She had killed four Cardassians already. Four different Cardassian soldiers, on four separate occasions, with her resistance cell. She was one of the best fighters in this bunch, even though she wasn’t quite fourteen yet. Some of the others in the cell still tried to get away with treating her like a child, but she knew better. She knew that her hide was tougher than that of many of the full-grown men she had met in her short time with the rebels. And there was nobody who could pick a pocket like she could, nobody who could steal a holstered phaser right from under a Cardassian soldier’s bony nose. She had a talent for it; Bram had said so, many times.

Part of her ability came with her age, her deceptively girlish face. She knew this, and she took full advantage of it. It did the spoonheads no good to underestimate any Bajoran, but least of all Ro Laren.

It was with that thought that she spied Bram’s bedroll in the ethereal light of the approaching dawn, and she picked up a pebble to chuck at his sleeping form. It pelted the heavy fabric of his dirty blanket, and he sat up like a spring-loaded toy. Bram rubbed his forehead, wisps of dark hair plastered across it.

“What the kosst…oh, Laren, it’s you. I ought to have known. For Prophet’s sake, girl, go back to bed! B’hava’el is just waking.”

“Lazy, that’s what you are,” Laren chided him. She enjoyed pushing Bram’s buttons. He was just so delightfully easy to rile.

Bram shook his head. “I don’t know why I bother to keep carrying you along with us after all the grief you cause me, day after day…”

“Because you need me,” Laren said.

“It’s because you have nowhere else to go,” Bram said, “and I have a foolishly kind heart.” He removed himself from his improvised bed, stretching, and shook his bedroll clear of debris, much as Laren had done.

“I have plenty of places I could go,” Laren said.

“Sure, of course,” Bram said. “Go back to your uncle—”

“I’ll nevergo back there!” Laren said. She turned abruptly from Bram and ran down to the creek to wash her face in the icy water. Bram knew he could infuriate her by mentioning her “parents,” and he always had to play that card when he was annoyed with her, which was much of the time.

Laren had been on her own since she was twelve, when she ran away from her uncle’s house for the last time. After Ro Gale was murdered, Laren’s mother sank into such a state of despair that she had to be taken in by her family. She was no longer capable of looking after herself, let alone her daughter. Laren had been confused by her mother’s reaction—she missed her father terribly, of course, and she understood being sad about it—but why would her mother turn away from her daughter, as well, the only person who might have been a source of comfort? And why subject her child to the random cruelties that had gone on in that overcrowded house, full of so many cousins and foster orphans collected from neighboring villages that her uncle didn’t even know everyone’s name? Laren wouldn’t have dreamed of just…giving up, the way her mother had; a mother was supposed to protect her child. In this, both of Laren’s parents had failed miserably.

After several attempts to strike out on her own, Laren was finally emancipated at twelve, when the adults from her extended family stopped coming after her. It was not the most unusual thing, on Bajor, for a child to be on the streets by herself. Common enough, in fact, as to be unworthy of remark. She was only lucky she’d never been picked up by one of the Cardassian orphan-catchers. Lucky, or smart.

Laren learned how to dodge the spoonheads quickly enough, and how to pick their pockets even quicker. From the older children on the streets she had learned how to break and enter, and how to manipulate simple security systems, even the computers that ran some of the rationing checkpoints. It was a skill that had come in plenty handy when she finally encountered Bram Adir, the man who had taken her under his wing and been a bit like a father to her. Like a father, only bossier, and without much affection. Laren had long ago decided that she preferred it that way. Anyway, who else was going to teach her how to fly raiders? She was hungry to learn everything, but flying offworld—it was worth the price of Bram’s constant nagging and admonishments.

Laren rubbed her face with the creek water and shook the droplets from her fingertips.

Bram came up behind her just then, to fill his water-pack at the creek. “You know I was only having some fun, saying that about your uncle…” He trailed off.

“I know,” Laren said sharply. “Are we ready to go?”

“Nearly,” he answered. He capped off his pack, brimming over with cold water, and fastened the flat pouch around his back with a pair of straps. “Did you fill up your canteen? You’re not sucking off my water like you always do.”

“I only did that one time, and that was ages ago!” Bram had a long memory where Laren was concerned. She followed him as they returned to their base camp, near where the cell’s four raiders were hidden. “Aren’t we flying today, then?”

“Not today,” Bram told her. “I got a tip about something on the surface, a few kellipates outside of town. We’ll need you to override a security system—nothing fancy—just to let the rest of us in, and we’ll take care of the heavy lifting.”

She pouted. “Heavy lifting,” she sniffed. “So I don’t get to kill any spoonheads?”

“There won’t even be anyone there,” Bram told her. “We’re just pinching some supplies. When I said heavy lifting, I meant that literally.”

Laren shrugged, supposing she could live with that. She withdrew her canteen from her improvised pack and shook it—nearly empty. She considered rushing back to the creek, but decided it wasn’t worth it. Bram had plenty of water for the both of them.

Doctor Mora Pol’s hands were trembling as he poured the bluish substance from one beaker into another. He held it up to the light, and then brought it back down to his work surface, where he could measure the changes with his tricorder.

“Pol!” The familiar, clipped voice piped up so suddenly from behind him that Mora nearly dropped the beaker.

“Mirosha, you startled me!” Mora was openly irritated in his reply. Doctor Daul Mirosha was the only other Bajoran in the facility. Although it retained its pre-occupation name, the Bajoran Institute of Science, the Cardassians had taken it over long ago, expunging nearly all of the Bajoran researchers who had once worked there. It had happened gradually, the scientists leaving the institute one at a time, a few finding their way to refugee camps with the rest of the idle Bajorans. But many of them had seemed to disappear—most likely sent to work camps, or possibly even executed. No one spoke of it, not even Mora and Daul.

The two Bajoran researchers knew that someday they, too, would most likely disappear. But for now, the two worked together in tight quarters, under tremendous pressure to yield results in the most unrealistic of time frames.

“How does it look?” Daul asked him, trying to peer around his shoulder at the beaker.

“Well, I suppose I’ll tell you when I’ve run an active scan,” Mora said coolly. “If you don’t mind, that is.”

“By all means,” Daul replied, his tone equally cool. The two men did not always relish each other’s company. It should have been comforting to have another Bajoran face in the facility, but familiarity often bred contempt in these close quarters.

Mora initiated the scan. The test was chemical, a possible precursor to a treatment for Orkett’s disease. He moved a step forward, to free himself of the sour breath of his lab partner, and then frowned at the readouts.

“Let me see,” Daul insisted, reaching for the beaker, and Mora instinctively pulled it away.

“Just a minute,” he snapped. “You’re going to break it if you keep clutching and grasping like that.”