The vast pit had been gradually but efficiently excavated over the course of many years, crisscrossed with scaffolds and enormous systems of conveyors to remove the chunks of rock and minerals from the ground. This had once been a massive hillside, likely covered over with trees and foliage and wildlife; now it was a bare, steaming crater, surrounded by many tessipates of complete desolation; it was the closest thing Daul could imagine to the myths about the Fire Caves. Before Terok Nor had been constructed, Gallitep was the center of ore processing in the B’hava’el system. Daul thought that Bajorans could never have conceived of a thing so unsightly and terrible as this place.
The steep, spiraling gravel roads that were cut into the sides of the pit were dotted here and there with workers, some of them disappearing into tunnels that had been dug randomly all around the perimeter of the mine. Though Daul could not see clearly most of the workers from where he stood, those nearest to him staggered on thin, bandy legs, their bare chests and backs covered in open sores and blistering sunburns. They wielded traditional shovels and spades and truncheons, hacking away at the exposed rock, slowly but persistently widening and deepening the abyss beneath them to get at the valuable minerals embedded in the ground. Also visible were a number of Cardassian guards, swaggering between the hapless miners and occasionally stopping to shout criticisms or reprimands. Most of the guards did not venture far into the pit, apparently preferring to remain close to their respective stations, well-built corridors like the one from which Daul and Marritza had just come.
Daul followed Marritza a quarter of the way across the diameter of the pit, until he came to a little building which abutted the swaying catwalk. Here was the center of the system, the brain of this entire operation—the primary server. The artificial intelligence program, which drove the core mining drills, was located here; those drills sought out the richest veins and pointed the scavenging miners in that direction, to pick out and process the precious metals by hand.
Daul began the reprogramming sequence that would eventually shut down the entire system. It was a complicated process, but the clerk waited patiently as he tapped in code. Beneath them, workers groaned and labored, guards shouted, and the machinery ground relentlessly on. As Daul neared the end of the first-stage closure, he found himself compelled to ask his unusual escort a question.
“What will happen to all of them when this camp is closed?” Daul finally asked, looking down into the enormous cavern below him.
Marritza did not immediately answer. “Darhe’el will take care of them,” he said in a low voice.
Daul was not sure if he should inquire further, though he did not know what the other man meant. “Oh—I see,” he stammered, and went back to his task.
“Do you?” Marritza asked him. He gestured out to the open space that surrounded them. “For Gul Darhe’el—for Cardassia—these workers are valued only for their productivity. You yourself, Doctor Daul, are valued only for your particular expertise here. Is that how it was on your world, in your culture, before we came here?”
Daul considered. Bajor valued its people as more than what they were capable of producing—they were valued as individuals, as relatives, as friends—as Bajorans. Daul slowly shook his head.
“When the camp shuts down,” Marritza went on, not looking at Daul, “these workers will lose their value. That value has already begun to decline, because of their illness. Do you understand?”
Daul thought perhaps he understood what Marritza was trying to tell him, but he didn’t understand the logic—nor did he understand why the Cardassian was telling him, either. “Yes,” he croaked, and finished his work.
“Good,” Marritza said. “Are you finished?”
“For now,” Daul replied. “I’ll have to come back to finish the job.”
Marritza attempted to smile as he guided Daul back toward the footbridge outside the little building, and again Daul thought he detected bitterness. “I’m sure Gul Darhe’el will be very pleased with your work.” He removed his headset as he ushered Daul back inside the cool, stainless chrome corridor, the echoing voices of crying men and women somehow louder now, and Daul was transported quickly and efficiently back to the institute.
Ro was to meet with Bis near the Lunar V base on Jeraddo, a place where another cell had begun stashing ships years ago. Since that time, other cells had begun bringing their own ships here, or using the base as an offworld meeting point to coordinate large-scale attacks that required the cooperation of more than one group.
In addition to her anxious curiosity about why Bis wanted to see her, she could not deny that she was nervous to see him again. In the years since she had been to Valo II, she had never met another boy who had turned her head the way he had, and she had built up a bit of mythology about him in that time. She wasn’t sure whether he would be able to live up to it.
Ro docked her little raider, the Lahnest,near where she knew the underground base was. What had once been jungle had been partially cleared away to create a suitable landing field, but much of the canopy and brush had to be left behind so as to obscure the Bajoran presence here. In fact, the landing area was smaller than even the poorest farmer’s field, and it apparently hadn’t been used in a few weeks; the fast-growing vegetation of this moon was already starting to fill in again.
Ro waited for what seemed like a very long time before she saw another vessel coming, starting out as a dot in the sky, gradually but quickly expanding into a light-capacity ship that she knew was the same one Darrah Mace had used for the rendezvous with the Kressari, three years ago. The ship cracked through the atmosphere of Jeraddo, singing in a telltale high-pitched greeting that took Ro’s breath away. He was here.
When he finally arrived, she somehow forgot to be nervous. Here approached a tall man, handsome as he had promised to be as a teenager, his eyes piercing and his smile apparently genuine—he was happy to see her. Ro couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
“Ro Laren!” he exclaimed. “I can’t tell you how glad I am you decided to meet me!”
She cleared her throat. “So,” she said, trying to sound casual, “what did I come all this way for? I hope it’s good.”
“Oh, it is good, it is,” he said, and she saw him swallow as he came closer to her, scrutinizing her face. She realized that he was very nervous about this meeting, and it occurred to her that he probably had a mythology about her, too. It was entirely possible that she would fail to live up to his estimation of her, just as easily as the reverse could be true.
“Well,” he said, “you might remember that we didn’t have much in the way of organized resistance on Valo II. But I want to change that. I’ve been working on an idea for a long time.”
Ro frowned. Still no organized resistance? Had she come all this way, pinned all her opportunities on just one idea, still in the planning stages? “What kind of an idea?”
Bis grinned. “Terok Nor,” he said.
Ro was a bit taken aback. “Terok Nor?” she repeated. “What about it?”
Bis’s smile grew even wider. “Think about it. It’s the perfect target, really. It’s the seat of the occupation, it’s where the prefect lives, and where half the Cardassian ships in this system are docked at any given time—”
“I still don’t follow,” Ro said. “What do you mean, a target? You just said you don’t even really have a cell—you’d need an entire army to attack Terok Nor, and an army is exactly what the whole of Bajor doesn’t have. Even with every single resistance cell on the planet, we’d never—”
“That’s the brilliant part,” Bis said. “We won’t be the ones to attack it. We’ll get someone else to do it for us.”