“I have accessed your comnet before—I’ve read the reports you deliver back to your homeworld. Reports of happy Bajoran subjects, much-revered Cardassian leaders, Dukat’s favorable reputation among the Bajorans. No mention of the resistance, except perhaps to report exaggerated victories against them—victories which have been few and far between, I might add.”

Natima did not have time to answer, as they had reached Veja. She knelt beside her friend, the weak light showing them her mud-streaked face, tight with pain and fear.

Natima reached for her. “It’s all right, Veja. We’re trying to find a way out. I’m so sorry to have left you alone in the dark, but we have only one light.”

Veja struggled to speak.

“Don’t waste your energy. You need to rest.” It was the Bajoran.

“Get…leave…I’m…okay. Go…”

“No, Veja. He’s right—don’t try to speak.”

Veja shook her head and gasped weakly, gesturing back down the tunnel, the way Natima and Seefa had come.

“I think she’s trying to tell us to get back to work,” the Bajoran said, and Veja nodded before closing her eyes again, the tension in her face lessening as she drifted back into unconsciousness.

Natima looked up at the Bajoran, who would not return her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I never meant for anything like this to happen.”

Natima stood up and tried to brush dirt off her dress before realizing how utterly futile it was—she was covered in grime and muck from head to toe, and she would be getting a lot dirtier before this day was done. She could not accept his apology, not with Veja so badly hurt, but she felt a need to at least acknowledge its sincerity.

“A lot of things happen that have unintended consequences,” she said stiffly, and started back to the blocked entrance. The Bajoran followed, carefully lighting their way.

Lenaris and Taryl landed their respective ships less than a kellipatefrom the prison camp. It was as close as they could get, considering the complicated web of defense arrays surrounding the camp. The atmosphere was breathable, but thin, and Lenaris’s head started to throb almost as soon as he left his raider. The air smelled strange—not bad, exactly, just a smell that Lenaris had never known. The very unfamiliarity of it made his stomach clench.

Lenaris and Delle met up with Taryl, who had ridden with Tiven, as the third raider thudded down. Sten and his cousin Crea leaped out first, followed by two brothers by the name of Legan, recent additions to the Ornathia cell. They were standing just beyond a patch of the strangest-looking vegetation Lenaris had ever seen—low trees with rounded leaves that appeared almost black in color, likely to compensate for the excessive distance of their sun. They provided good cover. If Pullock V had been a desert world, the operation would already be over.

“I read life signs,” Taryl whispered, looking at her handheld scanner. “But I can’t tell if they’re Bajoran. It’s the shield—blocks out most of the signal.”

Lenaris nodded. “Can you tell how many people are here?”

Taryl shook her head.

“Well, let’s do it,” Tiven said, and unslung his phaser rifle. Lenaris nodded, unslinging his own. The Legans both carried handheld phasers, while Taryl and her cousins were carrying pouches full of improvised explosive devices: slap packs and shrapnel grenades—unsophisticated, but they did the job.

Lenaris could see that the others were nervous, never having faced Cardassians in combat before. But he was too anxious and excited for his own sake to worry much about his companions’ lack of experience. He felt that he was better at ground combat than just about anything else; he’d had a lot of practice when he had been in the Halpas cell with Darin. The two of them were so confident, they could have taken out an entire outfit of Cardassian soldiers from the ground. Once, they’d destroyed a massive bunker—just the two of them—and had done such a thorough job, the spoonheads hadn’t even bothered to rebuild it. It was memories like this that Lenaris drew upon, scaffolding his courage, as the eight of them crept to the place where they expected the camp to be. They were always undermanned and outgunned—it was a fact of the occupation—but it was still possible to prevail.

As they edged closer to the Cardassian facility, a large, modern-looking operation surrounded by a low wall, they could see no guards, and they could hear no sounds of movement. It appeared completely deserted. Lenaris’s tension went up a few notches.

“Are those life signs any clearer?” Tiven asked.

Taryl shook her head. “No,” she said slowly. “There’s no way to know what kind of opposition we’re facing.”

“Does it matter?” Sten asked.

Taryl shook her head. “No,” she whispered. She edged a little closer, hesitant, looking at her scanner again.

“Maybe—” Tiven didn’t have time to finish his thought, for a tight line of gray-armored soldiers had abruptly sprung up behind the wall, less than thirty paces from where they now stood, and each soldier carried a massive rifle. The volley of simultaneous fire erupted in a single, terrible, impenetrable barrier.

Lenaris’s rifle was in his hands and he was spraying fire before he even had time to register what had just happened. His ears roared with his own heartbeat. He was only partially aware of the shots that originated somewhere at his side; presumably Tiven, but Lenaris only saw the ugly, reptilian faces in front of him, watched as they staggered and fell, one by one. He fired, fired again, and retreated, crouching back into the alien bushes.

The soldiers who had not fallen returned fire, though they did not advance beyond the low walls of the facility, only continuing to shoot like a single unwavering, mechanical entity, the same formation that Lenaris recalled they had often taken when on Bajor; if they were not advancing, it meant there were probably more of them, to replace those who fell. The shrieks from their phasers tore up the ground in blasts of cloudy, choking black dust, the blasts of fire erupting in perfectly timed staccato. It did not take long to confirm to Lenaris that there were indeed more soldiers coming; he heard their phasers before he saw them, marching forward from somewhere beyond the gates of the facility to fill in for their fallen comrades.

Lenaris took the briefest second to survey their own casualties. Delle was nowhere in sight. Sten’s foot was visible a short distance away, poking out from beneath the brush ahead of him, but Lenaris could not gauge if he was alive or dead. Crea was dead, crumpled in the dirt. The Legan brothers were firing wildly in tandem. Tiven also continued to fire, and Taryl, ducking behind insufficient cover, clutched her bag anxiously, her expression wide-eyed with the fear of first combat.

“Go, do it!” Lenaris shouted to her, and she quickly snapped into action. She chucked the palm-sized slap packs with all her might, one after another as he continued to fire, covering her. More soldiers fell, but it was not enough.

“Tiven!” he shouted, risking a look in the old engineer’s direction—and he saw that Tiven was on the ground, the upper part of his body a blackened mass, still smoking from the impact of Cardassian disruptor fire. Lenaris changed his position, continuing to fire. He still could not see Delle, and Sten appeared to be frozen behind the patch of bushes where he hid. One of the Legans had used up his power cell and was retreating, his brother continuing to fire methodically.

Lenaris made his way to Sten. “Go go go!” he screamed, firing over the other man’s shoulder, and Sten jerked into action, dashing forward just far enough to pluck the phaser rifle from Tiven’s corpse. With a cry, Sten discharged Tiven’s phaser at the line of spoonheads, until there were no more standing. At least, none that they could see.