The man’s eyes were held open very wide as he spoke, conveying a sense of extraordinary eagerness. Varc found his expression disquieting, particularly the slight curl at the corners of his mouth that did not straighten when he spoke. “They appear to wither so easily, but in truth, I have found them to be very skilled at lying. Surprisingly so, really. They will often allow themselves to die before the truth is ever revealed. Torturing them is useless, and in the end, I’m actually left feeling a bit sad about the whole business.”

Varc was dismayed at this admission, for it seemed to be an acknowledgment of weakness, but Prang’s reaction was dispassionate.

“Now, a Cardassian interrogation—” the man went on, “there’s a challenge I can appreciate.”

It was Varc’s turn to dispute. “I find the interrogation and torture of my own countrymen to be far more distasteful than that of aliens who conspire to destroy the Union.”

The stranger continued to half smile. “Indeed. Except that if a Cardassian is a dissident—a traitor—then I can hardly regard him as a countryman. He is far worse, in my eyes, than any hostile alien, who likely retains loyalty to his own society’s values.”

Varc considered his reply, but to his great relief, Prang finally spoke up. “That’s quite enough, Mr. Regnar. We can finish this report without you.”

The slight smile still on his face, the man left the room as silently as he had been standing in it. Prang turned to Varc, clearly amused.

“I apologize for Agent Regnar’s presence here. We were just finishing up his debriefing when you entered, you see. You began speaking before I could properly introduce the two of you.”

“Did you hear the way he talked to me?” Varc said, outraged.

“I would advise you to avoid tangling with that one,” Prang said. “They are already calling him one of the Sons of Tain.”

Varc was more irritated than ever at this news, but knew he would do best to follow the old man’s advice. Those agents who had fallen under the direct tutelage of Enabran Tain, the head of the Obsidian Order, were often referred to as his “sons.” If this agent was indeed one of them, then it wouldn’t matter what Varc, or any other agent, thought of him. It only mattered what Tain thought.

OCCUPATION YEAR TWENTY-ONE 2348 (Terran Calendar)

5

Lenaris was never so happy as he was when he was piloting a craft, whether it was within the atmosphere or out in open space. But right now, surrounded as he was by the seemingly endless vacuum of darkness, Bajor’s night-side a vast black well beneath him, he felt his exhilaration heightened to almost dizzying effect. He felt…free. All the months of careful planning and preparation had been more than worth it.

A bubble of static surrounded an incoming transmission, and he remembered himself. He was not free. It was imperative that he stick to the boundaries of the flight plan until the crucial moment when Lac would take the plunge into Derna’s atmosphere.

Lac’s voice sounded light-years away, even though Lenaris actually had a visual on the fuel burn from his friend’s tiny craft. “I’m not detecting any interference in our communication channel,”he said.

“Good,” Lenaris said, at a loss for words. His exhilaration turned sharp, excitement changing to unease as the looming, skeletal figure of Terok Nor drifted closer into range. He’d had no idea what the station would look like, but of course this was it. The menacing curvature of the arms, arching possessively over the top of the structure like the bleached-out rib cage of a corpse—it could only be Cardassian in design. Lenaris suppressed a shudder, and continued carefully on his course.

It was a simple enough exercise to fly their small ships around within the atmosphere—the Cardassians didn’t seem to pay much attention to Bajoran comings and goings, and when they did, it had been established that their overpowered ships lacked the agility to chase a sub-impulse raider in atmosphere. But the raiders’ capabilities in space were far less certain. The cell had only made a very few offworld excursions, and it had not yet been determined exactly how safe it was to be flying around in these tiny, vulnerable craft—they could withstand space travel, but they hadn’t been built for prolonged voyages. The danger was made even greater by the fact that, without more sophisticated scanners than they currently possessed, the raiders had no means to detect each other except by comm.

And of course, there were the Cardassian patrols… Mustn’t forget those.

“Target is in sight,”Lac reported.

Moments later, they began to approach Derna, an unassuming gray satellite partially bathed in glowing reflection from faraway B’hava’el.

“I detect no patrols in the immediate vicinity,” Lenaris informed his friend.

“I’m not finding any either,”Lac relayed back. “I’m taking the dive in ten…nine…”

Lenaris, in closer formation now, watched as Lac’s shuttle suddenly broke away from the safety of the flight path. If there were any patrol vessels that they had missed…if Terok Nor just happened to be doing a sensor sweep at the wrong moment…But there was no evidence of Cardassian presence, no nearby warp signatures, no Cardassian transmissions coming through on the comm, adjusted for enemy frequencies. Lenaris drew in a breath and followed Lac into Derna’s atmosphere.

He broke through without issue, weathering the resultant turbulence, holding to the flight yoke as he experienced the temporary sensation of freefall. The raider caught itself, and there was Derna stretched out in front of him, a dreamscape, mostly barren but for a thin, dry algae that covered the plains of endless rock. He concentrated on setting down, trying not to think about patrols, about Terok Nor.

Lac had set his raider down a few linnipates from Lenaris, nearer to the wreckage of the Cardassians’ ruined base, abandoned more than a decade earlier. He got out of his raider and began to unload the transmission equipment, while Lac assembled the components of a scrambler that would allow the high-bandwidth transmissions to escape the Cardassians’ notice.

The two worked silently, leaving behind their equipment and a narrow-band homing signal so that others could find it, should it ever need repair. Then, with a breath of poorly masked excitement, Lac brought the transmitter online.

Finished with their work, they stood for a moment, both searching the cold sky, Lac scanning for Cardassian signals with an old tricorder. Satisfied that they were still alone, Lac gave Lenaris a definitive nod.

“Ready when you are,” he said, and Lenaris walked back to his raider without another word.

He gave the engine a burst of fuel and prepared to lift off. He felt a vast relief—the hard part was over. Of course, breaking through Derna’s atmosphere still posed some risk, but if they stuck to the same flight pattern they’d followed when they came through, the Cardassians would never know they’d taken to the skies.

Lenaris was the first to exit the atmosphere, and he wasted no time retracing their path back to Bajor. His ship safely back on course, he was practically home free. His confidence mounted as Terok Nor’s imposing figure fell behind him, but then he realized that Lac had not reported back to him after breaking free from Derna’s atmosphere. He put in a call—and simultaneously saw an unfamiliar power reading on his instrument panel. A patrol from Terok Nor? His mouth went dry.

“ Lupus 2,do you read me? This is Lupus7. Lupus 2—please respond.”

Nothing but dead air.

Holem cranked his transmitter through seven different channels, repeating his request, until his panic finally convinced him to try an unsecure channel—one that the Cardassians could easily pick up. He was desperate. “ Lupus 2,please respond.” Bajor was coming closer, but he didn’t dare try to turn back, or even slow down.