Ro waited for what seemed like a very long time before she saw another vessel coming, starting out as a dot in the sky, gradually but quickly expanding into a light-capacity ship that she knew was the same one Darrah Mace had used for the rendezvous with the Kressari, three years ago. The ship cracked through the atmosphere of Jeraddo, singing in a telltale high-pitched greeting that took Ro’s breath away. He was here.

When he finally arrived, she somehow forgot to be nervous. Here approached a tall man, handsome as he had promised to be as a teenager, his eyes piercing and his smile apparently genuine—he was happy to see her. Ro couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

“Ro Laren!” he exclaimed. “I can’t tell you how glad I am you decided to meet me!”

She cleared her throat. “So,” she said, trying to sound casual, “what did I come all this way for? I hope it’s good.”

“Oh, it is good, it is,” he said, and she saw him swallow as he came closer to her, scrutinizing her face. She realized that he was very nervous about this meeting, and it occurred to her that he probably had a mythology about her, too. It was entirely possible that she would fail to live up to his estimation of her, just as easily as the reverse could be true.

“Well,” he said, “you might remember that we didn’t have much in the way of organized resistance on Valo II. But I want to change that. I’ve been working on an idea for a long time.”

Ro frowned. Still no organized resistance? Had she come all this way, pinned all her opportunities on just one idea, still in the planning stages? “What kind of an idea?”

Bis grinned. “Terok Nor,” he said.

Ro was a bit taken aback. “Terok Nor?” she repeated. “What about it?”

Bis’s smile grew even wider. “Think about it. It’s the perfect target, really. It’s the seat of the occupation, it’s where the prefect lives, and where half the Cardassian ships in this system are docked at any given time—”

“I still don’t follow,” Ro said. “What do you mean, a target? You just said you don’t even really have a cell—you’d need an entire army to attack Terok Nor, and an army is exactly what the whole of Bajor doesn’t have. Even with every single resistance cell on the planet, we’d never—”

“That’s the brilliant part,” Bis said. “We won’t be the ones to attack it. We’ll get someone else to do it for us.”

Ro made a face. “Who?”

Bis’s smile finally faded. “Do you remember that Ferengi freighter? The one you—”

“The one Bram and I tried to claim, before Darrah Mace suddenly took us on an unexpected vacation?”

“Right. That freighter is going to be the key to taking out Terok Nor once and for all.”

Ro folded her arms, intrigued.

Bis went on. “We never really got much use out of that ship, except to transport refugees, but it was just too cumbersome to be used as a ferry. Something went wrong with one of the engines, and my father—he’s one of the best engineers on Valo II—he couldn’t figure out what to do with such an alien system. So we started stripping it for useful parts, but other than that—”

Ro nodded, shooting him a “get to the point” look as politely as she could manage.

“Anyway, my father got the comm online a long time ago, and we started picking up a lot of Ferengi back-and-forth chatter. Without even meaning to, we started to learn a lot about some of the Ferengi supply runs—and about the Ferengi in general. Like, for example, they’ll do anything for profit.”

“So…you can spy on the Ferengi,” Ro said. She knew next to nothing about the Ferengi, except that they were avaricious and commerce-driven. Some were even pirates. Short pirates.

“Right. They do a lot of trade in and around the Bajoran sector. There’s even a regularly scheduled run that goes between Lissepia and New Sydney every two weeks, and they go right through the B’hava’el system.”

Ro still couldn’t see any significance in the information and she shrugged, waiting to hear more.

“That run is usually carrying a very unstable cargo—unprocessed uridium. They’re not supposed to carry more than a certain amount, according to regulation, but they’re a profit-minded bunch, and they routinely ignore the rules. They have begun taking on bigger and bigger loads lately, from what we’ve been hearing. I’m sure they’re making an absolute fortune on it.”

Ro frowned, beginning to see where this was going. “Those ships…if their cargo were exposed to a big enough electrical discharge…”

“They’re bombs waiting to happen,” Bis told her. “Very powerful bombs. And there’s one particular Ferengi ship in the fleet that does a routine stopover in this system—”

“—at Terok Nor,” Ro finished.

Bis nodded, pleased she had caught on. “That’s right,” he said. “And that’s where you come in, Laren. I don’t know anyone on Valo II who has even the faintest idea how to override a security system, but you, you could sneak onto that Ferengi vessel and spike one of the containers with an electrical bomb. It could be set to go off just as soon as the ship docks, and if we get to it just before it heads for Terok Nor—”

Ro was shaking her head. She was vaguely aware of at least one truth about Terok Nor: there were more Bajorans on that station than there were Cardassians. Innocent Bajorans—people who had been brought there against their will and forced to labor in what were supposed to be the most abysmal conditions one could imagine, second only to the horror stories she’d heard about Gallitep.

Bis misread her hesitation, and he smiled reassuringly. “I’ve thought of all the details, Laren,” he told her. “I’ve been putting this plan together for over a year. Contacting you was the next step, and now that you’re here, nothing can go wrong. If you come back with me to Valo II, I can tell you everything. What do you say, are you in?”

Ro looked around Jeraddo, looked at her raider where she had left it, and paused. This plan was madness, for more reasons than she could even begin to address. But she could only think of Tokiah, his saying, “Maybe you shouldn’t come back.”

“I’m in,” she said softly, and Bis surprised her by throwing his arms around her and letting out a whoop of triumph. Startled, she hung in his arms like a limp fish, having managed to avoid being embraced by anyone since she was a child. He released her, probably sensing her discomfort, and the two began the walk back to his ship, Bis rattling off more details about his reckless plan, Ro pushing away the uncomfortable thoughts that were beginning to stir her conscience.

For all the worrying Mora had been doing about Dukat’s visit to the institute, the prefect paid him approximately no attention whatsoever. Yopal had not been wrong when she’d advised him that Dukat would only be interested in weapons systems, for he spent almost the entire visit talking to Daul and the new scientist, Kalisi Reyar. The prefect left without so much as a hello to Mora—not that Mora would have wanted it any other way.

With Gul Dukat gone, Mora could finally let down his guard a bit. He eased his nerves with a uniformly dull task, performing a routine calibration on some of his tools. Daul entered his laboratory quietly.

“Hello, Pol,” the other Bajoran greeted him. Mora hadn’t spoken to his colleague since well before Dukat’s visit. They hadn’t spent much time together at all, in recent weeks.

“Hello, Mirosha. Did you survive your encounter with the prefect?”

“I did, though I won’t pretend that I enjoyed it.”

Mora chuckled. “I’d bet not. I’m thankful he left me alone.”

“Yes, well. He wanted to talk with me about the system at Gallitep. He was pleased with the work I did before, and apparently he found me trustworthy enough to send me to the actual camp, this time.”

Mora stiffened. He wasn’t sure what to say to his old friend, and he merely followed up with an “Ah,” and a clearing of his throat.