Valo II looked exactly as Ro had remembered it, only somehow even more depressing. Clearly there had been a bit of a population explosion since she had seen it last, for the clusters of shanty structures and tents near the landing field had trickled back farther into the scrubby brush, and the shabby town where Bis’s father lived was even more crowded than she remembered it. There were people everywhere, and they all looked unhealthy. Rheumy eyes; hacking, persistent coughs; open sores; drawn, emaciated faces. People were walking through the worn corridors between the tightly packed houses, carrying baskets of soiled rags, dried alien-looking fruits, or headless porlifowl. Lean and rawboned women walked surrounded by their dirty children. Old men sat on the ground in scattered hopeless groups, talking reservedly and smoking hiunaleaf—a cheap, unhealthy crop that helped to stave off hunger but shortened the life span significantly with its resulting ailments.
In fact, Ro thought, everyone here was slowly dying in one way or another: respiratory afflictions, starvation, communicable disease, or exposure. It sickened Ro to acknowledge to herself that at least the Bajorans back on their homeworld had the Cardassians to feed them—in exchange for slavery. She wondered if, despite its terrible appearance, Valo II might be preferable to Bajor for that reason.
Bis spoke to her as they walked. “In three days,” he told her, “the Ferengi captain—DaiMon Gart, he’s called—will be docking at the moon of a gas giant not far from this system. That will be his last stop before Terok Nor, and that’s where you’ll take the device to his ship.”
“That simple, is it?” Ro replied, trying not to stare at a woman with an especially prominent neck goiter.
“For you it will be,” Bis said confidently.
“But what if I can’t do it?” Ro said softly. “I don’t know the first thing about Ferengi security systems.”
“We can have a look at the freighter,” Bis said. “That should give you some ideas, shouldn’t it?”
Ro sighed. “It might,” she said, but she still felt doubtful.
“Look, if all else fails, you can just bribe him to get on the ship.”
“Why would he agree to that?”
“The same reason he agreed to take on such an incredibly dangerous cargo in the first place.”
“What am I supposed to bribe him with?”
Bis frowned. “That’s one part of the plan that might not work quite so well,” he confessed. “You see, we have a stolen Cardassian padd, and we might be able to convince him that he can access Cardassian passcodes with the device…but we’re not sure if he’d believe it—”
“I thought you had this all figured out.”
“Well,” Bis said, “there is one other solution.”
“What’s that?” Ro said sourly.
“Seduce him.”
Ro stared at him in disbelief before she broke out in rueful laughter.
“What’s so funny about that?” Bis protested. They had come to his father’s house, and Ro followed him inside.
“Right. Me, seduce an alien. Me, seduce…anyone,” she snorted.
The house was dark, and Bis lit a candle on the mantelpiece of a crumbling fireplace. It was likely this house had been built here long before the Cardassians came to Bajor, when the world was still considered an exciting new frontier land, a promising place to settle. Ro looked around the room and saw how those auspicious hopes had eroded. The room, with stone walls and a cracked and deteriorating wood floor, was blackened with the smoke from cooking fires and smelled strongly of ash and dirt. There was almost no furniture, aside from three sleeping pallets that were arranged around the fireplace.
“This is where you sleep?” She gestured to the pallets.
“No,” he said. “My cousin’s children sleep there. He had no room for them in his own house—he lives with his sister-in-law. His wife is dead, and we took in the children when his sister-in-law’s house got too crowded.” Bis took the candle and gestured to a corridor that led them to the back of the square house, and Ro followed him before he stopped.
“Why would you say that?” he asked softly.
“Say what?”
“About you…seducing anyone?” He looked embarrassed.
“Because it’s absurd,” she told him sharply.
“Haven’t you ever—” He stopped, and she was forced to look away. She considered what he was asking before she replied.
“No,” she finally said. “I haven’t.”
The candle flickering between them, Ro was aware of the sudden awkwardness there, too, standing in the corridor between the tiny rooms of this desolate house.
Bis stepped into one of the small rooms, revealing a bare pallet, a heap of worn clothing. He set the candle on a small, rough chest, the light casting long shadows across their faces, and turned to face her. He put his arms around her then, the feeling strange and terrifying and electric. As she had been on Jeraddo, she was clumsy in his embrace, not sure how to respond. But her body knew, and after a long, warm moment, she felt herself soften to his touch. Nobody had ever approached her this way, and as he drew back to kiss her, his face moving toward hers, she realized, for the first time, how much she had wished that someone would.
Kira pulled a knot of something unpleasant out of her mouth. A bone, perhaps? She hoped it was a bone, for something about the shape of it suggested a tiny little beak. She examined it, decided it was just a bone splinter, and laid it down on the long wooden table where the members of the cell took their meals together. “Ugh,” she exclaimed. “Who made this food? Furel?”
“It was Shakaar,” Dakhana Vaas told her, nodding toward the back of the cave.
“Oh,” Kira said, a little embarrassed. She wouldn’t want Shakaar to hear her complaining.
“It’s all right, little girl, he knows he can’t cook.”
Kira resented Dakhana calling her “little girl,” since they were only a couple of years apart, and anyway, Kira had been with the cell for more than a year. She silently wished she was taller, or at least as tall as Dakhana.
Shakaar came into the main body of the cave from where he’d been sitting with his precious and notoriously troublesome comm system since just before mealtime. He leaned his hands against the end of the table, his expression suggesting news.
“Listen up,” he said, the unusual tension in his voice imploring everyone to look up. The older members of the cell occasionally heckled Shakaar for his tendency to mumble, but he was not mumbling now. “We’ve got a chance to get into Gallitep.”
“Gallitep!” Dakhana exclaimed. “Who’s your informant? Is he reliable?”
“I believe so,” Shakaar said. “But even if it’s just a rumor, this is an opportunity that I don’t think we should pass up. It’s too important. The Cardassians have decided to shut down the place for good. It’s too much trouble to relocate the Bajoran workers, so…” he trailed off, passing a hand over his grim face.
“So they’re going to kill them instead,” Furel said, the disgust in his voice plain.
“Yes,” Shakaar said. “Right now, I just need a couple of volunteers to go down and meet with this contact in order to get more information about the plan. It’s a little risky—”
“Risky,” Dakhana warned. “Shakaar, we’re talking about Gallitep! There’s no way to even approach that camp; there’s nothing around for kellipates except booby-traps and Cardassian patrols, the air security has to be the tightest anywhere on the planet, and Gul Darhe’el is—”
“I’m talking about a meeting at a safe location not far from here,” Shakaar said. “I wouldn’t usually ask anyone to meet with a contact when I can’t vouch for his reliability. But like you said, Vaas, this is Gallitep. This person is supposed to have inside knowledge of the camp, and it could be the only way anyone could even—”
Kira spoke up before anyone else could. “I can go.”
Shakaar turned to her, hesitating. Kira was sure he was going to say no, but he surprised her. “Okay, I have one volunteer. Who else?”