Jayme yawned. “You could be some sort of liaison.”

“I’m no Sito Jaxa.” The thought of his Bajoran friend, a former member of Nova Squadron, still brought him near to tears. Jaxa was believed to have given her life last month by returning to Cardassia as a prisoner of war in order to protect a Federation informant. “I could never be a hero.”

“That’s nonsense. Heroes are just people who do what needs to be done.”

Reoh wasn’t sure why Jayme was smiling, but he couldn’t ask because she said she had an exobiology exam the next day. Before signing off, she sent a burst transmission of the Academy news service clippings on the recent developments.

Reoh stayed up half the night listening to the reports. He also accessed the Bajoran news on the Federation subspace channel. It didn’t look good.

He kept remembering his six months leave in the Bajoran system right after he graduated. He had never been to the homeworld before, so he had taken a complete tour of the colonies and most of the major continents of Bajor, visiting all the great historic sites he had studied during his life.

But it hadn’t felt like home. He had talked to other Bajorans who claimed to have had an immediate sense of completeness at being on Bajoran soil and among their own people. A homecoming, they all told him. Maybe it was his disenfranchisement from so much of the Bajoran spiritual life, feeling like he had no right to the comfort of his religion when he had failed his people.

It was worse when he ran into someone he knew from the resettlement colony on Shunt. Ran Sisla was married now and working in one of the fishing villages of Karor. She had been uncomfortable with him, remembering him in his former Vedek’s robes when he had acted as the spiritual leader of their tiny community in the north country of Shunt.

Reoh never did get to sleep that night, thinking over his mistakes and wishing he had done things differently. If he had never fooled himself into believing he was called as a Vedek, his life might have gone very differently. He wouldn’t have felt such a need to leave Shunt. He could have been on Bajor right now, helping his people.

Then again, nothing was what it appeared to be. In the last weeks of his vacation on Bajor, Vedek Winn had accused Vedek Bareil of being a Cardassian collaborator during the Resistance. Bareil had withdrawn from the election, and Winn was now Kai.

Reoh had written his astonishment to Ro Laran– whom he wouldn’t exactly consider a friend, but she was a fellow Bajoran in Starfleet. But his communique had been returned undelivered. Soon after, he received a Starfleet notification that Ro had gone AWOL and was believed to be cooperating with the Maquis, who had recently taken a more militant stand in the Demilitarized Zone. The communique added that any information as to Ro Laran’s whereabouts should be forwarded immediately to Starfleet Headquarters, etc. etc.

Meanwhile, he was alone in a very strange solar system, crawling through endless storage containers and checking ore for crystalline impurities.

Nev Reoh tried to wait outside the dancing bar for Captain Jord, but the enforcers insisted he move along or pay the door fee to get in. Once inside, he was able to secure a ledge near the lit entrance. Almost immediately, he had to fend off the advances of Orion animal‑women.

Then he saw Meesa slightly above him. A brutish Rigellian miner was trying to attract her attention with a purple laser light, signaling her to come to him. Reoh quickly motioned for Meesa to join him.

She was at his side in a flash, her expression so grateful and pleased that he suddenly realized how young she was–like a first‑year cadet. She snuggled next to him, fitting into the crook of his arm, holding up her finger to be validated on his charge card.

Reoh nervously hoped that he could push the woman away without too much fuss when Captain Jord arrived. It wasn’t the most professional situation she could find him in, but what did she expect, asking him to meet her in a place like this?

“How long have you been dancing here, Meesa?” He was grateful that this time she seemed content to cuddle rather than try to seduce him.

She squirmed up to bring her lips closer to his ear. “This many days,” she whispered, holding out all of her fingers but one.

“That’s all?” he asked, his voice cracking at her sudden closeness.

She nodded, leaning her head back against his shoulder. It was so intimate, yet they were sitting in a crowded room with a couple hundred strangers barely visible through the shifting lights of the bar. In the center, a long‑limbed Orion was contorting into unbelievable positions as she spun and rolled in midair.

He cleared his throat. “You come from Beltos IV?”

Meesa nodded, her tiny chin quivering and her eyes filling with tears at the memory.

“I’m sorry!” Reoh exclaimed, fumbling for something to wipe her eyes. “You didn’t want to leave?” he asked helplessly.

“I have nothing,” she murmured, looking down at her hands.

“That’s awful,” he said for lack of anything better.

He sat with her for the better part of an hour, hardly speaking. She actually dozed off. He was consumed with pity for the poor woman who was obviously worked round the clock, one of thousands who were burned out in the slave trade.

When it was finally clear that Captain Jord wasn’t going to appear, again, Reoh pressed Meesa’s finger to his card a few more times, telling her, “You can get some sleep now.”

Her eyes lingered on him a moment, struck by his girl of time. That made him feel even worse, that she would be so surprised and touched by such a simple thing. He watched to make sure she got through the crowd without being snared by a reveling Pa’a crew‑member or vacationing Beltos miner. She disappeared through one of the little slave‑holes, leading to the prophets knew where in the bowels of the place.

Shuddering in sympathy, Reoh left the dancing bar.

“Conditions are intolerable!” he pleaded with Commander Keethzarn, the security supervisor of Starbase 3. “You should see what they make these women do!”

Commander Keethzarn was half‑Human and half‑Vulcan, but at first Reoh had thought he was a Romulan, since he had never seen a pointy‑eared humanoid smile. But even with only a few days on Starbase 3, he had heard of Keethzarn’s very humanlike exploits of fun that were practically legendary. Some of the other security officers said he was aiming to be known as the “happiest Vulcan in the galaxy,” and everyone pretty much figured he had the title won, hands down.

“Slow down, Ensign,” Keethzarn told him. “I’ve seen the dancing bars. And I hate to tell you, kid, but I’ve seen far worse than that. We’re always working on ways to stop the slave trade on Beltos. Soon as we plug up one hole, four other leaks show up.”

“Can’t the Federation at least make them close the dancing bars on the stations? There’s . . . there are Starfleet officers in there.”

“The station’s regulations are an internal matter, kid.”

As one of the oldest cadets at the Academy, Reoh wasn’t used to being called “kid.” But he figured the commander called all ensigns that.

Keethzarn gave him a sympathetic grin. “Don’t let it get to you. We’ve been working on that cesspool for a century, and already the slave quarter has shrunk to half its size. It’s only a matter of time before the Pa’a are squeezed out.”

“Time?” Reoh asked, feeling the furrows being permanently etched into his forehead. “Meesa doesn’t have time. She’s stuck in there now. All of them are.”

Keethzarn glanced sideways, motioning for someone to wait. “I tell you what, Ensign. You make a report of the situation there on Station 14 and drop it by my office when you get back to Starbase 3.” The Commander grinned, looking like a plump‑checked elf. “Leave the problem to the higher‑ups who know how to deal with it, kid. Or you’ll wake up one day old before your time.”