The moment the alien name left his lips there was a ripple of astonishment that radiated out around him. Jas nodded as if to say, Yes, you heard correctly.“Mark this day well, my friends,” he told them. “Bajor is about to enter a new era.”

The applause began, and the minister stepped back as scroll after scroll fell into the brazier, lighting puffs of flame as they were consumed.

4

“Slow and steady, Dukat,” said Kell from behind him. “We don’t want to alarm the natives.”

“As you wish, Gul.” Dukat kept his expression neutral as he nodded to the young glinn in the pilot’s couch. The junior officer eased back a little on the cutter’s thrusters, dropping the slab-shaped vessel’s airspeed. It wasn’t as if they had been hurtling through the sky at any great speed, but Kell was the kind of commander who liked to micromanage his crew, to be seen to be doing something even when there was nothing to be done. The gul drew back into the main compartment of the Kornaire’s landing ship, to where the rest of the diplomatic party were seated. Dukat had a glimpse of the Oralians, Hadlo and Bennek and a couple more of their number with hooded heads bowed. Are they praying for a safe landing? The flight isn’tthat bumpy.Seated by Professor Ico’s side, Pa’Dar caught Dukat’s eye and threw him a nod before he went back to looking out through one of the armored portholes.

Dukat checked the glinn’s course and saw she was keeping perfectly to the prescribed air corridor that the Bajorans had transmitted to them. Coming in over that curious blue-green ocean, they were now flying upriver toward their final destination. A flight of swift, needle-hulled aircraft were moving in echelon a few hundred decas above them, an escort of atmospheric fighters from the Militia’s Aerial Guard. The shuttle’s passive sensors showed him exactly where each flyer was, and he had no doubt that the men piloting those planes had one hand on their active scanner controls, ready to illuminate the ship with targeting systems if they diverged from their course by so much as a wing’s span. The Cardassian smiled thinly. If the roles had been reversed, he would have done the same—then Dukat corrected himself. No, I would never allow one of them to set foot on Cardassia. Not unless they were under guns or in chains.

“Estimated time of arrival is seven metrics, Dalin,” said the pilot.

Dukat nodded. “Look sharp. Your landing will be the first impression we make, so do it with skill.”

“I will, sir.”

Dukat peered out of the cutter’s forward canopy and saw the Bajoran metropolis through the wisps of low-lying cloud. The colors, like the teal ocean, seemed peculiar to the eyes of a man used to the ashen gray and rusty umber of Cardassian cityscapes. Lush parkland of a kind that could never survive on Cardassia Prime’s water-scarce continents was everywhere, each major artery lined with trees and great square commons laid out over the radial terraced districts. The buildings were largely of a uniform red-gold hue, most likely made from some kind of local stone, and there were spires and minarets on each intersection. Dukat saw nothing like the imposing towers and majestic arcs of his homeworld’s architecture. Instead, the Bajorans favored domes that lay wide and low to the ground, or glassy orbs that seemed too fragile to be dwellings. With a practiced soldier’s eye, the dalin examined the scope of Korto, thinking of the city in the guise of an invader. What forces would a commander need to commit to take a conurbation like this one? Where would he need to strike to cut off lines of supply, yet ensure that the prize remained intact?

Filing away his impressions for later deliberation, he shifted back in his acceleration chair as the shuttle turned gently into a banking maneuver, toward the towering castle on the hill overshadowing the city.

“Beginning final descent,” said the pilot, and Dukat tapped the intercom and repeated the report to the rest of the passengers.

The shuttle slowed, coming over the walls of the Naghai Keep to stop in a hover above an open space in the broad inner courtyard. Dukat saw a pavilion down there, a small crowd of overdressed Bajorans looking up at them and shielding their eyes. To one side, beneath a set of ornamental arches, there was a raised dais and on it shrouded shapes that could only be the bodies of men. The white cloths that concealed the corpses fluttered as the shuttle dropped gently to the ground, the ship’s repulsors casting up small cyclones of air and dust.

The crew of the Bajoran scoutship had been turned over to the locals so that they could prepare for whatever death rituals were needed. He wondered idly if the Bajorans had examined the bodies as thoroughly as the Cardassians had before returning them. He made a mental note to ask Pa’Dar later if they had gleaned anything interesting.

Settling on its landing struts with a hiss of hydraulics, the cutter touched down with barely a tremor of motion, and Dukat inclined his head at the glinn in a gesture of praise before rising from his station. He checked the hang of his duty armor and the flimsy peace-bond seal over the butt of the phaser pistol in his belt holster, then crossed to Kell’s side.

The gul shot Hadlo a hard look as the elderly priest paused on the threshold of the hatchway. “I believe it would be best if I exited first, cleric.”

Hadlo’s lined face hardened. “What sort of message does that send to these people, Gul Kell?”

“Precisely the one I wantto send,” Kell replied, and thumbed the control that opened the wide gull-wing door.

Dukat was right behind him, and the rush of Bajoran atmosphere welled up and into the shuttle’s interior, washing over the dalin’s face. It was cool and sweet, lacking the dry edge of home.

Pa’Dar and Ico were the last to disembark, followed by two grim-faced glinns who wore the watchful look of men waiting in vain for a threat to emerge where none was lurking. Kell and Dukat, there in their black battle gear, next to the pastel robes of Hadlo, Bennek, and the other Oralians, and now the two scientists in the neutral blues and grays of their duty uniforms; Pa’Dar wondered what the natives would make of them, the three groups within the diplomatic mission all alien, all different.

The clothing worn by the Bajorans was a contrast as well. They seemed to favor earth tones, brown and ochre that reminded the scientist of the stonework of the city. Perhaps the colors are supposed to represent some sort of metaphorical link between the people and their world?It was an interesting hypothesis, and one that Pa’Dar might share with Ico when they returned to the Kornaire,if, of course, she could spare him the time. Of late, as the ship had come closer and closer to Bajor, his supervisor had been harder to pin down, always engaged in communications with the homeworld, distracted by assignments she was unwilling to discuss. Secrecy was part and parcel of life in service to the Cardassian government, but Ico’s recent behavior had gone beyond that. He wondered idly if she were doing something illicit, perhaps engaging in a liaison with one of the ship’s crew members.

Pa’Dar dismissed the thoughts and turned his attention back to the aliens. He was being provided with a unique opportunity here, and he would be remiss if he didn’t make the most of it. His family were politicians and administrators back on the homeworld, and they had made no attempt to hide their disapproval of his choice of an academic career path. At best, his parents saw themselves as indulging a youthful caprice that they fully expected Kotan to grow out of in due course; the Bajor mission was a chance to prove them wrong, to show them that he could do something of value from the halls of the science ministry.