiftly pluck
her out of the flow and haul her, streaming water, to
the transporters at the Academy. It would be no
trick to find her. Even if none of the guards had a
scanner, one could run to the Academy and be back
in a few minutes.
    She waited, counting seconds as accurately as she
could, until ten minutes passed. She was so chilled
that her bones felt about to crack. Then she counted
all over again. By that time, she understood: Ragat
had let her go. He had allowed her to die in peace, in
her own time, on her own planet, not by Gul Dukat's
schedule on Terok Nor. Ragat gave her that much
respect... and had happily stolen the equivalent
satisfaction from Gul Dukat.
    It was the single courageous, decent act she had
ever seen her "master" perform... she almost re-
gretted what he would suffer in her place. Almost.
    She stayed another five minutes, just to be sure.
Then, holding her broomstick as high as she could,
Sister Winn loosed her leg-grip and let the Swifts
carry her along wherever the Prophets pleased, to
cast her ashore some way downstream. When she
beached up on a sandbar, Winn took it as a sign. She
let her air tube float away on the current and stood,
instantly regretting that she hadn't saved the reed for
a walking stick. But she hardly needed it, for she
heard Bajoran voices less than a hundred strides
from the river. She followed the curses, never before
having been so happy to hear oaths and blasphe-
mies, and discovered three mechanics trying to
repair a truck engine that had stalled.
 It took Sister Winn five weeks to hook up with the
nearest Resistance cell, which was led by a man who
called himself Jaras Shie. Five weeks of skulking
through woods dark and deep, skirting all habita-
tion, looking for the secret blazes, "random" rock-
falls, and other signs of a nearby cell. She begged
some men's clothing from the mechanics to hide her
nakedness but had to walk on bare feet the whole
time. By the time she found the spot to wait for (and
be observed by) the cell scouts, her feet were tough-
ened from rock and twig, and she had lost much of
her fleshy excess baggage.
    She was blindfolded, searched, and led a tortuous
path to the cell meeting, where she met "Jaras,"
whoever he really was. She began to tell her story--
not her perilous escape, but the important informa-
tion about the holocam and what she had seen in the
code room--when a man in the circle surrounding
her shouted as if the fire had suddenly burned his
feet. He tore off his black hood and ran up to her, an
old man who smelled of fish.
    Winn froze in amazement and beatific grace. The
fisherman was the same she had seen in the temple
in Riis, far up the road, into whose pack she had
slipped the holocam. She recovered her aplomb
quickly. "Indeed," she said, speaking very much like
her old self, "the Prophets do move in mystery and
humor."
    They threw her a feast, and she overdid and got
sick. But every moment was precious to her that
night, and for long years to come. The intelligence
was used with care, and it was half a lifetime before
it was all used up. The Cardassians never did
discover what they had lost and what Bajor had won.

    Gul Ragat was recalled to Cardassia Prime, and
Sister Winn never heard of him again. But by then,
she was a busy woman, studying for her vedek
examinations; and she wasn't really listening any-
way.

    Ops, Level One, slid into Kira's view evil-quick.
She felt like an undead Bajoran ghost popping up
out of the grave, clutching the death of Bajor in her
one good arm. She limped off the turbolift platform
carrying the portable, far-seeing anomaly, also
known as the Orb, sealed in its latching cabinet. It
felt wrong, but then everything felt wrong lately:
Kira's entire life had gone awry, beginning the
moment Captain Sisko and the Federation decided
to hand over the station for a "trial run" of indepen-
dence to a people they evidently thought of as too
childish to be trusted.
    Wasn't there a human ghost who walked "With 'er
'cad tucked underneath 'er arm'7 It sounded famil-
iar, but her mind was wandering. Squinting through
her swollen eyes, Kira mustered what dignity she
could to shuffle forward with the horrible ransom.
    Was it really worth a hundred lives? A thousand?
It was hard for the major to believe it. To Kira, the
Orbs were Bajor, and Bajor's population was num-
bered in the billions! But Kira herself had no stom-
ach for the death-decision, either. She had proven
that when she yielded to the blackmail of Jake,
Keiko, Molly, and Kirayoshi--who were mercifully
absent, having served their purpose. She was sure
they were but a few levels away, ready to be hauled
back if Kira or Winn were suddenly to grow a spine.
    "Here'sh your portable, far-sheeing...your
damned Orb." Kira stretched her arm, offering the
cabinet to the dean without even a glance at Kai
Winn. But the Kai swept her hand out in a lightning
thrust that made Kira blink. The old woman inter-
cepted the handoff, holding the box to her bosom, a
new mother nursing her child.
    "I will give it to the dean, Major," said Winn,
softly but firmly. "It is my right as Kai, not yours,
child." It was an ugly performance, and Kira felt
dirtied by the Kai's obsequious eagerness to please.
    Kira let her hands fall limp. She was close to
vomiting, but she swallowed it back down. She
couldn't afford to be distracted by anything, cer-
tainly not nausea.
    "Show me," whispered the dean. His voice was
hoarse with excitement... the first emotion Kira
could recall hearing from him during the entire
occupation. He literally trembled with anxious im-
patience, clutching greedily for the box.
    Kai Winn deftly evaded the dean's grasping
hands. "I will show it to you, my friend. But it's too
complex to go into now. Let's adjourn to my office."
Winn nodded up toward what Kira would always
think of as the captain's ready-room.
    "Let me see it now!"At the last word, the dean's
voice rose to a piercing wail, sending Kira reeling
back a step in astonishment and disgust.
    Winn sighed. "As you wish." She carefully un-
latched the doors of the box, opening them wide and
flashing the dean with the innards. Kira stared like a
starving beggar at a banquet, seeing the Orb, she
imagined for the last time.
    Once they get their claws on it, she reckoned,
they'll trade it to the Dominion for an end to their
duties as prison guards--unconvicted '>risoners"--
and that wouM give them access to the Prophets, for
whatever deadly plan they had in mind.
    "You will come with us into the office," said the
faceless dean, still admiring the Orb-box and its
contents. "You will activate the portable, far-seeing
anomaly yourself and demonstrate its use to contact
the wormhole aliens."
    "It is not difficult," said the Kai. "You merely
probe the Orb with a high-frequency burst of six
GigaHertz electromagnetic radiation."
    Radiation? Burst? Kira was confused. She had
never thought of the Orb as a microwave receiver
before. What the bloody hell is she talking about?
    And then Kai Winn closed the box, but she turned
it around to do so, giving Major Kira her first
glimpse inside. Her eyes widened, her mouth
dropped; she sucked in a sharp gasp, which she
passed off by instantly making the sign of the
Prophets on her forehead and looking down in
consternation... for the bright, shiny, silver sphere
she had seen in the box in no way resembled the real
Orb, not in the least.
 Kai Winn had slipped them a ringer.
    The shock almost sent Kira to the floor with
dizziness. Her face whitened as she desperately tried
to digest the new information: Everything I thought
was wrong.t Every damned, blessed thing... I've had
it all backwards, she's not--the Kai didn't-- But if
the cabinet didn't contain an Orb, as clearly it did
not, then what the hell was in that box?

    "You will activate the anomaly," insisted the
dean. "If you make an attempt to damage it, you will
be instantly killed. Then the second-ranking prison-
er will operate the anomaly in your place. You will
follow."
    "I will follow," agreed Winn instantly. One by
one, the Liberated climbed to the upper part of the
Ops level, heading toward the ready-room. Kai
Winn lowered her face and began to pray silently,
her lips moving as she intoned the well-known
prayer for the ending.
    Kira heard an insistent ringing in her ears: some-
thing the Kai had said about a special project,
something involving the Orb, looking for the Orb,
something. At once, the twisted, tangled pattern
sharpened into the spider-web lines of a crystal
goblet: the "special project" was not to find the
Orb... with a gasp, Kira realized that Kai Winn
had somehow managed to instruct her elite guard to
construct a counterfeit Orb.
    Kira looked up, staring at the Kai with an intensi-
ty of emotion she had never before felt toward the
woman. If the silver sphere were not an Orb, not a
real one, then it could only, Kira reasoned, be one
other thing. Anything else would be discovered
quickly, and they would be right back to the por-
ridge course of the feast of suffering of the Bajoran
and Federation inhabitants.
    The silver sphere was a bomb. And Kai Winn was
about to follow them up to the ready room and
commit suicide to drain the deception to its bitter
dregs.
 At last, Kira's mind jerked back onto the course it
should have followed from the beginning of the
occupation, and her feet finally became unstuck
from the floor. At her feet lay still the broken handle
of the ratageena mug with its jagged, sharp shard for
stabbing... stabbing not to execute, not in re-
sponse to betrayal, but to save a life, one among
many. Kira swiftly stooped, ignoring the pain and
the blurry vision, and caught the handle in her one
good hand.
    "Die, you traitor/" Kira lunged forward, again
catching by surprise the complacent aliens, who
were used to dealing with demoralized convicted
criminals who complied with their own captivity.
    The blade-like piece slid easily into the Kai's
shoulder. She yelped in surprise, and then the pain
struck, hurling her to the ground in agony. Kira felt
not the slightest taste of remorse despite a hand
coated with a thick sauce of blood. She bent low over
the Kai's ear as the guards turned with their ultra-
fast reaction time and bolted back down the ladder-
way. "Kai, Kai," she said urgently in Winn's ear,
"hang on: as a wise woman once said, what we can
tolerate, we can endure.
"Endure, my Kai. It will be over soon, I promise."
Winn looked back at Kira with an odd light of
intelligence. Then the blood-loss, the shock, and the
pain conspired to put the Kai's lights out. An instant
later, Kira was buried beneath a swarm of prison
guards. Her last thought before the event was, I
wonder whether a double-thick layer of the Liberated
will shield me pom the blast?

CHAPTER

16

Kn~ COULD S~ virtually nothing under the dogpfie.
She could barely breathe. She already had at least
one broken rib from the beating, and an agonizing
ripping feeling in her chest indicated that the broken
ends had lacerated her flesh. I wonder if they punc-
tured a lung? she thought dully, and wondered also
why she no longer seemed to care much.
    Through a gap between the legs of one of the
Liberated pried on top of her, Kira just caught a
glimpse of a guard standing over Kai Winn. They
both dematerialized--in the infirmary, please the
Prophets/
    Kira tried to resist being crushed, but she had no
strength left, she had lost it all, to depression, to
enforced servility, apathy, and now physical abuse.
Slowly, she settled~ spreading a~oss the deck, heed-
less of both the searing pain in her chest and her
inability to suck in enough air. Will Ipass out before
being blown to bits?
    She heard the clanking of boots on the Cardassian
metal ladderway, as the dean and his top lieutenants
reclimbed back to the ready-room. If he issued
orders about Kira or the Kai, he did so silently, as
was his wont, for Kira heard nothing. But the guards
piled atop her did not make a move, either to lift her
up or execute her. She could only guess what the
dean was planning... not that he would get much
of a chance to execute his plan if the Kai were as
competent at direct action as she was at political
action.
    Major Kira of the Bajoran Defense Forces and the
Federation, executive officer of Emissary's Sanctu-
ary and Deep Space Nine, resistance fighter against
Cardassian and Liberated, closed her eyes and of-
fered what she assumed was her final prayer to the
Prophets. Curiously, she felt no rush of religious
certainty or ecstasy; her prayers were as detached
and formalistic as they often were when she was
stressed, angry, or doubt-ridden. She tried to review
her life, but she couldn't think of any great accom-
plishments: all she could think was that she never
had loved a man the way she had hoped to love,
never been the hero she'd imagined in her girlhood,
never served Bajor the intense way a Bajoran so
desperately desired. If I loved at all, I loved Bajor. All
else was mere physical desire, comfort, and custom.
The thought repelled, when it should have exalted.
    She heard a muffled pop. It~ the fuse. The explo-
sion will come any instant!
What, she pondered, would she have done if she
had another few years to do it? I would have gotten
away from the damned station for a while. Mabye
toured restored Bajor, rest on my laurels a bit. Oddly,
even in this extreme circumstance, the idea was
unappealing.
    Kira caught herself making a list of all the people
she wished she could talk to before dying. A few she
wanted to say goodbye to, to one or two she wished
she could apologize. By far, the Prophets' share were
people she wanted to punch in the nose or kick in
the groin. How elevated/But, she sighed, that was the
complex bundle of neuroses that was Kira Nerys.
    In fact, the guards on her back were awfully still.
Preternaturally so. Curious, Kira shifted herself,
shifted her legs, just to see what would happen, but
nothing did; there was no response whatsoever.
    She jerked, pulling one arm free. She pushed at
one of the bodies above her, but it didn't react,
didn't respond, made no attempt to recapture her
arm. And at once, the certainty flooded Kira that
everybody was dead. She lay beneath a heaping pile
of dead bodies.
    Filled with a surge of panic and horror, Kira's
body went into a convulsion, ignoring the fire in her
chest. She screamed--twice. Long before she dug
her way out, the panic subsided, but her determina-
tion intensified. Two or three minutes passed before
she finally made free.
    She squirmed free and pulled herself erect, cling-
ing to the comm panel as to a life preserver, and
stared in stunned incomprehension at the tangle of
corpses. "What the--?" The rest of her epithet
would have turned her mother's ears bright red. Kira
stared around Ops in complete confusion. Dead
Liberated bodies lay everywhere in positions indi-
cating they had died in an instant where they stood,
collapsing to the floor in positions that indicated
broken bones and even a split skull in one case,
where the guard had fallen against the sharp, angry,
Cardassian corner of O'Brien's engineering well.
Maybe we shouM put ProtectiFoam on those edges,
she thought, not even noticing the inanity.
    "Or are you dead?" She left the security of the
communications panel and stumbled to a body that
was not part of the mob atop her. She stooped,
catching the floorplates to prevent falling as her
dizziness overwhelmed her. She examined the body
one-handedly. "Just as I thought... it's an alien.
And I have no idea how to tell whether it's alive or
dead."
    She shook off the vertigo and lethargy and moved
as quickly as she could for the ladderway. She had to
grit her teeth against the tearing in her chest, but at
least she was breathing better. Kira decided she
hadn't punctured a lung; it had just been the weight
crushing her down.
    She felt a curious reluctance to enter the ready-
room, as if she might not be worthy to enter Captain
Sisko's most personal sanctorum. "Oh, come on,
Kira, you've been in here a thousand times." But it
was the first time since the occupation, and she was
not entirely confident of her performance under that
duress. But there would be time to examine herself
and her actions... now she needed to know what
had happened. Kira opened the door to a scene out
of hell.
    No fewer than nine dead Liberated bodies sur-
rounded the center of the room. The bodies were
pushed against the wall and injured, as by a blast.
But clearly, to Kira's practiced eye, they were not
slain by the force: the damage was too light. They
were all, however, as dead as dead could be, and
their facesmthey were definitely not helmets, she
realized that at last--were gray. She touched one
face and it crumbled inward like ash.
    Then she recovered her aplomb and examined the
rest of the bodies--without touching. They all
showed evidence of some sort of burning, but a
burning without flames or scorching. Then she
looked at the "Orb" in the center, on the captain's
desk, and she understood. The "special project"
item that the Kai's team had constructed--not
found--was a bomb... but a very special kind.
Kira had studied her own military history as well as
that of Cardassia, the Federation, even the Klingon
Empire. All had at one time or another come up
with the clever idea of a bomb that killed people but
left buildings and documents intact.
    Winn had ordered the construction of a neutron
bomb with a microwave trigger. The dean had just
solved his own problem of what to do with his life,
as well as the problems of the rest of the occupied
station.
    The station! Kira spun, darted out of the ready
room, and slid down the ladderway like an ensign in
a sailing-ship holoplay, falling at the end when she
forgot and tried to grab with her left hand. But why
didn't ! die, along with everyone else? The Kai had
doubtless set the range of the neutron bomb to a
small radius, a few meters. Surely she wouldn't kill
the entire station! And that meant that the rest of the
Liberated, scattered throughout Deep Space Nine,
were still alive and armed, and probably wondering
why their communicators had suddenly grown si-
lent. Soon, after being unable to raise the dean, they
would venture up to Ops to see for themselves what
had happened. Kira had only a tiny window of
vulnerability before they recaptured Ops and re-
gained control.
    Because I was at the bottom of a pile of armored
and shielded bodies. Their radiation shielding was
insufficient, in one layer, to protect them from death.
But several layers of it, as well as layers of bodies,
were enough to protect Kira herself... though she
doubtless must have some radiation damage Bashir
or somebody would have to fix. At the moment,
however, she was alive and mobile.
    She scrambled to the Security console; within ten
seconds she had completely cut off the shields. She
could have done it in an instant if the Liberated
hadn't made their own minor improvements to the
system. But with the shields down, there was noth-
ing to stop the Harriman, nothing to stop Captain
Taggart from beaming aboard a huge strike force.
The leadedess, frightened, demoralized remnants of
the prison-guard Liberated would be no match for a
full Federation combat team.
    She pounded on the subspace communicator re-
lay. "Emissary~... I mean, Deep Space Nine to
Captain Taggart, Deep Space Nine to Captain Tag-
gart of the U.S.S. Harriman, urgent communica-
tion!"
    The reedy voice popped out of the air. "This is
Rear Admiral Taggart of the Harriman. Whom am I
addressing?"
    "This is Major Kira. Admiral, I lowered the
shields, and the dean and top officers of the alien
invaders are casualties."
    A long pause; too long. "Major Kiramif that is
your name--I have no assurances that this is not a
ruse to lure my ship within striking range and
capture some more hostages. I'm afraid I will have
to investigate the situation thoroughly before com-
mitting any more human resources to what is un-
arguably a deteriorating situation."
    At that moment the turbolift ghosted silently
downward. If her eyes hadn't been opened by then
and looking the right direction, she would have
missed its departure. Kira watched the shaft intent-
ly... who would come up?
    Far below, she heard it coming. She was so intent
on the shaft that when a meaty forefinger tapped her
on the shoulder, she nearly jumped right out of her
skin and danced around in her bones. She whirled to
face a pale human face carrying a phaser rifle and
wearing a Starfleet uniform. A voice spoke authori-
tatively behind her. "Major Kira of the Bajoran
Defense Forces?"
    She whirled back, dizzy enough to grab the com-
munications console for support. There was a triplet
of black-clad soldiers in the turbolift, holding their
rifles at port-arms. "Major Kira," she whispered,
hardly daring to breathe.
    "Commander Vincent Fie, of the Harriman. Cap-
tain's apologies, but as he said, it was necessary to
investigate further and confirm your identity. That
investigation took a bit of doing, but I hereby
confirm your identity and you'll be pleased to know
this starbase has been secured."

    Kai Winn improved dramatically in the infirma-
ry, after the Harriman sent its surgeon to seal up her
back. K_ira's blow had been more precise than she
had a right to demand, given the circumstances, and
the major vowed to light incense and offer up thirty
prayer-cycles to the Prophets in thanksgiving for
Their timely guiding of her hand. The knife cut
deeply into the Kai's shoulder, creating lots of
realistic bleeding, but it missed all the innards and
didn't even shatter the clavicle. Winn regained con-
sciousness after the operation, and within a day was
running the entire station again through the com-
link, using her loyal fighting team as hands and eyes.
    Kira waited to be summoned, either to be thanked
(if the Kai understood why Kira had stabbed her) or
informed in crystal terms that the major had made a
deadly enemy. But the call never came. Kira fretted
at the silence, but there was no one to ask about it
except Garak... and I'm not that desperate, she
vowed.
    Garak returned to his cutting and stitching, refus-
ing to take a hand in the wrenching cleanup. But the
O'Briens pitched in, and Jake too, anxious at last to
be doing something. By the time the Defiant came
strolling back, Emissary~ Sanctuary would be in fine
condition for the farewell ceremonies for Captain
(not Admiral) Benjamin Sisko and the rest of his
Starfleet crew. Emissary's Sanctuary would truly,
wholly, be Bajoran at last.
    So why don't I rejoice? Kira asked herself... but
answer came there none, not even from the voice of
the Prophets. If even They're confused, she thought
miserably, what hope do I have to make sense of these
warring feelings?
    Major Kira slowly swept up broken glass from the
Promenade floor, shunning the automated systems
that would do such menial cleaning for her. She
looked forward with alternating dread and eagerness
to that final moment when theymwhen Bajor--
would truly spin in its own orbit. Maybe that's also
what the Kai is waiting for, thought Kira, swallow-
ing a lump of anxiety. She felt like a little kid in
school who's been promised a beating by the class
sadist, watching the clock tick inexorably toward
recess, when she would be alone with him and
there'd be no teachers around to intervene.
    But there was no Defiant, and no word. Kira, and
even the Kai (or so she said through her proxies),
began to wonder and worry. And whatever had
happened to the Orb???

0

CHAPTER
      17

CmEF O'BRIEN still felt a wee tad green about the
gills, despite (or due to) having digested his fair
share of an extract of the native plant life. There was
a horrible taste he couldn't get rid of crawling up and
down his gizzard like the creatures were back to life,
skittering from stomach to throat and down again,
rattling around inside his gullet. O'Brien felt nause-
ated, but he fought the feeling: it was a far piece
from the near-death experience of the cyanogen
poisoning, though Bashir still didn't know whether
there was any permanent damage. And the lurching
of the diesel jalopy wasn't helping O'Brien's stom-
ach either.
    I got the worst of it, thought the chief. I was the
weak link. I nearly brought us down. Even Quark
fared better, though to be honest the Ferengi fared
better than anyone except Odo, who didn't count.
    "I finally figured out why you were so little af-
fected," said Odo to his nemesis, eerily echoing
O'Brien's own thoughts.
    Quark was distracted, still staring at the ground
receding behing them as if it were the Glory Road
itself... which, considering the latinum content, it
probably was to a Ferengi. Had Quark been paying
attention, he never would have walked into the goo.
"What? Why?"
    He seemed to realize he'd blundered into a verbal
trap and tried to grab the words back, but Odo was
too quick. "Because you're already so corrupt to the
core that the cyanogens had no effect. They tried and
tried, but you're so poisonous, they simply gave it
up."
    "Oh, ho ho ho!" He must be exhausted, thought
O'Brien, or he'd at least have responded.
    The lorry jerked, crashing over a fallen tree
stump, nearly flinging the chief from his perch atop
the giant gearbox. One of the wheels caught on the
stump and tore off; another wheel fell from inside
somewhere and dropped into place, picking up the
load on the other side of the tree.
    The chief stared back in amazement at the lost
wheel receding behind them, then at the new one,
complete with flexible mechanical ankle, that had
taken its place. The ignorant genius of the Natives
terrified him. They were innocent of even the sim-
plest engineering knowledge and busily reinventing
the wheel--literally--at a pace of centuries per day.
"Lord knows," muttered O'Brien, not intending to
be overheard, "where they'll be same time next
year."

    "If we even recognize them," said Captain Sisko,
staring fixedly into his box of Native toys, items of
new tech that would expand the Federation techno-
base immeasurably... if O'Brien or some Earth-
bound engineer could figure out how they worked.
    "Beg pardon, sir?" O'Brien felt his face heat up.
He really had been talking to himself.
    But Dax took up the conversational line. She sat
on the hood itself, directly atop the engine, but
didn't appear to be burning herself. "When we came
here, we were worried that our technology might
contaminate this culture, exposing them to devices
they weren't prepared to handle .... "
    The chief looked as Sisko, a question in his eyes.
"And?" Why don't the Native diesel engines get hot?
he wondered.
    "I'm wondering if we should bring this box of
gadgets home with us, or just leave them right here.
I'd hate to contaminate our culture with technology
we're not ready for."
    "Julian?" Dax asked suddenly, looking back to the
passenger compartment, "are you still with us?"
    The doctor sat apart from the others, the only one
to end up in an actual seat, next to the little girl
Tivva-ma, who drove. (Since she was approximately
the same age as Molly, O'Brien sweated rivers when-
ever he caught sight of her behind the navigation
console.)
    Bashir responded only with a grunt. He cradled
his chin on joined fists and stared at the horizon.
He's probably got the plant-throat even worse than I,
thought O'Brien. After all, the chief had merely
"eaten" plant extract, while Bashir was the one who
had actually manufactured it. He knew far better
than the chief exactly what they had eaten.
    The shaking, belching, noxious diesel truck, with
its regenerating wheels, perfect heat-exchanger, and
(seemingly) no steering wheel, remained perfectly on
course, according to Dax and her tricorder. The
captain asked something, but had to repeat himself
as Chief O'Brien was holding his throat, wondering
whether the terrible aftertaste would ever go away.
    "Chief?. Are we close enough yet to use the radio
transmitter?"
    "What? Oh, sorry, sir." They traveled through a
forest of tall bluewoods that alternately blocked the
sun and allowed it to shine full-force on the chief's
modified com-badge, which he had opened in order
to rewire the guts. He cupped his hand over it,
squinting with aging eyes at the tiny, intricate cir-
cuits. He was looking for a carrier-wave response on
the transceiver pack. It was just starting to glow
tangerine orange. "Uh, looks like it's ready, Cap-
tain."
    O'Brien carefully handed the disassembled com-
badge to Sisko. "Don't, all, let these two pieces get
more thanmthere, keep them close. Just hold the
relay shut and speak normally."
    "Sisko to Defiant," said the captain with no pre-
amble, dramatic speech, or magic gestures. He spoke
as a man who expected a response, nothing less.
    He got one. "Captain, you're alive!" shrieked the
tinny, unrealistic-sounding voice. Damn, thought
the perfectionist chief, not enough bandwidth even to
sound recognizable. It could be anybody from Ensign
Wabak to a refuse-maintenance technician, but Sis-
ko seemed satisfied.
  "Whom am I speaking to?"
    "En--Ens--Ensign Weymouth, sir," she said,
sounding shaken even over the narrow-banded radio
carrier.
    "Yes, Ensign Weymouth, we all are alive," said the
captain, "and we will be at the seashore near the ship
in... Dax?"
    The Trill choked down a Cardassian rice-ball and
spat her estimate around it. "Two days, if we don't
stop for sightseeing."
    "In two days, Ensign Weymouth." Sisko grinned.
"So slay the fatted calf. Prepare the ship for immedi-
ate launch to orbit once you've picked us up."
    The chief heard a terrible rumbling. Reacting as
an old soldier, he flattened himself on the gearbox
faceup and drew his phaser. Two large dots appeared
at five o'clock position, from behind O'Brien's left
boot, from his perspective. He watched them nerv-
ously for some time before realizing what they were.
    It was a flight of two Native airships, grinding
their way across the sky with some sort of internal-
combustion engine driving a series of screws at the
back of each airship. The screws pushed the ships
through the sky in a similar fashion to old Earth
"propellers," except with a push instead of a pull.
    "My God," shouted the chief as the airships
buzzed the lorry column, much to the delighted
whooping of the Natives. "My God, five weeks ago
they couldn't work a bloody lever and had never
heard of rope." He shook his head in two parts
disbelief, three parts terror, as the airships flashed
past and disappeared over the eleven-o'clock ho-
rizon.

    Captain Sisko held his breath as the Defiant burst
off the ground, now carrying her full crew comple-
ment, and lusted for high orbit. The back of his neck
itched, and he could almost feel the big guns of
Sierra-Bravo 112-I1 shredding his ship like a ham-
mer into a stack of potato chips.
    The blow never came. Maybe we got out before
they spotted us. Maybe the defenses recognized that
we were leaving and chose not to hinder us.
    But for whatever reason, the Defiant rose swiftly
and unhindered; ship and crew were, at long last,
heading finally, inexorably, home. Home, after a
brief stop to disgorge prisoners.
    But to what? We have no home. A wave of sadness
washed over Benjamin Sisko. Deep Space Nine,
newly renamed, by now surely spiffed up according
to Kai Winn inspection standards, would be only a
way-station for him and his team--his family of the
past four years--a transit zone to await diaspora to
their new commands. Major Kira--and presumably
Quark and Odo, who were not under Federation
discipline--would stay. Everyone else, everyone,
would leave.

The circle is split
And becomes
A succession of lazy snakes leading
Everywhere astray
Of where my heart rang slowly
Like a bell

    --An unknown Klingon, chronicling one of
the riff's of the endless Klingon saga of conquest
and exile.

What next? "Whither then, we cannot say."
    "Could you please repeat that?" asked Worf,
scowling back from the nearby weapons console.
    "No," said Captain Sisko, gently closing the sub-
ject. The gaps were calling, and he must obey.
    He leaned his head back, recalling their leave-
taking from Sierra-Bravo 112-11. It warmed the
heart considerably more than the abbreviated depar-
ture from what once had been Deep Space Nine, full
of urgencies, recriminations, second thoughts, and
the extraordinary condescension of Kai Winn, an
awe-inspiring force unto herself.
    This time, Asta-ha had struggled against crying,
while tiny Tivva-ma had clutched Odo in a death-
grip around his knees, ordering him not to depart--
and following that with a frighteningly adult list of
more than a dozen reasons, including that he was
needed to "help develop and implement my newest
judicial compact." Still, chillingly developed intelli-
gence did not make her any less a little girl, and she
offered to allow Chief O'Brien to take her invisible
friend Datha-ma back to be a playmate for "Molly-
ma." That brought the chief to.
    What would happen to them? Was Bashir right,
that a mere eleven million Natives were not viable
without their new tech? Or was Dax correct, that the
Natives--especially Colonel-Mayor Asta-ha and her
Vanimastavvi--were more than capable?

 Another dilemma: should the Federation return or
leave the Natives alone to solve their own problems?
 And what sort of homecoming shouM we expect?
 pondered the captain. The command chair, which
 should have fitted Sisko like a tight uniform, felt
 loose, broken, and creaky. "Chief O'Brien," he said,
 "I think this seat needs maintenance."
    Sisko rose, took a last, last look at the star system,
already nothing more than a faint dot, that was
Sierra-Bravo and her dark sister Stirnis. It was
receding. No, it was gone: the tiny speck of flame
was an after-image in the rear viewer or perhaps his
own retina. There would be no more Natives for
Benjamin Sisko, not again.
    "They'll probably assign us together, Old Man,"
he said, not looking at Dax.
    "Probably. We work well together, and you have
pull."

    Captain Sisko looked down at his command con-
sole, which O'Brien was already tearing apart per
instructions. When he looked up again, Dax was just
Dax, his Old Man. Nothing more. It was always the
way.
    "I suspect the Kai will be more than happy to see
us, Dax," he said.
    "So pleased," said she, "that she'll probably throw
us a farewell banquet... in the launch bay, all the
better not to delay our final departure."
    Somewhere behind Sisko, Odo gave his character-
istic snort, and Worf was characteristically silent.
Quark scurried past carrying a bucket and a mop.

After a private talk with the captain, Odo had
relented and agreed not to formally charge the
Ferengi with the dozen or so counts the constable
had accumulated in his ledger--if Quark agreed to
scrub the entire Defiant from stem to stern on the
way back. Sisko shut his ears to the dreadful oaths
and curses erupting from the Ferengi as he went
about his cheerless task: the interplay between cop
and crook was a force of nature, and Sisko made a
habit of never interfering with the weather.
    He glanced at the woman he had spoken to on the
radio, Ensign Weymouth. "Ensign, set a course
for... ah, what's it called again?"
    "The station?" she asked, sounding suddenly un-
sure herself of the new name. Or maybe she's just
afraid to show up the captain in front of the bridge
crew.
    "Yes, that thing. Emissary's Sanctuary, that's it.
Full steam ahead."

    The summons finally came, calling Major Kira
before the Kai. She had dreaded the audience, but
resented its delay. When she finally received the
order to come to Ops immediately, Kira found she
had flits in her stomach as bad as the first time she
met the new Federation commander of Deep Space
Nine, of Terok Nor. If he had been the Emissary too,
back then, she thought, I probably wouM have run
back to Bajor rather than face him/
    Swallowing, Kira left the panel of the bombard-
ment shelter dangling. There were maintenance
techs better equipped than she to repair the circuit-
ry, restoring the ability of occupants to open the
door without requiring an electronic key from the
outside. She brushed herself off, tugged her uniform
vaguely straight, rejected the momentary thought of
rushing back to her quarters to freshen up, and
headed instead directly for the nearest turbolift.
    When she rose into Ops, the Kai's "cell group"
was running the place, as usual, and Winn herself
was up in her ready-room. She sure has mastered the
art of delegating authority, thought the major un-
charitably.
    Tugging at her collar as she climbed the ladderway
and tonguing her new tooth, Kira offered a brief
prayer and apology to the Prophets for the thought.
She stepped forward to ring the twitter, but the
unlocked door opened instead, leaving Kira with
raised hand.
    "Do stop gaping, child, and sit down." Kai Winn
barely glanced up at her until she did as instructed.
Then Winn put away the report she had been
reading, carefully turned off her desk viewer, and
settled her hands together, smiling in her special
way.
    "I received subspace communications from the
Emissary. He is on his way back."
    Kira's voice caught momentarily in her throat.
Too many emotions. She took a deep breath. "Did
he find any Cardassians or Jem'Hadar?"
    "Cardassians and Drek'la, but no Dominion
forces. Not that he mentioned. It was a very terse
message, child."
 "Any casualties?"
    "None. He was quite emphatic about that, insist-
ing that I tell you personally." The Kai sounded
peeved at being ordered to do anything by anybody,
even the Emissary to the Prophets. She probably
wouldn't like the Prophets themselves manifesting
and ordering her out for tea things.
  "Yes, my Kai. Thank you. Anything else?"
  "We have retrieved the Orb safely."
    Kira hesitated. "May I be permitted to ask where
you hid it?"
    Winn smiled, always pleased to be able to demon-
strate her astuteness. "Why child, when the aliens
invaded, I simply put the Orb into the garbage shoot
and ejected it into space. I concluded the aifiessness
wouldn't hurt it, and it would be easy enough to
retrieve it when the invaders left... all of them,"
she added--signifying the recently departed Star-
fleet admiral.
    Kira was truly impressed. "I never would have
thought of that! You are rightly Kai. Um, anything
else? Involving me?"
    "Yes. Major, what is your assessment of the re-
pairs? Are they progressing rapidly enough? I'm
disturbed by how much of the station continues to
show evidence of the recent unpleasantness."
    Kira paused a long time before speaking. "Kai, we
really have to talk about it."
    "Yes, I think it's high time we talk about the
progress of repairs."
"Not that. We have to talk about what I--"
"Repairs are vital if we are to greet the Emissary
as he properly deserves, child. How about young
Jake Sisko? Is he going to be, well, presentable?"
     "Presentable?" Kira again tried to interrupt the
 runaway dreadnought of the Kai's discourse, but she
 was thwarted once more.
     "I seem to recall a recent unpleasantness with him
 and a Dabo girl. I would be mortified on behalf of all
 Bajor, if the Emissary were to return and find his
 only son and heir in the arms of a young lady of
 loose character several years his senior."
    Kira stared, frustrated and astonished. "You're
not going to talk about it. You're not going to talk
about what happened during our own little Resist-
ance, are you?"
    Winn shrugged, dismissing a trivial subject. "We
resisted, child. Now please give me a full report on
the progress of restoration."
    Kira waited a long moment, then smiled coldly
herself and gave a spontaneous but thorough analy-
sis of the state of repairs. Just as she finished, the
com-link chirped.
    "Kai," said the voice of one of her cell members,
"the Cardassian tailor wishes to see you."
    "Send him right up," said the Kai blissfully. She
leaned forward to whisper to Kira. "I truly can't
stand the plotter, but what can I do? I am governor
to all who live on this station... for however long
they continue to do so."
    The door slid open and Garak entered, looking
like the dog who swallowed the breakfast, if that is
the expression. "Good morning, ladies. I didn't
expect to find you here, Major Kira."
    Kira stiffened. She knew what he was implying by
the raised brow, the slight tilt to his head, the curled
lip. But there was nothing overtly wrong with what
he had said, so she sat quietly and made no re-
sponse. Some of the Kai ~ diplomacy must be rubbing
off on me, she thought glumly.
 "Yes, Mr. Garak, may I be of assistance?"
    "Oh no, Governor, it is I who shall be your
servant in this! I'm playing message carrier today,
bringing you information from some of my close
friends back on Bajor." Kira could not help making
a noise, but neither conversant paid her any mind.
    "A message from Bajor? Odd," said the Kai,
smiling as she had when speaking to the late dean, "I
have heard nothing."
    "Ah, then it's a good thing I have." Garak re-
started his interrupted progress to her desk and laid
a data clip in front of her. "This is an intercepted
communication between your friend and mine,
Minister Shakaar--your friend too, Major!--and
two of his erstwhile cellmates. Oh, I do beg your
pardon. Of course, I meant cell members."
    Kai Winn glanced down at the clip but made no
move to pick it up. "Was this a privileged communi-
cation? I would have thought our governmental
encryption methods were hard enough to prevent a
mere tailor from breaking them."
    "I? I am merely the passive receptacle. I haven't
even read the communication. But I'm sure it's
important."
 "Oh?" said Kira. "How would you know that?"
    "I suspect it has to do with the unannounced vote
tomorrow in the Bajoran Council."
    A bickett chirping would have echoed in the
totally silent ready room. Both Bajorans waited
expectantly.
"My word," said Garak, pretending surprise,
"you haven't even heard?"
    "I have heard about no vote in the Council
chambers tomorrow."
    The Cardassian spymaster tsk-tsked, shaking his
head. "I understand it has to do with the future of
Bajor. Specifically, who is to govern the planet
itself."
    "Why," said Winn dangerously, "we have all
agreed that the Kai--in consultation with the min-
sters, of course--should set the course for--"
    "Now that the Kai is too busy as acting governor
of Terok Nor to be bothered by the trivialities of day-
to-day governance of Bajor itself."
    Kira rose. From Kai Winn's expression, it was
evident that the meeting was over... and undoubt-
edly, that the Kai would very quickly be calling for
her belongings to be shoveled into a runabout as she
shrieked away toward the planet to rally her som-
nambulant troops and partisans, polywogs and
hangers-on, groupies and agitators to start a belated
and possibly futile campaign against the vote. "I
have finished my report, Kai Winn," said the major.
"May I leave?"
    Winn said nothing, staring at the data clip as if it
were a dead lizard on her desk. "I should be going as
well," said Garak; "I have cloth to cut, coats to sew,
and such. Good day, Governor." He bowed and
followed on Kira's heels out the door and down the
ladderway, his own boots almost kicking the major
in her forehead as they raced each other (in a
dignified way) to the turbolift.
 As they dropped, Kira turned to the Cardassian.

 "Now that's an interesting turn. You didn't like it
 much, her being here, did you?"
    Garak raised his brows yet again. "Why, Major.
Whatever are you accusing me of?. Do you think a
humble Cardassian would have the ear of certain
dissident elements on Bajor? Could a tailor move
the mighty Shakar to attempt a coup d'etat? In any
event, I suspect Kai Winn will be too busy dealing
with the political wildfires on Bajor to worry over-
much about the station reverting into Federation
hands, as many in the Federation Council have
wanted all along."
    Kira said nothing. But she smiled and didn't even
care that Garak could see her appreciation. And
why're you so happy? she accused herself. Bajor has
been humiliated. When will Bajor~ finally be Ba-
jor's?
    But she shrugged off the patriotic voice. Bajor had
enough problems being Bajor without taking on the
role of Master of Terok Nor as well, with all the
emotional and psychological baggage it brought. All
in all, she decided it was probably best that the
station remain Deep Space Nine, with Benjamin
Sisko, Emissary to the Prophets, in charge, rather
than Kai Winn.
    For now, she added. At least for now. But with the
Kai~ damned spy-eyes ripped out, she promised
herself.
    "Computer," she said abruptly, as the doors
opened on the Promenade and Garak exited. "Lo-
cate Jake Sisko."
  "Jake Sisko is in Quark's, third level."
  Kira stepped out of the turbolift, headed toward
Quark's. She figured Jake (and whoever he might be
with) would appreciate the heads-up that his old
man was on the way back.

    Three Federation years after first contact was
initiated with the natives of Sierra-Bravo 112-II
("the Natives," as the original contact team called
them), the U.S.S. Malloc dropped out of warp at the
proper coordinates. It was a small ship, fast and
lightly armed, useful for scouting, diplomatic mis-
sions, and setting up a contact readvisory team on
"contaminated" worlds.
    "Ensign," said Captain Mirok, a Vulcan admiral
in the ambassadorial corps, "please initiate a geo-
synchronous orbit outside the reported range of the
planetary defense systems. We will send down a
cloaked shuttle to contact the Natives." Mirok's
dignity was somewhat offended by the flippant
name, which had unfortunately stuck. The first
order of business would be to construct a better way
to refer to the natives.
    "Sir?" asked Ensign Weymouth, newly transferred
to his command. He already regretted her hesitation
and found her lapses of judgment troubling.
    "Put the ship into a high orbit, Ensign. Is there a
problem?"
    "There's .... "She faded out, looking blank.
"There's nothing to orbit around, sir."
"Are these the correct coordinates, Lieutenant?"
Lieutenant Pas, another Vulcan--for obvious rea-
sons, the ship had a heavy Vulcan contingentrare-
checked the navigation system. "Yes, sir. We are at
the correct coordinates, and the star on the forward
viewer is, in fact, Sierra-Bravo 112. Stirnis is in its
correct place. But the ensign is correct: there is no
second planet in the recorded orbit."
  Mirok raised an eyebrow. "Debris?"
    "None," said Pas. "Neither is there any echo of
weaponry that could have destroyed the planet."
The lieutenant rose from his science-console scope.
"The planet is missing, and there is no explanation
that I can think of. It is simply gone."
    Mirok raised the other eyebrow, then stood. "Ini-
tiate a search pattern. If we cannot find the planet or
any evidence in three days, we must return to the
Federation and make our report."
    "I suspect the diplomatic corps and the Council
will not be pleased at the report," said Pas.
    "I suspect your prediction is correct," said the
captain. "Nevertheless, there is no other logical
course of action. Proceed."
    Captain Mirok stepped around the turbolift to
return to his ready-room, already sketching in his
orderly mind the diplomatic gymnastics he would
have to perform to soothe the emotional humans
who still ran the Federation Council as if by heredi-
tary right.
    But he couldn't help wondering: what in the name
of Surak had happened to an entire planet full of
intellectually supercharged Natives? They could not
have taken their planet and simply left. Or could
they?