She aimed her palmlight at a computer terminal she saw in one of the open rooms, and wondered if she might be able to hack into such an alien system. The challenge interested her, and she entered the room.

“What the kosst?” said a man’s voice from somewhere back the way she had come. Laren stopped, confused. The accent, the timbre of the voice—it did not belong to Bram. Someone else was here. Someone Bajoran, apparently, for the curse was not one that a Cardassian would ever use. Laren considered her options. Should she go back to the bay and investigate? Did this person mean to harm her? She drew her phaser, more excited than afraid.

“Who are you?” she shouted.

“Who am I?” the voice answered. “Who are you? This heap is mine—we claimed it over a week ago.”

A man emerged in the corridor then, a gray-haired Bajoran that Laren didn’t recognize.

She lifted her phaser. “Don’t make me ask again,” she said coolly.

He slitted his eyes at her, his heavily lined face crinkling with the expression. He looked worried for an instant, but then smiled. “My name is Darrah Mace,” he told her. “I’ve come here from Valo II. Now, how about you tell me who you are?”

“Valo II?” Laren repeated, shaking her head. “My cell found this ship two days ago,” she told him, her phaser still trained on the stranger. “I was here first.”

The man laughed. “Just how old are you? Twelve? You still haven’t told me your name, by the way.”

There was a low vibration beneath their feet, the sort Laren might expect from the closing of the cargo doors. Bram must have docked.

“I’m Ro,” she said firmly. “And that will be Bram, the leader of my cell. It’s two against one now, so you’d better shove off. This ship is ours.” Laren stood her ground, her phaser still pointed directly at Mace’s head.

“And just what do you propose to do with that?” The man smirked, folding his arms in a self-satisfied expression that infuriated her.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said shove off.” She indicated her phaser. “This thing’s stun setting is broken, but the rest of it works just fine.” Laren could hear Bram coming through the airlock. “Bram!” she shouted. “Draw your weapon! We’ve got company in here, and he’s trying to steal our ship!”

Bram appeared behind Darrah Mace, hand phaser raised. The stranger turned a little, and finally seemed to accept the seriousness of the situation; he raised his hands above his shoulders.

Twelve!She’d been fourteen for better than two months.

“Who are you?” Bram demanded.

“Call me Mace,” he said, his tone a bit more hesitant. “This ship is mine, and I’m going to take it. I’ve already been here three times, set up a signal scrambler so the Cardassians wouldn’t find her. Why do you think the patrol ships haven’t hauled her in yet?”

“Because the spoonheads don’t do salvage,” Bram said, but he sounded doubtful.

The other man scowled, though whether it was because of Bram’s use of the racial slur or his defiance, Laren wasn’t sure. “Look, you two. I’m taking this ship back to Valo II. I’ve already done some repairs on her—she’s got air and AG, doesn’t she? You think that’s just luck? I’m willing to guess that neither one of you has ever set foot on a vessel like this before, let alone flown one.”

Bram watched the man, his gaze scrutinizing. “We’ll see about that,” he muttered, and gestured Mace toward the bridge. Laren led the way with her palm beacon, looking back to Bram for an indication that she was going the right way. He nodded once, and made a point of loudly telling her that the “rest” of the cell members were standing by for his signal, still on their raiders outside. Laren nodded, pleased that Bram hadn’t given their numbers away.

They came upon the cramped bridge. Whoever designed this ship could not have been much taller than Laren, for both Bram and Mace had to duck through the doorways, which were thankfully jammed open. Ro managed to squeeze to the front, interested in spite of herself.

“Let’s see you get her online,” Bram said gruffly.

Mace emitted a short sigh, clearly exasperated, and gestured for Laren to highlight a particular panel with her palm beacon. The wide circle of light fell on his hands, and he threw back a couple of switches, dancing his fingers over the keypad. There was a flicker of light, and then a ragged thrumming noise. The ship’s power was back online, or at least, partially so—the lights behind Laren continued to flicker hypnotically, and the sound of the power core seemed an uneven chugging, like the throttle noise of a raider that was pushed into too low a gear for its speed.

“You can’t possibly get this thing going…can you?” Bram seemed a bit awestruck.

“Of course I can,” Mace said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. If you’d like to come along to Valo II, you can stay aboard, but otherwise, you might want to get into your raiders and get off my ship, because we’re going to have to go to warp.”

Bram kept the phaser pointed at Mace, apparently trying to decide what to do. Laren knew that Bram was not about to kill another Bajoran, and neither was she. There were collaborators, of course, but this man clearly did not fall into that category. Still, Bram and Laren had an advantage with the phasers, and they weren’t quite sure what to do with it. Order him to take it back to Bajor? Where would they dock such a thing, how would it behave in Bajor’s atmosphere? She had no idea, and she knew Bram didn’t, either. But warp ships were in notoriously short supply, and too badly needed to walk away from one—even a derelict.

“Oh, for fire’s sake,” Mace swore. “I knew this would happen.”

“What?” Laren asked fearfully, for Mace seemed genuinely afraid.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing to the alien ship’s sensor screen. “That’s a Cardassian patrol. The scrambler can’t mask the energy emissions of an active warp reactor. It’s time to go, now.”

“Wait,” Bram said, but then shook his head. “All right,” he agreed. He finally lowered his phaser, probably realizing how ridiculous it was to be squabbling with another Bajoran when the real enemy loomed within striking distance. He put a call in to Sadakita, ordering the pilot to return to Bajor.

Mace didn’t waste any time. He entered commands into the ship’s internal computer system with startling efficiency, and the ship was trembling from its warp engines in almost no time at all. Laren expected to feel a discernible whoosh,something to indicate that she was traveling at warp, but there was nothing except the vibrations in the soles of her feet.

“Will they catch us?” Laren wanted to know. She was not often afraid, not since she was a child, but the thought of being captured alive was something that particularly frightened her. She was not usually concerned about it, so long as she was driving her own ship, for she had the utmost confidence in her abilities to dodge even the fastest Cardassian vessels at sublight. But this Mace fellow—well, she hoped that if the Cardassians came after them, they would just blow them up. Being taken prisoner was a possibility she could not even bring herself to consider.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Mace assured her. “It’s possible they haven’t even spotted us yet. If they have, they won’t necessarily take an interest if we’re headed out of the system. It’s no crime for a Ferengi vessel to be in Cardassian-controlled space, if they have legitimate business. If worse comes to worst, we talk to them—pretend to be a damaged Ferengi ship on our way home.”

Laren nodded, but her throat still felt tight.

Mace smiled at her. “Cheer up,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to us.”

Laren nodded again, thinking that maybe Mace wasn’t such a bad person after all.

“You know, Ro,” he added, “I think you’re going to like Valo II.”