“Indeed,” Dukat agreed, remembering himself. The Oralians had been nothing but troublemakers for Cardassia, backward-looking, naïve fools who did little more than damage his people’s collective morale—not to mention nearly cause civil war, on more than one occasion. Dukat felt certain that anything Kell had heard was no more than rumor, for the Oralians had all been taken care of many years ago. Dukat would not stand for any alternative.
“At any rate,”Kell said, changing back the subject, “I want to see some quantifiable differences where the Bajoran resistance is concerned. And I want to see them soon.”
“Of course, Legate.”
“Perhaps this truth is lost on you, Dukat, but the citizens of the Union have come to speak your name synonymously with the Bajoran annexation. Whatever way the annexation falls, success or failure, the responsibility rests on you. Not to your predecessors, and likely not to your successors, either, for you are considered to be the true architect of the Bajoran-Cardassian construct. I would advise you to keep that in mind.”
Dukat could find no answer. It seemed that the legate felt resentment about the words he had just spoken, but Dukat was not sure it was something to be envious of, the caliber of responsibility that had just been attributed to him.
The legate started to reach for his console, then paused. “One last thing. I’m sending a new scientist to Bajor—Doctor Kalisi Reyar. She has been doing interesting things with weapons research, and she has a specific interest in Bajor. I think you will find her to be useful.”
“I thank you, Legate. I will let the director of the Bajoran Institute of Science know that she is to have a new player on her team.”
“Very well,”Kell acknowledged, and hit his disconnect button, severing their tenuous connection.
The small group of seven Bajorans slipped through the woods, using nothing but the light of the moons to guide their way. It was cold, for Jo’kala, and Ro felt confident that they would not meet many Cardassian patrols tonight—at least, not until they came upon the military compound itself.
The target was not far from the edge of the forest, and they arrived there in very little time, the remaining three from the cell silently bringing up the rear. “We’re all clear,” Tokiah murmured. “Let’s do this.”
Ro immediately set about rigging a tricorder to project a Bajoran life sign. She pitched the tricorder within striking range, and a thin, red beam shot out from under the eaves of the squat structure. Ro aimed her phaser at the source of the laser, and took it out neatly with a single shot. She crept closer, beckoning the others, who scrambled behind her, staggering their crouched positions.
It was only a moment before a stiff-legged sentry came out, an exaggerated frown frozen across his features. He was clearly uncomfortable, having been made to stand in the Bajoran elements, and Ro wasted no time giving him a full dose of her phaser. He landed backwards with a nearly comical thud. She leapt forward, stripping him of several pieces of useful equipment, including his comcuff, phaser, tricorder, and padd.
“Hurry, Ro!” Kanore snapped in a loud whisper. “There’s no time to pick off paltry bits of equipment when there’s a full armory in there waiting to be raided!”
“I’m coming,” she muttered, stashing the items away in her clothing. Old habits died hard. She leapt over the sentry’s prone form to the entrance of the compound, where she expertly removed the security panel and worked her particular brand of magic on the bypass loop. The door opened obediently, and the seven Bajorans slipped inside.
Ro’s thoughts condensed as she entered the compound, her vision focused on each pasty, angry-featured Cardassian face, those lumbering bodies clad in shiny gray. She aimed for the neck ridges, the dimple in the center of the forehead, anywhere they weren’t armored, but if she misfired and hit one in the chest, the resultant blast was usually enough to at least disable him for a moment. One soldier caught it just below the shoulder, forcing him a step backward. He shook it off, a tight fist from his uninjured side swinging out to knock Ro’s arms sideways. Keeping her pistol clenched tightly between her fingers, she had only enough time to swing her elbows and slam them up under his chin. His knees buckled and he fell, giving her the opportunity to deliver a pulse directly into his face, leaving a gaping, smoking hole where his lizardlike features had once been. Ro coughed and moved on. At least there wasn’t so much blood where phasers were concerned. Ro had never cared for the sight of blood.
The Cardassians were outnumbered, a mere skeleton crew on duty in what they thought was a secure facility, and it took very little time for the Bram cell to finish them off. The cell was still named after Bram, though he was gone; injured by a Cardassian phaser last year, he had finally died several months later, though he put up a good fight. Tokiah had stepped in to fill his shoes as an ad hoc leader for the past year or so, since he was the oldest remaining member. Kanore begrudged him the leadership, but it didn’t much matter to Ro who led them—she still did pretty much whatever she wanted to do, whether it coincided with her orders or not. Most of the time, she garnered successful enough results to avoid major conflict, but there were those—Kanore, especially—who frequently let her know that she was out of line. Since Bram had left, Ro found that she had fewer advocates for her position all the time, and it had begun to occur to her more and more that Bram might have been the only member of the cell who had really wanted her around for any reason other than her skills.
“In here!” Tokiah yelled. He and two others had found the compound’s armory, in a room with flickering lights—a stray phaser shot seemed to have hit the environmental controls, for the lights were winking out all over, and the tinny humming of the building’s heat monitoring system had gone silent. Entering the room, Ro immediately saw the force field that protected a long wall of weapons—stacked three and four deep, the aisle as long as three tall men lying end-to-end. There were more weapons than they could carry in one trip, but they couldn’t risk coming back for more. Laren quickly found a console, and tapped her way into the mainframe, searching for the correct Cardassian words and phrases among the jumble of foreign text.
“Hurry!” Kanore said.
“When you learn to do this, you can hurry,” Ro shot back.
She finally found the right command, and the translucent force field skittered out. Kanore took a step forward before Ro shouted at him to stop. “There may be a secondary security measure,” she reminded him, and he obediently froze in place. Ro entered another command, and the lights went out completely, Sadakita and Faon quickly switching on their palmlights to compensate for the close darkness.
“Everyone grab four weapons,” Tokiah instructed, as the rest of the cell found their way to the armory. From the farthest end of the line of weapons, Ro promptly selected six rifles and two pistols, to which Kanore wasted no time in rebuking her.
“You can’t carry all that, it will slow you down!”
“Maybe it would slow you down,” Ro countered.
“Tokiah said—”
Ro bumped his shoulder as she walked past him, heavily weighted down with the massive weapons slung over both shoulders.
“Laren,” Tokiah said, and Ro shot him a look. Just because he was older, because he’d been close to Bram, he thought he could get away with using her given name, as though they were friends. They weren’t friends. None of these people were her friends, and the look she gave Tokiah said as much. He didn’t bother to finish his thought as she left the compound, and she set off into the forest ahead of the others.
It was not long before she was beginning to think that maybe Kanore had been right. To keep the cumbersome weapons from clanking together, she had to carry them close to her body, across the front of her chest, which was putting a tremendous burden on her neck and shoulders. The obvious solution occurred to her, and she set down her weapons some distance into the forest. With another thought, she turned back for more.