She could see the automated tower less than a half tessipate ahead of her, rising from the apex of the winding ridge. Thankfully, this one wasn’t too far from the tunnels; the next closest was eight, nine days on foot. Still, she was nervous. Even the dense cover of the woods high on the ridge felt too exposed, and she had to climb the tower, melt the panel lock, and plug in a whole series of carefully memorized passcodes and commands. What if the lock didn’t melt? What if she forgot a number or a character? What if whoever had cracked the code in the first place had made a mistake?

I’ve hacked a hundred system panels, she told herself. And I won’t forget. And if there was a mistake in the code’s translation, there was nothing she could do about it, anyway. Worrying wouldn’t rewrite it for her.

The sensor tower was a slender metal cage that rose well over the tree line, built of the dusky matte composites that the Cardassians favored, that they manufactured at a massive plant in the southern highlands. Surely there was no ambush, no reptilian squad hidden in the shadows, waiting for her to show herself. Kira took a deep breath and stepped out from the cover of the trees, moving quickly to the tower’s base before she had a chance to second-guess the action. This wasn’t a job to linger over.

She approached the tower and shifted her small pack to one hip before starting to climb, the structure’s design creating its own ladder. The panel she wanted was about midway up, perhaps four times her height from the ground. Not a terrible fall, but bad enough. She concentrated on the rungs one at a time, holding tight, always looking up, and finally, the boxy computer relay access panel was in front of her.

An evening breeze blew, cool through the late heat of the day. She uncoiled her belt with one shaky hand, clipping each end to the tower’s metal hook-rings, creating a simple sling she could lean against. She felt horribly exposed, sitting on top of the trees, and quickly reached into her pack and drew out a slender vial about the length of her index finger. She uncapped the vial, dripped its contents onto the duranium lock that sealed the panel. The solution hissed and reeked, the lock dissolving as the magnasite did its work. Kira turned her head away from the acrid fumes, ignoring the magnificent view, all too aware that it was still light enough for her to be seen. Early evening was the best time for one of their raiders to lift out, all of them agreed—the setting sun caused problems with the Cardassian visual systems—but for her own sake, she wished it was dark.

A thin tingas what was left of the metal turned brittle, and the panel was open, the tiny screen and keypads lighting up.

Access first, she told herself, using the trick Lupaza had taught her to memorize the long list of codes, breaking it down into mental pictures and associations. 2698178, she thought, tapping it in carefully. Twenty-six hours in a day. Keltis had ninety-eight prophecies. Seven plus one was eight.

She touched the input bar and the screen blinked once, twice, a third time—And someone screamed, so loud and close that she lost her grip on the tower, fell back against the sling, her knees banging into the structure hard enough to hurt. The sound stretched impossibly long as Kira scrabbled for the metal rungs again, her breath coming in shallow sips, the alarm klaxon tearing through the empty canyon from the top of the tower. The scream rose and fell, alerting the world to her trespass.

Kosst!She considered running for almost a second, disregarding the impulse in less time. She could afford a few minutes. She forced herself to think of the entry code. Twenty-six hours, Ninety-eight prophecies, seven plus one is—

“One plus seven,” she said, her voice unheard over the deafening screech of the alarm. She’d transposed two of the numbers.

Focus. You know this, you know the numbers, so you do it, just do it.She typed it in again, forcing herself not to hurry—and the alarm shut off in mid-scream, the last echoes falling away over the treetops as she called up the next set of numbers, and the next, working her way into the system. Focus, the nine days of atonement, the slash-dot key, four halved was two, plus…

As she watched the complicated command sequences flash by, she understood that without these codes, there would have been no chance at reprogramming the system. If it worked, Bajoran ships would read as Cardassian. The majority of the cells would still have to stay hidden, but their shuttles could be moved to Derna or one of the other moons, the communications equipment there repositioned. Everything could change.

7, characters ksi, 3, 3…9.

There. The last digit was in. She took a deep breath, watched the screen go blank, back to a waiting status. Had it worked? She didn’t know how to confirm, and she couldn’t risk staying any longer. Someone would come to see why the alarm had gone off, and she meant to be far, far away by the time they showed.

She unhooked the sling and half slid down the tower, giving herself a few more bruises in her hurry to be elsewhere. She thudded heavily to the forest floor, stopping only long enough to stuff her belt into her pack, grabbing her comm as she darted into the woods.

Shakaar spoke her name as soon as she tapped the switch, his voice riding waves of static. She kept moving, taking deep breaths, stretching her legs for a run. She thought she heard the hum of an approaching ship, a faraway drone in the rapidly cooling air.

“It’s done,” she said.

“Is…safe…send up…raider?”

“I have no idea,” she said, and she was sure of it now: a ship was coming. She broke into a sprint, pumping her arms for speed, jumping over fallen logs and crashing through the underbrush, more concerned with gaining distance than with stealth. She tripped over rocks, slid down sudden drop-offs, ran and ran and finally stopped, unable to go any farther.

She doubled over, hands on her twitching legs, gasping for breath. The skimmer had been coming from the south, she was sure of it, and she was headed north. By the time they realized that someone had cracked the access panel, she’d be well out of reach.

She raised herself up, deepened her breathing, and heard something she hadn’t heard in a very long time—the telltale sonic boom of a Bajoran raider as it prepared to leave the atmosphere, echoing out from behind the hills that hid much of what was left of the resistance.

Kira clenched her hands into fists, counting seconds, breathing through her open mouth so she could hear the roar of particle cannons firing. But she heard nothing. A brown bird, flapping through the brush. Wind in the trees. Her heart, pounding.

We did it, she thought, she believed. It was too soon to know anything for sure, but she couldn’t help her belief. She started moving again, her breath coming more easily as she worked her way down the ridge. She even found the capacity to laugh as two more raiders went up, noisily scraping the sky as they broke through the sound barrier.

Dukat had just finished his weekly call to Athra and was feeling nostalgic for home. His wife was pregnant again, a happy result of his last brief visit to Cardassia Prime, and positively glowed with good health and humor. She had images to show him of the other children, stories of their accomplishments. This child would be their fifth.

Sixth, he thought, but quickly shook the thought. He did not often think of the son he had lost, a casualty of Cardassia’s poor conditions before the annexation. Athra never spoke of him.

He sat back in his chair after his faithful wife had bid him a heartfelt good-bye; he wished he could be home more often. As it was, the extra day or two he spent on Cardassia whenever he went to present his periodic progress reports was all he could spare, often in conjunction with his reports to Command. Before the insurgency was under control, he’d been lucky to manage that. Perhaps with this birth, he would arrange to take a more substantial vacation, a week or so…