A sect of the Bajoran underground during the Cardassian occupation, whose geneticist Dekon Elig created the aphasia virus later released by accident on Deep Space Nine.
The Higa Metar was a faction of the Bajoran resistance that turned scientific skill against the Cardassian occupiers. One of its members, the geneticist Dekon Elig, engineered a virus that scrambles the speech centres of the brain before killing its victims.
The sect comes to light in Babel. Eighteen years after the device was hidden in a replicator while the station was being built, Chief O'Brien triggers it during a repair and the plague spreads through the crew and residents.
Kira learns that Dekon died in a Cardassian prison and traces his former assistant, Surmak Ren, who is now a hospital administrator on Bajor. She beams him aboard her runabout against his will, exposing him to the virus so that he has every reason to work out the cure.