There was a moment of awkward silence while Thrax tried to think of another item of interest. “So…after the next Bajoran council, I think I will try to make a connection with Yoriv Skyl, the Tozhat exarch,” he said. “To see if I can discern his leanings.”

“A wise idea,”Astraea agreed softly, and there was another moment of silence. Their calls always seemed to be conducted this way, ending with strained pauses, loaded with unspoken emotions.

“May you walk with Oralius,” Thrax finally said, and she smiled, though she looked disappointed, too.

She signed off with a recitation from the Book. “‘To speak her words with my voice, to think her thoughts with my mind, to feel her love with my heart.’”Thrax repeated the words back to her, and she smiled, her eyes closing, as her image skittered from Thrax’s screen. He sat back in his chair and paused to reflect, to think exclusively of her for a moment, then he abruptly rose and left the security station, heading to his quarters for the night.

Natima’s eyes were dry, but she felt like weeping. The transport had already left the station, and there was no looking back now—not that she would have wanted to. Still, she was going back to Cardassia Prime entirely contrary to her appointment. Dalak would be furious with her for this insubordination, but there was simply no way she could have remained on the station, not after what had transpired earlier today.

She was the only civilian on this transport, which had little in the way of elbow room. There was a tiny commissary, small berths, two beds to a room, with a ’fresher that had to be shared—at least for the soldiers. Natima was lucky enough to have gotten a room to herself. Being a woman had a few perks, at least. She rested, as best she could, on the hard berth, and tried to shut her mind to the unhappy events that had unfolded earlier, but it was all she could think of.

Had Quark really believed he could hide from her forever in the microcosm of Terok Nor? She had cornered him leaving his quarters early this morning, and had demanded an explanation—hoping against hope that he would actually have one. But of course, through his pathetic attempts to justify what he had done, Natima saw the truth: not only had he stolen from her, he wasn’t even sorry he had done it.

She had threatened to turn him in to the authorities for his dealings with the Bajorans—or the very least, to turn him in for violating her acquisition number. She was going to have to explain it to the accounting department at the Information Service, a task she dreaded almost as much as facing Dalak regarding her sudden abandonment of her assignment. But then, she hadn’t turned him in after all—she still wasn’t entirely sure why.

How foolish she had been, to trust a man who pretended to have a romantic interest in her—a Ferengi, no less! She could only assume that he had been using her from the very beginning, and yet, she had not even turned him in to save her own reputation. She knew that it was dangerous to draw attention to herself this way. If accounting were to closely examine her acquisition codes, would they find anything that would point to her status as a dissident? Natima didn’t think so, but she couldn’t understand why she would even consider taking the risk for someone as dishonest as Quark had turned out to be. She supposed she was just a fool, in the end.

She was crying, now, which should have been a relief, but was mostly just a humiliation. She let herself cry softly for a few moments before pulling herself together. She would never go to Terok Nor again, or to Bajor, and if Dalak tried to make her—well, maybe she was done with Dalak, anyway. Maybe it was time to move away from the Information Service. She had long remained loyal to her employer in part because she’d believed that she owed her life’s success to the Service. But would it be so terrible, to attribute her success to her own actions? Maybe this was the push she needed to go in another direction, the sign that it was time to move into another phase of her life.

Good-bye, Quark, she thought, and lay down again on the hard, empty bunk, wishing she could sleep.

Vekobet had several abandoned districts that were not beyond the boundary constraints, but they had fallen into ruin in the past twelve years. The desolation was due in part to destruction from skirmishes between Union and resistance forces, and in part to a lack of functioning utilities. But the population was inching toward expansion again, and most of the occupied houses in town were bursting at the seams with extended families. The older districts had to be considered for renovation, for the active portions of the cities were becoming dangerously overcrowded. Kalem Apren was helping to dig an irrigation trench in one of the newly reclaimed areas, having already helped to patch the roofs of three old houses that had fallen into disrepair. He was waist-deep in the muddy ditch when his wife Raina suddenly appeared, out of breath, her exuberance showing.

“Apren!” she cried out. “It’s the comm! Someone is calling you—from off world!”

Kalem wasted no time in dropping the shovel he had been using and clambering out of the muddy, half-finished trench. “Excuse me,” he cried hastily to the other men, though he did not stay to hear their reply. He raced after his wife through the old streets, stopping at brief intervals so that one or the other could catch their breath, occasionally locking gazes and laughing. Someone had repaired the long-range systems, unless Raina was mistaken, and Kalem knew from her expression that she wasn’t.

Panting and gasping, he clutched at the receiver, hoping against hope that whoever had called would still be on the line—it was a good twenty minutes to and from the outlying settlement from where he and Raina had just come—but someone immediately replied to his greeting.

“Apren! It’s Jas Holza! What a relief to finally reach you again!”

“Holza!” Kalem exclaimed, hardly able to comprehend such an auspicious occurrence. “It’s been a long time!”

“Yes—as you say. And I have good news for you, and for Jaro Essa and all the others.”

“Do tell!” Kalem turned to Raina so that she could hear the exchange, both of them struggling to contain their excitement.

“I have been in contact with an arms merchant named Hagath. He is willing—even eager—to sell us some very sophisticated weapons—things that could make a genuine difference in the fight. If you and I pool our resources, and distribute these materials among the right people—”

“Is this a secure line, Holza?” Kalem interrupted.

“Don’t worry about that,”Jas reassured them. “You have said that Jaro has information regarding the whereabouts of the resistance cells on Bajor…”

“What’s left of them,” Apren replied, and then quickly attempted to redact his pessimism. “Yes.”

“Someone with a warp vessel will have to rendevous with this man somewhere outside the B’hava’el system.”

Kalem closed his eyes, trying to rein in his frustration. “That’s impossible. Warp vessels under Bajoran control are virtually nonexistent. The resistance uses sub-impulse vessels, but even those have been grounded by a Cardassian detection system that—”

“There must be someone with access to—”

“You mean, besides yourself?”

There was a pause, and Kalem wondered if the connection had been severed before Jas spoke again.

“I can’t do it, Apren. The risk is too great. You must find someone in the resistance movement who can get access to a warp vessel. I have been in sporadic contact with this man for over three years now, and I know he will be willing to negotiate whenever we are ready, but someone will have to go to him to make the exchange. He is wisely unwilling to enter Cardassian occupied space. I will appropriate whatever funds I can for this purpose, and I know you will too—but you can’t ask me to enter the B’hava’el system.”