She hitched up the satchel around her waist; it held her phaser, comm unit, and the small electrical device that she would soon be leaving inside the vessel. This is it,she told herself, and began working at overriding the controls to the drop ramp.

The minutes ticked by. Ro’s forehead was slippery with perspiration, but she could not spare a moment to wipe her eyes. How much longer would Gart be preoccupied? If he was successful in his pursuit of the alien woman at the bar, would he bring her back to the ship? It seemed to take forever before the drop ramp began to slowly descend, and Ro scampered inside, finding a shuttlebay much like the one where she had once docked her own raider. She’d walked the remnants of that long-ago ship several times with Bis only yesterday, memorizing its layout. In seconds, she was in the cargo bay, surrounded by massive nonmetallic containers filled with unprocessed uridium. She shivered as she removed the electrical discharge device from her satchel and programmed it to react directly with the impact of the locking clamps at Terok Nor. Then she aimed the bomb’s makeshift conducting spike at one of the containers, raised it over her head, and stabbed it through the casing.

She thought she heard voices coming from somewhere to the rear left of the cargo bay, and she quickly scuttled out the way she had come, not stopping to put the drop ramp back up as she ran, removing the comm device from her satchel and placing it in the pocket of her tunic. Once clear of the shipyards, she squeezed the device once, and, like magic, found herself once again on the transporter platform of the little warp ship.

I did it,she thought, and knew that Bis would be happy.

Odo usually had very little control of his senses while he regenerated, though certain external stimuli could rouse him from his state of near slumber. And as it was, something had forced him out of stasis on this particular night. Something was not right in the laboratory, though Odo had no concept of what it might be; he only knew that there was a sound coming from somewhere outside the door of Doctor Mora’s laboratory, and at this time of night, there should be no sounds at all. He remained a liquid, but he poised himself to be ready to morph into something else if he needed to, though he wasn’t sure what that thing might be.

Someone had entered the laboratory. Though the lights were still off, Odo could make out the shape of a humanoid—a Bajoran, he thought. This person looked more like Doctor Mora than like Doctor Yopal and the others, but there was something different about him. Odo wasn’t sure what it was right away, but then it somehow dawned on him. This person was a female. This was a Bajoran female, something he’d not seen before. The female was touching Mora’s computer. Odo wanted very much to get out of the tank and have a closer look, but he had the distinct sense that she was not supposed to be in here. He wondered what to do, and wished Mora would come, but it was nighttime; Mora would not return until the morning.

“Gantt!” the person said, and Odo wondered who she was talking to. The sound of her voice was like nothing he’d ever heard before. She did not sound like the Cardassian women, and she certainly didn’t sound like Doctor Mora.

“Mobara found it, down the hall,” said another voice, coming from somewhere outside. “It’s done. We need to get to the transporter—it’s in the lower level.”

“Come in here and look at this,” the female in Doctor Mora’s laboratory called. “I think this is a Bajoran’s laboratory.”

“Never mind that,” the other person said. “We need to get out of here.”

“Yes, but—”

“Kira, we have to go, now!”

“I’m coming,” she said, and left the room.

Odo felt relieved that the intruders were going, but he also felt something else, too. He felt an oddly placed regret, for the female had made him terrifically curious—curious in a way he wasn’t entirely familiar with. He wanted to know why they had been here, what they were doing. He was too restless to go back into his resting state now, and he contemplated his feelings. He considered that some part of him wished the female hadn’t gone quite so soon. He regretted not emerging from the tank to speak to her, though he knew he shouldn’t have done that, and it was certainly best that he hadn’t. But there was something about her, the novelty of her appearance, her voice—if he couldn’t have spoken to her, he wished he could at least have looked at her just a little while longer.

Daul had been seated inside the cramped little outbuilding, situated along the vast, stretching footbridge strung across the center of the open-pit duranium mine, for well over three hours now. That was almost twice as long as it should have taken him to complete his task, but the Cardassians didn’t know that—at least, Daul hoped they didn’t.

The odd file clerk had accompanied him for most of the day, but just under an hour ago, Marritza had explained that he had to get back to his office, and had placed a much less agreeable Cardassian guard in charge of looking after him. The guard had made it abundantly clear that he resented the assignment, glaring at Daul from the only other seat in the little room where the massive computer was housed. But Daul was relieved at the changing of his guard, for he felt confident that this sentry would give him far less trouble than the more observant file clerk would have.

From time to time, the guard shifted impatiently in his seat and inquired as to how much longer Daul was going to take, and Daul’s reply was always the same: “I’m not sure, but I don’t think much longer.”

Finally, the surly Cardassian made an attempt at conversation. “Just what is it that you’re doing here, anyway?”

“I’m reassessing the mine’s reserve, and reprogramming the system’s algorithm to ignore any veins of duridium with inferior percentage extraction. Eventually, the AI will cease drilling when viable duridium reaches 10 percent or less.”

“Oh,” the guard said, his expression confirming that he didn’t know what Daul was talking about. This guard apparently had little understanding of how the mine operated; he was only here to force the Bajorans to work. To Daul’s great relief, the guard removed the headset he was wearing—the set which enabled him to hear what Daul was saying. He rubbed his head, and held the set idly in his lap.

Daul glanced at the time displayed on his padd. The resistance outfit had been instructed to transport several of their operatives into a specific mine location in approximately five minutes. Daul had no idea if the terrorists really had the capacity to do all that would be required of them for this undertaking; he had left the most explicit instructions he could conceive of, but even so, his own knowledge of transporter operation was anemic—especially considering the transporter in question was Cardassian technology, and not Bajoran. Still, Daul was an intelligent man, a resourceful man—and he believed the plan was feasible. He had to believe in it.

Sneaking a glance at the bored Cardassian sentry, Daul began to tap into the networked security program. It was lucky the file clerk was not here, for he was obviously a man who knew his way around the facility’s computer system and would probably have caught Daul in the act of what he was about to do. Struggling to maintain an aura of calm, he shut down the beam-shield that would prevent unauthorized travelers from transporting in or out of the facility. His task done, he switched back to the AI, thinking it had gone much easier than he would have expected.

He tapped away at the interface, when suddenly, the console began to blink, rattling a line of ominous characters.

WARNING. UNAUTHORIZED SECURITY SHUTDOWN. ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE FOR THIS ACTION OR SHUTDOWN WILL BE CANCLED IN SIXTY SECONDS.