He pushed away the latter thought yet again, for there was nothing he could do to resolve it. It was time for him to regenerate, and he went to retrieve the vessel where he could be safely contained in his natural state. But before he could be lulled into comfortable senselessness, he recalled some of the incidents from his days on Bajor—days when he had decided that what the Cardassians were doing on this world was wrong in its entirety. Odo had believed it until he had come to Terok Nor, and had met several Cardassians whom he thought he could relate to, on some level. Their laws had seemed sensible to him at the time—comfortably well-defined, unlike the Bajorans, for whom just about anything could fall under the definition of “good.” But now he was forced to rethink his assessment of the Cardassians once again, and he was revisiting his previous ideas of the so-called annexation more often than he wanted to.

If it was true that the occupation was wrong, then could any of the Cardassians’ actions, their laws, their decisions—could any of it possibly be right? Or must it all be rejected as further extension of their evil? Odo had to acknowledge that he didn’t know anymore, that the definition of what was right as it was given by a Bajoran terrorist, or his friend Russol, or the prefect, or the Ferengi bartender, all definitions seemed to intersect, and yet still contradict. As an outsider, Odo should have been in the perfect position, as Russol had said, from which to judge what was truly just. But it was becoming clearer to him all the time—he was not really an outsider at all.

OCCUPATION YEAR FORTY-ONE

2368 (Terran Calendar)

19

Tahna Los always appreciated a good excuse to shimmy through the tunnels and speak to Nerys, though Shakaar was usually hovering over them while they talked. The cell leader was ever trying to project his “brotherly” vibe, but Tahna knew better. Edon was a notorious womanizer, and though he hadn’t made any advances toward Nerys that Tahna knew about, it was only a matter of time. Anyway, Edon had been bickering with Biran and Jouvirna more than usual lately—trifling over “ethics” as always. Tahna was thankful that on this day, Edon was off in another cavern with Mobara, looking over some piece of equipment or other.

“What do you want now, Tahna?” Nerys griped. She hadn’t been doing anything in particular, as far as Tahna could tell. She held a padd in one hand—she had probably been reading something. But she always had to make a show of being annoyed by him. In truth, Tahna welcomed it. After the last time he had been captured by the Cardassians, Kira had been awkward with him for a while, apparently out of guilt—or pity. But now that time had passed, Nerys’s manner with him was starting to drift back toward the familiar, and Tahna couldn’t have been happier that she was short with him today. “Don’t tell me the grid is already back online,” she said.

The cells had made numerous attempts to permanently knock out the sensor towers, but the Cardassians were always quick to repair them. Every time they went back online, Kira and Tahna began a wager to see which cell would be first to take them out again. It was unfair, since the Shakaar cell had twice the members of the Kohn-Ma, and pointless, since the two cells were practically converged at this point, but Tahna felt it was useful to have the incentive—especially since he had grown so familiar with what could happen when you got caught.

“They are,” Tahna told her, “but there’s more to it than that, this time. I’ve just gotten my hands on a schematic.” He pulled an isolinear rod out of his jerkin. “Trentin Fala brought it to us, stolen from the Cardassian records office in Tempasa. Blueprints.”

Kira frowned. “What’s the target?”

Tahna smiled broadly. “The grind itself—at the source! We won’t have to waste our time taking out the towers over and over again, waiting for the spoonheads to just reinstall them every single time. We can sabotage the telemetry processing system on Terok Nor—”

Kira interrupted him. “Terok Nor!” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “No. No, Tahna, I’m never going back to that station. Ever.”

“Don’t be stupid, Nerys. If we could shut down that grid for good, then we’ll never have to argue about knocking out those towers ever again. Anyway, you’ve already been there, you know your way around—and you’re the only one of us who can beat the grid long enough to figure out a way to get smuggled onto a penal transport.”

Kira interrupted him again by snatching the rod from his hands.

“Watch it with that thing!” he warned her as she jammed the isolinear rod into her padd. “It’s not like I can just ask Fala for another copy!”

Kira ignored him as she looked over the schematic, her lips moving slightly as she read. “I’m not going to Terok Nor,” she said without looking up. Tahna started to interrupt, but Kira spoke over him. “I have another idea,” she said. “I know someone on the station who can help us.”

Tahna shook his head. “No, Nerys. There are only a handful of resistance people left on the station, not enough to—”

“The person I’m talking about isn’t in the resistance,” she said, handing him back the isolinear rod.

“Well then, how do you propose to…?” Tahna stopped after seeing the look on Kira’s face. She could convey her emotions with a single look better than anyone Tahna had ever encountered, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit that she intimidated him a bit. She intimidated nearly everyone, even those who were older than she was, though it hadn’t always been so. She was a far cry now from the skinny and eager little girl who had joined the resistance over a decade ago.

“He’s not in the resistance,” she said. “He’s in security.”

Tahna looked at her doubtfully. “In security?”

Kira finally smiled. “He’s the chief, actually.”

Keeve Falor did not often have reason to contact Bajor anymore. He knew that Kalem Apren and others on the surface had been trying to coerce him into helping them with their grandiose plans for a very long time, but Keeve couldn’t see much point to it. It was all he could do just to keep the people on his adopted world from starvation; he had very little reason to fool around with subspace communication system anymore.

But today was different. Something had happened in the past week, and Bajor needed to know it. In Keeve’s estimation, Kalem Apren wasBajor, being one of the very few former politicians from his homeworld that Keeve still trusted. Keeve had come to the old hangar on Valo II, the place where ships had once arrived and departed with some measure of regularity—but it was no longer like that here, or anywhere else on this world, for fuel was an import that the people of Valo II could not afford to squander without sufficient cause. The Bajorans of Valo II used the hangar for storage of salvaged parts, but it could also function as a communications center if necessary. A few of these ships still had functional communications equipment, and now that the long-range relays on Derna had been repaired, it was possible to send messages to Bajor, if the need ever arose. It seemed to Keeve Falor that the need had finally arisen.

“Apren,” Keeve spoke into the pickup, adjusting for interference. He hoped the signal would be strong enough. As he tapped the interface, he could pick up bits of chatter, both Cardassian and Bajoran, coming from Jeraddo, from Valo III, from Terok Nor, from Bajor herself. He fine-tuned the connection when he recognized the Bajoran signal code on the comm’s battered readout.

“Apren,” Keeve spoke the name again. “Kalem Apren. This is an attempt to reach Kalem Apren, of the Kendra Valley.” The channel was almost certainly wide open and traceable, but there was nothing that could be done about it—and it scarcely mattered, since the Cardassians already knew the piece of news that Keeve intended to pass along.