“It’s about Gallitep, sir.”

Dukat immediately stopped what he was doing and excused himself from his visitors. The sabotage of the camp took precedence over all else; Dukat was eager to amplify the blame laid on Darhe’el for the disaster, no small task. Gul Darhe’el had been away from Gallitep when the mass escape and near total destruction of the camp had taken place; at worst, he was guilty of poor timing, although he hadspecifically asked for that Bajoran scientist, the one who’d acted on behalf of the terrorists. Dukat had gone out of his way to say as much in every report heading back to Cardassia Prime. If there was anything Basso could tell him that might be useful in his quest to see Darhe’el disgraced, Dukat was eager to hear it.

Leaving the conference room, he walked briskly back to his office, the Bajoran at his heels. When the door had closed behind them, he nodded for Basso to continue.

The Bajoran was breathless—from excitement or exertion, Dukat didn’t know. “I reviewed all the security rods from the day of the disaster, as you asked me, and I found one that has something you need to see.”

“Very good,” Dukat said, and sat down at his office desk.

Basso quickly plugged the recording into a nearby monitor and found the sequence he was looking for. Dukat squinted to view the footage. “Enhance,” Basso told the computer, and the focus pulled in on a group of people edging along one of the narrow roads that lined the open-pit mine.

“There,” Basso told him, pointing to the screen. “That’s Shakaar Edon, the leader of a cell just out of Dahkur.”

Dukat nodded. “So, we know who is responsible for Gallitep. But this doesn’t get us any closer to—”

“No, no, sir, there’s more.” Basso progressed the recording a few steps further, to show another crowd shot on a road further below the first point. “Enhance,” he said again, and pointed to the slender red-haired figure that appeared onscreen. He didn’t need to say more.

“Nerys,” Dukat breathed.

Kira mostly felt triumphant, for she’d just taken part in one of the biggest missions in the history of the Shakaar cell. She’d personally had a hand in liberating the worst camp on all of Bajor. She felt dizzied from all the praise that was being heaped on her, from not only Lupaza, but Dakhana, Mobara—even Shakaar himself had commended her courage and clear thinking.

The Shakaar cell had taken proper time and measure to grieve as well as celebrate, for two members of the group had not made it back. Mobara had been unable to get a lock on two of the communicators, and made the assumption that they had been destroyed. Ornak later confirmed that Matram Tryst had blown himself up, taking at least twenty Cardassian guards with him—along with Par Lusa. Par had been only eighteen years old, and Matram not much older than that. But they’d known the risks…just as Kira did.

She couldn’t stop thinking about one small thing, certainly small against the overwhelming sense of victory that had accompanied the sight of all those Bajorans suddenly appearing in the forest of Dahkur, many of them so near to death that Kira knew they would not have made it for one more day inside that camp. They could go home now, and those who were sick could at least live out their last moments in freedom, hopefully with their families or loved ones. But there was one Bajoran who wouldn’t ever see his loved ones again—the scientist who had made it all possible. And that small thing kept at her, throughout the celebration, throughout the glowing aftermath of Gallitep’s liberation.

She had gone to sit outside the cave, watching Bajor’s moons as they very slowly crept from behind the mountains in the west, one after the other. The closest moon was a deep orange, tinted by the haze in the atmosphere. She wondered what it had looked like in the days before the Cardassians’ various mining and manufacturing interests had tainted the air with billowing clouds of pollution. People said the moons were once the color of fusionstone, nearly white sometimes on summer nights. Kira absently drew circles in the dust with a stick, briefly calling to mind thoughts of her mother, the artist, and wondering why she’d never had any talent of her own.

“Nerys,” called a gentle voice—Lupaza, of course, emerging from the cave.

“I’m here,” Kira answered her, setting down the stick.

“What are you thinking about?”

Kira shrugged. “Nothing,” she said unconvincingly.

Lupaza pursed her lips. “You’re not still thinking about that scientist, are you?”

“No,” Kira said. “Yes. A little bit.”

Lupaza squatted on her heels. “Nerys,” she said. “You need to understand something right now. That man—he was a collaborator. It’s true that in the end, he did what he could to compensate for the evil he’d been responsible for, but…it’s only right that he ultimately gave his life for the struggle. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Kira said listlessly, picking up the stick again.

“Nerys,” Lupaza said, her voice not quite so gentle now. “If you want to fight in the resistance—if you really want to be in this cell, or any cell—you’d better get used to the idea that Bajorans have to die sometimes. Not just the people in your cell, which is bad enough, but sometimes…Bajorans have to die, and we have to kill them. It doesn’t matter how brave you are, how strong—if you can’t come to terms with killing collaborators, then you’d better go home to your father right now.”

Lupaza stood up, and made to go back into the cave. “Really, it’s a good thing that scientist was killed. Because if I were him, I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself, after seeing what those people in that camp looked like.”

“You’re right,” Kira said quickly, before Lupaza could go inside. “I know you’re right.” She managed a weak smile at Lupaza, genuinely feeling a little better. Lupaza smiled back, and held her hand out to pull Kira to her feet.

Lupaza went on. “It’s difficult to understand, maybe, but this war we’re fighting…it’s not just a matter of Bajorans versus Cardassians. This is a fight between what’s right, and what’s evil. And the face of evil sometimes looks unsettlingly like your own. It could be someone that you know. It could be a member of your own family. It could be the boy that…the boy you were supposed to marry, the boy you thought was the love of your life. But it’s still evil, nonetheless.”

Kira nodded, remembering what Lupaza had mentioned of her ih’tanu.

“Let’s go inside,” Lupaza told the younger girl, changing her tone. “There’s a glass of copalin there with your name on it.”

“Copal!”Kira exclaimed.

“Sure,” Lupaza said. “You’re old enough to handle something like Gallitep, I think you’re beyond old enough to have a little old glass of copal.”

Kira nodded, eager to taste her first cider with the rest of the cell. For if Gallitep had been her formal initiation into the cell, the event that would finally persuade the others to stop calling her “little girl” would probably be a round or two of copalwith Shakaar. It would do the job better than an ih’tanucould have.

A cheer went up as Kira and Lupaza entered the cave, one of many cheers that had been erupting throughout the evening, and Lupaza poured Kira a stoneware tumbler full of strong cider. Kira took a hesitant sip and willed her face not to crumple with the potent sour flavor that stung the back of her tongue. Another cheer went up as she opened her eyes and raised her cup with a smile.

As the evening blurred into a haze of warm triumph, a cacophony of friendly cheers and songs of victory, Kira recognized that the old ways were really gone for good now. Bajor was a different place than it had once been, a new place. It would never be the same as it was before Kira was born, but her world wouldbe free again. Kira would have a hand in ensuring her people’s freedom, she decided—no matter how many Bajoran collaborators she had to kill to do it. This would be the last time that she would ever mourn the loss of someone who had caused the kind of suffering that she had witnessed at Gallitep. Tonight, she was truly a resistance fighter.