Dukat let him trail off as he decided whether or not to explain himself. He didn’t need to, of course, but he wasn’t without pity; in Basso’s position, he’d probably hope for an explanation himself.

“You needn’t concern yourself with Kira Nerys any longer. I’ll see to the matter personally.”

“But her connection with the Shakaar cell—”

“—isn’t at issue, here,” Dukat said. “She’s on mystation. And she can’t leave without my knowing it. Let her pretend for a while, that she still has some control. When she starts to get desperate, I’ll bring her in for a discussion about her options. By then, she’ll be ready to listen to reason.”

“You underestimate her,” Basso said. “She’s a terrorist. She might be here to assassinate you.”

Dukat smiled. “Or you,” he said lightly, and the way the other man blanched, he thought he’d discovered the root of Basso’s concern. Considering the lure they’d used to draw her out, it was extremely likely that Kira had been involved with Vaatrik’s death; he’d been Bajoran, but a collaborator with the Cardassians. She might not hesitate to kill another. Basso Tromac, for example.

“Don’t take on so,” Dukat said. “I’ll oversee the matter myself. You trust me, don’t you?”

Basso did his best to nod convincingly. “Of course, Prefect.”

He left the office, the outer door of Dukat’s living space closing a moment later. Dukat stared after him, thinking. After a moment, he tapped his system up and typed in a few commands, calling up two files on Kira Nerys. The first, her file as it had been.

Confirmed association with Shakaar and Kohn-Ma cells. Probable connection to events at Gallitep, to the destruction of several surface relay bases, to numerous counts of tech sabotage. Possible affiliations with other terrorist groups, including Gertis, Krim…The list continued. Her priority status was in the upper hundreds. He looked at the newer file, a file that he’d edited himself upon receiving the news that Kira Nerys had been recognized by the shuttle’s computer.

Civilian runner for the Shakaar cell. A minor operative whose activities are limited to running errands for the terrorist leaders. May have participated in minor boundary/curfew infringements.He’d also dropped a digit off her status number, making her a low priority. Dukat altered the number again, lowering it further, then dropped it back into the system. The real file would stay on the self-contained system in Dukat’s private office, for now. Had Kira Nerys set foot on Terok Nor with her actual file online, security would have been alerted immediately, the docking ring locked down. As it was, he and Basso Tromac and a single communications worker were the only people who knew who she really was, and he meant to keep it that way. He didn’t need to be worrying about Central Command’s reaction to his harboring a wanted terrorist, or Odo turning her over to the military police before Dukat had a chance to speak with her. Dukat hoped to eventually inspire a more personal loyalty in Odo, but thus far, the shape-shifter had proven himself to be quite pedantic about the rule of law…

“Best to keep you to myself, for now,” Dukat said, looking at the capture of her face next to the doctored statistics. He still hadn’t decided what course to take with her. In truth, he did not know what outcome he sought, only that he felt irresistibly drawn to the young woman, perhaps because of his history with her mother. His fascination with Meru’s daughter had only grown over the years, deepening as time passed.

Ah, Meru!There were times he missed her terribly. Her death had been a tragedy, one he’d truly felt himself helpless to prevent. He was not a man who wasted time reconsidering the past, but there were times he wondered what might have been, if Meru had not betrayed him…

Dukat shook himself, closed the files on his screen, and picked up another padd, calling up the specs on a likely tritanium deposit in the northeasternmost corner of Musilla Province. He’d have his chance to indulge his personal life another time; there was work to be done, and he didn’t want next month’s quarterly report to be sent without at least five major projects at outline stage. The people at home needed to understand how vital the annexation remained. He could cite reasons of compassion for their extended stay—the fragile Bajoran government would collapse if Central Command withdrew, undoubtedly causing a civil war—but he felt that appealing to common practicality was a better bet. Bajor was a sustaining resource, one the Union mustn’t dare release. As its prefect, he understood that better than anyone.

14

Odo had been swept into an investigation regarding the brutal murder of a Bajoran chemist on Terok Nor, and he wasn’t sure he was up to the task. In the weeks since he’d come to the station, since the prefect had recruited him for security, he had struggled to learn the job. He had observed and restated information to people with differences of opinion, and thus far, the disagreements he’d overseen had mostly worked themselves out. Gul Dukat said he’d wanted Odo because of his reputation as a mediator in some of the Bajoran villages, and more recently, with some of the Bajorans in ore processing. But solving Bajoran disputes and puzzling out Cardassian criminal codes were hardly the same thing. A deliberate killing was something entirely new in his limited experience.

Having just come from an interview with the Ferengi bartender, Odo was struggling to keep up with the interface on the security office’s computer. The system differed from the one at the Bajoran Institute of Science, and Odo had not yet become accustomed to its peculiarities.

“Anything from the Ferengi?”

Odo looked up as a Cardassian man entered the room. Dalin Russol had arrived at the station shortly before Odo himself, to shore up security after the previous chief had left. Russol didn’t seem to be especially keen on accepting the position as chief himself, however, although he had allegedly been offered the position, and had thus far been encouraging Odo to accept the role. A year ago, Odo would have accepted the encouragement at face value, but he’d learned a few things about the nature of humanoids. Enough to know that he understood very little.

“Not sure,” Odo said, and left it at that. The Ferengi had given him a story that turned out to be false. A female suspect had bribed him for an alibi, which Odo supposed could be an indication of her guilt. But he had a nagging feeling there was more to the story. He looked up at Dalin Russol. “I don’t know if I’m the right person for this job,” he confessed. “The prefect seems to want me to simply find someone to arrest as quickly as possible, without completely ensuring that it’s the right person. I don’t know if he and I…” He stopped, for he didn’t know how to put voice to the rest of it.

“What?” Russol asked him, but then supplied his own answer. “You wonder if the breadth of your own moral bandwidth might not completely overlap with Dukat’s? Is that it?”

Odo wasn’t sure, but he thought this sounded something like what he wanted to convey. He nodded.

Russol smiled. “That is exactly why you must accept this position, Odo. My understanding is that Thrax was as fair as a man could have been, for being a Cardassian, but you—you’re an outsider. You’ll escape the biases my people have for these”—he spread his hands—“Bajorans.”

“Your people seem to have a natural prejudice against them,” Odo replied carefully, for he still did not fully understand what drove the two races to despise each other so.

“My people are offended by the Bajorans,” Russol said, looking away from Odo. He locked his hands behind his back and raised his head, seeming very interested in the ceiling, though he kept talking. “Their culture appeared static to us. They had not progressed, by Cardassian standards, in many centuries. Their behavior…we found it unacceptable for them to have settled into a lifestyle of such lazy contentment.”