“On a matter of this import there must be consensus,” Lale warned. “If you reject this, Falor, you will have no voice in the assembly.”

Keeve shoved away the chair behind him and strode into the middle of the hall. Jas saw his adjutant and the keep’s watchmen react with concern; the minister’s rage was so towering it seemed very possible he might strike Lale. “What assembly?” he roared, casting around. “Do you mean this pathetic rabble of frightened, cowed children? Month after month I have sat here and watched the erosion of Bajor’s government under the slow greed and self-interest of men like you!” He stabbed a finger at Lale, at Kubus, and the First Minister’s most vocal supporters. “What have you done but sell our world piecemeal to these aliens?” He rounded on Kell, but the Cardassian was impassive. “Their so-called enclaves in every city, their soldiers and priests infesting our streets, trampling over our culture, our women?It is Cardassians that are leading the rape of our lands with mining and overfarming to feed their planets, it is the Cardassians that brought the Tzenkethi to our world, and what do you do?” He turned back to Lale. “Will you give them Bajor?” He shook his head, his rage ebbing like the tide. “I…I will not remain here to see my homeworld become nothing more than another annexed colony of the Cardassian Union. Do any of you have the courage to stand with me?”

Keeve’s gaze fell on Jas, and he felt his heart shrink in his chest. His jaw worked, but no words emerged. He broke out in a cold sweat, cursing himself for his weakness once again. His eyes fell to the table, and his hands spread upon it. Ashes and blood,he told himself, so much and yet so little has stained me.

“I thought as much,” Keeve said, after a moment. He looked away and addressed the room with a bleak ferocity.

“You will, all of you, live to regret the choices you make here today.” The politician turned his back on the hall and strode out of the door, never looking back.

There was a long silence before Lale spoke again, his usual tone of neutrality once again in place. “If there are no more comments from the floor, then I move we call for a consensus on the matter of the extended military pact with the Cardassian Union.”

Keeve Falor glanced to his side as Jekko caught up with him, concern plain on the face of his adjutant. “Sir…” began the man, rubbing at his thin beard.

“Where is my family?” Keeve cut in.

“On the ship, sir. The baggage as well. The freighter’s captain told me he’s ready to break orbit the moment you come aboard. He’ll have you at Valo II in a couple of days.”

“Good.” Keeve nodded, striding out of the keep and across the courtyard. “I’ll take the shuttle straight there from the port.”

“Sir,” Jekko began again, “what you just did—”

Keeve halted and looked the other man in the eye. The snarling fury the politician had demonstrated in the hall was gone now, and in its place was a cold, controlled manner. “You think I was wrong to walk away? You think I made a mistake?”

Jekko shook his head. “I haven’t been in your service for a good decade and more because you’re the kind of man who makes mistakes, sir. Frankly, I don’t think Keeve Falor has ever made an ill-considered choice in his entire life.”

Keeve smiled slightly. “I’m flattered, Jekko.”

“But this…You were the only one who had the steel in you to stand up to Lale and Kubus and those spoonheads. Now you just walk away, and you let them have what they want? Where’s the sense in that?” He leaned closer. “I trust you, sir, but you have to explain it to me. How does running make this right?”

Keeve’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve never run from anything,” he said firmly. “But only a fool fights a battle he can’t win.” He jerked his chin at the keep. “You’ve seen how it is in there. Lale has the scared ones scared and the greedy ones bought. Even the men who might stand up for something are so beaten down they can’t straighten their backs anymore.” He shook his head. “No. If I stay here, I’m a threat. If the Cardassians can make this happen, they won’t give pause to removing me or my family or my whole damn clan.”

“The Cardassians?” repeated Jekko. “But it was the Tzenkethi who attacked—”

“Perhaps,” said Keeve, “but the result was in the Union’s favor. As much as I hate to leave my homeworld in the care of cowards, I need distance. Valo II is far enough away to be safe. Out there, I might be able to do something to stem the tide of this insanity. On Bajor, I’m just a target.”

Jekko nodded slowly; he could see the logic of his master’s words. “The fight’s not over yet,” he said firmly. “Whatever Lale decides in there, the Vedek Assembly still has a considerable influence. The clergy could overturn his edict. It’s happened before.”

“Only in matters that affect the spiritual life of Bajor.”

“This doesn’t?” Jekko snorted. “It affects everyone on this planet, if they go to services or not! Kai Meressa won’t let it pass without comment.”

Keeve’s lips thinned. “The Kai…As much as I hate to say it, but I’m afraid she is in no position to oppose Vedek Arin. Her sickness grows worse, and the shock of the attacks has done little to aid her recovery.”

“She’s not with the Prophets yet,” Jekko insisted.

“Where there is life, there is hope.”

“I hope you’re right.” He put a hand on Jekko’s shoulder. “In the meantime, I need you to stay here after I depart. I’m putting you in charge of all the remaining Keeve clan holdings on the planet. I want you to be my eyes and ears…”

Jekko found himself nodding. “All right.”

“This isn’t the end of this, you understand me?” Keeve looked up into the sky and frowned. “This isn’t the end at all. There’s much worse to come.”

“They’re coming!”

Hadlo didn’t recognize the voice of the woman, but the raw panic of the cry was plain. In the corridors of the old cargo lighter, women and children in desert robes, men in penitent’s rags, and clerics in blues and yellows all mixed together in a screaming, frantic mass. The old priest had to use violence to get through their numbers, shoving them aside to make his way forward.

He fell hard as the ship rocked again with another impact, the metallic decking biting into his knees. There was a child’s scream and the wet snap of bone as a young boy broke a limb behind him. Hadlo did not stop to minister to him; there were matters of far greater import to deal with. He went on, adrenaline driving him, making his old muscles tight with pain.

Hellish light spilled in through the grimy portholes in the ceiling of the corridor, beyond them the sight of twisting, writhing hurricanes of yellow-gold energy. They were still inside the sector of space the crewmen called the Badlands, but the constant plasmatic storms had provided poor cover for the Oralians. In the hectic flight from Cardassia, they had not had the luxury of choosing the best men to ferry them. Two ships had been destroyed by the storms in the first day, streams of glowing fire consuming them when they ventured too close. The planetoids Hadlo had been told would serve the Oralians as a hiding place turned out to be barren and airless rocks, warrens of stone that had no functioning life support, no shielding from the constant flood of radiation that bathed everything in the Badlands.

It had been Hadlo’s choice to stay on the ships, in the ragged flotilla of transports that were all they could muster. His choice—just as it had been his choice to leave countless adherents to the faith behind when the ships had been filled. The cleric saw their faces in the people around him, when he closed his eyes, every night in his dreams. He saw them through the portholes, watching as the last ship lifted off, leaving them to the mercy of a military that had named all of them dissidents and terrorists.