It was hot and dry in the late afternoon.

Perfect weather for Cardassians. Humans were another matter.

Jake brushed the sweat from his eyes as he reached for his stylus. A wispy breeze blew into the tiny makeshift hospital that stood in the remnants of Pa’rem’tir City, a weak attempt to relieve Jake’s discomfort, but a reminder of the weather. More hot. More dry.

Light was another problem. Cardassian eyes required much less light for sight than humans did, and since they were conserving energy, the hospital was practically pitch black, to Jake, except for a shaft of pale sun coming from the doorway, blinking through the burgundy-colored carpet being used as a door.

It certainly made his task a lot harder. Conditions in Cardassia City were bad, but not this bad.

But when one of the senior editors at the news service started pressing for information on conditions in remote areas of the planet, Jake couldn’t resist. He’d been planning to explore and report on the conditions outside the city for some time, and finally made the decision to go. Things were improving slowly in the capital. He wanted to see how what impact they were making in the outer areas.

Jake had wasted no time in securing a landtram and some essentials for the trip, calling his stepmother on Bajor so she wouldn’t worry and letting Dr. Bashir know the time had come. Kasidy looked dismayed at first, but eventually wished him well. Jake figured it was the strain of the pregnancy and the thought of being without communication for so long. But so many of the remote regions still suffered a loss of power. Aid was slowly creeping over from the capitol and larger cities, but resources were limited, and the split between the Reunion Project and the Directorate was slowing down the reconstruction process even more. As usual, politics interfering with progress.

Bashir just smiled and gave him a medkit, with no arguments or objections, or even much discussion beyond asking what direction he planned to go and how long he planned to be gone. It was his way, lately. Jake noticed how changed he was. He remembered all the times he’d spent with the doctor, and, especially when it came to medicine, Julian was quite the talker. Jake wasn’t certain if he liked the new, more silent Julian, but he certainly knew that the doctor would speak when Jake needed him. It was good to know he now had Julian’s confidence.

Now all Jake needed was a story.

He had traveled mostly through the southwestern portion of the continent for the past few days, with not much of a story to tell. Of course Jake reported on the conditions, but with much of the area uninhabited, or at least not heavily populated, there wasn’t much to tell. The story never varied.

A Cardassian orderly walked past Jake, making a concerted effort not to stare.

Jake had been getting those looks the entire trip. People weren’t excited to see a human face. Some might not even have realized there was a Federation presence on their home world, or why aliens were present. Aya had warned him about that possibility. Fortunately he only had one person, a young Cardassian woman, react completely negatively when he asked if she had gotten what she’d needed from the hospital. She sputtered a few curses, presumably in some Cardassian dialect or idiom, slapped him across the face, then ran from him crying. Jake wished he knew what she meant.

Gently he pressed the writing utensil to his PADD and began scrawling notes. *A burgundy-colored fabric hanging in the doorway is all that shields visitors from the dry heat and dust of the region....*

Jake looked at what he’d written and silently scolded himself. What about the walls, Jake? What, are they laying down on the job? he thought.

Deleting what he’d done, Jake started over. *Not much protects the patients of the Pa’rem’tir City hospital, a tiny, ill-lit, ill-equipped shack that was once the home of a gardener on the city’s outskirts. The walls are full of cracks, with the dry, hot wind whistling through, blowing the same dust as Laemit City, the ruins of Lakarian City, and Cardassia City itself. The dust that has engulfed the planet in a grayish haze, clouding the sun as it sets, peaking through a hole in the burgundy-colored carpet that hangs in the entrance as a door....*

Not bad, Jake thought. Not exactly the lead of a news story. Maybe we need to decide what we’re writing. Hard news, or soft news? Current events, or feature? Which is it, Jake?

Jake was distracted by a phlegmy-sounding hacking. He looked in its direction, and saw what looked like an old Native American totem pole in a corner on the floor, consumed in shadows, thanks to the lack of light. The coughing didn’t stop, and despite Jake’s efforts, he couldn’t get back to his story.

Finally an orderly walked toward the shadowed corner. From what Jake could see, a young Cardassian woman with her black hair tightly braided and piled high, and a white lab coat shrouding her clothes. Jake strained to hear the conversation.

“I’m sorry, young man, but we’re full today, the regular treatment offices are closed.”

One of the heads of the totem pole, the middle one, stirred and looked up at the orderly. “But we’re here, we’ve been waiting all day! Can’t you see she’s sick? That she’s getting worse? She needs help!” the head said. A male’s tenor voice. Jake was shocked at the youthfulness in the sound. He couldn’t be more than eleven, twelve Earth years of age.

“I’m sorry, but you know these are the rules. If you would just register with the Central—”

“What kind of hospital is this, telling me I have to risk being separated from my family and my home in order to get help for my sister? Shouldn’t doctors help the sick all the time?”

“Young man, we do not have the resources to help everyone. We need to help the people who follow procedure first.”

“Every day I come here, and every day you turn me away! How long do I have to sit here to get help for my sister?”

Suddenly the totem pole moved, separated. It had several pairs of legs and arms. It walked past Jake, and his gaze followed intently. Three people, children. Two boys and a girl. The two younger children clung tightly to the elder one, who had been the one talking. Jake watched the three exit the hospital through the carpet, and turned to the orderly, who was also watching them go.

“They come here every day,” she said, obviously frustrated and weary. “We can barely help the people who register with the Central Office. We can’t help every stray that fears the government.”

“Who are they? Where are they from?” he asked.

“Who knows? They won’t register.” She turned on her heels and stalked back into the darkness.

Jake grabbed his PADD and his medkit and bag and headed for the carpet exit. He’d made his decision. Soft news. Feature story.

With his landtram and its limited sensors, it was easy to track the three children. They headed out of the rubble of Pa’rem’tir City, across the plain toward the west. Jake followed, being careful not to lose them among the sparsely populated buildings and streets and the late afternoon shadows. Pa’rem’tir City hadn’t been much more than a town of twelve to fifteen thousand residents, from the looks of it, a small processing and resupply depot for the agricultural region surrounding it. Less than half that many lived there now, and Jake suspected a good portion of the current population were refugees from the surrounding province with nowhere else to go.

Beyond the city limits, he dropped back so he wouldn’t be too easily spotted. The wind blew away all tracks on the dust-coated road ahead of him, but it also blew his own dust trail across the fields. He kept his sensors focused on the children, and kept his own attention on avoiding the potholes and scorched areas of the highway.

Several miles out of the city, he came across a farmstead. It must have been a very comfortable home for a large or extended Cardassian family, once upon a time. The main house had several wings extending off in two directions. There appeared to be close to a dozen storage buildings in a semi-circle to one side, structures that Jake now recognized as granaries, root storage bins, a modest processing center, a livestock manger, and a garage for equipment and mechanical work. Several partial walls circled the rural compound, broken by gates and several paths that led off into the various fields that surrounded the structures.

Most of the place was damaged. Jake could see, as he came closer, that several of the buildings appeared to have sustained fire or weapon damage; one had collapsed entirely. A large section of wall was broken down. One wing of the house was gutted, and part of the main structure. There was little evidence of continuing occupation.

But the children were there. He didn’t see them, but his equipment told him three small Cardassians were inside that main house.

Jake drove through the gate that opened onto the road he’d been traveling, and pulled up to what he believed was the front entrance, an archway with two talon-pointed columns on either side, and scrubby, thorny growths extending along the house in both directions. Stopping the landtram, he opened the door and stepped out.

“Hello!” he called, then waited a moment.

The wind continued to blow around him. Under the acrid tang the air seemed to carry as a constant, there was a scent of growing things, grasses and herbs, a richer and cleaner aroma than that surrounding Cardassia City. He could tell some of it came from the plants along the wall. Somewhere in the distant he could hear an exchange of animal or bird calls — he didn’t know enough about the local fauna to tell what kind.

But there was no response in the house, no movement.

“Hello! I’m Jake Sisko,” he began again. “I’m with the Federation relief team at Cardassia City. I’d like to talk to you.”

The long silence continued.

“I’m not here to hurt anybody. I promise. I saw you in the city. I just want to talk to you.”

Finally, someone stepped out of the shadows in the entrance.

It was a young Cardassian, the boy, eleven or twelve, perhaps a teenager. He was the one who’d spoken back at the hospital, the apparent oldest of the three. Grey-complexioned, with dark gray eyes. Huskily built, dark hair a little long and shaggy. Dressed in simple farmer’s clothing, worn, and a bit snug, as though he were growing out of them. He stared at Jake suspiciously.

“Hi.” Jake held out his hand, smiling and trying to appear friendly and unthreatening.

“What do you want with us?” the Cardassian asked.

“I—“

Coughing distracted them. Both turned to see the Cardassian girl now standing in the entrance way. She looked at Jake with open curiosity.

In his estimation, she couldn’t be more than five years old. There was a definite resemblance between her and the boy, but she was more delicately built and her eyes were brighter, a pretty shade of blue. Her dark hair was plaited in one long, lopsided braid. Her clothing was just as worn-looking as the teen’s.

“Jeila, go back inside. Stay with Togga. I’ll handle this,” the boy said.

The girl coughed again, a spasm that wracked her little body and left her leaning against one of the columns, gasping.

“Jeila!”

The teenager ran for the little girl. Jake reached back inside his landtram and grabbed the emergency medkit Julian had given him. He followed, already pulling out the medical tricorder.

The girl slid into the boy’s grasp, breathing hard and open-mouthed, the color fading from her cheeks. The older boy kept calling her name, increasingly anxious.

Jake quickly ran the tricorder over the girl’s laboring chest. There was a heavy congestion build-up, but he couldn’t tell what caused it. Still, he could offer temporary relief. He pulled a hypo from the kit, and after hastily checking the medical tricorder’s information bank for dosage, injected the little girl.

After a moment, the child’s breathing eased. She looked at him, blinking, then smiled. It was a dazzling change, and a little color returned to her face.

Jake exchanged glances with the teenager.

“Are you a doctor?” the youth asked hopefully.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Jake admitted. “I’m just a journalist with the relief mission. But I carry an emergency medkit for ... emergencies.”

“Did you cure Jeila?”

Jake had to shake his head regretfully. “I just gave her a little something to help her breathing.” Jake pointed at the medical tricorder. “She’s got a lot of congestion in her lungs. She’ll need real treatment. This is just a temporary help for her.”

“That’s more than the doctors at that hospital will do for us.”

“I wish I could do more.”

The youth glanced back at Jeila. “Do you feel better?”

She nodded, shyly responding, ”Yes.” But she kept looking at Jake.

Relieved, he helped her back to her feet. “Go tell Togga to fill the water tank. I’ll take care of this....”

They watched her slip back inside.

“Mind if I stick around for a day or so? See how she does?” Jake asked after a moment.

“You are welcome to stay,” the youth assured him. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been very hospitable. My name is Herem Gemelen.”

“Jake Sisko,” he repeated.

“That was my sister Jeila. Our brother Togga is inside too.”

“How about the rest of your family?” Jake questioned, knowing his tricorder had only shown three Cardassians here.

Herem’s expression was a little bleak. “They’re ... gone.”

“What happened to them?” Jake asked softly. He suspected it would be much the same story as so many others on Cardassia, and he was right.

“The Jem’Hadar came,” Herem told him, reluctantly at first, the words slow and painfully heavy with memory. “In flyers, from the direction of the city. They landed in the yard. We didn’t know why they came, though we saw smoke to the east, tall pillars of smoke against the sky. Grandfather went to ask them what they wanted. They shot him. They shot Uncle Lennis when he ran to help Grandfather. Uncle yelled for us to run, to hide, before he fell. Grandmother ordered Mother and Aunt Kortira to take us children and go.” The teenager looked down at the dusty ground.

“You saw all this?”

“Yes. I was here. It was midday. We were gathering to eat.”

He couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What happened then?”

“Aunt Kortira grabbed the twins. She went out the side door. I think the Jem’Hadar saw her. I heard her scream, and I heard Timmet start to cry — she always cried. But the voices stopped. I saw Grandmother grab a kitchen knife. She told Mother to leave again, and then she ran to the door. Mother hurried us to the back, told me to take the others to the rock cleft and not to stop or look back. She said she would come to us. We ran. She never came.”

Herem stared straight ahead. “I sneaked back to the house that night, after the Jem’Hadar were gone. Grandfather and Grandmother and Uncle Lennis were in the yard. Aunt Kortira and Timmet and Teleyn were beside the zabo manger. Our animals were dead or run off. Mother....” He had to stop to breathe, but his eyes were dry. “She was beyond the yeltorin root bin, almost to the tammeron grain plantings. That was the other way. I think she made them follow her so they wouldn’t follow us.”

A long silence. Jake found his throat too tight to speak.

“I found our father, too. In the strillagrass field, where he was working that day. He was still alive. But he was dying and he knew it. When he saw me ... he wept.” The very young man’s throat moved. “My father never cried. I never saw him cry.” He swallowed again. “He asked me if anyone else survived. I told him I had hidden Togga and Jeila in the rock cleft. Then he smiled, and made me promise to take care of them, to take care of the farm, our home. I swore I would.”

An empty moment.

“Then he died.”

Another eternal pause.

“I took food and water to Togga and Jeila. I came back and buried our family. Then I brought them home.”

“You’ve been alone since that day?” Jake asked hoarsely.

Herem shook his head stubbornly. “We are not alone. We have each other.”

“But you have no one to take care of your little brother and sister. You can’t even get medical help—“

“No! We’re not going to register! We’re not going to be separated!”

“Why would you be separated, just for registering?” Jake asked.

Herem glowered in the direction of the city. “They think I’m too young to take care of my family. They’ll split us up.”

“How do you know that?”

“The first time we went to the city, there were officials registering everyone they could. We joined the line, to get food and to find out what was happening. But I saw a family ahead of us. A father and his children. There was no mother. I guess the father was badly hurt by the Jem’Hadar. I saw the doctor examine the father. Then I heard her say they couldn’t help him. A man with the doctor shook his head and said they would have to take the children and send them to camps so they could be taken care of.”

“With their father still alive? Right there?” Jake was almost incredulous. He didn’t recall the arrangements for orphans back at Cardassia City, but he couldn’t believe they were separating children from their surviving siblings.

“They let him say good bye to his children. Then they took them away in different directions. I couldn’t let them do that to us. So I took Togga and Jeila and we left. One of the officials tried to stop us, but we wouldn’t talk to her. She finally let us go, saying we’d have to come back sooner or later. But we won’t. We won’t be separated.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Jake agreed somberly. “But how are you going to make it without any help?”

The teenager’s expression turned bleak. “I’ll manage,” he insisted with uncertain bravado. “I have to. I’m a Cardassian. They’re my family. I promised.”

A long moment passed as Jake debated with himself.

“Can I help?” he asked.

The Cardassian looked at him quizzically. “You said you weren’t a doctor.”

“I’m not.”

“Are you a farmer?”

“Well, no...,” he admitted.

“Then how can you help?” The suspicion was back in the teenager’s voice as he stared up at the tall young human.

“I’m ... not sure. But I know I’d like to try.”

“What do you want to try?”

Jake flashed what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “To start with, I’d like to tell your story.”

Herem’s expression was disbelieving. “Who’d care about our story?”

“A lot of people.”

“Not officials who’d separate us—”

“Nope. I want to tell it to the galaxy. So that the whole Federation knows that you promised your father you’d stay on the farm and rebuild, and take care of your brother and sister. So that so many people would know about you that the officials here wouldn’t dare separate you or take you away from your home.”

“People in the Federation would care about us? Why? The Federation is our enemy.”

“We’re not your enemy — and I know the Federation cares. That’s why our leaders sent us here, after all, to help people like you and Jeila and Togga. And to help people like you get your lives back together. And that includes keeping your farm.”

For the first time that day, he caught a hint of a smile on Herem’s face, and maybe even a bit of hope.