Tedar suddenly felt very foolish, wasting his energy on a couple of squirming brats. “What are your names?” he demanded. “I don’t mean to harm you, I just want to know where you belong.”

“We belong in Dahkur,” the girl replied, through gritted teeth. “This is our home, and you can’t tell us we can’t be here!”

He tightened his grip on the girl’s hair, twisting until he felt a good many strands breaking away from her scalp. Tears were running down her face, but he could see that she was struggling not to cry. It made him all the more angry to see her fight against her natural response, and he gave her hair another firm yank before he threw her to the ground.

“I can tell you that I think you’re a disgusting little churl whose parents are negligent to have let you in the forest by yourselves! You’re lucky I have a soft spot for children, otherwise I might have shot you straightaway!”

“We aren’t d-doing anything wrong,” the girl insisted, her sobs finally having gotten the better of her. “You l-l-let my brother go right now!”

Tedar pulled the crying boy close to him. “Perhaps he would be better looked after in an orphanage,” he suggested, “since your parents can’t be bothered to keep track of him. He’s practically a baby!”

The girl hiccuped through her sobs. “I look after him j-j-just fine!”

“Tell me your name, or I will take him to an orphanage—and you’re welcome to accompany him, if you like.”

“K-K-Kira Nerys, and R-Reon.”

“Kira?” he repeated. He considered the name, knowing he had heard it before—knowing that it was supposed to mean something to him. And in a beat, he remembered. Dukat’s Bajoran mistress—her name was Kira…something. He couldn’t remember her other name, but he was certain that her family name was Kira—and that the Kira family was to be left alone. These children could be related to her, could even be her own. He released the boy’s arm, and the child commenced to crying louder than ever, as if jostled awake from a state of shock.

“Go home,” he ordered the girl. “Go and fetch your bag where you dropped it, and go home. I don’t want to see you here again.”

“But,” the girl said, wiping the grimy tears from her face, “we were supposed to take that mobato Sorash Mabey. She’s ill, and Papa said—”

“I don’t care what your papa said,” Tedar shouted, scarcely able to believe that this stubborn child would be arguing with him after he’d just done her such a tremendous kindness. “Just get out of here. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

It wasn’t true, of course. Tedar could not have taken the risk of hurting any relation to the Kira family, but they probably didn’t know that. Tedar shook his head, thinking of Dukat and his “cultural” exchanges—disgusting, and a lot of the men on the ground felt the same, but it was not wise to speak of such things.

He holstered his disruptor and watched the two children run back to retrieve their bag of fruit, balling his fists to ward the cold away from his fingers. This loathsome tradition of allowing children to… play…Tedar would never understand it. But then, it wasn’t his job to understand things. He went where they sent him, did as he was told, and left the understanding to others.

Horrible planet. Tedar slogged on, wishing he was home.

10

Halpas was struggling with the controls on the old carrier, which had not behaved exactly the way he’d thought it would. It had been a long time since he’d flown a warp vessel, of course, and he’d never flown this particular model, but the ship was bucking and wobbling madly when it was not at warp, the inertial dampers damaged enough that they could actually feel some of it. Perhaps they’d taken it out a bit hastily, but he hadmanaged to get it to the Pullock system, and that in itself should have warranted him significant congratulations.

Tiven Cohr, standing behind him, spoke up. “Do you think it worked?”

“I don’t know,” Halpas said. “We went to warp before I could see what happened.” This was the second patrol vessel they had encountered since leaving Bajor’s atmosphere; the first they were able to evade simply by exploiting the blind spots in their security grid; Halpas had been counting on them—and he turned out to be right. But they weren’t so lucky with this ship—this spoonhead had already spotted them, and Halpas had been forced to launch a couple of their unmanned raiders in order to distract him.

“They’re bound to find us eventually,” Ornathia Taryl said.

“They might, but I’m staying in the wake of a Cardassian transport ship that passed through here. With luck, the patrol ship might actually pass by without noticing us.”

“That would take a lot of luck.”

“It took a lot of luck to get this scow spaceborne in the first place, let alone to warp.” He grinned at Ornathia, whom he’d come to like despite himself. She was certainly a know-it-all, but then, she had been a surprising boon to the planning of this operation—for a farmer. Not to mention the business with the balon. It was hard not to be impressed by that.

“What’d I miss?” Lenaris entered the bridge from the shuttlebay, where he’d been supervising the launch of the autopilot vessels. Like the rest of them, he was dressed warm. The ship ran bare minimum life support; comfort wasn’t a consideration.

“Nothing,” Halpas said. “We went to warp before I could tell if the Cardassians took the bait. Now we’ve got to worry about whether or not they’ve picked up our trail.”

Taryl was examining the sensor readouts. “I think they’ve picked us up,” she said nervously.

“Looks that way,” Halpas agreed.

Taryl looked around the room. “We’ll have to launch another raider in their direction—give them something to stop and shoot at—then they’ll have to power down their sweep cycle, just long enough for us to turn back around and sneak by them.”

Lenaris shook his head. “We only have four shuttles left.”

“I don’t see that we have much choice,” she told him.

Lenaris frowned. “If we need those ships to bail out later…”

“This isn’t the time for cautious pragmatism, Lenaris,” Halpas said. “We’ve got to do whatever works, or there might not bea later.”

Lenaris looked as though he might argue, but then he glanced at Taryl and quickly backed down. “Okay,” he said. He headed back to the shuttlebay to program another of the raiders for an autopilot launch.

Halpas was annoyed with the younger man’s persistent pessimism, but he was not a man who spent too much time thinking too far beyond the most immediate step. Truthfully, he was a little surprised that they’d made it this far, but he’d always felt that way, in every mission he’d taken part in.

There were only nine of them aboard, the bare minimum needed to pop a prisoner free from one of the camps at home—and that was assuming they had schematics, practice time, probably some small intervention bought by bribe…They had none of that, here, their offworld venture entirely carried by Ornathia Taryl’s wish to free her brother. Their plans were vague, their knowlege of the camp minimal; it would be a miracle if they managed to find Lac and get him back to Bajor.

Once the raider had been launched, Halpas watched the sensors closely, waiting to make the call. He couldn’t afford imprecision, not now. The ship might have been damaged, but it was careful piloting that would make this kind of maneuver a success or a failure. A bad pilot couldn’t save them from a Cardassian patrol even if the ship had been whole. His eyes glued to the transponder, he waited just another second, or less, and then— now!He reversed direction.

“I see their signature,” Taryl said, pointing to an icon blinking on the sensors. “That’s them. We’ve passed them.”

Tiven peered over her shoulder, turned to Halpas. “Do you think they saw us?”