“Well?” He rounded on her. “Talk to me, Tomo! You’ve dragged me to my feet, you may as well make it worth something!”

“Sir, I have Colonel Li Tarka of the Militia Space Guard and First Minister Verin Kolek waiting on comm channel nine for you. There’s a matter of utmost importance that requires your immediate attention.”

Jas’s ire instantly dissipated. “Verin? Why is he contacting me? The next scheduled council meeting isn’t for days yet.” He blinked. “What do the Space Guard want?”

“It’s about the Eleda,the scoutship?” she prompted. The minister’s brow furrowed, and he orbited his desk, searching for something among the documents there.

“Eleda,”he repeated, dragging the name from the depths of his memory. “One of ours, wasn’t it?” Jas nodded to himself. “Yes. Old Rifin’s son was the captain, wasn’t he?” On Lonnic’s look of agreement he tapped a finger on his lips. “Yes, I remember. Terrible business.”

The Jas clan, in addition to owning land and mercantile concerns across Western Bajor, also ran a relatively successful asteroid prospecting business in the uninhabited systems throughout the sector. There was a small fleet of warp-capable survey ships that earned a decent turnover scanning for valuable ores that the larger belt-mining corporations could exploit. The Eledawas one of those ships, and it had gone missing a few months earlier out toward the Olmerak system. Bajor Traffic Control had declared it missing and presumed lost, and death benefit paperwork to pay off the crew’s dependents was already in the works. The loss of the scout was unfortunate, but not uncommon; asteroid prospectors in the Bajor Sector regularly fell foul of pirates, belligerent Tzenkethi, or just plain bad luck.

The minister worked to make himself look more presentable, taking a seat behind his desk to face the oval wallscreen across the room. “Did someone find the ship? Are the crew still alive?”

He was doing a good job of moderating his earlier bad mood. Lonnic could see her patron was already thinking about rescinding the benefits. “Uh, yes and no, sir. The crew didn’t survive, but someonefound the ship.”

Jas nodded. “I see, Li’s people, was it?” He frowned again. “Olmerak is a bit of a way out for the defense fleet.”

She shook her head. “The Cardassians found the Eleda,sir.” The words sounded just as odd coming out of her mouth as they had when she’d first heard them herself, only a few minutes before she knocked on Jas’s door. “They’ve…come to return it. And the bodies of the dead men.”

The minister blinked, and for a moment his eyes went hazy as his vision turned inward. Lonnic knew that look; Jas Holza was a rather dogged political operator, and while his recent years had not been the most stellar part of his tenure as minister for Korto District, he still had the one skill that all politicians kept sharp—the ability to see an opportunity when it presented itself. He drew himself up and adjusted his collar one last time. “Tomo, put Verin and the colonel through, please. Let’s see what these aliens want, shall we?”

His aide nodded and tapped a control on her belt.

Jas Holza settled on his default neutral expression as the screen activated. The display was split into two live feeds, with Verin on the left and Li on the right. The minister’s eyes were drawn to Li Tarka first, the Militia officer all dark hair and intensity, his ghost-gray uniform stark against the command chair behind him. The colonel’s broadcast was coming directly from the bridge of his flagship, one of the Space Guard’s assault vessels that prowled the edges of the Bajor system. By contrast, Verin Kolek, representative for the Lonar Province and the current First Minister, was a careworn figure who appeared outwardly to resemble a kindly old grandfather. Verin’s aspect, however, belied a sharp mind in a hard man.

The First Minister wasted no time on any preamble. “Holza, there’s an issue at hand that requires your immediate involvement. This ship of yours…”

Jas nodded. “My adjutant has explained the situation to me.”

“Did you have any involvement in this?” Verin demanded.

“I know you’re ambitious, but making overtures to an alien interstellar power on your own authority is unacceptable!”

Jas licked his lips. “First Minister, Colonel Li, please understand I’m as surprised by this turn of events as you are. Believe me, I’ve already listed the Eledaas lost, whereabouts unknown.”

“You may wish to reopen that file,” said Li gruffly.

“As of this moment, my ship is shadowing a Cardassian battle cruiser at the edge of the system. They’ve transmitted detailed scans showing they have your scout and the remains of its crew on board.”

“They want to return them,” added Verin. “To you. Apparently, their technicians were able to recover part of the ship’s database, and they learned you were the Eleda’s owner and patron of the dead men.”

Jas found himself nodding. “That…that is correct.”

Li’s eyes narrowed. “The Cardassians have never done anything like this before, Minister Jas. They’ve always kept to their borders, stayed away from our core worlds. Any dealings we’ve had with them have always been through colonies on the fringes or third parties. The fact that a military starship from the Union has arrived in our home space is…unprecedented.”

The politician smothered a twinge of surprise. He was hearing something in Li Tarka’s voice that he had never heard before— apprehension.For most Bajorans, Jas Holza included, the Cardassians represented just one more aspect of the wide universe out beyond the edges of the Bajor Sector—unknown, alien, potentially dangerous. “Do you think it’s the vanguard of an invasion force?”

Li’s lips thinned. “One vessel wouldn’t pose a threat to us. I have a flotilla of raiders standing off rimward of the Denorios Belt that could be here in moments. We could ash a single cruiser if they made any aggressive moves.”

“And yet,” said the old man, “the Cardassians aren’t known for their spontaneous acts of diplomacy.” He glared at Jas from the viewscreen. “The commander wants to speak with you, because the Eledacrew were your men.”

Jas put his hands flat on the table in front of him and shot a look at Lonnic where the dark-skinned woman stood off to the side. Her face reflected the same concerns that he felt, but he schooled his expression carefully and did not show them. Taking a breath, the minister became aware of how delicate a circumstance he now found himself in. Verin’s annoyance was clearly stemming from the need to bring him into this situation, and he knew that the old man would do whatever he could to discard Jas as soon as the Cardassians had been mollified. Jas’s frequent opposition to Verin’s policies of late and his thinly veiled suggestions that the aged politician should step down had isolated him in Bajor’s political arena. If things had been different, he might have smiled at the discomfort the First Minister was exhibiting, but the matter was too serious to treat lightly.

If the Cardassians were here, coming as galactic neighbors and not at the head of a warfleet, then Jas was being presented with an opportunity that would never come again. With cold certainty, he knew that whatever choice he made in the next few minutes would alter the course of his political career forever. “I’ll talk to them,” he said with a nod.

“Holza,” rumbled the old man, his eyes turning flinty, “be wary. Don’t allow yourself to exceed your remit. Remember, your jurisdiction ends at the boundary of Korto District. Mine encompasses all of Bajor.”

“As you say, First Minister.”

Verin grunted and waved to someone off-screen. The view on Jas’s display shifted to allow a new window to appear; and there were the aliens. “Do I address Minister Jas Holza, patron of the scoutship Eleda?”There were three of them on the screen, the one in the center that spoke, another with a curiously slim face, and the last wearing what seemed like some colorful parody of a penitent’s hooded robes.