Bareil went on. “I have been considering—if I were to go to Dukat with a false location outside the Kendra Valley for your son’s cell, perhaps it could buy us enough time to contact another resistance cell—someone who could help those in the rest of the villages to escape.”

The kai appeared quite tired, and seemed somehow smaller than her already small size, as though she’d shrunk within her skin. “Vedek Bareil, the resistance does not have the means to evacuate the villages. Even if it were possible to convince Dukat that Fasil’s cell was elsewhere, there are many people in the villages who could not tolerate evacuation—elderly people, terminally ill people, people with small children…”

“We could get them to the forest, somehow. The detection grid is still nonfunctional, Your Eminence—we must use this fact to our best advantage!”

“You have concerned yourself with this matter far beyond your call of obligation, Vedek. I would request that you go to the Dakeen Monastery until this incident is concluded.”

“Eminence! I cannot leave at a time like this!”

“This is exactly the time for you to go, Bareil.”

“Kai—Eminence—” He could not express the frustration and horror he’d felt, watching this conundrum unfold. He knew he was overstepping his bounds, but he could not help himself. “What is it that you have foreseen? Why will you not act?”

The small woman sighed, her shoulders hunched as though the weight of their world rested upon them. “All I can tell you is that this is the way it must be. Whatever happens, it is Their will.”

Bareil felt frustrated by her answer. Ambiguity and pessimism were unusual for Kai Opaka. “Your Eminence…you have always told me that the Prophets look after those who look after themselves…that we show our greatest trust in the Prophets by having faith in our own abilities to solve our troubles.”

“I have faith in my own abilities,” Opaka said, her voice soft. “And I have faith in my own visions, as well. I have foreseen this, Vedek Bareil.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “Your suggestions…will lead to an unfortunate path.”

“Then we must ask the Prophets for the right answer!”

“The right answer, Vedek—or the answer that you want to hear?”

Bareil wished that for once, the steady leader would question her own beliefs. “You cannot be sure that—”

“Vedek, I am ordering you to go. I will not tell you again.”

Bareil felt gripped with misery. “Yes, Your Eminence.”

“But before you go, Bareil, you must put me in touch with Prylar Bek.”

“Prylar Bek?” Bareil repeated. “Do you mean…you would like me to convey a message to him for you?”

“No, Vedek Bareil. I will speak to him myself. Please arrange it for me, and then go.”

Bareil left the kai, holding out a thin ray of hope that perhaps Prylar Bek was still in contact with his Oralian, or perhaps he could somehow exercise some sort of influence over Kubus Oak—even Dukat himself. Perhaps Opaka knew something that she wasn’t telling, something that could keep her son safe. Perhaps she was protecting Bareil from a greater threat that she could not reveal. He struggled with his own doubt, but he was not ready to disobey a direct order from the kai. He headed to his room to gather some things, and to contact Prylar Bek.

The streets of Vekobet were empty but for a scant bold number of Bajorans. Soldiers spilled out into the abandoned regions of towns, searching the old, ruined habitat districts for the hiding place of Opaka Fasil and his resistance cell. They would not find them—of that, Kalem Apren was sure. Theirs was one of the most carefully concealed cells on Bajor, the secret of their location fiercely guarded by the few who knew it. Most Bajorans were reluctant to give up any resistance cell, but none would turn the kai’s own son over to the Cardassians.

Kalem was in his basement, the same place where he had conducted so many clandestine council meetings for the citizens of Kendra. Today, the low-ceilinged root cellar was more packed than it had been at the most hopeful of those gatherings, and Kalem still knew that it would offer them no protection from what was to come. They were here as much for the company of one another as for the false sense of security they conjured while huddling tightly together in the sweltering, sour-smelling dark. Raina had brought some chairs down from the main floor of their home, but most people were sitting together on blankets that had been laid on the hard dirt floor. Some were talking, halting amiability having begun to return to their conversation in the past few days. Others were tending to their children. Several were praying, but most were still sleeping—the best refuge they could have sought.

Kalem had made hasty arrangements with the others in his village. Anyone who requested shelter was not to be turned away, but so many had come, and how could Kalem refuse them? Despite how very futile it must be to hide under the flimsy floorboards of an ancient dwelling, at least they would not have to die alone.

Kalem continued to venture outside from time to time with a few of the others, gathering supplies as necessary and making futile attempts to communicate with the Cardassian soldiers, and with the few stubborn Bajorans who continued to go about their business, refusing to hide. Few had attempted to evacuate; it was well understood that no one could get far enough away to make any difference. There was still a hopeful current in his mind that insisted there might be a way to negotiate with the Cardassians—if the Cardassians would only answer his requests for a conference. No word from anyone about when to expect an attack, only frightened comm transmissions back and forth between the few households that had access to communications equipment.

Then all the soldiers, without exception, abruptly departed Vekobet.

It was mid-morning, or at least, Kalem thought it was, when he began to hear the sound of ships overhead. “Stay calm, everyone,” he announced. “Perhaps they are coming to negotiate. We will wait to be contacted before we make any assumptions.”

It did little good. People began to cry, those who were sleeping quickly awakening to slap their hands over their ears and cling to their loved ones in terror. Kalem did his best to calm them, but nobody was listening to him, only tilting their faces upward to the floor of the house. A few stumbled over one another to get to the stairs, wanting to see what was going to happen; others held them back, arguing and wailing. All the while, the terrible growling drone from overhead continued to crescendo. A single word permeated Kalem’s consciousness. Soon.He waited for the flotilla overhead to drown out the crying all around him.

But there was no sudden press of fire and devastation, no wild screaming as bombs fell, no intense flashes of heat and light. Instead, there was a discernible shift in the direction from which the flyers seemed to be coming, and everyone else heard it too. The stillness of the air in the basement returned as everyone stopped crying to listen, even the children seeming to know that something had changed.

“They’re heading for the forest,” someone announced fearfully, and Kalem did not waste another moment clambering up the stairs, followed by many others who wished to confirm what they were all thinking: their lives were to be spared, but at a cost that none felt they could afford.

Kalem ventured outside to look up at the sky, and instantly he saw the small formation of attack craft in the sky—headed away from the village, passing it over for another target. There were not nearly enough ships to have taken out the entirety of the Kendra Valley, Kalem realized. And he knew then that he was going to live, but he took no joy in that realization at all.

Many other people were standing in the streets now, looking to where the Cardassian flyers were headed. “Are we saved?” asked a small boy, standing just outside Kalem’s brick home next to his sniffling mother, and the woman held her son close.