“But this is not the whole scope of your failure, Dukat!” Kell’s color darkened. Dukat saw the look in his eyes. He would not back off. Kell was determined to claim blood from the other officer. “The wreckage on Ajir IX? This…this memory core?” Dukat glanced at Ico, knowing exactly where the jagul had gotten that fragment of information.

“Did you recover it?”

At last he spoke. “The ship carrying the device was destroyed. I gave the order myself.”

“That is not what I asked you!” Kell thundered. “Are you certain it was destroyed?”

“I believe so.”

“You believe so?”Ico mused. “You do not believe that the Federation ship you encountered took it aboard?”

Dukat’s jaw hardened, and he made a mental note to commence a security purge of the Vandir’s crew the moment he returned to his ship. “I do not. We were driven off by superior numbers, but not before the Bajoran ship was destroyed.”

Kell was shaking his head. “As much as I wish I could excise you both, I cannot.” He placed his hands flat on the desk. “It is a matter of influence and power…” His gaze traced over Ico’s insipid smile to bear on Dukat. “And my power is over you,Gul.”

“All I have done was in service to the Cardassian Union,” Dukat answered.

“Liar! You are an ambitious renegade, interested only in your own aggrandizement, and I will personally assure that Central Command learns of the catalog of errors that occurred during your posting here!” He banged the table again. “I am to return to Cardassia Prime where I will accept, as is my due, an elevation to the rank of legate.” Kell showed his teeth. “Before I do, I give this order! The Vandiris hereby reassigned, and you will return to the fleet in disgrace. I will see you ruined, Dukat! Your father’s influence will count for nothing, and if there is any justice, your family will share in your ignominy as well!”

“You have no right…” Dukat began.

“Accept your punishment, Skrain,” Ico said airily. “Show that you are still a Cardassian, underneath the armor.”

He was surprised when Kell rounded on the woman. “You are no better!” he spat. “You have stirred up a hornet’s nest down there!” He stabbed a finger at the floor, in the direction of Bajor. “Do you think I do not know the spoor of the Obsidian Order’s work? You are to blame for staging the attacks on the Bajoran temples and the stirring up of hate toward the Oralians!”

And more that we can only guess at,Dukat added silently. That was the Order’s way; if you could see one of their gambits, you could be certain there were ten more that you could not.

“The only difference between Dukat’s arrogance and yours is that you have kept your hands clean throughout it all.” Kell turned away from her, choking on his anger.

Ico showed the slightest glimmer of annoyance in those dark eyes. “Then I would say that difference is a most profound and important one, Jagul Kell.”

Dukat stepped back and considered them both: Kell, rocking with such coiled fury that he might at any moment suffer some sort of spontaneous coronary; and Ico, the icy hate and concealed disdain for all around her coming off in invisible waves. A dark chuckle caught in his throat, and then suddenly he was laughing at them.

“You dare to mock me?” Kell snarled.

“You mock yourselves!” Dukat retorted with venom.

“You are fools, both of you. Your vision narrowed to this pathetic game you play, sparring across Bajor as if it were some private arena for your sport?” He shook his head.

“In all of this, as this world falls into Cardassia’s grasp, what occupies you the most?” He snorted. “Not succor for our hungry masses, but which of you can use me to score points from the other.” He turned away. “You have no understanding of what Bajor represents. I knew it five years ago, a decade ago, and it is still true today.”

“Bajor belongs to Cardassia because of what I have done,” Ico snapped, her mask of calm cracking. “I have set this in motion.”

Dukat laughed again. “You have. Like a child putting a flame to tinder, without foresight to see the inferno that will grow from it.” He walked toward the door. “Your plans…your schemes will ultimately come to nothing.” He halted on the threshold. “And do you know why?”

“Oh please, enlighten us,” Ico sneered. “I cannot wait to hear sage council from the common son of a minor archon!”

“You think you know the Bajorans. You don’t know them at all.” Dukat felt a flash of sudden insight, a moment of hard, sharp self-knowledge. I know the Bajorans. They are like me. At heart, struggling, fighting, searching for a path, nursing old hates. Seeking vengeance.He gave the others one last look, and when he spoke it was with such conviction that neither Kell or Ico could find the words to deny him. “History will prove me right, and I will walk on Bajor again. Of that”—Dukat smiled coldly—“you can be certain.”

OCCUPATION DAY TWENTY

2328 (Terran Calendar)

Epilogue

The darkness opened up for him, just once, a rush of painful white light flooding into his sensorium. Everything about Darrah ached, as if he had been taken at both ends and twisted like wire. Among the blurs there was a face framed with dark hair, a pleasant face with kind eyes.

“Wenna?” Speaking came hard, but he managed it. He tried to raise a hand to touch her face, but he couldn’t get it off the bed. She reached down and took it, her smooth skin against his rough, scarred flesh.

“My name’s Gwen, actually,” she said, in that not-quite-Hedrikspool accent. “Just rest, Mace. You’re okay. Everything’s going to be fine.”

He had been dreaming, or something close to it. Fires, he remembered. The smell of burning. And dry, rough skin being drawn across his body, serpents massing in the dark. He blinked the motes of dream-thought away, concentrating on the woman. Part of her face seemed pinker than the rest, as if she’d been sunburned. He slowly remembered her in the hangar, the burns there from a phaser’s near hit. She looked much better. He wanted to tell her that. But something about her was wrong. He couldn’t place it.

The hangar—that seemed like only moments ago. Like the ship, like Syjin, like the explosion. Only moments ago. “How…long?” Darrah labored to make the shape of each word.

Gwen’s pretty face clouded, and the darkness started to roll back over him. “Just rest,” she repeated.

Darrah didn’t want to, but the choice was taken from him. He fell away into the black.

He had no sense of intervening time, just disjointed images, sounds, sensations. When all these finally stitched themselves together, he awoke in the medical center of the Starfleet ship, surrounded by busy people in white jackets. They ministered to him for a while and pronounced him well.