“Thank you for the information, Kintaura Two. This is Ornathia Two, shutting down.”

Lenaris turned off the system and rested his face in his hands, allowing himself a moment to catch his breath. He quickly decided to tell his mother that Jau had been killed. If she learned that her son was at Gallitep—

Lenaris was not willing to be the one to deliver a piece of news like that, not to anyone’s mother, but least of all his own.

Laren had not yet caught her breath as Darrah’s ship shot away from Valo VI. She continued to gasp as she tried to answer Bram, whose questions came so quickly, she didn’t have time to answer. “Why didn’t you call for me? Laren, you compromised us! Mace and Keeve made it plain that stealth was the prime objective here. Now they’ll know an intruder has been there, and they’re going to suspect it’s the Valo II settlers!”

“What happened back there?” Darrah said.

“I’m sorry…” Laren panted. “There were more of them than you said…and I didn’t have time to think! I was just about to call Bram, or…sneak away, but one of them noticed the security loop had been disabled…. I had to make a judgment call!”

Bram continued to shake his head. “But you at least got the data,” he said.

“I…” It hit her then. She’d had to pull the datarod before the download had really gotten going. She had never failed before, not when it mattered—and this mattered.

Bram looked horrified. “You…you didn’t even get the data?”

Laren started to argue as she caught her breath, but she let it drop, tired and confused. She had expected to feel overwhelmingly triumphant after killing that man, the man who haunted her dreams. But she didn’t feel anything except exhausted. Maybe it would come later—though she was beginning to doubt it. Her father was still dead, after all.

I had to kill him, though,she thought. Even if it hadn’t been him…I had no other choice. They were about to find me, I wouldn’t have been able to get away.

Darrah’s ship set down on the old airfield that was dotted with an assemblage of disabled-looking air and ground vehicles, including the freighter, which was off near an out-cropping of rock.

Darrah addressed her before they disembarked. “So, what happened back there? You said there were more Cardassians in the place. Tell me exactly what you remember.”

“There were two soldiers who came up from someplace underground,” Laren told Mace. “They didn’t see me at first and I thought I could sneak away, but—”

“I’m sorry,” Mace said, and he looked it. “I would never have put you in that situation if we’d known there were more Cardassians in that facility.” He turned to Bram. “I’m sorry to have put her in harm’s way like that.”

Bram nodded. “It’s all right, you couldn’t have known.”

The three climbed out of Darrah’s ship. Laren didn’t bother to point out that Bram had let her go into much more dangerous situations than that one, and he’d never had any qualms about her being in “harm’s way,” but she only continued with her report as they left the ship behind and began to head back toward the center of the main town. “I had to think fast, I guess. I might have had time to call for Bram, but then I heard one of them tell the other one that the security feed had been compromised. I thought for sure they’d start looking around for me, and so I took them out.”

Bram spoke up before Darrah could. “You mean, they hadn’t seen you yet?”

“I don’t know!” she snapped. “I told you, I had to think fast.”

“It’s all right, Bram,” Darrah assured him. “She did the right thing. Look, I’ll tell you the truth—I don’t think we’ll experience much fallout from this.”

Bram shook his head. “They’re going to know it was you!” he argued. “Don’t sweeten it for the girl, Mace—she messed up, and she needs to know it!”

“No, no, she did the right thing. I’m telling you—the Cardassian military isn’t going to be bothering us over that facility. They probably don’t even know about it.”

Bram looked taken aback. “How do you mean?”

“The Cardassians at that facility, they aren’t military. We don’t really know what they do, but we think they’re an autonomous body trying to keep their heads as low as possible.”

Laren didn’t know what Mace could be talking about. Cardassians were Cardassians were Cardassians. Weren’t they? Indiscriminate killers. They were allthe military, as far as she knew…Although there had been that unusual sigil on the panel near the door…

Darrah went on, though Bram looked dubious. “Of course, it would have been better to have kept this mission a little quieter…but let’s face it: despite their loss of personnel, by now they’ll have figured out that no data was compromised. I don’t think we have to fear military repercussions.”

Laren stopped listening as they walked through the depressing outskirts of the town, where clumps of refugee camps had gone up, tents blowing in the high morning winds. She became aware of some people approaching from where the older part of the “city” was, and recognized Akhere Bis and his father.

“Mace!” Juk called. “Back in one piece?”

Laren looked at her toes as they approached; she did not want to have to be confronted by Bis when she’d just failed so miserably. Juk had questions for her, and she answered them tersely, without looking at anyone, Bram filling in the rest of the blanks where she could not provide an articulate answer.

“You…you killed one of them?” Bis asked her incredulously.

“I killed two of them,” she said, trying to sound boastful, trying to feel proud of herself at least for that aspect of the mission—she had finally killed him, the murderer who had robbed her of her father. But she felt nothing. Ashamed, that she’d failed to retrieve the data they wanted.

Bis had nothing else to say. He merely gaped at her while she continued to avoid looking at anyone. She was only half-listening when Juk told Darrah that he could safely take Bram and Laren to a rendezvous with a Kressari freighter captain he knew, who was willing and able to smuggle them back to Bajor.

Laren should have been happy to get away from this desolate rock, but she felt an almost unbearable disappointment, and she wasn’t sure where it came from. Was it the failure of the mission? Could it be because she was going to leave Bis behind? Or was it because the face of that blond Cardassian soldier, his eyes blank with confusion before she took his life, had not immediately provided the relief she craved? Again, she hoped it would sink in later, would suddenly be transformed into a euphoric sense of a mission accomplished. But she only felt a chaotic jumble of nervous emotion, none of it very pleasant at all. Keeve had joined them now, and he began asking her questions straightaway. She tried to focus on what she was being asked, but all she could think of was failure and loss, an interminable black spot of grief, as if she would never be happy again.

OCCUPATION YEAR THIRTY 2357 (Terran Calendar)

18

The loose rocks beneath her feet rocked and cracked against one another as Kira Nerys scrambled up the side of the hill. The wind was bitter up near the ridge, and she pulled her heavy woolen overjacket close around her, her pack shifting on her shoulders. It was a cold day in Dahkur. It would be winter before long, but until then, Kira had to get used to the constant soaring dips and spikes in the temperature. Throughout the fall, the days would be hot, the nights plummeting nearly to freezing after sunset. It wasn’t anything new, for Kira had lived in Dahkur her entire life. But now that she had left her father’s home, had taken to sleeping outside with the rest of the fighters in the Shakaar cell, she had to get accustomed to waking up with frost over the top of her blankets, the various members of her group huddling together to keep warm while they slept.