“Don’t worry,” she said to him, and suddenly, he did worry—he found he still had the capacity to worry, even after feeling mostly nothing for such a very long time.
Ro had not expected to feel so conflicted as she warped back to Valo II. She had been on and off the Ferengi freighter in less than ten minutes; the entire operation really had been as easy as Bis had said it would be. She kept reminding herself of the wonderful, risky, and brave thing she had just done, but the thoughts were not quite resonating within her, and she was eager to find Bis and hear his reassurances.
Still wary of landing the valuable warp ship on her own, she left it in orbit of Valo II, hoping that Bis would be able to retrieve it later. But she could not immediately find him once she materialized on the planet’s surface. He had implied that he would meet her near the landing field when she returned, but she was back much faster than expected, and she did not know where he could be. She went to his house, but he wasn’t there, so she wandered the dusty, tightly packed village, asking those people who bothered to look up as she walked by. It was in the center of the crowded town that she encountered Keeve Falor, the old politician she’d met those years ago with Bram. She did a double take as he passed, and he stopped to regard her.
“You look familiar to me,” the man said, stepping back as he tried to place her.
“I’m Ro Laren,” she said, feeling suddenly as sulky as her younger self.
“The little girl from Jo’kala?” Keeve mused. “Is that right. What are you doing here?”
“I’m helping Bis with something,” Ro said. “Akhere Bis.”
Keeve immediately looked alarmed. “Helping Bis!” he exclaimed. “Tell me he hasn’t recruited you for that foolishness with the alien ship?”
Ro wasn’t sure if Keeve was talking about the plan she had just undertaken, but since he seemed not to approve, she supposed she’d better not confirm her involvement. “I haven’t decided if I’m going to help him,” she lied.
“Prophets help us,” Keeve said. “Bis is young and reckless—he doesn’t understand the great cost that would be suffered by destroying Terok Nor. Thousands of Bajoran lives…It simply doesn’t make sense, to sacrifice what we are trying to preserve.”
“If those lives buy millions more, maybe the sacrifice is worth it.”
“Is that how your resistance is going to save Bajor?” Keeve asked in disgust. “Using arithmetic to decide who lives, and who dies? That isn’t what the Prophets teach us.”
Ro felt a flash of anger at the sanctimonious mention of the Prophets. “At least…at least it would be doing something to fight the Cardassians, instead of hunkering down on this world like a coward, hiding here where they won’t trouble you, and letting them do as they please with Bajor!”
Keeve studied her a moment. If he was angry, she didn’t see it; he only looked tired and sad. “Perhaps to you, I seem a coward,” he said, after a moment. “But I know that when the people on this world still listened to my advice, we were learning things that could have brought the Federation in to aid us in our struggle. We had warp vessels, we had trade relations with other worlds. But that is changing, and the people here have begun to grow impatient. We’ve lost most of our warp ships, and we have to rely on charity from others within this system for our very survival. We’ve fallen out of favor with the Federation, especially since the unfortunate incident that occurred on Valo VI. The Federation once had a lot of questions about what that little group might have been doing there, and I suppose now they have much less of a chance of ever finding out.” He looked at her very pointedly when he said it, and Ro felt a strange thing, a thing she thought might be guilt.
Troubled, Ro looked past Keeve to see that Bis was approaching her, his face unable to contain its excitement. Sensing that Ro was done with him, or wishing to avoid confrontation with Bis, Keeve moved on down the road, toward his own residence.
“Is it done?” Bis asked her eagerly, and Ro gave him a single nod, her head feeling heavy. This time, she did not respond when he grabbed her tightly, lifting her nearly off her feet.
“We have to celebrate,” Bis said. “Come with me, we’ll have spring wine at my friend Lino’s house.” He gestured toward a dwelling not far from where they stood.
“We did a good thing, didn’t we?” Ro said.
“We did a brilliant thing,” he said. He laughed out loud, a picture of jubilation.
“And…the people on the station…”
“What people?” Bis said, beginning to walk.
“The Bajorans,” she said. “They’ll…walk with the Prophets? Is that what you believe?”
Bis looked puzzled. “That’s right,” he said, but his voice sounded a little less excited now. He stopped walking. “Come on, Laren. Just think. We’re going to be responsible for killing Gul Dukat! Gul Dukat and Kubus Oak, all their henchmen. We’re going to destroy Terok Nor! Do you have any idea of the significance of it?”
“Yes, I know,” Ro said. “But Keeve Falor just told me—”
“Forget Keeve Falor!” Bis said, and he sounded angry now. “Just wait—once Terok Nor is really gone, once the prefect is dead—Keeve and the others will see that I was right.”
“Of course,” Ro said. She thought of the botched mission on Jo’kala, her last. She’d been so sure the others would see that she was right—but she hadn’t been.
“I left the ship in orbit,” she told him.
“That’s for the best,” Bis told her. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow, when I take you back to Jeraddo.”
Ro swallowed. Back to Jeraddo? “Right,” she said, feeling her chest tighten.
Bis’s friends Lino and Hintasi were both inside a little house with a dirt floor, one nearly identical to Bis’s, but older and smaller. It was mostly dark inside, with dirty and mildewed fabric covering the open windows. A pile of blankets was heaped in a corner, making do for a bed. There were several bottles of spring wine on the floor where Lino and Hintasi were sitting, and they saluted with a bottle as Ro entered, shouting their congratulations and pushing a bottle into her hands. She was only too happy to drink it, thinking her nerves deserved it.
She took a sip, wanting to make it last, but she found herself drinking deeply, thirsty for the effect. “I hope it was worth it,” she said, coming up for air. She sat on the floor, took another drink.
“It’s worth it,” Bis assured her. “I can’t think of a better reason to finish off the last of my father’s spring wine. The last time we drank a bottle was—”
“No, I mean—all of it. I mean—what if the Cardassians just send another prefect? What if they just build another station? What if it’s all just—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lino interrupted.
“Why is it ridiculous?” Ro asked, and as she said it, she began to think, to really think, about what she’d done. To the Cardassians, Bajor was just one little planet. Killing the prefect might not matter much to them at all. Certainly, the destruction of Terok Nor would mean a setback, but perhaps their resources were truly infinite. Perhaps there were exponentially more of them than there were Bajorans. Ro suddenly recognized that maybe Keeve Falor had been right, all those years ago when he’d sent her on the cautious reconnaissance mission; maybe gathering information about the Cardassians before fighting them was the better approach, after all.
“Come on, Laren,” Bis said, starting to sound a little upset. “Don’t you remember what you said all those years ago? About just killing the Cardassians on Valo VI? And then you did it! You shot them, all by yourself. Even though I would have been scared to death, I never would have been able to—”
“It was a stupid thing to do,” Ro interupted. “I didn’t have to kill them. I could have gotten out of there before they would have seen me, I could have called for Bram, but I compromised the mission, and I killed them anyway.” She took another deep drink from the bottle. “I thought…I thought if I killed him…I’d never have another nightmare, I’d stop feeling so terrible about what happened to my father, but it made no difference. None!” She dropped the empty bottle on the dirt floor, fighting tears.