After what seemed like a very long time, Gantt and Shakaar arrived with a smaller group of people.
“Did we get everyone out?” Kira pressed Shakaar.
“As many as we could see,” he told her, his tone hasty and dismissive, looking among the faces for the rest of his cell. Kira recognized others from the Shakaar cell in the growing, noisy crowd, Dakahna and Ornak and the young couple from outside Tamulna who had just joined the cell, but two were still missing, and Shakaar was trying to get clear word from Mobara regarding what had happened to them.
“Edon,” Lupaza prompted him, “we need to get these people to safety.”
Kira interrupted. “The scientist,” she said. “What about him? Mobara is supposed to…”
“Nerys,” Lupaza said gently, “the scientist is gone. He was in the structure when it fell from the suspension bridge above us.”
Kira shook her head. “But…” she said, “you can’t be sure…”
Gantt put his hand on her shoulder. “He’s gone,” he told her. “Now, we’ve got to get these people out of here. We’d better let Mobara know to get him and Furel back to the camp, and we’ve got to get these people somewhere safe.”
Swallowing hard, Kira nodded.
Valo II had grown dark, the people in the tents and rotted wood huts and eroding brick houses all gone to sleep. Ro knew that somewhere, Bis was probably looking for her by now.
Ro made her way to the landing field on Valo II, where the Ferengi freighter lay scattered in pieces. But she knew the comm was still functional, the comm that Bis and his friends had used to formulate their careful plan—the plan that she was now about to sabotage.
She managed to contact DaiMon Gart quite easily; Ro still recalled the comm code she’d seen on his bar tab. His face appeared on the tiny screen alongside the aural device. “DaiMon Gart,” she shouted, hoping the universal translator was still working.
“Who are you?”the Ferengi DaiMon said gruffly.
“I’m a…terrorist, DaiMon Gart. I wanted to let you know that…I put a bomb on your ship.”
The Ferengi’s eyes suddenly went wide with fear, and he began to shriek. “What?”he cried. “Why would you have done such a thing? I’m an honest man! Is this about the ion coil assemblies? Because they were in perfectly good shape when I sold them, I assure you!”
“No…it’s not…it’s…look, DaiMon Gart, you have to eject your cargo, now, or it’s going to react with the bomb and you’ll never see another…ion coil assembly…or anything else…ever again!”
The man stopped screaming, and looked suspicious. “Eject my cargo? Are you mad? Do you have any idea how much latinum I’m going to be making with this run?”
“Which is more important to you, DaiMon—latinum, or your life?”
The Ferengi considered for what Ro thought was an absurdly long time before finally making his decision. “My life,”he said grudgingly.
“Then you’re going to have to eject your cargo, DaiMon. I’m sorry. If you don’t believe me, you can send someone back there to confirm that there’s a device in the bay, but I’m not sure I’d advise tampering with it. The men who built it were a bit on the amateur side.”
The DaiMon appeared to consider this for a moment. “I believe you,”he said. “You’ve got an…honest face.”He said the last part with clear revulsion. He muttered to himself for a moment, looking over his control panel. “Yes,”he said, “you’re telling the truth, aren’t you? My scans show an object of unidentified origin and composition in the cargo bay…”He looked positively miserable. “Why would you do this to me?”he cried.
“Hey, I’m saving your life right now!” Ro pointed out, but it seemed of little consolation to the Ferengi.
“Fine,”he practically sobbed, and began to mutter to himself again, though it sounded quite distinctly mournful this time. With an exaggerated and deliberate gesture, he stabbed at a control panel on his sensor array. Ro sighed with relief, and left the comm without so much as a good-bye to the Ferengi.
She wandered away from the landing field and walked aimlessly around the perimeter of the village, finding the copse of trees where she had once taken a little walk with Bis, to hide from Bram. She remembered hoping that he would kiss her. It was so foolish, she recognized now, not just the thoughts she’d had as a younger girl, but that she’d been so easily convinced to take part in such a dangerous and costly plan by the promise of…what? Love? She almost laughed out loud at it now. Even after all she’d shared with him, all of herself that she’d given him, Bis had just been expecting her to go back to Jeraddo, go back to Jo’kala, without a second thought of him.
Where would she go now? She could not very well wait for Bis to take her to Jeraddo; he’d be so angry with her when he learned what she had done that he would be sure to…She didn’t know what he would do, but she had no intention of finding out. She didn’t want to go back to Bajor, anyway. The way she saw it, she had only one choice.
Before she’d gone to the moon of that gas giant, she’d known that there was much more to the universe, that it was crammed with people who took no notice of the simple dichotomy between Cardassian and Bajoran. But it had never occurred to her that she might somehow be part of that other universe, a universe where she might be regarded as something beyond the identity she’d somehow stumbled into. Orphan, pickpocket, resistance fighter—she didn’t want to be any of those things anymore. She just wanted to be Ro Laren. The trouble was, she didn’t know who Ro Laren could be.
She took one last look at the copse of pathetic little trees, thought that she would miss the majestic forests of Jo’kala, and then she squeezed the comm device that was still in her pocket, the device she’d neglected to give back to Bis. She felt a strange whirring deep in the very essense of her body’s composition as she was transported into the pilot seat of the shuttle, one of the last warp vessels on Valo II. It was a shame that she had to take it from them, but she could think of no other way. The defeat she saw on her world, the petty squabbles and the justification of such heinous acts in the name of liberation—maybe now she could go to a place where she could really make a difference. Maybe now she could find out who she really was, and what she really wanted.
“How can this be?” Kalisi Reyar was shouting, and Mora could hear every word as he poked his head out of his laboratory.
“It’s a very good question,” Yopal answered her. “I don’t understand how you could let a thing like this happen, Doctor Reyar.”
“It was a security measure!” Reyar answered, her voice high and angry. “I assumed the system here was safe! Why would I risk copying my research, leaving it where anyone could get hold of it, could steal it from me—”
“Protecting your work from terrorists should have taken precedence over your concerns regarding provenance for your achievements.” Yopal’s voice had gone cold.
“How was I to know that a terrorist was working right alongside us?”
Mora turned to Odo’s tank, where the shape-shifter was apparently regenerating. “Odo,” he said, keeping his voice authoritative, though the conversation down the hall had him very frightened.