Kira compulsively looked back at the door of the basement transporter room. Though she knew they were alone here, that Furel was outside waiting to give a signal if anything went wrong, it was terrifying to be inside an actual Cardassian facility. The only missions she’d been part of until now had been attacks from outside facilities or ships; this was the first time she could remember actually entering Cardassian domain, and it made her feel uncomfortably claustrophobic. She couldn’t imagine how she was going to feel when she was inside Gallitep. She would never have admitted it, but she was having second thoughts.
“I think I’ve got it,” Mobara said from behind the transporter console. “The scientist said you would be beamed directly into the facility if I use these coordinates; you’ll close your eyes, open them, and find yourself standing somewhere in the Gallitep mine.”
“I think we all understand the basic concept,” Shakaar said wryly.
Kira held her breath. What if Mobara had the coordinates wrong, and she were somehow transported into the solid rock that surrounded the open mine? The thought was beyond horrifying. Kira trusted Mobara’s expertise, and she knew that transporter technology had been used safely by the Cardassians for decades, at least. But still…it was impossible not to be afraid.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Gantt said to Nerys.
“Of course I am,” she said fiercely, terrified.
Lupaza, who stood close to Kira, reached out to grab her hand. “You’ll do fine, Nerys,” the older woman assured her, but Kira met Shakaar’s eyes for a moment and saw that he wasn’t so sure he should have agreed to let her come along.
Shakaar stepped onto the transporter platform. “I stand here?” he asked. Like the rest of them, he’d never used a transporter in his life.
“That’s right,” Mobara told him.
Lupaza stepped up after him, along with Kira and Gantt. The rest of their strike team would be transported immediately after them, slightly higher in the mine so that they could deal with the guards. There were ten from Shakaar’s cell in all—not as many as Daul had requested in his detailed instructions, but several of their group were already on assignment in Ilivia with another cell when Daul had contacted Shakaar, and they were out of reach. Ten would have to be enough.
“Now, just remember,” Shakaar told them all. “We get inside, make sure the Bajorans are all in a central location, kill any hostiles we find, and then we contact Mobara with these.” He held up one of the comm devices the scientist had given to Furel. Kira fingered hers nervously; it was pinned to her tunic, and she feared she was going to lose it. She unpinned the small oval of metal and slipped it in her pocket.
“Is everyone ready?” Mobara called out, and Shakaar gave a nod.
“See you on the other side,” Gantt said, and Kira shut her eyes tightly.
Lenaris Jau was monitoring one of the dozens of subterranean smelters at Gallitep, so weary that he could scarcely keep his head above his shoulders. So many of the sick workers had died lately, and those who were not affected by disease had to pick up the slack, working nearly round the clock. Jau had no idea how long it had been since he’d slept. Exhaustion and the darkness of the underground tunnels in the mine tended to distort his sense of time. It could have been three hours, it could have been three days. It didn’t really matter.
Jau wondered why the number of workers had been dwindling lately. The dead were usually replaced, but lately they had not been. He wondered why the sick workers were no longer being treated. Those who died were unceremoniously dragged from the mines, to be taken to some undisclosed location for disposal, though it was not unusual for their corpses to remain where they had fallen for up to three days, swelling and stinking in the baking sun. The numbers of dead seemed to have escalated quite dramatically lately. Was it only yesterday that over three dozen people had died, in a single day? There were rumors that Darhe’el was planning to shut down the camp, which would not bode well for the workers here. Jau thought he would walk with the Prophets soon, and mostly, he was too weary to care—if anything, death would be a welcome release from the horrors of this place.
Jau had seen the most unspeakable things of his life happen in this place. He had seen plenty of tunnels cave in, had listened to the screams of those left to suffocate inside. He had seen scarcely recognizable corpses retrieved from the vats of chemicals used to separate the rock from the valuable minerals, and even worse, he’d seen the gruesome-looking survivors from similar accidents, forced to go back to work with no hair, no skin—even no eyelids. He’d heard the groans and wails of people who were “treated” in the camp infirmary, more like a torture chamber or the laboratory of a mad scientist, bent on using live subjects. He’d seen dozens of people crippled from injuries sustained after stumbling down the steeper precipices at the very top of the mine. He’d seen people beaten within an inch of their lives for what Gul Darhe’el perceived as insubordination. But Jau was numb to it, mostly. At least, as much as he could have hoped for.
Jau adjusted the smelter’s temperature, ignoring the echoing groans and wails all around him. He drew his forearm over his brow, wiping the sweat away, when he noticed that the system of conveyor belts that delivered the ore to the smelter had stopped, and the overwhelming noise that usually accompanied it had ceased as well. It took his sluggish mind a moment to register what was going on, and he looked around, his heart fluttering. Something must have gone wrong with the artificial intelligence system, though in all his time at Gallitep, Jau could not remember that happening, even once. No, it had not happened since the accident, which had occurred before Jau had been brought here. An alarm began to tear through the hollow caverns of the mines, indicating a systems failure—the mine was to be evacuated at once. Jau’s breath froze in his lungs; was this going to be Darhe’el’s method of disposing of him, and everyone else here?
Before he could think further on it, he was instantly swept up in a crush of panicking Bajorans. Jau began to run, drawing on reserves he didn’t know he had, pushing and stumbling until he found himself stepping out onto a wide dirt road that curled down from the very top of the pit all the way down here, just a few linnipates from the bottom. He was immediately aware of the heat—more than just the heat from the hot, midday sun that he was accustomed to; it was from a fire, somewhere not far below him. Something burned and scorched with chemical brightness at the base of the pit, sending up great plumes of toxic smoke. Jau began to scramble up the gravel road, trying to get away from the flames below him, but he encountered so many confused Bajorans, he could not get far. The road was packed with people, crying out in panic. Finally, Jau came to the road’s widest point, and realized he could go no farther. He would have to wait for the crowd to thin out, which he suspected would not happen before they were all murdered here, en masse—for it seemed logical to Jau that this was really it—Darhe’el’s final solution had come.
He looked up once, panned the miserable and frightened faces of the crowd that surrounded him, and did a double take. There was a girl standing there, a Bajoran, and he could have sworn that she wasn’t there before. This girl did not look like she belonged here. She looked like one of the younger ones that might have been brought in many months ago, but Jau wasn’t aware of any new workers coming in for some time. And there was something else about her too…There was a bulge at her hip, underneath her tunic, and Jau felt certain he knew what it was—this girl carried a phaser. She caught his eye and moved closer to him, shoving her way through the tight press of gangly limbs and exposed rib cages, bruised beneath too-tight skin.