The ridge where Kira squatted clung to the side of the ravine five meters above its floor. Across from her and down, she could make out the shapes that marked her destination: a copse surrounding a small structure of some sort. “They hide within the canyon,” Taran’atar had told her before the simulation had begun. “And they watch for pursuers.”

Kira waited for the lightning to aid her reconnaissance. With each series of flashes, she focused on a different section of the ravine floor. Up and down the canyon, she saw nothing: no beings, no vehicles, no animals, and no visible traps. Or maybe the whole area is a trap,she thought. As inhospitable as the weather had been, the geography had proven even more difficult: the canyon walls fell steeply; the mud, as well as loose stone and shale, made footing precarious; and no obvious routes—either naturally formed or created by wear—had revealed themselves beneath Kira’s scrutiny. She considered herself fortunate to have made it this far without incident.

She flexed her fingers, washing the mud from them in the rain. Lightning once more brought the scene into stark view. The stand of trees might be concealing something or someone, Kira thought, but the structure seemed the more likely hiding place, especially given the conditions. She wished she had a tricorder or a phaser with her—either would have allowed her to gather more information, and provided her with additional options—but she had agreed to Taran’atar’s suggestion that she equip herself with only a knife.

“You are dead,” the Jem’Hadar had intoned as they had entered the holosuite, his manner even more solemn than usual. “Go into battle to reclaim your life.” It had always seemed such an alien philosophy to Kira. Even though she had often fought to save lives—her own and others’—it felt qualitatively different for her to act on the assertion that her life had already been lost. The simple shift of perspective required more of a commitment to the possibility of dying in battle than she believed healthy. For the right reasons, and there were many of them, Kira would willingly risk her life—and had done so on numerous occasions. But her instincts would always be to keep herself alive, not to recapture her existence from the clutches of death.

“Victory is life,” she said aloud now, echoing the Jem’Hadar mantra. Her breath puffed out before her, and she thought, Right now, I’d settle for “Victory is warmth.”Her joints had begun to ache, an effect of the chill and the damp.

Kira studied the structure as best she could from her present vantage. Small and constructed of stone, with a relatively flat, empty roof, the building projected an odd quality. No more than three meters tall, and just as wide and long, it featured neither doors nor windows, though a meter-square opening stood in the center of the wall facing her.

Easily defended from within,Kira thought. Anybody inside would be able to guard the entrance with a single weapon. Despite that particular advantage, such a design might still be characterized as strange. It was something else, though, that tugged at Kira’s sensibilities: the roof. If it was actually made of stone, how could a flat roof support itself? And if the structure contained materials other than stone, then all was not as it appeared, and that meant there might be subterfuge at work here.

Kira wiped the rain from her face and shielded her eyes with her hand. She needed to find a course down to the structure, one that would allow her a rapid approach. As she scanned the ravine, though, another sound gradually distinguished itself from that of the rainfall. A great rushing sound, like the rain but more intense, identified the source of the noise even before Kira located it. Crawling forward and leaning out past the edge of the ridge, she spotted an overflowing stream coursing below, between herself and the structure. The ridge must have blocked it from view during her descent.

Lying flat on the ground, Kira waited for the lightning to detail the stream for her. At its narrowest, she saw, the water looked to be only five meters across, but it flowed swiftly. Depending on its depth, she might not be able to ford the stream without being dragged from her feet, possibly even swept away. She considered traveling upstream or down in search of a narrower place to cross, but even had finding one seemed likely, she had no desire to prolong this experience. For Taran’atar’s sake, Kira did not wish to quit the simulation, but neither did she feel compelled to treat the success of this virtual mission as she would have a real one.

And even if she had wanted to invest as much effort as she could in this endeavor, she simply did not possess enough information to be able to do so. Taran’atar had presented her with a vague goal—capture a Rintannan, whoever that was—amid a few sketchy parameters: the need for stealth while descending into the canyon, his desire that she arm herself with nothing more than a knife. Kira would never have undertaken an actual mission like this without more data, including, most important, the reasonfor it. But when she had begun to ask questions, Taran’atar had either not wanted or not been able to supply her with answers. Instead, he had recommended that she treat the task as he always treated his: as duties divinely charged to him. Kira had not protested that the Prophets did not hand out assignments like military leaders, nor did she mention how unbefitting gods she found such behavior. Since she would be doing this for Taran’atar anyway, she had agreed to his conditions.

Seeing no ready path down to the ravine floor from her current viewpoint, Kira withdrew on her belly from the edge of the ridge, propelling herself backward with her forearms. Once back behind the boulder, she rose to her haunches again. She glanced down at herself and saw only a few small patches of orange where her uniform had not been covered or discolored by the dark mud of this place. Her boots were caked.

Kira waited for the lightning, then shifted her position to the other side of the boulder. Again, she peered out in search of a route from her location down to the structure. As she did so, she wondered what planet this was— Rintanna, perhaps?—and who lived here, and how and why Taran’atar knew of it. Had the Founders instructed him and his fellow soldiers to conquer this world, or had he come here as part of his own training? Was it a place in the Gamma Quadrant, or an environment entirely of Taran’atar’s own creation? No,she thought then. Not something he invented.While he had clearly demonstrated a remarkable capacity to encode holoprograms from memory—she remembered watching him battle the eight-legged monstrosity he had called the Comes-in-the-night-kills-many—Taran’atar had shown no indication at all of having an imagination.

It took another twenty minutes, but Kira finally identified a path for the final leg of her descent. The additional time actually benefited her, because the rain eased, the lightning became less frequent, and the already dark afternoon began transforming into night. With a bit of luck, she would be able to approach the structure in stages, moving in the darkness from one point of concealment to another. She waited again for the lightning, taking a last opportunity to imprint her planned route into memory.

Then she moved.

Seven strides back along the ridge, she raced with one hand out in front of herself and the other to her side, using the feel of the foliage as an additional guide to her recall. Her hand raked through small, wet leaves, sending a spray of water up along her arm, and sounding, she hoped, like wind among the plants.

With her seventh step, just where she expected, there came a break in the bushes. Kira turned abruptly and felt for the slope with her foot. Finding purchase, she followed with her other foot and stepped sideways down the incline. Twice, she had to jog around larger bushes, and her footing continually threatened to give way, but she managed to reach the ravine floor before the lightning flared again.