Gar leaned forward. “Perhaps she already has.”

“I do not follow you.”

“Perhaps you should,” said the other priest. “We have often spoken of how your worship of Oralius and our devotion to the Prophets are but two sides of the same coin. There are those on Bajor who have come to feel your faith is like an unwanted tenant, that its presence will somehow dilute the veneration of the Celestial Temple.” His gaze passed over Tima, and the implication was clear; as one of the handful of Bajoran Oralians, she embodied that concern. “We both know that is untrue, but how can we convince the people otherwise?”

Bennek’s blood ran cold. “Do you want us to leave Bajor?”

Gar smiled and shook his head again. “No, no, you misunderstand. I do not suggest you leave us, my brother. I suggest you joinus.”

Tima blinked, confused. “Bennek, what does he mean?”

He gasped. “You want the Way to merge with the faith of the Prophets?” The thought of such a thing made the Oralian’s heart tighten in his chest. “Give up our identity?”

“You would not be giving it up,” Gar said mildly. “It would be a confluence, an assimilation. The Way could come under the auspices of the Bajoran church, and your people would be protected by us.” His fingers knitted. “A coming together, Bennek. The Prophets can offer so much to you.”

For an instant, he wavered on the cusp of the proposal, the pressures and the great weight of his responsibilities bearing down on him; the temptation to release it all, to let someone else take up the stewardship of the Way, was strong.

And then he heard Dukat’s words once again, the memory of them hard and cold in his thoughts. All that is important now is your responsibility.Bennek’s hands tightened into claws. Hadlo had died trying to keep the Oralian Way from being destroyed by the faithless, and on that night five years ago, Bennek had followed in his footsteps, selling his honor to keep the Way alive. His mentor had asked for sacrifices, and Bennek had made them. But this? What the vedek was suggesting was no less than to accept the slow death of his faith, that which Bennek had struggled to hold off year after agonizing year.

Tima was staring at him, her eyes wide and shimmering with fear. He gave her a nod, reaching inside himself to find the wellspring of devotion he knew lay there. “No,” he replied, with shaky defiance. “I see that you mean well, my brother, and I thank you for your offer, but the answer is and will always be no. Whatever adversity threatens to engulf us, the children of Oralius must not flinch from it. This is our path.” He took a breath, and found a certainty that he had thought long forgotten. “This is the Way.”

Conflicted emotions crossed Vedek Gar’s face; Bennek thought he saw anger there, along with sadness and regret. Finally, the other priest nodded. “I did not expect you to agree, my friend. I hope that my words instead spurred you to remember how much your faith means to you.” He sipped the tea. “That you elect to forge on despite your hardships, that shows the strength of will needed to stay true to your beliefs.” Gar paused, and when he spoke again the warmth in his voice was absent. “But I must warn you that Cardassia will not suffer your presence, even here on Bajor, without question. Soon you may find yourself faced with a terrible choice.”

“The Detapa Council believe Oralius is dead within the Union,” Bennek replied, “but all they have done is cut her to the core of her most staunch followers, driven her underground. The Way will survive.” He got to his feet, and Tima followed. “And whatever choice I must make, I will do it in the name of my faith.”

21

The skimmer hummed over the scrubland, keeping in the lee of the dry riverbed. The Bajoran man with the shaven head and the hard eyes steered with quick, economical movements on the yoke. Every light inside the vehicle had been doused, and he was using a night visor to find his way. Gwen Jones found her attention kept falling back to him. He wasn’t like Nechayev; Jekko lacked her caustic manner and instead, he had a kind of workmanlike quality to him, a sort of grim determination. He was the first real Bajoran she had ever met, and he wasn’t at all what she expected.

In the backseat, Nechayev had her gear pack open, and she was working at the tricorder inside it. Without looking, the woman reached up and passed Jones a small pistol. Jones took the phaser and weighed it in her hand. It was set on heavy stun, and she pocketed the weapon, hoping she wouldn’t need to use it.

She glanced out of the window at the blur of the landscape flashing past. Bright light from Bajor’s multiple moons gave her clear sight for some distance. In the blue-white illumination the scrubland looked sterile and unwelcoming.

“A decade ago this was all farms,” Jekko answered her unspoken question. “Katterpods mostly, and a few kavaorchards.”

“What happened?”

“The Cardassians,” he said, as if that were enough explanation on its own. He talked without looking away from the job of steering. “Bought up a lot of the land through trade blinds, mostly through the Kubus clan. Got it cheap too, no surprise when it was their fault the place was drying up. See the enclave? The spoonheads sank wells there and drew off the water table, made all the farms in the surroundings fail. Folks out here were happy to take the money and go. Didn’t like living next to offworlders anyway.”

“Didn’t someone complain?”

“Probably. And those that did got paid like the rest, or else they’re still out here somewhere, buried in the dirt.”

“That’s horrible,” Jones grimaced.

Jekko drew back the throttle, slowing them to a halt. He shot her a look. “Horrible?” He smiled grimly. “Let me take a guess. This sort of thing is all a bit new to you, isn’t it?”

She colored. “It is, yes. I’m not really a field agent, I’m just an analyst—”

“She’s here to make sure I don’t get caught out by eating with the wrong fork,” Nechayev broke in as the skimmer settled to the ground. “So. What now?”

Jekko retracted the canopy, letting the warm night rush in. “We walk from here.”

The Bajoran pulled a camouflage net from a compartment in the skimmer and concealed the craft in a tumbledown barn. Jones saw evidence of building foundations all around, the overgrown remnants of a dirt track; the place was likely the site of one of the farms Jekko had mentioned. She turned around and saw the enclave in the near distance, a walled settlement capped with the glassy mushrooms of habitat domes. She could just about make out the red glow of sensor pods around the walls. “How are we going to get in there?”

Nechayev beckoned her to follow the Bajoran into a dusty cutting and there, beneath tinder-dry bushes, was the oval mouth of a tunnel. “Drainage conduits from the old farm complexes,” he explained, levering off a metal grille. “Cardassians just built onto them, used the existing infrastructure. If you know where to look, there’s a couple of places inside the walls where the new building marries up with the old. We can get in that way.”

“You’re sure?” Jones asked.

He nodded. “Some data was slipped my way, from a contact in the Korto City Watch. The chief inspector and I go way back.”

“Can you trust him?” Nechayev asked.

Jekko shot her a hard look. “More than I trust you.”

“But you haven’t actually been inside the enclave?”

“No. They haven’t been open to Bajorans, not for a long time, not for anyone without an armed escort from the Union military. For security.” He added the last words with hard sarcasm.

“They’ll have sensors covering any entry points,” Nechayev snapped. “The Cardassians aren’t stupid.”