Chapter One

Major Kira Nerys stood rigid, forcing her body not to tremble in suppressed anger and humiliation. It was all the Bajoran freedom fighter could do not to leap across the brief gap and throttle the black-clad, black-helmeted alien "dean" who now commanded Deep Space Nine...or Emissary's Sanctuary, as Kai Winn had renamed it -- the same Kai Winn who had just surrendered the station to the "Liberated," as the invaders had called themselves.

The Liberated said little but the necessary. But that was a welcome change from the more loathsome, loquatious representatives of the Dominion, the Vorta -- and from the harsh...