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CHAPTER
        1

MAJOR KIRA NERYS stood rigid, forcing her body not
to tremble in suppressed anger and humiliation. It
was all the Bajoran freedom fighter could do not to
leap across the brief gap and throttle the black-clad,
black-helmeted alien "dean" who now commanded
Deep Space Nine... or EmissaryW Sanctuary, as
Kai Winn had renamed it--the same Kai Winn who
had just surrendered the station to the "Liberated,"
as the invaders had called themselves.
    The Liberated said little but the necessary. But
that was a welcome change from the more loath-
some, loquatious representatives of the Dominion,
the Vorta--and from the harsh Jem'Hadar, who
would already have slapped a restraining field on
Kira, the Kai, and the other Bajorans. These un-
knowns were gentle, at least, now that they'd won
the station. Have to change the name to Hot Potato,
thought Kira with a curled lip, the way we're passing
it around from hand to hand. Living among humans
had taught her many old Earth expressions.
    "Courage, child," said the Kai in a monumentally
condescending attempt at raising Kira's spirits.
"The Prophets send tribulations to test us."
    "Did you say that during the Occupation, too?"
The words were out before Kira could swallow them,
but she was secretly glad she'd said it: too many
people, herself included, tiptoed around the blind,
stubborn Kai Winn as if she were a glacier, unturn-
able and irresistible.
    "Yes, child, I did." Winn turned to stare at Kira's
face, bringing a flush of self-consciousness to the
major's cheek. Kira kept her eyes on the invader
dean, who was quietly ordering his troops into
quite an effective occupation of all three Prome-
nade levels. "And at last, we passed that test," said
the Kai.
    Kira clenched her teeth so hard, she felt one of
them crack. There was nothing she could do but
obey the dean's last order to stand still and not
move: Kai Winn, Kira's commanding officer and
governor of the station, had surrendered to the
Liberated, and the Bajoran frigates had backed far
enough away not to be a factor. Not that they couM
have done anything but die gallantly, she thought,
tasting another lump of bile; we were outgunned, out
fought, and out thought. Already, the ghosts of three
hundred Bajoran souls haunted Kira Neryswthe
number lost in the first naval wave sent by Bajor to
reinforce the Emissary~ Sanctuary and its governor,
the Kai.
    Kira snuck a glance to her right. The Kai wore a
sweet smile, the vapid mask of "serenity" that Kira
had learned hid a capable and determined middle-
aged woman, a true leader of her beleaguered people.
Kira fought the illusion that Kai Winn projected.
The major struggled to remember that Winn could
be as bloodthirsty and dangerous as any Resistance
fighter, no matter how much or little she might have
done during the Resistance. We fought in different
ways, Kira caught herself thinking; now my way is
futile... couM the Kai Winn route still be viable?
    The futility of fighting had been demonstrated to
Kira a few scant minutes after she and the Kai met
the alien dean on the Promenade three hours ago.
Then, Kira had been her angry self, coldly confront-
ing the dean and demanding, demanding... what?
Everything: that the prisoners be treated gently, that
the station integrity be respected, that the Liberated
apologize, beg forgiveness, and get off Deep Space
Nine/But Kai Winn passed on an opportunity to
back up her executive officer, offering only that the
name of the station was Emissary~ Sanctuary now.
    Furious, Kira turned on her Kai. "That's it?
That's all you can say?"
    Winn smiled gently through the tirade, irritating
Kira even further. "Child, the Way of the Prophets is
not the child's blind resistance to authority. I'm sure
our new masters will be kind to the Bajorans, who
freely offer to share the Orb, the far-seeing anom-
aly." Kai Winn turned to the dean. "Won't you?"
    "Bajorans will not be harmed," said the universal-
translator implant in Kira's head, the clicking and
buzzing of the alien's actual speech an annoying
background noise.
    "And what about those who aren't Bajorans?"
asked Kira, beginning to tremble as she held back a
wall of rage. "Jake Sisko, and Nog, and--and Gar-
ak." Did I really just say that, fretting for the safety of
that butcher? "And what about our freedom? Is that
just another casualty of war?"
    She was shouting at the dean, but her fury was
directed more at Kai Winn for her betrayal. Drop-
ping her hands to her side, Kira's thumb brushed the
combat knife she still carried. She had of course
surrendered her phaser rifle and hand phaser, but
she had conveniently forgotten about the largely
ceremonial "kolba~ tooth" commando knife, which
she had worn all through the Resistance. Then,
though used only once to kill, it had come in handy a
thousand times to open a food pack or cut a fishing
line.
    Without thinking, her hand curled around the
wooden haft. She slid it from the sheathe, silent as
the grave, and concealed it up behind her forearm.
Kira glanced at the Kai... but she could never turn
her wrath on one annointed by the Prophets, no
matter what the betrayal. Kai Winn will never get a
knife in the back from me, whatever the provocation.
     At that moment the alien dean turned his back to
 order a complete search of all buildings on the
 Promenade. Kira had a single chance and took it.
 She leapt the short distance, thrusting directly for-
 ward with the blade in a brutal and efficient lunge.
     Evidently the Liberated boasted significantly
 quicker reaction time than Bajorans. The dean bare-
 ly glanced back over his shoulder as he hooked his
 foot up and slightly deflected Kira's lunge, which
 missed wide. Giving her a gentle push in the direc-
 tion she was already moving, he flung Kira to the
 ground with disturbing ease. Then he picked up his
 conversation where he'd left off. Meanwhile, three
 other aliens dogpiled on Kira's back, wrenching the
 knife from her grasp and nearly breaking her wrist in
 the bargain.
    The black-clad invaders were anonymous, their
heads in tight-fitting, opaque helmets, or so Kira
originally thought. Close up, she saw there were no
helmets. Their faces were featureless cyphers, and
she felt her stomach turn despite long exposure to
disgusting aliens. Sensory organs buried inside, she
realized; built to withstand terrible punishment. Feel-
ing the hardness of the bodies pinning her, she
understood with revulsion that they wore no armor,
as she first imagined: their outer skin was an insect-
like carapace covered only with a layer of metallic
clothing. They needed no suits or helmets, not even
to cross the abyss of space between their ships and
the station, nothing but what looked like some kind
of foil, to protect them against the background
cosmic radiation. Perfect killing machines.
    And they let her up. Her captors helped Kira to
her feet and didn't even bother binding her hands.
They even gave her back her knife. Burning with
humiliation, Kira shuffled back to stand alongside
her Kai... who throughout her attempt had never
stopped negotiating diplomatically with the dean.
I'm not the slightest threat to them, Major Kira
realized. I'm a chiM with a toy sword.
    Hours later she still felt the dull ache of useless-
ness, the same claustrophobic feeling of horror that
had driven her to join the Resistance at such a young
age. Today, however, there was no outlet. Kira's
shoulders slumped, and she could barely work up
the energy for verbal defiance.
    One certainty echoed through her head: despite
the Kai's seeming surrender, she knew that Winn
had no intention of giving up either control of the
station or hegemony in Bajor, that she would never
voluntarily turn over so much power.
    Kai Winn must have a plan, some plan, some
amazing, unexpected plan that would cast out the
tide and reclaim the dry land! If Major Kira could
only control her temper and work with Kai Winn,
together they still had a chance--many chances--to
unspill the water jug.
    �.. Or at least, any other thought was intolerable
to the major. Bajorans, and most especially Kira
Nerys, could not live without hope. And the most
burning desire in Kira's stomach, she admitted to
herself shamefully, was to live through the ordeal--
to survive.

    Light-years away, on a strange and different world,
Security Chief Odo sat rigidly on an overturned
barrel, puzzling over the sheaf of documents Tivva-
ma, daughter of hereditary Mayor Asta-ha, had just
shoved into his hands.
    Odo pored over the pages she had scrawled on in
her childish hand. At first, he humored her: he began
a suitable period of study, to be followed by a pat on
the head and some encouraging words.
     But as he read section after section, Odo became
 so enthralled he forgot even to simulate breath.
 What Tivva-ma had pushed into his indulgent hands
 was less a manifesto, as she had claimed, than a fully
 developed constitution for a complex trade republic;
 it included a declaration of rights and duties that
 balanced so nicely, Odo thought the United Federa-
 tion of Planets might want to take a look.
  "Tivva-ma, where did you say you got this?"
     The girl put her hands over her eyes, shyly refus-
 ing to answer.
    "Did your mother work it out?" She grunted,
meaning No. "Owena-da? One of the away--one of
us officers?"
    "Uh-uh." Abruptly, the waif threw her arms wide,
exposing a huge grin set against her pale blue hair
and alabaster skin. "I did!"
    Odo slowly lowered the pages into his lap, re-
straining the pulse of excitement that whirled round
his mind, which was his whole body. Easy, easy.
Maybe she didn't understand the question. Maybe
she g lying or mistaken. Choosing his most imperi-
ous schoolmaster tone, he began to question Tivva-
ma about specifics and particulars. But at every
query, he was satisfied: the tot knew the proposal
backward and forward, at least. And in her squeaky,
little-girl voice, she defended the provisions from all
attack, whether the tricameral judicial legislature,
the ceremonial and functional presidents, the selec-
tion and evaluation criteria for government officials,
or the minimalist nature of state authority. After a
quarter hour of discussion Odo was reeling from her
observations, calling into question as they did every-
thing he had ever believed anent the value of law in
guiding good behavior.
    Odo rose, holding the pages carefully. He wanted
to scan them into a computer and compare them to
the constitutions of thousands of societies in the
Federation memory banks... but a more impor-
tant task loomed. "Child, what you have created is
brilliant. You are a shining star. But we cannot set up
a government until we have a society at least--a
community!"
    Tivva-ma gasped; her eyes showed she had been
stunned by Odo's critique. "ThaFs what I forgot! I
knew I forgot something, but I couldn't remember
what it was." The girl turned and sped like a
lightning discharge back toward the temporary
camp. She paused, just before the scattered trees
that hid the shelters. "I'11 be right back! Wait .... "
Then she grinned sheepishly. "Actually, it might
take a couple a days." She dashed away; if Odo had
blinked, he would have missed her exit.
    Suddenly freed from the darkness of techno-
utopia, the Natives, as Commander Dax called
them, had lit up as though suddenly electrified. They
had been living their lives unchallenged, with noth-
ing to tax the brain beyond a few peripatetic raids of
one village by another, and the simple act of destroy-
ing the hemisphere's power grid had energized them
like the spark of life. The socially infantile Natives
flickered suddenly at the threshhold of intellectual
puberty.
     How far will they go? wondered the constable,
 looking nervously back over his shoulder at the away
team's own camp. How soon will the Tiffnaki surpass
us?And what will they do then, when we're no longer
useful to the them? He snorted, taking refuge in
sensible cynicism. They were still the same Natives:
Mayor-General Asta-ha had once again changed the
name of her villagers, the third time in the ten days
since Captain Sisko, Odo, and the rest of the away
team had blown the power generators: from Tiffnaki
to Tivvnaffi to Vanaffi, and now to Vanimastavvi. So
what if their IQs were already cruising past 200
on their way up? Their personalities had hardly
changed--and that was a better measure of who one
was than raw brain power. Or so the constable and
the rest of the away team had told themselves at
every opportunity.
    He heard a terrible, hacking cough from Chief
O'Brien. Odo felt a twinge of guilt that he alone of
all the team members didn't experience the asthmat-
ic agony produced by microscopic, poisonous algae
in the atmosphere. Captain Sisko had concocted a
slapdash antitoxin from his own emergency Medi-
Kit, but it couldn't compensate for the algae any-
where near as well as Dr. Bashir's original had. We
must return to the Defiant, thought Odo. But the
Defiant had disappeared from orbit and was not
communicating.
    The constable heard a wild patter and someone
screaming semicoherently. He leapt to his feet, al-
ready annoyed even before he recognized the owner
of the bare feet pounding in the latinurn-laced mud
toward the constable. But he was struck dumb at the
sight of mad Quark, naked save for a large, palm-like
frond wrapped around his midsection, dashing like a
frog monster toward Odo's "courthouse stump."
The Ferengi's eyes were wide and wild, his skin a
livid pink-tinged orange under the ruddy sun.
    "Do something--do something! You--you--just
do something, by the Final Accountant! Or I'll..."
The Ferengi heaved and panted, gripping his frond,
simultaneously enraged and humiliated.
    "Oh dear, Quark. Mind snapped at last?" Odo tsk-
tsked and turned back to Tivva-ma's astonishing
constitution.
    "I've been robbed! By force!" Quark mumbled
something under his breath.
    "What was that last part?" asked Odo, half-sure
he knew what the Ferengi had said but wanting the
pleasure of hearing it aloud.
    Quark closed his eyes, took a deep breath, facing
up to the latest outrage against his Ferengi sensibili-
ties. "I said, I've been robbed by force--of fraud."
    "Force of fraud? Is that what you call it?" Odo
smirked, a talent he had perfected through long
years of dealing with the Ferengi bartender. "In
other words, your little Native friends, whom you've
been swindling out of everything they owned before
you came here--oh, I have notes!--and I'm going to
file quite an interesting report when we get back to
the station... your friends have now turned the
tables on you, Quark, and beaten you out of every
slip and strip. And from the look of things," Odo
stretched his finger out to poke nastily at Quark's
bare chest, "you've been kind enough to let them
have the shirt off your back. How generous of you!"
Quark paced up and down nervously, waving his
arms in agitation; the mauve-colored palm frond
slipped and almost fell. "You raise them, you try to
help them, teach them everything you know--"
    "And they turn around and out-Ferengi the Fer-
engi. So you, too, are discovering the full mental
abilities of our Native friends, eh, Quark? Now that
we've kicked away the crutch of new tech." Odo
threw the sheaf of papers down on the barrelhead.
"Forget your petty losses for a moment. You see this
formative document? It puts to shame the constitu-
tions of every planet in the Federation and, not
incidentally, all my own research on the ideal gov-
ernment. And it was drafted this afternoon by an
eight-year-old child."
    The constable shook his head, speaking more to
himself than his audience. "With all the changes
around here, the Natives decided to put together
a workable society to deal with the Cardassian/
Drek'la invasion and the sudden loss of their mag-
ical technology. I helped them a little with some
sociological information and some organizing docu-
ments... and I get back this."
    Constable and Ferengi sighed in unexpected har-
mony, to Odo's chagrin. Quark sat gingerly, holding
the frond carefully to prevent undue financial expo-
sure. "I wonder how Commander Worf is doing?"
    After a beat, the Ferengi grinned wickedly. Only
the iron will of Constable Odo prevented him from
doing the same. The image of Commander Worf
trying to "instruct" a class full of inquisitive, so-
cially inept military geniuses raised his spirits ten-
fold.
    Elsewhere on the planet, the Cardassian prisoner,
Gul Ragat, walked in front of Julian Bashir like a
man already dead whose legs had not yet gotten the
message. Jadzia Dax followed somewhere far behind
and to the side, so that she and Julian would not
drift close enough to make a single target. I wish we
could talk, thought the doctor. But speech would
have informed the prisoner that they were Federa-
tion, and Dax wanted to hold that information in
reserve.
    The Gul had recovered somewhat. The doctor
quietly scanned him while he rested and determined
that Ragat had no serious injuries--minor burns
and abrasions, smoke inhalation, bruises, and other
blunt-force trauma, but nothing life-threatening.
The diagnosis was a relief. Had Gul Ragat required
medical treatment, not all the wild splitheads on
Sierra-Bravo 112-II could have stopped Bashir from
doing his medical duty, and their cover as "Natives"
would have been blown; Ragat would then realize
that Starfleet officers had infiltrated the Cardas-
siardDrek'la occupation.
    So what would that mean? wondered Julian;
what's he going to do, publish it in a news clip? Still,
the lovely Jadzia (who had insisted upon command
prerogative) had gone to great lengths to guard that
secret. The Cardassians and their Drek'la crew evi-
dently believed that the Deftant had crashed and
burned in the ocean--when in fact it lay submerged
in shallow water, intact, under the command of
Ensign Joson Wabak and a couple other junior
officers, waiting to lift off when the Cardassians and
Drek'la were cleansed from orbit. So long as no
 soldiers of the Empire knew that the Defiant still
 lived, they wouldn't waste time searching for her.
    So maybe Jadzia is right after all, Bashir tenta-
tively concluded. Still it was a pain: they couldn't
talk for fear the Gul's "universal translator," or
whatever the Cardassians called their version, would
warn Ragat that Julian and Dax were speaking a
Federation, not Native, language. They couldn't
show their faces--or even let Ragat look back at
them for fear his sharp, Cardassian eyes would
penetrate the disguise.
    But nothing stopped the Gul himself from talking,
which he did without concern for their stony silence.
"They couldn't take my title. The house was far too
old for that. But they took everything else. Stripped
of all rating. No command, no authority, no face. Do
you know what it's like to enter a room and hear
only silence? I knew Legate Migar and Gul Dukat
personally. I was on the list--on the list, I say. I was
to be legate, legate! Until... she came and dashed
the cup from my lips. She spilled it on the ground--
my honor, my promotion, even my governorship. I
was a governor, that's what I tell you. But there were
those, those--don't think I didn't know who they
were! Neemak, now he was the one to watch. He was
the one who waited, any slip, a weakness. And she
gave it to him in a silver chalice. She, she, she. Don't
mind me--I'm an old man now, I run on. You know
what it's like? It's entering a room and hearing all
conversation cease, the music, dead silence. Do you
know?"
    Julian Bashir continued to walk silently behind as
they headed toward the hidden skimmer; there was
only one left now, the other having long since run
out of fuel and been abandoned. The ex-Gul rattled
on, an old man with a new, fresh ear for the first time
probably in decades. He told them more than they
wanted to know about his pain and suffering, his
banishment. He never mentioned the name of the
woman who had done him wrong (a failed love
affair?) save that she was his sister, or perhaps a
friend close enough to be called Sister.
    Jadzia didn't so much as glance at the prisoner.
The doctor felt pangs of guilt. Ragat had made some
sort of terrible mistake long ago, something involv-
ing a woman, and had been stripped of all his
positions and power. No wonder he had fled the
Empire and tried to stake out a life far across the
quadrant. To a Cardassian, losing face was infinitely
worse than losing one's life.
    But Bashir and Dax's own problems were more
pressing than understanding the enemy: they had to
find Captain Sisko and link up. He didn't know that
the Defiant was still on (actually under) the surface,
or that they were waiting for his signal via old-
fashioned radio waves, which neither the Cardassi-
ans nor the vicious, automatic planetary defenses
were likely to monitor. Dax, Bashir, and the junior
officers back on the ship needed to know what the
captain intended, fight or flee; either an attack on the
Cardassians and their Drek'la allies or abandon-
ment of the mission would have to be coordinated
between Sisko, Dax, and Wabak back on the Defiant.
    The day was hot and steamy, the ground broken,
the sun reflected from brittle crystals in the latinum-
laced soil. Gul Ragat fell to his knees without
warning, palms loudly slapping the baked mud. The
old man had had it for now. But they were near
enough the hidden skimmer that they could stop for
the night, and mount up and ride in the morning. If
we're chummy enough, thought the doctor, I suppose
it can carry the three of us.
    Commander Dax caught Julian's eye; she gestured
at the ground, then formed a triangle with index
fingers and thumbs. The doctor was puzzled for a
moment, before he connected the gesture with the
stylized image of a tent: they didn't have one, but the
idea was clear: camp here for the night.
    Julian sat down, surprised at how tired he felt. It
took even more energy to remain lithe and graceful
(as a genetic freak should, he added to himself) than
merely to march in the bright, red sun. Jadzia, with
no reputation to protect, had the easy job.
    Gul Ragat continued to talk. He spoke of the
invasion of Sierra-Bravo, speaking with repugnance
of the "aborigines," how primitive and savage they
were, how disgusting, what a perversion of men. His
bigotry was bright but blunted by impotence: there
was nothing Gul Ragat would ever be able to do
about the Natives again, and he knew it. He could
curse them freely now, for he was himself free of
responsibility: having surrendered to the two of
them, he could at last also surrender to his bottled-
up rage, humiliation, and prejudice.
    After several early attempts by Ragat to turn and
look at his captors, the Gul had got the message; he
kept his back to the Starfleet officers as he lay on his
side, breathing too deeply. Worried, Julian again
scanned Ragat from behind. I'm not sure, he
thought, but I think some internal bleeding may have
started up. Julian decided that during the night,
while Gul Ragat slept, his ghoulish doctor, like a
reverse vampire, would slip some life into the old
fellow.
    The ragged breathing provoked an empathy in
Julian Bashir that burned beyond the Hippocratic
oath. He gently laid a hand on the Gul's shoulder
from behind, squeezing gently.
    Ragat cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said.
"Good night, doctor."
    Alarmed, Julian stared at Dax; but the Trill
frowned and shook her head. Probably just an hono-
rific, Julian nodded, then lay back to look at the
stars.
    Just before drifting into a troubled sleep, Gul
Ragat raised his voice again to a throaty whisper,
which was all he could still manage. "And good
night to you too... Commander Dax."
    Julian grinned, unwilling to look the startled and
probably stunned Jadzia Dax in the face. All that
care, the silence, the face masks/And all along, the
damned Cardassian had known exactly who his
captors were.
    With a quiet chuckle, Julian, too, drifted into the
shadowlands, too exhausted even to consider eating.


CHAPTER
        2

COMMANDER WORF had his hands full of mayor: he
was holding the "mayor-general," Asta-ha, the
mother of Tivva-ma, in a pressure hold from which
she struggled desperately to escape.
    The Klingon was surprised by the female's in-
genuity: she independently invented several hold-
breaking maneuvers that Worf had not even taught
yet. A brilliant pupil! Unfortunately, her lithe but
weak body was not up to the level of her tactical
brain. Finally, Worf allowed his hold to be broken by
Asta-ha's third attempt: creativity in combat must
always be encouraged in a student.
    "You have progressed adequately," he praised;
"but the weakness of your body holds you back. You
must reapply yourself to a vigorous calisthenics
program until your muscles respond."
 Owena-da, a constant irritant, stepped forward.
Worf prepared to bellow the man into silence; but
unexpectedly, the Native "tech-master" came to
attention and saluted... a first for Owena-da. "Sir,
request permission to speak freely."
    "Request denied. You will use all proper forms of
address as you speak." Owena-da already took too
many liberties, and Worf was not about to give him
more.
    "Aye, aye, sir. Sir, this recruit recommends a
change in the PT program."
    "Oh. You do? I am sure the Klingon Military
Command Council will be eager to hear your sugges-
tions."
    "Thank you, sir! This recruit has prepared an
anatomical kinesthetic analysis of the physical-
training regime, sir. Including suggestions for in-
creasing the efficiency and speed of bodily responses
through nondestructive hormone therapy." From
nowhere, Owena-da pulled a sheaf of paper, which
the villagers had lately invented. From where Worf
stood, he could see that it was covered with a dense
thicket of crabbed writing in the language used by
Starfleet--a language the Natives had learned in five
days.
    The Klingon sighed, accepting the pages and
handwaving Owena-da back into the ranks. Worf did
not look at the paper... not yet. "On your faces,"
he said quietly, but with absolute authority.
    The Natives dropped quickly to the standard
push-up position. "Down, up," began Worf; "down,
up, down, up, down, up ... halfway down." Worf
held them halfway through a single push-up, waiting
until he heard groans and saw them beginning to
collapse before resuming the count.
    An hour later, safely ensconced in his makeshift
bivouac tent, the Klingon read through Owena-da's
analysis with mounting irritation and frustration.
He keenly felt the slap to his authority--a raw
recruit, telling Worf of House Mogh how to teach
physical training! It was a deadly insult to his
military bearing, his honor, and his house. And the
most humiliating factor was that Worf would have to
implement Owena-da's training recommendations
immediately, because they were brilliant and in-
sightful and training time was horribly short.
    Worf brooded for too long after finishing the
paper. Honor dictated that he would even have to
submit the paper to the Federation journal for
immediate adoption throughout Starfleet and the
civilian milieu.
    And Worf's honorable role in defending Sierra-
Bravo against the Cardassian/Drek'la invasion
would forever be subsumed under the Natives' mi-
raculous tactical and training innovations. For gene-
rations, their genius had been blocked by instant
access to all the "new tech" their hearts desired.
Now, under the stress of having to fend for their own
lives, the native intellectual capacity was bursting
forth like the human war goddess Athena erupting
from the head of Zeus in Worffs favorite human
myth, taught him by his foster father.
    And who would draw the lesson for the Federation
itself?. "And who was it who warned of this danger?"
he asked aloud; the wind supplied no answer. No-
body would remember. Worf's honor had been
snatched by Klingon thieves, won back at enormous
cost... and now was about to be buried under the
casual brilliance of a race of supergenius dilettantes.
    The situation was intolerable. But Worf was a
Klingon, and had a duty to perform, so the intolera-
ble would be tolerated. He rose; the squadron would
have set up their spring traps by now, ready to be
tested. The Klingon grimaced as he ducked through
the tent flap, dreading the marvelous innovations in
booby trapping he was about to see.

    Major Kira lay on the deck on Level Four, held
prone by a heavy foot planted on her cervical
vertibrae. She made no attempt to struggle; she
already knew it would be useless. Of course, the
whole damned thing is useless, isn't it? Through
overlong familiarity, the thought barely bothered
her anymore.
    She listened at the corner of her ear to the dean:
"You are not worthy of trust. You must be re-
strained. You will wear the collar of slaves."
    The Kai's voice sounded offstage, faintly chastis-
ing without provoking. "As you were restrained by
the Dominion?"
 A long silence. "Yes, as we were."
    "I see." Kai Winn's tone would have chilled a
winter river.
    Kira, however, could hardly imagine caring less
than she did at that moment. The station was lost.
The brave Bajorans had accepted surrender. Even
the vaunted Federation was stymied... there had
been no further reaction to the seizure of Deep Space
Nine. She was yanked to her feet and held immobile,
while a binding plastic collar was locked onto her
throat.
    Bitterness tasted sweet on her tongue. Kira stood
when they released her, not even glancing at the
piece of catwalk railing she had battered over the
dean's head, striking from ambush with every New-
ton of force she could gather. The power of the blow
had knocked him to his knobby knees, but that was
the only effect; when he stood up, he was unhurt.
    "You must receive a demonstration of the power
of the collar of slaves," recited the dean, his curi-
ously uninflected voice nevertheless conveying a
subterranean river of emotion. He made no overt
signal, but the collar tightened, cutting off Kira's
windpipe.
    They had caught her after an exhalation. Within
seconds, her lungs screamed for air. But she stood
absolutely still, eyes closed, not letting herself gasp
or double over and keeping her hands at her side.
The collar tightened further, and Kira felt con-
sciousness ebb. Cutting off blood to my brain, she
thought dully.
    She felt a sharp pressure against her cheek, but it
didn't seem important; the blackness welcomed her.
Then her head ached, suddenly washed with agony.
She was drowning in a lake, coughing up bitter-
tasting water onto what must have been the sea-
shore. But the beach felt too hard, too cold.
    She lay on the deck of maintenance tube 19, Level
Four, while a pair of insectoid invaders sprayed
bitter-tasting water on her face. "You now see the
authority of the collar for slaves," buzzed the dean.
"You must obey the rules for prisoners or the collar
will be used to execute you. There is a limbic
integrator. It senses violent impulses and acts auto-
matically."
    The offstage voice again, surely the Kai's. She was
speaking to someone, one of her special team. "How
are you coming with the project I set for you, finding
the Orb?"
    "We are nearly done, my Kai," said a man whom
Kira vaguely recognized from Ops duty during the
initial battle.
  "You will finish in time?"
  "We will."
    'Ms I instructed, you will tell me when you find
where the rebels hid the Orb, and I will send Kira to
fetch it." It seemed odd for the Kai to emphasize the
first three words, but Kira had other needs.
    Dimly, she sought the anxious figure of Kai Winn.
How curiously motherlike she looks! "Was I--uncon-
scious?" croaked Major Kira.
    "Yes, child. I think the collar cut off the flow of
blood through the artery." The Kai leaned close,
speaking for Kira's ears only--though Kira pre-
sumed that the insectoids heard every word, either
using audio-amps or because they had exceptionally
keen hearing. "There is a time when we who walk
with the Prophets must learn that humility is an
important virtue. Trust me, child. I surely know
what I'm speaking about. It seems the end of the
world, but really, it's not: what you can tolerate, you
can endure."
    The major's lips flickered for a momentary smile.
The words fi'om the psalm: tolerate and endure. "I
will struggle no longer," said Kira Nerys. "You will
watch me become a model slave." She allowed
herself to be led in purest docility back to the access
corridor.
    A model slave... and astonished, Kira realized
that she meant it. The insects had taken over the
station, and there was nothing that anyone could do
about it. Not yet, she appended dully. Struggle was
futile; she proved it to herself alone in her cabin,
deliberately working herself into a fury, only to feel
the collar tighten by itself as it had on the dean's
command.
    "I'm just trying to lull them into a false security,"
she told herself; but it was hard to believe it. Many
times over the next days, she "woke" to realize she
had been serving the dean and the other invaders for
several hours without noting a single, militarily
useful weakness, nothing to use against the enemy.
Do I slip so easily into a slave's role? she wondered,
lying awake in terror half through the night.
    She caught the Kai watching her through lazily
lidded eyes, a knowing smile on Winn's lips. Kira
felt the seduction of acceptance, and the thrill it
produced set her body to shivering. How deep into
this "cover" can I go and still escape?
    "What will you do during this Resistance, child?"
asked Kai Winn unexpectedly the next afternoon.
    "Resist," said Kira, hearing the echo of a previous
conversation. But she meant she would resist temp-
tation to succumb to her fate. Prophets, she prayed,
it's so damned easy to make a big show and resist,
defiant, like a teenage girl in Shakar~ cell during the
Occupation. She bent, lowering her head as the dean
approached; she waited for him to issue orders...
they were never difficult or humiliating, which made
it worse. But it's a hell of a lot harder to resist with
bowed head and a soft voice. Help met Don't let me
lose my temper or lose myselfl. If the Prophets
answered, Kira couldn't hear Their words.
    Kira's duties were to run messages to the Kai and
other Bajorans, demonstrate the use of station con-
trols (the dean never asked Major Kira about weap-
onry), reprogram the replicators, and bring the
ceremonial first and last meals to the dean (though
he served himself, for which Kira thanked the
Prophets). She was to finish each task and return to
the dean, unless he contacted her over the com-
system to give further orders. But Kira perfected the
art of dawdling, which she'd never mastered before,
taking as long to complete each project as she could
reasonably pretend to need. She walked slowly, in a
stately manner, killing even more time: every ten
minutes slain was one fewer task before she could
crawl into her rack.
    Kira Nerys shrank and shrank, until at last she
found her irreducible core. Her spirits contracted
into a sharp ice-blade that pricked her breast and
irritated her stomach. After the rest of her pride,
efficiency, courage, recklessness, and bravado had
boiled away, Major Kira found at last the pure will
that would finally drive away the new invaders. And
she found a new respect for Kai Winn, whose own
will must have been mighty indeed to sustain her
through so many years of silent, hidden resistance--
with a bowed head and a soft voice.
 Kira's eyes began to open. She began to see every
crack and weakness, every overlooked line of attack
in the invaders' profile. Their sleep was too sound,
almost comatose. When eating, they neither talked
nor looked around. They needed special suits out-
side the hull to withstand cosmic background radia-
tion. The "insects" were too individualistic, tending
to go wildsiding through the station, and the dean
could hardly reel them in at times. They were
nevertheless terrified to be alone and always roamed
at least by threes.
    Kira easily accepted that they had been Dominion
slaves, probably as completely dominated as the
Jem'Hadar. But they had been used for other pur-
poses, and Kira probed to discover what exactly
they'd done for the Founders (while she bowed and
answered, "Yes, most gracious dean; instantly, great
one"). The Founders, Kira knew from personal
experience and conversations with her friend Odo,
liked specialization. They used the Jem'Hadar for
war and the Vorta for diplomacy; what could the
Liberated do for shapeshifters?
    One curious incident puzzled Kira, and she fret-
ted endlessly about what it could mean. It occurred
early in the occupation of--of Emissary's Sanctu-
ary, two days after the dean and his crew seized
control.
    At first, Kira made a point not even to mention
Keiko, Jake, and the other children and civilians in
the eight bombardment shelters around the main
Promenade level. She still hoped, absurdly, that the
occupation would be brief, and Keiko and the kids
could come out after a few days. Keiko played her
part well: she laid low, as she would have said,
neither communicating nor trying to leave, doing
nothing to reveal her presence.
    But after several hours, the dean stopped and
"stared" at Kira. In fact, she had to infer the stare,
since his face was a featureless mask. "There are
beings not accounted for in the inventory," he said,
his actual voice behind the universal translator
sounding so disturbingly like the shellclickers of
Bajor that Kira shuddered.
    "I don't know what you mean." She was still in
her sullen phase then, and in no mood to cooperate.
    "Our scans reveal there are 237 beings in this
enclosed environment who are not listed on the
prisoner manifest you gave us. You must find them
and return them to their places."
    Kira said nothing. She was well aware that the
aliens would swiftly locate the other "prisoners,"
but that didn't mean she had to help. But Kai Winn
answered in Kira's place. "My friends, the rest of the
personnel are in the shelters on this level." The Kai
gestured around her; she was standing directly in
front of the Klingon restaurant, which was across the
circular hallway from one of those very shelters.
Winn turned and pointed at it. "There are eight of
these structures. The rest of the... the residents
here are secured inside."
    Kira had a momentary urge to leap the distance
and break Kai Winn's nose. But she pressed her lips
together and said nothing, contenting herself with a
look that should have frozen the marrow in the old
woman's bones.
  "They are secured?" repeated the dean.
  "Yes, my most gracious host. They are safe."
    The dean turned away. Kira heard no words, but
an alien moved to stand in front of Bombardment
Shelter Six as if guarding it from attack. Looking
along the Promenade in both directions, the major
saw that guards were taking up positions in front of
alternate shelters. But since they made no effort to
enter, Kira slowly forgot about it. Keiko seemed
safe--for the moment.
    Several more times, Kai Winn asked one lieuten-
ant or another as the occupation progressed about
the "special project," which evidently was to find
the Orb. How odd, thought the major; how could she
possibly not know where itg hidden? It was incon-
ceivable that the Kai would not be able to put her
finger-ends on the Orb at a moment's notice. But
seemingly, those she sent to hide it had succeeded
beyond anyone's wildest imagination. Buying time?
Does she still hope for rescue from the Federation?
    Two days passed, and Kira began to worry, howev-
er. The last time she had talked with the botanist,
Keiko had promised to stay secured for two or three
days. But how long could she wait? Clearly, the
aliens were not leaving anytime soon.
    They continued their sentrylike marching up and
down the Promenade, looking like military beetles
on parade. Every time Kira shuffled through the
Promenade, she felt a little more nervous about
what would happen when somebody, Keiko or one
of the other civilians in a shelter, decided to go stir-
crazy and break out.
    She didn't have long to wait. The first casualty of
claustrophobia was not Keiko; it was Jounda Mar,
an archeologist from the Riis Valley on Bajor. At
last, Jounda couldn't take the isolation--she was in
a shelter with only twelve people counting herself--
and she cracked the seal and yanked open the door.
Major Kira, slave collar now in place, was attending
the dean while he sampled food from a Bajoran
noodle house. "Attending" in this case meant sitting
next to him, eating whatever dish he ate first to make
sure it wasn't poisoned.
    When the door to Shelter Two popped, hissed, and
swung open, and Jounda stepped outside trembling,
the dean's reaction was so startling that Kira
dropped a plate full of malibon on the deck, where it
shattered. The alien leapt to his feet with such
alacrity that he knocked over the table, clenched his
fist (which Kira had determined activated his com
circuit), and began shouting "Emergency, emergen-
cy, breakout on Deck Nine!"
    The aliens swarmed the location, led by the dean
himself, and they pulled the door all the way open
and mobbed the shelter. Jounda screamed once, but
then she fell bitterly silent.
    Kira rushed over to mediate, to prevent the aliens
from panicking or the Bajoran civilians from putting
up a futile resistance that would only get someone
hurt. Prophets, she thought, I'm turning into Kai
Winn.t Jounda's once-white jumper was stained with
two days of grime and sweat, and the dozen of them
smelled like they hadn't bathed, naturally enough.
Kira was shocked to see how quickly the civilians
fell right back into their "occupation daze," obeying
the aliens' gestures and incomprehensible com-
mands-for none of the civilians had a universal
translator, of course.

    "My lord," said Kira, pushing herself in between
the dean and Jounda; "don't let your anger get the
better of your judgment. These people are civilians,
not warriors--they pose no risk to you!"
    But the dean paid her no attention, merely pulling
her aside gently. "Replace them," he said to his men,
"quickly, lest we lose one or more than one."
    And while Kira stared, stupified, the aliens pro-
ceeded to return the civilians to the bombardment
shelter. Jounda Mar's pleas were in vain, and neither
would the dean listen to Kira. "You don't need to
put them back!" shouted the major. "They won't
attack you--they're as trustworthy as the rest of us."
She was uncomfortably aware that that, actually,
was saying a lot: when shove had come to tumble,
the grand, independent, passionate Bajorans on
Emissary~ Sanctuary had become as docile as a herd
of curlbeasts.
    But it made no difference. Without even listening,
the aliens returned Jounda Mar and the other eleven
civilians to Bombardment Shelter Two and resealed
it. And there they stayed.
    Over the next two days, there were similar "break-
outs" from each of the other shelters. Jake's was next
to try to leave, followed by the other six: three the
same day, then two more the next, then the last,
Shelter Five, containing forty-one assorted civil ser-
vants brought up to the station by the Kai. The
aliens' behavior was identical in every case: they
treated the incidents like a prisoner breakout,
swarming the "escapees" and returning them forci-
bly to their "cells."
 Kira understood why: somehow, the dean had got
it into his carapace that the civilians hiding in the
shelters were prisoners confined involuntarily to
cells, and he chose, for whatever reason, to continue
their sentences. But why? What had made him think
that? Kira shook her head, still not understanding
when the final secretary was pushed into the last
shelter already full of Kai Winn's bureaucrats, a fate
almost worse than death. A thought tickled Kira's
hindbrain: for some reason, she knew that this was
an important--even critical--piece of information,
if she could only figure out the reason for the
aberrant behavior.
    Why? Why would they make such an absurd mis-
take? But the Prophets, Who knew all, chose not to
whisper in the major's ear, and she remained in
ignorance.

    Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax was awake
before the sun, pacing in the chilly predawn, devel-
oping a plan. When she glanced at Gul Ragat, she
was startled to find him watching her, his black
Cardassian eyes enigmatic but hard. Julian had not
yet stirred.
    Ragat sat up, pulling his rough blanket around his
frail body. His trapezius muscles, stretching from
neck to shoulder tips--huge and powerful on most
Cardassians--were instead thin and limp, sagging
pathetically; the bony ridges surrounding his eye
sockets were dark gray, and his dull eyes were
sunken into deep flesh.
    "I didn't expect you to wake for another couple of
hours," said Dax. The charade was over; Ragat
knew who the both of them were, Bashir and Dax.
     "Old men don't sleep well," he said, shrugging.
 "Even those of us made old long before our time by
betrayal and dishonor."  "What tipped you?"
    At first, the Gul simply smiled, dark and mysteri-
ous, like Garak telling lunchroom tales to the doctor.
Then Ragat slumped, letting his head sink. He tried
a self-deprecating smile. "You swore when you
couldn't shoot me. You said 'oh, hell.' The aborigi-
nes don't have any concept of heaven or hell. So you
were Federation--Starfleet."
  "From that you knew our names?"
    Ragat looked up at her. "We knew only one
Starfleet ship in orbit around this planet, the U.S.S.
Defiant. With all the trouble our two peoples have
had, you'd imagine we would make an effort to
memorize the crew manifests of ships we're likely to
encounter. Wouldn't you?" Dax said nothing.
    "You are a high-ranking female. You certainly
weren't Major Kira; I can smell Bajorans. So I took
the chance that you were the Trill."
    Jadzia cocked her head at Bashir and raised an
eyebrow.
    Ragat snorted, sounding almost like their own
Constable Odo. "Who else but Julian Bashir would
be sneaking behind me with a medical tricorder?"
    Dax nodded. "Anything else we should know?"
She leaned dose. "Any reason I shouldn't kill you
now, before Julian wakes up?"
    He blanched, turning his face away. "The best
reason in the quadrant: I know something you need
to know but don't."
  "That being?"
    "I know the story of the aborigines. How they got
here, why they have such technology but are so
primitive and uncivilized."  "Why?"
    The Gul shook his head slowly, wincing at the
pain. "Release me to my men and I'll tell you what
you need to know."
    "Tell me what I want to know, and I won't release
you from this life."
    For an instant, Dax was sure she saw terror flicker
across the Gul's face. He's a man used to living in
fear, she intuited. Then the Cardassian mask fell
across it once more. "We, ah, appear to be at an
impasse, Commander. Will you kill me before even
finding out what information I hold?"
      She stood straight and contemplated the prostrate
form for a beat. "No. I won't. Not yet, anyway."
  Bashit awoke.
    Gul Ragat struggled to his feet and picked up his
pack in weary resignation. "Don't look so tortured,"
she said, feeling little pity but much repugnance.
"You don't have to walk. We have transportation."
The Gul relaxed visibly, and Dax was sorry she had
told him so quickly.
    She stared at his back as he waited. He does know
something, she concluded. At the least, he's found
electronic or even paper records. If it's a main com-
puter, then maybe we can reprogram the planetary
defenses to let the Defiant pass!
    It was a charming thought--whose reality de-
pended on nothing but the whim of an ancient
Cardassian Gul, unusually cynical and manipulative
even for that species. Or is he really that old,
chronologically? She shrugged; he was ancient in
mind if not in body. Jadzia Dax throttled back her
racing thoughts and began scooping her belongings
into a pack. At least, considering Gul Ragat's condi-
tion, he wouldn't be making any quick breaks for the
border.




CHAPTER
        3

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO stayed unobtrusive, leaving
day-to-day contacts between Federation and Natives
to the other away-team members. He tried to perfect
his own antitoxin, and it got better. Still, I don't
know how much longer we can last, he thought,
hypospraying himself with the latest experiment.
    Captain Sisko was particularly pleased at the
progress Commander Worf was making on the mili-
tary side and with Chief O'Brien's work with
Owena-da to develop home-grown "new tech" to
replace the fantastic devices the Natives had relied
on for millenia, but that no longer worked. They
don't work anymore because I stopped them, he
thought for the thousandth time. No matter what the
others imagined, Sisko was increasingly aware that
making such a terrible decisionmcutting off all
power to the northern hemisphere--didn't get easi-
er with time. He still stewed over the dilemma,
second-guessing everything he had done.
    He took a deep breath. Some of the ache was gone.
The new serum did in fact work marginally better.
    "They are learning," he told O'Brien, injecting the
chief; "but are they learning quickly enough? Will
we be able to repulse the next Cardassian attack?"
    "I think it likely," said O'Brien, who continued to
cough. Sisko couldn't tell yet whether he had im-
proved. Of course, he'll say he has, regardless, real-
ized the captain.
  "Spears and arrows against disruptors?"
    "People confuse not being state-of-the-art with
being obsolete," said O'Brien; "especially us engi-
neers. But you know, old-fashioned radio still works
as good as subspace over short distances; and you
can die just as easily from an arrow in the gut today
as you could two thousand years ago, sir."
    Sisko stroked his chin, looking at the three wood-
plus-local-steel devices the chief had placed before
him on a fallen, blue-gray log. Owena-da's first
design was what O'Brien had called an "arbalest"
but looked to Sisko like a crossbow, a "steel" arch-
er's bow mounted on a shaft, with a trigger to loosen
the string. The second, invented the next day during
lunch by Colonel-Mayor Asta-ha (cut down from
mayor-general) was a pair of miniature, hand-held,
angled catapults, each of which fired a small, cast-
metal ball split in half, the two halves connected by a
two-meter length of cable: after firing, the halves of
each ball would separate, pulling the cable taut, and
rotate at a high speed, wrapping around the legs and
arms of anyone unlucky enough to be standing in the
 way. A two-shot, automatic bola pistol, thought Sis-
 ko, awed.
     The third device, also by Owena-da, was more
 complex, a technological leap in two days that had
 taken humans a thousand years. The weapon resem-
 bled a tube with a trio of metal bulbs growing out the
 rear end. Cocking the device by operating a pump
 lever several times compressed the air in the bulbs;
 the compressed air then fired a needle-sharp poison
 dart that O'Brien estimated could pierce Cardassian
 battle armor in a square shot within twenty meters
 range. Owena-da dubbed it the "Viper's Kiss" (at
 least that's how the universal translator rendered the
 name).
    As Sisko gingerly fingered the Viper's Kiss, he
heard a dull explosion outside and down the hillock
to the east, in the area Worf and O'Brien had
selected as a munitions proving ground. The
colonel-mayor, her daughter Tivva-ma, and Owena-
da were experimenting with the Sierra-Bravo ver-
sion of gunpowder, though they hadn't yet learned to
control the gas expansion. The Captain shuddered
slightly; have I built a Frankenstein's monster? On
whom would the erstwhile Tiffnakis, now called
Vanimastavvi, turn once they had rid their planet of
its Cardassian infestation?
    As least O'Brien had stopped hacking, and his
color looked better. The captain was encouraged.
    "Chief," he said, "could you ask the rest of the
away team to step into my tent?" While O'Brien
beetled away, Sisko paced, hands clasped behind his
back, trying to frame his argument. "Gentlemen,"
he greeted the team when they arrived, injecting
each man except Odo. "We are in a tricky situation
here. All... this." Sisko gestured expansively, indi-
cating the Vanimastavvi all around them.
    Everyone seemed to understand what he meant.
"The Natives are progressing much faster than any
of us expected," said Worf.
    "I told you about the constitution," said Consta-
ble Odo, visibly piqued. "If you ask me, they're
moving too fast."
    "You're right. The question is what to do about
them."
    "By the time they finish," bragged O'Brien with
a wicked grin, "they'll have such weapons, the
damned Cardassian bastards won't know what hit
'em!"
    "I want my clothes back," insisted Quark in a
quiet, angry voice. He looked particularly oafish
wearing animal skins and wooden clogs.
    "Gentlemen, we are in the fight of our lives here.
The Defiant is gone, and who knows when it will
return. Our food supplies are dwindling, and we still
can't eat the native plants or animals."
    "Sir," interrupted Chief O'Brien, "maybe we can
get the Tiffnakis, or whatever they're calling them-
selves now, maybe we can get them to invent a food
reprocessor?"
    Odo snorted. "Oh be serious, Chief. They don't
even know the first thing about food chemistry. All
the intelligence in the quadrant can't turn lead into
latinurn!"
     "Why don't we let them read a Federation chemis-
 try textbook?"
 "Did you happen to bring one along, Chief?.
Captain, can you please continue?" Odo turned his
back on the chief and folded his arms defiantly.
    Sisko had kept quiet during the exchange, using
his lack of interest to make the point to O'Brien.
"Thank you, Constable. We must raid the Cardassi-
aris again. They have the only food we can eat, the
only water we can drink. I'm tempted to take the
Vanimastavvi on the raid, or allow them to perform
it themselves."
    "May I interrupt, Captain?" Without waiting for a
response, Worf turned to face the entire group and
continued. "I do not advise that we raid the Cardas-
sians."
    "How are we supposed to eat?" demanded Chief
O'Brien, who was beginning to look a little thin and
stretched, thought Sisko.
    "Up until now," said the Klingon, "the Cardas-
sians have been entirely or/the offensive. They may
be aware that the power is offline, if they have
attempted to use captured native technology. But
they will not associate that with the passive, ah,
Natives." Worf paused, waiting for response.
Sisko nodded. "We're listening, Commander."
"The Cardassians have attacked many Native
villages. In every case, the Natives have responded
with panic and ill-prepared and ineffective defenses,
allowing themselves to be overwhelmed in a matter
of moments."
    "Wolf," snapped O'Brien, holding his stomach,
"we already know all that."
    "But as soon as the Natives go on the offensive,
especially if they are effective, the Cardassians will
be alerted to the changed situation. They will re-
spond. Although they are not Klingons, they are still
determined and clever warriors. We do not want
merely to bloody their noses. If we are going to tip
our hands, we must do so decisively."
    "Never do your enemy a small injury," quoted
Sisko.
    "That is well said, sir. You raise his ire but do not
cause him to fear you."
    "I take it you are suggesting, Mr. Worf, that
instead of a small raid, we launch a war."
    "That is what I recommend as chief military
advisor."
  "Does anybody disagree? Gentlemen?"
    Odo frowned, opened his mouth, but closed it
again. O'Brien didn't respond. But Quark cleared
his throat.
  "May I say something, Captain?"
    "We already know you want your clothing back,
Quark," said the constable.
    "Mr. Wolf, Mr. O'Brien," said the captain, "Begin
preparing plans for a full-strength assault on the
Cardassians. Odo, go aloft as a local bird and scout
out where the biggest body of invaders lies. And
Quark .... "Sisko hesitated, finally turning to look
at his troops. The Ferengi was good at negotia-
tionswbut tactical planning for a military opera-
tion?
    "Mr. Quark, why don't you go: bargain for your
clothes back. Team dismissed; I have reports to
begin drafting." And many dark and ~ightening
thoughts to explore, he added to himself.
     Dax sat in the shade watching Gul Ragat, the beat-
 up skimmer parked beneath a scrubby blue tree. He
 stood rigidly in the high sunlight, stiff as a board,
 hands clasped behind his back in a motion that
 would have looked regal on a fellow not wearing
 rags.
     "Gul Ragat," said Bashir, "get into some shade,
 for heaven's sake. We have water--Cardassian wa-
 ter."
     "I do not require water," said the Gul. "Thank
 you, Doctor."
     Dax smiled. She closed her eyes, resting. "Mad
 dogs and Cardassians go out in the midday sun," she
 said, more to herself than to Bashir.
  "Why does that sound familiar?" asked the doctor
anyway. "I'm sure I've heard ...."He trailed off in
silence, for Dax wasn't listening.
    She pondered Ragat's offer: information for free-
dom. Fundamentally, it was a good trade. The last
thing in the world I want is to be dragging a prisoner
around with me, especially a flail, young-old man.
But there was the problem that Ragat knew who they
were, which so far the rest of the Cardassians did
not. She relied on that ignorance. If the Cardassians
realized there was a Starfleet away team on Sierra
Bravo, they would move mountains to hunt them
down and kill or capture them all. We're their only
natural predators, she said to herself.
    "Julian," she said in a voice almost too soft for
him to hear, even sitting next to her. "If we can
figure a way to keep Ragat off the board for the next
week or so, I see no reason not to let him go."
 "I was just thinking the same," said Bashir. "If
he's telling the truth about the information, that
might be much more beneficial to us than a pris-
oner."
    "I doubt the Cardassians would trade much for
his carcass. To hear him talk, there won't be too
many statues erected to Gul Ragat on Cardassia
Prime."
    "His troops seem loyal," said Bashir, but he
sounded dubious even as he said it.
    "His troops are a bunch of renegade brigands. His
XO would probably pop the cork on some expensive
Cardassian Champagnemif there is such a thing--if
we told him Ragat was a prisoner."
  Bashir nodded. "Then let's accept his offer."
    "We can dump him in the wilderness," suggested
Dax.
    "With water and provisions," said the doctor,
giving Dax a hard look.
    "Of course. Enough for a couple of weeks... eas-
ily long enough to hike back to a Cardassian en-
campment, if he doesn't get lost."
    "As you say," said Bashir, still sounding as though
he were trying to convince himself rather than Dax,
"the information is more valuable than the man."
  "If," said Dax, "he's telling us the truth."
    Gul Ragat turned to stare directly at the pair. "Of
course he's telling you the truth," said the Cardas-
sian. "We came across a nodule that I believe is a
terminal of some sort, connecting directly with the
main planetary computers, wherever they are. We
have been able to access part of it... the historical
records."
  Dax fell silent in astonishment. Beside her, Bashir
was likewise speechless. "You really have it?" she
said, quite unable to keep the eagerness out of her
voice.
    Ragat sighed, stepping into the shadows at last.
He was sweating, Dax noticed, a strange, bluish
perspiration, whether natural for a Cardassian or
from the planet, she wasn't sure. "I will take you to
my glorious imperial camp," he said with lip curled.
"You will be able to query the computer yourself.
We can also reprovision there. I want four weeks
worth of rationsrain case I do get lost."
"How many guards?" asked the Trill, warily.
"But two," said Ragat. "Not recognizing your
presence, I took all but two junior noncoms out on
the Wild Hunt." The bitterness in his voice almost
made Dax feel pity. Then she remembered the
butchered village, and she pressed her lips together
to hold back the fury. "Yes," continued Ragat, "we
had just left the camp when you attacked us. It's no
more than, um, four or five of your kilometers
distant."
    Dax leapt to her feet, so eager to see this alien
computer "nodule" that she couldn't bear to rest any
longer. "Lead on," she commanded. Anticipation all
but drove the rage from her mind... until later.
Until it would be needed.
  Bashir groaned. "Jadzia, that's--"
    She held up her hand, stopping his objection.
"Yes, Julian, I already know that's not the line from
the play. Let's get across this damned gully and find
that deserted encampment. We'll leave the skimmer
here," she added as afterthought; "your engines are
so damned noisy, it would be like calling ahead for

an appointment." They set out across the sand,
trekking toward their rendezvous with an alien
brain.
    Deserted the camp was indeed. In fact, Dax was
quite astonished to discover the Gul had told the
truth: there were only two Cardassian guards at
home; one was relaxing out of sight, suggested
Ragat. "Julian," said Dax, "take care of the sentry."
    Bashir took down the sentry with no muss, a
single shot on stun laying him gently to the dirt. The
three-man team approached silently, ghosting up to
the fallen enemy. "What now, Jadzia?" asked the
doctor. He frowned, starting to dig in his heels.
  "No need," said Dax, holding up her hand.
  "The liquor ruse again?"
    She shook her head. "Nobody would believe it a
second time. But I have another brainstorm. Julian,
can you inject something into his heel that will cause
his foot to swell up and itch?"
  "Itch? How much?"
  "A lot."
    "And why? You don't think he's going to tell us
anything in exchange for the antidote, do you?"
    Dax laughed. "Come on, what could a corporal
possibly tell us? Do you think Gul Ragat confides in
his noncoms?" The Gul affected not to hear the
reference, and Dax continued. "But when he comes
to and tries to figure out what happened, if he finds
what looks like a weird bug-bite, don't you think
he'll put two and two together?"
    Bashir smiled. "All right, Jadzia; one itchy bee-
sting coming up."
    While the doctor mixed the potion, Dax scouted
the compound with Gul Ragat in tow. "If you make
a sound," she promised, "it will be your last. There's
no Julian Bashir here now to get in the way." She
looked significantly at the Gul, who swallowed and
tried to look nonchalant. But she could see he was
shaken. He knew, of course, how many lives she had
livedrand that some of her incarnations had been
rather more bloodthirsty than the typical Starfleet
officer's. Gul Ragat said not a word as they crept up
on the remaining guard.
    They caught him sleeping on a couch, a regs
manual lying open on his chest. He snored lustily,
obviously out for some time. Dax returned to
Bashir, who had just finished anointing the uncon-
scious guard's foot. She dragged the doctor into the
library, where he hyposprayed the sleeping guard
with a sedative that would keep him out for three
hours or more. "He's already asleep," said Dax.
"He'll just assume he was tired."
    Gul Ragat snorted, sounding almost like Consta-
ble Odo. "How clever you can be," he said, nodding
approval. "I see your long contact with the Empire
has rubbed off on you."
    "Computer," said Dax, all seriousness again. Try
as she might, she couldn't get the image of the
Native massacre out of her brain. Nothing Ragat
said seemed at all cute or witty when superimposed
as voice-over to that internal video feed.
    The Cardassian curled his lip as if smelling some-
thing distasteful. "Of course. Let's get down to
business."

0

CHAPTER
       4

DAX MADE RAGAT walk in front along the corridor
and kept a phaser trained on his back. She trusted
that her own reactions would be faster than the old
man's, even if he had a head start from plotting
beforehand: he wouldn't elude them or sound any
sort of alarm. Bashir searched all about them with
his medical scanner, looking for life signs; Cardas-
sian, Native, or anything else.
    But the Gul was in no mood to fight. Looking
terribly bent over, like a question mark, as if he
really were oldtbut he wasn't!--he padded
through the prefabricated corridors that had been
thrown up in a day by the Cardassian Corps of
Engineers, and led them to a steel door secured by a
complex lock. Dax examined it closely, saying, "Jul-
ian, I think even Chief O'Brien would have trouble
bypassing this security protocol."
    She caught hold of Gul Ragat's arm and pulled
him to the lock. "You'd better be able to open this, if
you want to live to rejoin your friends."
    "Don't look at me for relief," said Bashir, as the
Gul flicked his eyes at the doctor. "I'm not in
command here." Julian doesn't look pleased,
thought Dax. He doesn't like the whole hostage
game. Well, hell--neither do I.
    But Gul Ragat at least understood the rules. With
a great sigh, as if leaping a threshhold he never
thought he would cross, he poked and beeped the
touchpad until the door reluctantly ground open.
    Air hissed around the edges as the seal cracked.
Dax sniffed as they entered: she smelled not only
ozone but the curiously wet and fresh smell of cold
nitrogen, quickly replaced by Sierra-Bravo's metal-
lic atmosphere. Her eyes were immediately caught
by the alien nodule... an apt description, she
thought. It was a silvery ball, much smaller than she
expected, no larger than her fist. It floated in an
antigray field, or else it generated its own.
    The Cardassians had surrounded it with a dizzy
collection of dish antennas and electronic probes--
none actually touching the nodule, but arrayed
around it in a meter-wide sphere. The Gul crossed to
the nearest console and screen, ignoring the nodule
itselfi He touched a single control, and the screen
flickered to life.
    It was filled from edge to edge by Cardassian block
lettering. Bashir leaned close, reading as best he
could, while Dax kept her eye on Ragat. Surrounded
by as much equipment as was in that room, she was
nervous lest he activate some sort of alarm, causing
an entire regiment to beam into the compound from
one of the ships in orbit.
    She glanced at Bashir: the doctor was so engrossed
with what he was reading, he had completely forgot-
ten everything else in the room. His mouth stood
open in astonishment. At last, he came to some sort
of end. He pressed the screen-down button several
times, then stepped back, shaking his head and
blinking moisture back into his irritated eyes.
     "Well," he said, his voice soft and shaken, "I guess
that answers a few questions." "What is it, Julian?"
    Twice, Bashir started to respond, then closed his
mouth again and thought. The third time, he made
it. "Jadzia--Commander--you weren't too far off
in some of your speculations." His lips were evi-
dently too dry; he licked them, but it didn't seem to
do much good.
    "Yes?" she said, revolving her hand as if to say
speed it up/
    "Jadzia... this entire planet is a gigantic social-
science experiment."
    An icy, invisible fist gripped at the commander's
bowels. "Conducted by whom? To discover what?"
    Julian Bashir sat on a blue chair, stroking the
console and thinking. "A long time ago--that seven-
million-year timeline you calculated for the hut hit it
on the head--the Natives' ancestors grew interested
in the question of whether technology and society
were inseparable. So they... God, this is so horrif-
ic. They found a planet amenable to their biology
and terraformed it--I suppose they also genetically
engineered the animals for consciousness and intel-
ligence, but the scraps I read weren't clear on that
point. Maybe that's natural for those animals on the
Natives' home system, Native Prime I guess you can
call it."
    Dax waited. "Julian, are you going to tell me? Or
do I have to learn Cardassian and wait for the
novel?"
    "All right. They sprinkled the planet surface with
a random sample of their technology, which was far
in advance of our own. Then they raised about a
hundred million of their own children in complete
isolation from any adults, any elements of culture or
society, even from the language the Native Primes
themselves spoke."
    Nobody said a word; a solid minute of silence
passed, punctuated by the clicks and hisses of the
Cardassian air recirculators. "God is the right
word," said Dax at last. "That's exactly what the
Native Primes were playing. And a bored and deca-
dent God at that."
  "Then they took these kids--"
    "I can guess the rest, Julian. The Native Primes
took the kids, as soon as they could walk, and
transported them down to the surface of Sierra-
Bravo, all alone--no mother, no father, no culture,
no community, nothing but each other and a world
filled with enough 'new tech' to allow some of the
kids to survive. Julian, what was the death rate?"
    He shrugged. "Well, there were a hundred million
to start, and today, seven million years later, the
population appears stable at eleven million. I would
guess that most of the deaths occurred within the
first year."
    Dax felt nauseated. "That's a death rate of 89
percent of their own children. And they let the
experiment continue!"
    "They surrounded the planet with defenses in-
tended to keep everyone away. I suppose the Native
Primes must have died out or lost interest millions
of years ago, but they never terminated the experi-
ment as long as they lived. The eleven million
Natives left on Sierra-Bravo probably wouldn't be
enough to be self-sustaining, except for the technolo-
gy that provides food, shelter, clothing, entertain-
ment, and everything else they need."
    "Julian, I hope you're wrong, dead wrong about
that."
 "About what?"
    "That the Natives won't be self-sustaining, now
that we've..." She didn't need to finish. She was
sure Bashir understood the catastrophic, unlivable
guilt they would all feel if a ham-fisted attempt to
save the Natives ended up killing them all instead.
Eleven million ghosts dragging me to my grave.
CouM I ever live with myselj? She fought down
existential terror. Even three centuries of life hadn't
prepared her to shoulder such a weight of culpa-
bility.
    Bashir's face paled. "Here's to being dead wrong,"
he toasted, raising an imaginary glass.
      "Well," said Dax, still trembling, "I guess they
proved one point."  "They did?"
  "Civilization and technology are separable." She
laughed, more from nervousness than mirth. The
cold metal computer banks surrounding her looked
so much like Deep Space Nine, she felt a great
longing to get the hell off the planet and back
home--a home she would probably never see again,
now that Kai Winn had her clutches on it. "I guess
Worf was right after all, all those warnings he gave
about technology not being enough to sustain a
society."
    Bashir shrugged; he didn't seem interested in
Worf's philosophy of technology. "So now what?" he
asked.
    "Well, it eliminates one worry." She paused. "At
least we don't have to fret about violating the Prime
Directive. There is no natural evolution to disturb in
this demonic social experiment." She stepped for-
ward, taking Gut Ragat's arm. "Okay, you gave what
you promised. Let's get on the hump. We've got
some flying to do." Somehow, the bloody crimes of
Gul Ragat didn't seem so significant to Dax at the
moment, against this new landscape.
    Then they left, Ragat shutting and sealing the door
behind them. They exited the way they had come,
hiking the three klicks back to the remaining skim-
mer. Again, they sandwiched Gul Ragat between the
two of them, Dax driving, and set off across the
desert.
    The landscape below shimmered in the heat-
induced turbulence. Dax was quiet for the moment,
thinking about the Native Primes, the children, the
experiment. At last she spoke. "I'm going to dump
him off about a hundred and fifty kilometers from
the nearest Cardassian base," she shouted over her
shoulder.
    Bashir nodded, also distracted. Only Gul Ragat
seemed unconcerned about the atrocity they had
read about. Of course, he had had several days to
think about it already. And of course, he's a Cardas-
sian, thought Dax bitterly.
    At last, she veered away from her phaser-straight
northeastern course when she saw a bluer glimmer
on her right. It turned out to be a large saltwater
lake.
    She landed, turned to Ragat, and said, "end of the
line, partner."
    He startled as from a dream of long ago. "What?
Here? There's nothing."
    Dax bared her teeth. "Take a hike. Way back to
your compound is a century and a half that-a-way."
She pointed back along the course they had come. If
the GUl couldn't find his way back, she decided, that
was his own problem. "Keep these mountains close
on your left. You'll get there."
    Gul Ragat pulled a stiff upper lip, Cardassian to
the end. Must be a noble house, she thought, under-
standing but unimpressed. He spoke, seemingly to
no one, or to himselfi "Perhaps it's for the best. I
have always had my Neemak Counselor."  
"What kind of counselor?"
    Ragat shook his head. "Now it's a changeling. One
of those." He stared at her with intensity, speaking
like a lost soul in an endless nightmare. "They spy
on me," he explained, enunciating clearly, as if for a
hidden microphone. "Now they take the form of
 Cardassians and infiltrate my organization. Was
 Neemak a spy, do you think?"
     "I don't have a clue to what you're talking about.
 And actually, I don't care."
     Ragat smiled knowingly at Dax, smiled and
 winked. He bowed with slight mockery but real
 courtliness. "It's not important to anyone but me."
    She pulled a pack from the saddlebag, twenty-
eight days worth of Cardassian provisions, as de-
manded, lifted from the compound. "You'll pardon
us if we don't wish you luck," she said. Then she
started the engine, yanked the skimmer into the air,
and took off, leaving the pathetic, hunched figure of
a man standing by the lonely shore of the lake. He
was looking, not the way they had come, the way he
would return, but at the sinking sun--almost as if he
saw his own life falling toward its horizon.
    Then he was gone, and Dax couldn't even see him
in the rear-viewer. Bashir leaned close. "You drive
for a while," he said, "then it's my turn. I don't want
to stop for the night. Let's put some distance be-
tween us and .... "
    She nodded. I know exactly what you mean, my
friend.

    Kai Winn settled painfully into the overly austere
chair in the Emissary's former office, behind the too-
plain, too-small desk overlooked by barren walls and
unornamented ceiling. The Emissary was the elect of
the Prophets, but he had much to learn about the
majesty of office. Perhaps he would have made a
good ran fin or monk, but he would have served very
unwell as Kai. May the Prophets forgive me, she
appended with half her heart.
    She let her head droop into her arms. There was
nothing more tiring than wearing The Face, bowing
and scraping to a "master" who must not under any
circumstances understand how much one loathed
him or that one sought any method at hand to end
his plans, career, life. Winn smiled behind her arms;
Nerys was surely discovering this very fact at exactly
the same moment. The child, Kai Winn's secret
protege (a status unknown even to the major her-
self), was finally beginning to grow toward adult-
hood: the major is attaining majority, O joyous day.
And her secret mentor, Sister Winn, was nervously
anticipating Gul Ragat's raid on the Riis spaceport,
hoping that the young boy Barada Vai had under-
stood Winn's cryptic message and warned the Re-
sistance cell not to ....
    No, no, that was years agogdecades.t I am Kai
now. Or am I still a vedek? Is Opalca still among us?
No, I'm sure she is gone and I am Kag but I'm just
too weary to get up and check.
    The memory-dreams were coming more fre-
quently, striking Winn in her waking moments, not
only at night. It's because this whole adventure has
turned into a waking nightmare, she concluded. It
was supposed to be so simple, so triumphant. Bajor,
in the person of Kai Winn, was to assume control of
the Cardassian eye that had orbited the planet for so
long, watching every move of the Bajoran people.
She would rename it to remove not only the stench
of Cardassia but also the shame of Federation rescue
 when Bajor could not free itself. Once Terok Nor,
 then Deep Space Nine--now the station was Emis-
 sary's Sanctuary, a Bajoran name for a little piece of
 Bajor--defacto as well as de jure now.
    That scheming little blasphemer Shakaar, having
weaseled his way into appointment as First Minis-
ter, tried to add the title of Governor of Emissary~
Sanctuary to his plate. But Kai Winn made sure the
Council considered all its options and choices; in the
end, "it was decided" that the station would be
better in the hands of a proven religious leader,
already so favored by the Prophets as to have been
elected Kai. "It was decided"--by me. And I must
confess, I enjoyed that little exercise of authority.
    There really was nothing wrong with Shakaar. He
was a good fellow, had been a loyal soldier during
the Resistance. But the Prophets had had so few
victories of late in the thoroughly secularized Bajor-
an government. It was good to win one for righteous-
ness, for a change.
    Not every popular indulgence or every move
toward tolerance was good for the people--even if,
childlike, they enjoyed it. A child would enjoy candy
for dinner, too, and a man might enjoy intimate
time spent with that poor Bajoran Dabo girl in
Quark's Place. But enjoyment didn't make gluttony
or adultery acceptable.
    There was always duty. Duty called to everyone,
from the farmer in the field to Kai in the Sky.
Brothers and Sisters of faith had great duties laid
upon them. Winn knew her duty; it had been writ
clear from the moment the opportunity presented
itselfi she had to get the holocam with its precious
images to the cell, to any cell. The information was
so urgently needed for ....
    There I go again, down the snakehole of old
memories. Well, if the Prophets will hint so strongly, I
must yield to their will.
    Consciously relaxing her face, her shoulders and
thoughts, Kai Winn drifted into a dark, fretful
temple where she was faced with four ways to fail: if
she lacked the badge of valor, she could throw the
holocam into the bushes and forget all about it; if
she missed the stone of wisdom, she could confide in
the wrong man and be denounced; if she lost the
bowl of compassion, she could condemn another,
such as Barada Vai, diverting suspicion from herself.
And if Winn misplaced the needle of reason ....

THIRTY YEARS AGO

Heavenward Prayer Spaceport, the "Palm of Bajor,"
was a marvel of obsolescence in an age of modernity;
Sister Winn loved it beyond all its fellows. Though
the Cardassians had renamed it--with typical bu-
reaucratic inventiveness--CoUection Point One, all
the Bajorans still used the original name (and if the
truth be told, so did nine-tenths of the Cardassians.
Tradition imbued every building, floating walkway,
roadway, and launch pad in the place: the passenger
terminal, for example, now used for large-scale Car-
dassian troop transportation as well as for ferrying
Cardassian notables and Bajoran untouchables to
 Terok Nor, included not a single slidewalk. Instead,
 passengers shuffled along on foot past murals depict-
 ing the Nine Stages of the Prophet Amadan, the
 Beginning, the Apotheosis of Ramn, and the Gather-
 ing. That is, the Cardassian legionnaires and Bajor-
 an prisoners walked; high-ranking Guls, legates, and
 other dignitaries simply "beamed" from the entry
 checkpoint directly to the VIP lounge, having little
 apparent interest in Bajoran religious artwork.
    Sister Winn, crouching in a muddy ditch on the
outskirts of the landing field itself, squinted against
the afternoon sun, which burned her eyes even
through her polarized, UV-protection, "frog-eye"
sunglasses. In her discomfort, she considered the
Cardassian innovation of beaming, disassembling a
body into molecules or atoms or subatomic particles
or whatever, firing it through the ether at some
unholy speed, and miraculously rebuilding it at
another spot, and decided that she would rather
suffer an eternity of foul-smelling mud and an
endless supply of mud-chiggers than ever allow
herself to be atomized like the bug-spray she used in
her tiny garden. I will never, ever, ever voluntarily use
that horrific method of transportation... surely it
strips body from soul and leaves the latter behind
    She pinched to death another chigger that had
happily begun to gnaw on her ear. Winn had only
herself to blame for her discomfort: she had led Gul
Ragat to this awful vantage point, whence he could
"spring his ambush" on the unsuspecting Resistance
raid. He expects to net an entire cell, thought Sister
Winn grimly, and who ~ to say he won't be right? She
prayed yet again to the Prophets that the young lad,

Barada Vai, had understood her secret message and
convinced the cell leaders of the lurking disaster; if
prayerful repetition alone were sufficient to move
the Prophets, then Winn had prayed enough to
invoke Their physical presencemhigher than the
tallest launch tower--on the landing field itself.




CHAPTER
       5

HEAVENWARD PRAYER was the forefinger of the Palm
of Bajor, laid against the Kimbila Stream, the largest
tributary into the Shakiristi River. It lay nearly ten
Bajoran kilometers from the city of Riis proper,
which itself sat at the "wrist," where the swollen
Shakiristi threw itself through the final pass in the
foothills of the Lakastors into the Cold Sea.
    In the summer, the rolling hills would be brown,
the moist hollows deepest green. Streams and rivu-
lets collected from the Lakastor Mountains and
from the sharp buttes of Granite Prayer, and chuck-
led down the hills, barely slowing across the valleys,
until they flowed into the thundering Shakiristi.
    But now it was deep, cold winter. Riis never grew
cold enough to snow, but the chill wind picked at
Sister Winn's bones and made her joints ache. She
pulled the priestess habit tightly around her ample
flesh, wishing she had listened to her inner nag and
worn long underwear. Gul Ragat appeared impervi-
ous to the weather. He was so intent on catching his
rabbits he was practically salivating.
    The spaceport itself was laid out like a gigantic
kami board: a circular causeway surrounded the
landing field, raising it above the swampy lake of
dark-green water on which the rest of Riis floated.
High ramps, reinforced now for Cardassian heavy-
tracked vehicles, drove like spokes from the "wheel"
of the causeway to the field itself at the hub. An
access road spiraled from ramp to ramp, tighter and
tighter, closing on the center of the field like a spider
web.
    The buildings were arched and porticoed, colored
in muted greens and pastel pinks. They lay low,
hugging the dry elevated land. Except for the tower,
not a building rose higher than four storeys. The
controlling tower was a pyramid that thrust sky-
ward--heavenward--five times that height, domi-
nating the landscape. From the top, where a
revolving vegetarian restaurant was a customary
tourist watering hole, Sister Winn discovered she
could see all the way to Kimbilisti, forty kilometers
away. At night, the lights topping buoys on the lake
and dotting the surrounding countryside between
the Thousand Rivers of Riis looked like nothing so
much as a heaven full of stars reflected on land and
water--hence the name Heavenward Prayer.
    "Where are they?" said Gul Ragat, so softly that
Winn wasn't sure whether he was talking to her or
himself.
 "Your pardon, my lord?"
    Ragat turned on Sister Winn the angriest face he'd
ever shown her. "Where are they? Your little reb-
els... what are they waiting for?"
    Winn tried to look nervous, which wasn't at all
difficult. She licked her lips and discovered her
tongue was just as dry. "I... uh... perhaps
they're--delayed?" Her face flushed with the lie,
and she hoped he would give the reaction a different
interpretation.
    "Perhaps," said the Gul, "they're not coming at
all. Perhaps they know not to come."
    "Give me--give them more time, my lord! They
may yet come." She crouched away from the window
of the inn Gul Ragat had taken over. Winn buried
her face in her forearms and prayed.
    Her words were a flat lie: Sister Winn already
knew there was no chance whatsoever that the rebels
would show up and attack the spaceport. Jaras Shie
was the most punctual man in the entire Resis-
tance-that was almost the only thing Sister Winn
knew about him. If Jaras missed an attack at dawn,
it could only be because he had no intention of
attacking at all. Winn's prayers were not a request of
the Prophets--they were words of thanksgiving.
    But I do beseech the Prophets, she corrected her-
self. She was spared the horror of having collabo-
rated with the Cardassians... but she still had a
holocam full of pictures to deliver. If she failed to get
the camera to Jaras's cell, then all the lives she had
put at risk, including her own, would count for
nothing.
    "Their eyes will see every part of you," said
someone from--from inside Sister Winn's own
head. She looked up, sucking in a sharp inhalation.
She had never "heard voices" before! For a moment,
the priestess felt dizzy; a senseless fear stole across
her face. Am Igoing mad? she wondered. Then, just
as quickly, she understood: Prophets, he~--they're
about to search met
    Winn stood, mouth open. Gul Ragat had never
searched her, not once in the four years she had (as
he thought) served him. He rarely had anyone
searched, violated--never a priestess. But she knew
at that moment that Ragat was going to do the
unprecedented... and he would find the holocam.
He couldn't help it... her trick bootheel wasn't
that clever.
    Whose voice was that? Flustered, she pushed her
mind away from the contemplation of forbidden
mysteries. Who could it have been but... Winn
shook herself, rose, and walked with anguished
stateliness to the comer farthest from the Gul and
his personal bodyguards. She felt a pair of reptilian
eyes tracking her movements. Turning, she beheld
Counselor Neemak staring intently at a spot a little
to Winn's left. Keep watching until your eyes fall out,
she thought. IfI have nothing else, I have the patience
to wait for my time.
    Winn perched herself precariously on a pile of
Cardassian field packs. She folded her legs like a
knotted bow, resting each hand on the opposite
boot. From this position, it would be but the work of
a moment to twist her right bootheel and drop the
holocam into her palm--and then what?
    Where in the world can I possibly hide such a
suspicious object as a camera? Several minutes of
thought failed to produce a plan, even a germ of one.
Instead, she methodically attacked the problem
from the opposite side. What, Winn asked herself,
could the Cardassians find in a trick swinging heel
that would not cause them instantly to execute her?
    That's easy, she thought. What else wouM an
innocent Bajoran wish to conceal from prying eyes
and clutchy hands but money? She nodded, hum-
ming to herself. Wherever she found to stash the
holocam, she had to replace it with a thick wad of
cash in her bootheel. Great. Now I have two miracles
to pull off in place of one!
    She decided to work on the money problem first,
hoping that her backbrain would continue mulling
the primary puzzle of what to do with the holocam.
Where, she pondered, would a Bajoran priestess get
her hands Bajoran money, she thought; a Bajoran
with a wallet full of Cardassian currency would
doubtless be executed for robbery.
    Once again, inspiration stepped forward and in-
troduced itselfi the only person in the Gul's entou-
rage who would probably carry Bajoran bills was the
half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian Neemak Counselor,
who made a career of playing both sides against the
middle and pocketing the squeeze. A brief smile
flickered across Sister Winn's face, almost too quick
even for her to catch it. Neemak had already lost
interest in her, his own patience long since ex-
hausted.
    It was time, decided the holy one, to put to good
use some of the tricks a lonely, friendless seminary
student had practiced while her fellow students were
laughing and socializing and ignoring her. It's been a
long time since I slickered anyone's pocket... if the
Prophets love me as I love Them, let Them guide my
hands now.
 "Winn!" shouted Gul Ragat.
 "Yes, lord?" said Winn, jumping to her feet.
 "Come here. Now."
    Winn never waited to be told twice. She rushed to
the side of her Gul, who still stared out the window
at the controlling tower, a quarter-kilometer from
the inn. "I am here, M'lord Ragat, to be com-
manded."
    He turned to face her, looking for the first time
like a real Cardassian. His jaw clenched like Legate
Migar's. His trapezius muscles, absurdly prominent
as on any Cardassian, were as rigid and hard as Gul
Dukat's. His fist clenched like Colonel Akkat's had
just before he had struck Winn in the face at the
bulletin tea, four days and a thousand years ago.
Ragat had intervened on Winn's behalf then; now he
looked as though he would cheer her hanging.
    "Barada Vai," whispered the Gul, as if not trust-
ing his voice not to break. Winn said nothing,
wearing the mask of serenity she had long ago
developed; a professional facemexpectant, calm,
but slightly puzzled. "Your brother. You do remem-
ber your brother, don't you?"
    "Yes, of course, m'lord. What about Vai? He's just
a child."
    An evil presence loomed behind her. Without
turning, Sister Winn knew the breath of Neemak.
But Ragat seemed not to notice.
    "Even a child has a mouth," said the Gul, words
winding about her neck like a squeeze-snake. "So I
begin to think."
  "Oh, no, surely not, most gracious lord!"
    "But he could have talked," said Ragat in a
perfectly horrid, quiet voice; "couldn't he have? If,
that is, he somehow guessed that we planned a raid.
What a lucky guess!"
    Neemak, irresistibly drawn by secrets and whis-
pers, began to edge toward the pair, surely stretching
both his ears. Winn carefully kept her eyes exclu-
sively on Ragat, though she itched to see how close
Neemak was going to getmand to begin a visual
search for where the counselor kept his ill-gotten
bribe-money. Best not to give the Gul any excuse to
find me insubordinate.
    Ragat turned his back on Winn, but she knew
she still had his full attention, even as he stared at
the sleepy, unexploded controlling towermas un-
touched, as unattacked as it had been yesterday and
would be tomorrow. It was the symbol of his humili-
ation, and possibly his ruin, if Neemak were but to
put two threes together and get six. After a moment,
Sister Winn bowed deeply, backing away with hu-
mility.
    And with half-lidded eyes expertly scanning the
half-man to her left. Neemak did not notice; he was
too busy trying to penetrate Gul Ragat's open-faced
frustration. Winn was suddenly surprised to feel
talents she had long since renounced flooding back
through her brain and hands. She had immediately
seen the pocket that bulged beneath Neemak's black,
leather overcoat ....

    It had been a long time ago, back in the seminary.
Winn was not the most well-liked religious student.
In fact, she was held in disdain by the fashionably
agnostic crowd. When she'd fallen sick with a nerve
disorder, a few visited her dorm room out of a sense
of duty, but nobody came in friendship.
    So Winn, in a perverse moment of her life (never
since repeated), studied and practiced the simple art
of removing a wallet from a pocket... more to
restore manual dexterity than for any criminological
reasons. After several months of illness, Winn got
quite expert at the obsolete talent... enough so
that she could play a few practical jokes on her
"friends," slipping valuables into a pocket that
would fall out when the mark reached for his hand-
kerchief.
    She knew she was good. But never before had she
found occasion to slicker a pocket for real. It pro-
voked a heavy feeling of stage fright, now that she
was lightening the pockets of the counselor--evil
incarnate.
    Neemak was no soldier, but he always wore his
greatcoat unbuttoned for quick access to the pistol
he kept in a back-draw holster. He was distracted.
There was no better moment... certainly none
before it would be too late for the priestess, so her
inner certainty told her.
    Before Winn could think twice and perhaps talk
herself out of it, she stretched out her hand as she
continued to back past Neemak Counselor. Her left
hand caught the edge of the thick, stiff greatcoat,
drawing it back. She stepped behind him, placing
her right hand near his right hip pocket, finger-ends
lightly touching the billfold. Now all I need is a
distraction, she thought... prayed.
    "Barada �ai," said Ragat, definitely to himself
this time. "Barada damned Vai!"
    "Barada Vai, M'Lord Gul?" repeated Neemak,
probing.
    The reaction from Ragat took Winn's breath
away. Never a granite-face, never one to wear the
mask, the Gul whiffed to face his counselor-spy with
an expression of guilty astonishment, a thief caught
with his hand actually inside the lockbox. His face
drained, and his mouth opened and closed. Prophets
above, thought Winn, he had no idea the silent-footed
Neemak was skulking behind him. No clue whatso-
ever/
    And Neemak, no fool in the wiles of intrigue,
knew he had struck a vein of purest ore: guilty
secrets were lifeblood to Neemak. He smiled, step-
ping forward eagerly to confront Ragat inside his
personal space with the terrible secret he had just
learned. Winn stepped quickly, so he wouldn't feel a
tug on his greatcoat. "Barada Vai," said Neemak,
calculating, "the child you spoke to in the square.
Where you waited... as if waiting for Barada him-
self."
Ragat said nothing, but he slowly shook his head.
"As we wait here now! How many times, m'lord,
have you glanced out that window at the tower? As if
you were... waiting for something to happen."
    Gul Ragat giggled like a schoolgirl. Neemak
brought his hands together as if washing them. And
holy Sister Winn clipped the folded bills between
forefinger and middle finger and slickered them as
smoothly as a carny. Heart pounding, she slowly let
the greatcoat close again, then stepped back farther
into the opposite corner, sitting once more on the
teetering pile of Cardassian field packs.
    The voices of Gul and counselor dropped to a
whisper, and both glanced back at Sister Winn. She
waited until Ragat began to sweat. He backed away
from Neemak to restore his space, and the counselor
stepped forward, "chasing" the Gul in slow motion
around the room. How familiar that is, thought
Winn to herself, smiling. She had been in Gul
Ragat's very situation at a seminar once, slowly
pursued by vedek Dasa, intent upon making some
obscure philosophical point, until she was rescued
by vedek Opaka and vedek Marinasa.
    The Cardassian-and-a-half had completely forgot-
ten she was even there, so intent were they upon the
dance of spider and fly. She fanned the bills... too
much, far too much. No Bajoran would have as much
money as Neemak carried. She quickly discarded all
the biggest bills (and all the Cardassian money) into
her palm, keeping only as much as a thrifty priestess
might have saved over a few years.
    She glanced again at the pair of intriguers. Then
she swallowed a lump of dust, crossed her legs again,
and twisted her heel open. The holocam tumbled
out, and she caught it, barely preventing it from
thumping on the floor. Fumbling the bills into the
secret compartment, all her dexterity suddenly van-
ished. She swung the heel closed again and breathed
a sigh of relief.
    But a moment later, her heart jumped as she
realized that now she held a camera full of classified
 holos in her hand, a hand that shook with palsy. She
 stared around the hotel room, desperate for another
 inspiration from the Prophets--anything!--telling
 her what to do next.
    Dresser. Liquor cabinet. Wardrobe. Wash basin.
Sink. A bed for the rugged Gul while his legionnaires
camped in the old grazing field. A comm screen, a
writing desk. Her eyes were drawn back to the
wardrobe, then to Gul Ragat's own field pack. Why,
by the Prophets, does he carry that, when he sleeps
in a luxurious spaceport hotel? He never even un-
packs it.
    The words rustled through Winn's head like dried
leaves along a concrete walk: He never even un-
packs it.t
    Thought became deed in the wink of an eye. She
rose, crossed to the walk-in closet, and dropped the
holocam into a side pocket of the field pack. After a
moment's thought, she gently pressed the pocket-
flap closed, where the fuzzy-hooks held it shut.
Then, hearing the discussion slowing, she sat in the
nearest seat, a hard, cold, "proper Cardassian
chair." She sat at attention and once again put on
the mask.
    Minutes later, as a grim-faced Gul led them out of
the hotel room and into his household's camp in the
grassy field that once had been a grazing pasture, she
found no difficulty casting away the excess currency
that she was still palming, the large denominations
and all the Cardassian bills, even with Neemak
Counselor breathing down her neck like a wild beast.
It never occurred to him that anyone would throw
away money, and he did not notice what he could
not see. Let the wind hide my deed, thought Sister
Winn.
    Gul Ragat waited, quietly fuming, in the hotel
lobby, accompanied by his increasingly worried
personal priestess and his gloating counselor. The
sun crawled across the sky, then began to walk, and
finally sprinted through the last few hours. Sister
Winn sat on a couch watching Cardassian news
bulletins--nothing interesting, but she wasn't pay-
ing attention anyway--until she looked up and it
was night. There was no attack; Heavenward Prayer
Spaceport bustled as it always did, shouting with its
usual cacophony, stuffed as full as ever with Bajor-
ans and Cardassians from here to there and back to
here. A moment later, Winn found herself with the
unwanted but undivided attention of three Cardas-
sian legionnaires and her own personal Gul.
    "Yes, my--my lord?" She allowed a note of fear
and uncertainty to color her words.
 "I never thought it would be you," said Ragat.
    "Me?" Winn's voice sounded tiny and childlike,
even to her own ears, and she didn't need to fake it.
    "To betray me!" Gtfi Ragat's face grew stony and
gray, and he spoke through a jaw clenched tight.
Winn saw every muscle in the young Gtfi's body
flexed. Behind his Cardassian eyes, she saw ob-
sidian.
    "I? Betray your grace? Prophets forbid I shotfid
ever betray anyone to whom I owe my loyalty!"
Winn squirmed off the couch and fell to her knees,
prostrating herself before the furious Gul. "Please, I
beg you--do not blame me, m'lord! I don't know
what happened, why they didn't..." She let her
 voice trail away. Looking up, she stared between Gul
 Ragat and Neemak Counselor, between rage min-
 gled with its own fear and a triumphant smirk
 shaken with a drop of nervous confusion: Neemak
 knew that he knew something, but he didn't yet
 know what he knew.
    But Gul Ragat, like Sister Winn, would know that
once the half-breed got his yarpi-teeth into a dirty
secret, he wouldn't let go until he had swallowed
every drop. And Ragat knew it might ultimately
prove his ruin... he had withheld information, and
by his negligence (and his trusting of a Bajoran)
missed the opportunity to capture one of the most
effective cells of the Resistance. Cardassia Prime
was not forgiving of stupidity.
    He mouthed a single word silently at her: Barada,
it was. Winn said nothing; what else could the Gul
think? He doesn't even know how right he is, she
thought with little satisfaction.
    "Take her," he said abruptly. "And if she resists or
attempts to escape--kill her." Winn sighed, sitting
back on her rump. She could see that the words
tasted bitter to Ragat... yet still, he had forced
them out. Congratulations, she thought, you have
just ordered your first murder. You are now a full-
fledged Cardassian.
    She rose quickly and went with the sergeant and
the two private legionnaires, giving them no excuse
whatsoever to carry out the Gul's conditional order,
for some Cardassians were only too eager for red-
work. She paused only long enough to look back at
the young man, barely even twenty-one, and to allow
a single tear to roll down her cheek. "M'lord," she
said, "I thought you knew me better." Then the
unsentimental soldiers yanked her toward the re-
volving doors and hustled her faster than she cared
to walk toward the encampment.
    Winn stumbled twice on the cobblestones between
the lobby door and the grassy pasture. As she was
shoved through the camp, the Bajorans who had
relied upon her for so much of their spiritual needs,
their hope, their lives as anything but slaves, turned
their faces away and pretended not to notice. They
gave her no support. One young Bajoran boy yelled
a rude rhyme at her implying she was a woman
of small virtue, but a woman cuffed him and he
shut up.
    They reached the tent that would be her desig-
nated prison. As the sergeant yanked open the tent
flap, a Cardassian was blocking their way. With a
gasp, Winn realized it was the same sadistic guard
who had seen her drop off the edge of Surface 92.
The corporal's own mouth fell open in shock...
Winn was the Gul's favorite! How could she be in
such trouble? But then he recovered. He spread his
feet, hooked thumbs in his belt, and began to bray.
"Well, well, well! Look what we have here! So it
looks like I wuz right after all that, and you're a
traitor just like I--"
    Without pausing or missing a step, the sergeant
grabbed the bullying corporal by his breastplate and
jerked him out of the way and onto his posterior.
The sergeant shoved Sister Winn into the tent with-
out a backward glance. The corporal sputtered and
leapt to his feet, shouting slurs in Cardassian against
the sergeant's manhood and loyalty, words that
Winn barely knew--and would never admit to
knowing.
    Only then did the sergeant turn. He stared silently
at the bully, saying nothing, just looking. The corpo-
ral's voice faltered, then he struggled to silence.
Without a word, the sergeant grimly drew his thumb
across his own throat in a gesture as universal as it
was chilling.
    The corporal grew distinctly ashen, confirming
what Winn had long thought about such sadistic
thugs. Then, with a sick smile, he backed slowly
away. Sister Winn prayed she would never see him
again... but fretted that she would.
    The sergeant turned back to her. "Search her," he
said without emotion. "Strip her clothes, her boots,
her bag. and catalog everything. Then we will pre-
pare for the interrogation."
    Winn offered no resistance. She had the patience
to wait for her time.

$

CHAPTER
        6

Klic~ a'uE SLAVe watched quietly for her chance.
From Kai Winn she was starting to learn the pa-
tience to wait for her time. At last, three days
following the last "prisoner" roundup, the dean
ordered her to the Promenade to talk to Garak: the
aliens had decided that all the captives should wear
uniform clothing, and they chose the tailor, natu-
rally enough, to design and replicate it.
    It was a strange feeling for Kira, being so anxious
to speak to a Cardassianmand in particular, this
Cardassian. But Garak had been in the Obsidian
Order, and much as he still turned Kira's stomach,
she needed that expertise.
    "There is something completely wrong about the
way they're acting," she whispered to Garak, in
between conveying the dean's uniform-design in-
structions. She looked around nervously: with Kai
Winn's inexplicable help, the aliens had repro-
grammed the computer to eavesdrop on their cap-
tives throughout the station using hidden audio
pickups.
    Garak instantly put his finger to his lips. He went
around his shop, starting several cloth-cutting and -
attaching machines. Then he touched his ear and
drew his finger across his throat. Kira interpreted
Garak's signal as telling her the noise from the
machines would interfere with the computer's abili-
ty to eavesdrop... in fact, thought Kira, I'll bet he
designed them that way deliberately. A Cardassian,
especially this Cardassian, trusts no one.
    But that was the very expertise she needed.
"Which peculiarities have you noticed?" asked Gar-
ak, with the faint, I-know-more-than-you smile Kira
despised more than anything else about him.
  "Well, they refer to us as prisoners--"
  "We are."
    "Instead of captives or hostages," she finished,
glaring at Garak. "And then there's the episode with
the civilians in the bombardment shelters." Garak
raised his brows questioningly, and Kira explained
what had happened. Meanwhile, the Cardassian
worked on a sketch of the proposed uniforms, and
he and Kira pointed to various sections and re-
worked them, in case the aliens had installed spy-
eyes as well.
    "I would think they were soldiers," said Kira, "or
even police officers. Except for what they call them-
selves."
    "Yes, few police renegades would call themselves
'the Liberated.'"
    Kira gave Garak a hard look, but she didn't bother
asking how he had come by his knowledge. He
would never tell her anyway. After a moment, Garak
continued. "But our quasi-cops certainly appear to
be driving police-style ships." Kira blinked. "They are?"
    "Well they're certainly not military vessels, or you
would have them in your security database. Oh, I do
beg your pardon," said Garak, bowing. "I should not
have implied that I have access to your security
database. I was only extrapolating from the fact that
your do not seem to recognize the ships, yet I'm sure
you consulted the database the moment they at-
tacked the station."
    The major fumed. It was obvious that Garak did,
in point of fact, mean to imply exactly that .... but
did that mean he had or hadn't broken into the top-
security Starfleet intelligence database? Was he just
playing games, or did he really know?
    "They didn't have the kind of weaponry that has
been used against us before," she said, thinking out
loud, "these, what did you call them? Quasi-cops."
    "Or there would be little left of Terok--my apolo-
gies, of Emissary~ Sanctuary. But tell me, Major
Kira .... "Garak hunched closer on the pretext of
redrawing a section of the sleeve. "Why didn't you
use those wonderful quantum torpedoes of yours,
those that your Captain Sisko used so effectively in
the recent unpleasantness involving Cardassia?" He
smiled without guile, by which Kira knew he was full
of it.
    "There were technical difficulties." I'll be damned
if Fll tell him anything, she promised herself.
    "It's almost as if... as if you didn't have the
authorization to fire them. Or some such problem.
Why, can you be telling me that the vaunted Federa.
tion doesn't trust you with the access codes? Tsk,
tsk." He shook his head sadly. "They're getting more
devious and suspicious with every passing day. I
daresay, the Federation is almost starting to get
Cardassian on us."
    Kira curled her lip, feeling an overwhelming urge
to slam her fist into his Carassian face. But she knew
any violent impulse would be detected by the slave
collar she worewin fact, it was already beginning to
tighten. Ten bars of latinum says the bastard knows
all about the collar, too.
    It was a bet she quickly won. "Well," said Garak,
"at least I ought to be able to help you with that."
His eyes flickered briefly to the torc, pressing into
Kira's flesh.
    "Can youmdeactivate?" she said, gasping for a
thin, reedy breath.
    The Cardassian nodded, smiling and studying the
uniform design. "A small piece, a sliver in the right
place, can short out the entire mechanism. We've
used similar devices ourselves. I'll work on it and
slip it to you when it's ready."
    She controlled her breath, calming herself. There
was no alternative to working with Garak the Spy.
"So we have police cruisers driven by quasi-cop
aliens who call themselves the Liberated. And
they're desperate for an Orb--don't tell me you
didn't already know that."
 "Major!" Garak looked scandalized.
    "But why? What the hell do they want with it?
Why would any non-Bajoran race want to speak to
the Prophets?"
    The instant the words were out of her mouth, Kira
gasped, not even remembering to hide the reaction
from any lurking spy-cams. Garak smiled; the
thought had already occurred to him, she was sure,
but now she knew as well... and no need to risk
being overheard by saying it aloud.
    Why would any race want to speak to the Proph-
ets, the "wormhole aliens," as the captain used to
call them before he became Emissary? Because the
Prophets were a dangerous unknown. Kira didn't
think it possible that the Prophets could be turned
away from Bajor, but another race might not know
that. Even the thought that the Prophets might
abandon Bajor was blasphemous. But blasphemies
have come to pass before, she thought cynically. That
the aliens might succeed in subverting or perhaps
even harming the Prophets was a chance she Could
not take.
    Somehow, she had to warn Kai Winn. It was vital,
desperately vital, that the alien dean not get his
hands on an Orb under any circumstances. The fate
not only of Bajor but of the entire Alpha Quadrant
hung in the balance.
    But the Kai was surrounded and constantly
watched by the aliens, as if they knew, like Kira, that
Kai Winn was the key. Since the moment of the
Kai's surrender of the station, the aliens had not
allowed the two women to be alone together for a
single moment. And how, wondered Kira, thinking
 of a Cardassian game of strategy she had studied as a
 young soldier, how to pass through a fortress of stone
 to whisper the word in the ear of the queen?
     But she wasn't to get the chance. Garak's door slid
 open without a preceding chirp, and two of the
 quasi-cops strode into the tailor's shop. "May I help
 you, gentlemen?" asked the Cardassian. "Have you
 come about the uniforms? I have the preliminary
 designs right here. I've been working hard on them."
    Kira admired his smoothness. Her own heart was
pounding in excitement. The bugs ignored Garak
and walked straight to the major. "You will come,"
said one of them. "The dean requires your presence
in the cell-block control center."
    "And where is the cell-block control center?" But
the aliens did not answer, each taking one of Kira's
arms and hustling her toward the door.
    They dragged her to the turbolift, entered, and
said nothing. The lift moved on its own--up to Ops.
The Kai, the dean, and several other Bajorans and
aliens were arrayed in a parabola, waiting for her.
    The moment she entered, the dean made a flat
statement that he meant as a question: "You work
with members of the military unit called Starfleet."
Kira uncomfortably noticed she was at the focus of
the parabola.
    After a slow, shuffling moment, during which she
pretended to have difficulty understanding the ques-
tion (she had quickly relearned the traditional Ba-
joran game played against occupying forces), she
nodded. "Yes, sir. I know some people in Starfleet."
"Please observe the forward surveillance moni-
tor," said the dean. Kira obediently turned and felt
her stomach roll silently. Sitting dead in space
relative to the station, but inverted, since it had its
own gravity of course, was a Galaxy-class Federation
starship, the U.S.S. Harriman. It was sending a
hailing message to the current "owners" of Emis-
sary~ Sanctuary... considering that possession,
Kira remembered reading somewhere, was nine-
tenths of the law.
    "This is Admiral Taggart, captain of the Federa-
tion starship Harriman, speaking to the' Dominion
force currently holding Deep Space Nine. We have
received a plea from a former ranking officer of this
station--" Kira winced, feeling the Kai's glare of
betrayal burning the back of her neck--"that you be
removed from the premises immediately. You have
ten minutes to commence evacuation, or we declare
an act of war and initiate counterforce to recover our
possession."
    Major Kira shrank within her uniform at the
words, as ill-chosen as they possibly could have
been. Not only at the arrogance of this Admiral
Taggart, proclaiming that Ernissary's Sanctuary was
a "possession" of the Federation, but even more at
his extraordinary inability to predict the most obvi-
ous response from a group of terrorists holding
hostages on an occupied military base. What the hell
does he think they're going to do?
    Kira heard no order to open a channel, but the
dean began to speak a response. "I am dean of the
Liberated. You have ten minutes by your time to
depart from the range of these scanning instru-
ments. If you do not depart, we will execute one
prisoner every five minutes. To show our resolve, we
shall execute two prisoners immediately."
    Kira said nothing, her throat constricting so tight,
she probably couldn't have spoken if she'd wanted.
Kai Winn was likewise silent. Both leaders had been
through such "displays" before... during the last
occupation of Bajoran territory. They knew the
drill. It was the hardest thing Kira had ever had to
do in all her years in the Resistance: to stand still
and watch friends and battlefield comrades mur-
dered rather than yield and betray the rest.
    But she almost lost her fragile grip when the dean
issued the command to his troops. "Take two female
prisoners from cell-block Shelter Seven to the trans-
porter chamber, execute them, and transport their
bodies to the bridge of the vessel Harriman."

    "The problem with Cardassian skimmers," said
Dax, shouting over Bashir's shoulder against a hor-
rific wind, "is that they're Cardassian."
    The doctor said nothing, but he thought a few
words and phrases he was too much a gentleman
ever to say aloud, even to a centuries-old Trill.
Speech was an annoyance: Bashir was too busy
cranking and straining against the controls of the
two-man cycle-like skimmer that had suddenly, two
hours before, grown a mind of its own. It had
wrenched itself off course and veered sharply to the
right.
 "Julian! Get this thing under control!"
 "Perhaps you'd like to try it," he snapped. Not-
withstanding what could have been considered an
offer, Bashir continued tugging on the handlebars
for the simple reason that he happened to be sitting
in front. "What is this blasted thing doing?"
     "Julian, I think somebody whistled and it's going
home." Dax sounded worried. "Um... Gul Ragat?"
    "Are you kidding? That old man can't be more
than ten kilometers from where we left him, fifteen if
he's highly motivated. And he doesn't have a com-
municatormI searched him myself." She was quiet
a moment, then drew the same conclusion that
Bashir had already drawn. "It must be a general
recall... something has happened, and the Cardas-
sians are retreating to regroup."
    Bashir pursed his lips. The obvious conclusion to
leap to was that the "something" was Benjamin
Sisko. But he hardly needed to suggest the possibility
to Jadzia Dax, the captain's "old man."
    The doctor stopped trying to physically wrench it
back on their previous course and settled back,
panting. "Commander, if this skimmer is heading
home, then it's heading..."
    "Straight into the arms of a Cardassian expedi-
tionary force," she said, her voice barely audible
against the whistle of the wind and the whine of a
siren that had started up when the skimmer made a
sharp right turn. "Julian," she said, leaning over the
side and staring downward, "how high would you
estimate we are?"
    "I'm not a pilot, Jadzia. But I'd say were fifty me-
ters?"
  "What would happen if we~"
    "Splattered across the desert like a pair of broken
eggs." He sighed, staring at the console before him:
the touchplates and buttons were all completely
dead; he had already tried them. Whatever broad-
cast command had turned the sled, it had taken
complete control.
    Dax was still leaning over, but now she started
monkeying with the engine. "I wonder," she said.
"Julian, do you have something long and thin, like
a--like a..."  "Probe?"
"Yes, that's perfect. Hand it over, Doc."
Balancing on the wobbly skimmer, Bashir fished
in his medical pouch, extracting his oldest and least
delicate plastic probe, ordinarily used to separate
tissue from a wound for visual inspection. He
handed it to the commander, who began poking at
the high-speed, high-power turbine assembly. "Urn,
Commander... if you jam a probe in those blades,
assuming it doesn't yank your hand off, wouldn't it
just--"
    With a Klingon war cry, Dax thrust the probe as if
stabbing a d'k tahg knife into an enemy's innards.
The scream of metal almost burst the doctor's
eardrums, and the skimmer commenced bucking
and sashaying. He wrapped both arms around the
handlebars, and Dax grabbed his slim waist in a
death-lock that forced all the air out of his lungs.
    The skimmer began to fly apart in mid-air. Shards
of metal were ejected at high velocity, one of them
slashing through Bashir's pants-leg and razoring his
shin with a horribly painful cut to the bone. But he
had neither time nor breath to shout, for as the
skragged engine dropped from the frame the skim-
mer assumed the aerodynamic characteristics of a
brick.
    On the plus side, he regained control of the now-
nearly-useless flight surfaces. The skimmer fluttered
in a flat spin. There was one chance... if the spin
acted like the blades of the ancient helicopter, which
Bashir had flown in one of his spy-simulations with
Garak, it might slow their fall enough for them to
survive.
    The spin increased. Rather than fight it, he did
everything he could to encourage it. After a moment,
he realized he was dangling from the handlebars,
near the axis of rotation, as if gravity were now
directly behind them. He clenched his teeth against
the acceleration, straining his abdominal muscles to
keep the blood in his head from rushing to his feet. If
I black out, he thought dizzily, I let go and we both
die.
    But straining made little difference. They were
experiencing probably five Gs of acceleration, and
without the anti-G suits worn by pilots back in the
twentieth century, they hadn't a hope. Bashir felt
Dax's arms suddenly go limp and knew she had just
lost consciousness. He caught her with his legs, but
he couldn't hold on long. If only they would hit the
ground; then it would all be over, one way or
another. Goodbye, cruel world, he thought--my last
stupid joke.
    He felt something start to slip from his side--my
medical bag! Letting go the handlebar with one
hand, he grabbed the bag just as it was torn from his
shoulder. Instead, he felt his other pouchmfull of
 useful survival equipment--fly away to be lost in the
 desert sands. But he knew his priorities: the princi-
 ple of triage worked in many surprising places.
     But the single hand with which he held on was not
 strong enough for both his own and Dax's weight.
 The post was wrenched out of his hand. Dax disap-
 peared; he couldn't even remember when she
 slipped out of his leg clamp. The world was a black-
 and-gray swirl, and Bashir's head spun so he had no
 clue as to which way was down.
    Somebody punched him hard in the stomach,
cracking two ribs and leaving him gasping and
struggling for oxygen. He couldn't see, couldn't even
tell whether his eyes were open or closed... but
luminous blackness filled his "vision," or his visual
cortex, at least. Oh God, here comes the headache, he
just had time to think before the pain struck. It was
so intense, it forced an involuntary grunt out of him,
and he knew he was alive and on the deck.
    Nausea overwhelmed Bashir, and he lost every
undigested scrap he had eaten in the past twelve
hours. When he finished, he blinked his eyes open.
They were blurry, but his normal visual acuity soon
returned. Shaking, tears and mucous dripping down
his face, Bashir rose to his knees and looked for Dax.
    She was lying on her side about a hundred meters
from his position. He tried to move, but the pain in
his chest stabbed him, and he inhaled raggedly.
Punctured lung, he realized. Gallantry told him to
ignore it and walk, crawl, whatever it took to get to
Dax's side. But the intelligence that had often fright-
ened him as a child (after his "treatment") began to
speak inside his head in calm, emotionless tones:
you'll be a lot better help to her, it said, if you're in
good health yourself. Repair your own injuries first.
    He hated the voice of reason, but as usual, he
could find no fault with it. "Have you," he gasped to
himself, "ever tried--to fix--your own broken--
ribs and puncturedmlung?" The answer was no, but
Bashir discovered to his surprise that it was pos-
sible. ~. assuming one were as flexible as a monkey.
He played the tissue restorer across his chest a dozen
times before his breathing settled; it took longer to
knit the bones, but he was finished with everything
in less than three minutes.
    He pushed to his feet, ignoring the remaining
tenderness, and stumbled across the pebbly sand to
Dax. Trill luck had worked as advertised: Dax had
fallen first, when they were still too high, but she had
landed in a soft sandpit. She was unconscious but
still breathing, rasping so loud that Bashit decided
she had a fractured skull even before he used the
medical tricorder. The skull fracture wasn't serious,
but she had a compound fracture of her radius that
required immediate treatment before she bled to
death (and she already had a head start).
    After fifteen minutes of very basic emergency
medicine, the commander moaned and shifted to a
less uncomfortable position. Her eyes opened. She
looked at the torn, bloody sleeve of her native
costume, then at the exposed arm with the charac-
teristic pink splotch of regenerated tissue. "Miracles
of modmmodern medicine," she said, mumbled
actually. Then she fell into a deep sleep... partly
due to fatigue, partly the mild sedative Bashir had
hyposprayed into her shoulder.
     He allowed her to sleep for two hours while he
 scavanged everything useful from the wreckage of
 the skimmer. He clawed his way into the onboard
 computer brain and found the transponder, smash-
 ing it to rubble so the Cardassians couldn't use it to
 locate the crash site. Then he returned to Dax,
 squatting over her.
     "You look so peaceful when you sleep," he said. "I
 toss and moan like a patient with a fever." Bashir
 sighed. Then, setting practical judgment above med-
 ical wisdom, he gently shook her awake.
     Dax sat bolt upright, gasping in terror, eyes like
 saucers. She gripped his wrists painfully hard, star-
 ing past him at the lengthening shadows of the
 desert of Sierra-Bravo. Then she blinked, coming
 fully awake. "What--whatmwhat a nightmare,"
 she said, shuddering.
    "Nightmare? Don't Trills thrash around when
they dream?"
    Dax shook her head, clearing cobwebs, not re-
sponding to the question. "All right, Julian. Now
what?"
    "At least we're not headed for the last roundup
with the Cardassian cowboys."
    She lowered her brows, studying him. "You say
very strange things sometimes. How much time do
you spend in Quark's holosuites, anyway?"
    Bashire smiled at the old Dax. "I'm a student of
history. Come, let's start walking and find some
shelter for the night. From the sand dunes, I'd guess
we might get some wind when the sun sets."
    They charted a course for the nearest range of
hills. But before they could reach them, the breeze
kicked up, as Bashix had prophesied. Soon the sand
was blasting their faces, stinging like a swarm of
angry bees. Through the painful, dangerous sand-
storm, Bashix thought he saw a faint luminescence in
the distance.
    "Lights!" he shouted. "Maybe it's a Native vil-
lage!"
 "Where? I don't see anything."
    "Trust me, it's there," he said. The curse of seeing
twenty-fifteen, he thought; nobody ever believes you.
    As they got closer, the light increased until even
Dax could see it. Soon, Bashix could see clumps of
houses and other buildings looming in the blackness,
and they cut close to minimize the sand damage to
their exposed flesh. But none of the buildings were
lit, and they all looked deserted. The light he had
seen from two kilometers distant was a tiny, star-
light lightglobe at the top of a striped pole in the
center of town. A hexagon of pavement surrounded
the pole. Probably a bandstand of some sort, he
decided.
    Near the bandstand was a garage-like building
whose doors were not locked. Dax helped him
wrestle the sliding door up--there was probably a
button that would have raised it automatically, but
they hadn't time to hunt for it. They ducked inside
and began to shake out the sand. The doctor fished
some facial cream from his MediKit, and he and
Dax repaired the sand lacerations.
    "Do you have a light?" he asked. "I lost everything
but the medical gear back on the skimmer."
     Dax fumbled in her jacket, checking all the inter-
 nal pockets. "Damn," she said; "my hand torch is
 gone. Wait, I have something." From what Bashir
 could see in the starlight that filtered through a
 window in the ceiling, it was a tube a quarter-meter
 long, two centimeters in diameter.
    Dax took it in both hands and made as if she was
trying to break it. Bashir heard a pop, and a faint
green glowing mess swirled in the center of the tube.
Dax shook it violently, and the entire tube glowed
brilliant green, lighting the room.
    "One of Quark's," she said, smiling. "I filtched it
from him during the first away-team mission." She
held the glowtube aloft and gasped. "Oh, my," she
said breathlessly.
    "What is it?" Bashir turned to look. He saw some
peculiar object hulking in the deep shadows at the
back of the building.  "Oh, my!"
    "Dax, what is it?" He began to see the outlines of
a large, rectangular compartment with seats, storage
areas, and a pair of controls that looked like hospital
exercise bars hooking over the front seats and dan-
gling down about hand height.
  Bashir's mouth fell open. "Dax, it's..."
  "Julian, it's a--"
    The Native aircar taunted them with its nearness.
Even if they had fathorned its inner workings, there
was no way they could take off and fly in the dark in
such a storm. "Sleep well," said Bashir, more to the
aircar than his companion. "I have a feeling it's back
to basic pilot training in the morning."

0

CHAPTER
        7

JADZIA DAX forced herself to lie down, she even
closed her eyes, but she positively refused to listen
to her inner worm and sleep. She lay more or
less immobile for the five hours until morning,
not wanting to wake Bashir (assuming the good
doctor wasn't likewise feigning sleep to avoid both-
ering her). But the moment the sun east its first
tentative rays through the still swirling dust, a
natural searchlight illuminating the curious Native
car, she was up and inspecting the bizarre piece of
equipment.
    Bashir was at her side in an instant. "So you were
faking it," she said.
    "Sleep?" said he. "What's that? I don't believe
I've had a wink since we bubbled up from the
Defiant."
  "Let's see," said Dax, ticking off her fingers. "We
 fought a sea monster, were ejected from a destroyed
 runabout, swallowed half the ocean--"  
"Well, you did, at any rate."
     "Stole a pair of skimmers and dumped one, took
 out an entire Cardassian strike team, kidnapped a
 Gul and dropped him in the middle of nowhere,
 crashed the other skimmer .... "
    "And found out where the Natives came from,"
said a quiet Bashir. Dax trailed into silence, abrupt-
ly uninterested in her own witty repartee. Remem-
bering the ghastly experiment in which ninety
million Native children had been allowed to die, just
to see whether civilization would spring magically
from technology, had sobered her mood.
    "Commander," said the doctor, "are we ready to
get this--air-buggy moving?" Dax nodded, leading
the way to the vehicle that was slowly becoming
visible in the dawn light.
    The passenger compartment was enclosed by a
roll-cage, but the seats were bare blue metal--the
"exercise-bar" steering linkages were slightly stiff to
Dax's touch. Any looser and they'd be impossible to
hoM steady, she realized.
    There was no obvious engine. Storage boxesm
trunks--occupied the entire space behind the seats.
Other than the linkages, the boxes, and the seats, the
rest of the air-buggy was empty space enclosed by
bars. The contraption sat on landing skids instead of
wheels; it clearly was intended never to move along
the ground.
    "Maybe we'd better climb inside, Jadzia," said the
doctor. Dax was dubious about the missing engine,
but there was nothing else to do except set her eyes
on the horizon and start marching.
    "I really don't want to walk a few hundred kilome-
ters," she said, provoking a puzzled glance from
Bashir.
    She clambered inside, ducking her way through
the cage bars and squirming into a seat that was just
slightly disproportionate to the Trill frame. "So how
do you make it go?" she asked; "or how would you
make it go if there were an engine?" Experimentally,
she took hold of the overhead crane-like steering
link with both hands and pushed forward.
    The air-buggy leapt up a meter in altitude, then
lurched forward like a runabout on maximum
thrusters, hurling Dax back in her seat with bone-
cracking acceleration. With a horrible, metal-on-
metal, wrenching sound that tore at Dax's ears, the
buggy shattered the back of the garage, shredding
bits of steel like tissue paper. Panicked, she let go of
the link, and the air-buggy slowed to a stop. But it
didn't settle back on the ground; it remained a long
step in the air. There was no sound of turbine or fan
or even the hum of Federation-style antigravity
units. Whatever science held the buggy aloft, it was
silent as the grave.
  "Jadzia! Are you all right?"
    Dax didn't answer. She was too busy scanning
three hundred and sixty degrees around them, look-
ing for an energy signature.
  "Commander? Did you find something?"
    "Julian, this car isn't running on broadcast pow-
er."
     "Is there an internal power source? I tho