Laren stayed close to Bram as they followed their guide from the freighter’s resting place on an old landing field to the meager residences nearby. Mace explained that Valo II had once been a popular resort destination for many well-to-do Bajorans, but the colony quickly went into decline as more and more refugees fled here during the early years of the occupation. Now the primary continent—the only truly hospitable landmass on the planet—was dotted with slums, shantytowns, and nomadic encampments. They meandered through the outskirts of the village, strewn with a few tents and buildings constructed of transitory scrap, the dwellings becoming thicker and more numerous as they made their way into the heart of what passed for a city here. Laren was astonished; even Jo’kala proper was not so shabby as this. There were structures made of some kind of imported stone that looked to have come from Bajor, but the stone appeared too porous to bear up to the harsh winds of the current season; it was chipped and eroded on all the buildings that featured it. Most of the windows she saw were broken, with improvised covers of worn fabric or strips of old smartplastic, but some were simply left gaping open, the bits of jagged leftover glass coated with blowing dust. Everything smelled, like root broth and dirt and despair.

“My family lives here,” Mace told them, gesturing to some kind of a heap of wood in front of him. “I’d offer you accommodations, but it’s already a bit crowded. My son and his family live with us. His wife is pregnant, and her time is coming soon…” he trailed off.

“We’re accustomed to sleeping outside,” Bram told him. “You needn’t worry about where to put us. We’re a bit more concerned with getting back to Bajor, if we can.”

Mace laughed sharply. “You’re better off staying here, if you want my advice,” he told them. “Anyway, I don’t know if it can be arranged. The Cardassians mostly leave us alone here. Between trying to maintain their hold on Bajor and their ongoing border troubles with the Federation, they don’t see us as being much of a threat to them. We’re just eking out a living here; Valo II has nothing that they want.”

“But you do go into Bajoran space, from time to time,” Laren pointed out. “Like after the freighter—”

“Yes, and we still take in refugees,” Mace admitted, “but we follow a strict procedure in doing so. There might be some way to get you back, but it will most likely be a few days, at least. We’ll have to discuss it with Keeve and Akhere.”

“Are they in your cell?” Laren asked him.

“Cell?” Mace repeated. “What do you mean?”

She wrinkled her nose. “The resistance,” she said. “You are a resistance fighter, right?”

Bram held up a hand. “That’s enough, Laren, don’t interrogate the man.” He turned to Mace. “She’s just a kid,” he said dismissively. “Smart for her age, but—you know.”

“Just a kid, eh? Flying a raider, all by herself, out there in space just swarming with Cardassians…” Mace grinned at Laren, and she scowled ferociously back. She did not appreciate anyone’s attempt at being overtly friendly; she found it suspicious. Still, a long-buried part of her visited the man’s kindness with an infuriating sort of longing. She did her best to suppress it.

Mace looked up just then. “Ah,” he exclaimed. “Here’s the man I’ve been looking for.”

“Darrah,” greeted the other man, nodding at Mace. He was an older fellow, not much beyond Mace in years, but with a completely bald head and a rather ornate earring. It was one of the old D’jarraones, denoting him as Te’nari. Not everyone wore the jewelry of their caste anymore, though of course everyone still wore some kind of adornment. It would have been as absurd as going without trousers to be seen without an earring.

Following at the man’s heels was a tall boy, a teenager, with the greenest eyes Laren had ever seen. The two were clearly father and son, with a resemblance that went beyond their similar earrings: a kind of similarity about their noses and mouths, though the father’s head shone with its hairlessness, and the son had a shock of very thick brown hair that hung nearly in his eyes.

Mace clapped his hand against the other man’s forearm. “Juk,” he said, “I brought back a couple of stowaways with me.”

The bald man turned to regard Laren and Bram. “Where’d you find them?” he asked Mace, as if they could not hear him.

Bram answered. “Your friend here claimed a derelict vessel that we had our eye on.” He extended his hand, which the other man looked at for a moment before taking it. “I’m Bram Adir, and this is Ro Laren. We’re from Jo’kala.”

“Jo’kala!” he exclaimed. “You mean—Bajor?”

“That’s right,” Laren answered him, unable to take her eyes off the boy who stood mutely behind his father. He did not appear to be much older than Laren herself. She hadn’t had much interaction with people her own age since joining the resistance.

“I’m Akhere Juk,” the man finally said. “I’ve been on Valo II almost my whole life, long before the Cardassians came, though my people were originally from Mylea.”

“You’re a Te’nari,” Bram observed.

Juk shrugged. “We don’t pay much attention to those designations anymore,” he said, but Laren had a feeling that it might not be entirely true. She fingered her own earring, an old one of her father’s that her mother had allowed her to take. Sern’apa.Caste was so unimportant that she paid it almost no mind—it was little more than a word. Its only significance for her lay in the fact that it was something of her father’s.

“Neither do we,” Bram said, “other than to find things to reminisce about. My mother’s people were Te’nari,also.”

“Ah,” Juk said, and Laren detected a new light in the other man’s eyes. It had always puzzled her, the old D’jarrasystem. The very idea that the adults would still pay any sort of homage to it was laughable. Just like most of the old ways. Foolish. Bram and Juk continued to jaw about their castes, and Laren shifted her weight from foot to foot, bored and impatient for something to happen. She looked over Juk’s shoulder at his son, and their eyes met for a paralyzing moment. Laren quickly looked away, realizing that her face had been plastered with a sneer. She rearranged her features to look unreadable, benign, but still durable—a person to be reckoned with. It was the truth, after all.

The boy cleared his throat noisily. “My name’s Bis,” he said, the proclamation clearly directed at Laren. His voice was deep, but not quite like a grown man’s; there was still a ragged softness to it. He took a step toward her. He extended his hand to her, and it was then that she flinched, as though she thought he meant to strike her. Ro wasn’t much for shaking hands, and in fact, she supposed she had never really done it before that she could remember; she’d only seen adults do it from time to time. To her chagrin, Bis laughed at her. “What’s the matter?”

She put her own hand out, her cheeks burning, and shook with him, without making eye contact. “This is all very friendly and everything,” she said loudly and sharply, “but just where do you propose we sleep tonight? We haven’t brought our bedrolls or anything like that—”

“Laren, you let me worry about that,” Bram snapped, bossy as always.

“We’ve got plenty of room at my house,” Juk suggested, but Bram quickly began shaking his head.

“No, no, we wouldn’t dream of it. Just find us an empty building and we’ll curl up in a corner. Even under a grove of trees—we don’t need much.”

Laren shot him an are-you-crazylook, for though it was true that she had often been reduced to sleeping in some very unaccommodating places, she couldn’t imagine turning down an actual bed to do so.

“Let’s take them to speak to Keeve,” Mace suggested. “And then we can figure out where we’ll put them for the night.”