The whole Golana problem; it hung around her, dragging on her thoughts. On one level she felt betrayed by Jas for cutting her out of the crisis, while on another she understood the choice he had made. Kubus had been correct when he suggested that Jas had done it to protect her. But I am his chief adjutant,she fumed. I should have known.And then there was the matter of the fate of the Eleda.

A shadow fell across her table, blotting out the afternoon sun, and Lonnic looked up to see two men in uniform.

“Hey,” said Darrah, and indicated the empty chairs across from her. “Did some foolish man break a date with you? How rude.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Constable Darrah, and Watchman Proka. What brings you to this part of Korto?”

Darrah sat. “Oh, you know. Law officer stuff.” He threw a glance at the chronometer on his cuff. “Actually, we’re on break for a moment, isn’t that right, Migdal?” He shot Proka a look.

“We are?” said the watchman. “Oh,” he continued, “I mean, we are.”

Darrah nodded. “Catch a server, will you? Get us a couple more of those.” He tapped Lonnic’s copalglass, and Proka stepped away to summon a waitress.

Lonnic raised an eyebrow. “Drinking on duty is not permitted,”

Darrah shrugged. “One glass doesn’t count as drinking. At least, not where I come from.” He settled himself in the chair. “Besides, me and you talking? That counts as a business meeting.”

“A taphouse is hardly businesslike.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I beg to differ. I’ve done some of my best police work in taverns like this.” He paused, watching her. “You know, I only ever see you here when something’s bothering you. Want to talk about it?”

Lonnic was thinking about what to tell him when a group of noisy children ran past, laughing and shouting. A couple of them were wearing crude masks made of gray paper that mimicked the shape and form of a Cardassian face. “Will you look at that?” she said.

“They’re just kids,” Darrah said easily. “They’re fascinated by anything that’s unusual.”

Lonnic’s expression darkened. “And they aren’t the only ones.” She looked around, taking in the people at the other tables on the veranda. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the word ‘Cardassian’ float over from someone else’s conversation since I got here.”

“Better than ‘spoonhead,’” said Darrah quietly. “What did you expect, Tomo? Offworlders are always a crowd-pleaser. We get so few of them, and even then they tend to stick to the spaceport quarters in Ashalla or Dahkur.”

Proka returned with two glasses of copaland sat, taking a slow sip of the Bajoran cider.

“Sometimes I think that’s better for all of us,” Lonnic replied, tapping her own glass. “You haven’t seen things at the keep. All the attendant D’jarras, when they think they’re out of earshot, I hear them talking about the Cardassians.” She grimaced. “The women are fascinatedby them all right.”

“Oh,” Proka said with a blink. “It’s like that, is it? Huh.”

“Well, I have heard that talk as well,” noted Darrah, reaching for his drink. “You know how people wonder.” He tapped his shoulders. “All those ropey muscles on their neck, folks start thinking that maybe they have them in other places as—”

Lonnic thumped her glass on the tabletop. “Stop right there. It’s bad enough I’m hearing it from giggling servant girls, now I have to get it from you?”

Darrah’s wan smile faded. “C’mon, Tomo, don’t take this so seriously. I’m sure the aliens are probably thinking the same things about us.”

“I don’t trust them,” she said flatly. “I don’t trust the Cardassians, and I don’t trust Kubus Oak or the First Minister or anyone involved in this.” She took a gulp from the copal.“There. I said it.”

“Verin’s a sour old coot,” opined Proka.

“Well, Kubus. Yeah, I don’t like him either, but…” The constable watched her expression. “You didn’t seem this angry about it when we talked in the precinct.”

“That was official business,” she retorted, and had another sip of the cider. “Now I’m on a break.” Lonnic glanced around to be certain that no one was listening in on their conversation. She was on the verge of telling him about Golana, but she reeled back. Instead, she revealed something else. “You know the Eleda?”

“The scoutship,” said Proka. “The one the spoonheads brought back.” Darrah shot his subordinate a terse look at the casual epithet, but the watchman pretended he hadn’t noticed.

Lonnic nodded. “Just how was that vessel wrecked? I knew the captain by reputation, and he was good at what he did. I find it hard to imagine he nose-dived into an asteroid.”

“Is that what the sensor logs say happened?”

She sighed. “The Militia isn’t saying much. They’ve only released the most basic of information about the fatalities. It’s all very sketchy, at best.”

Darrah’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at? You think this wasn’t death by misadventure?”

“The Eledacrew perished under dubious conditions, that’s a given,” she insisted. “I’ve pulled in favors with my contacts at the Space Guard division, and from what I’ve learned they haven’t been able to make an accurate postmortem on the wreckage.”

“The aliens rigged it?” Proka hesitated with his glass at his lips.

“That’s a bit of a leap,” added Darrah. “Just because you’re wary of the offworlders, that doesn’t make them murderers.”

She eyed him over the lip of her drink. “You’re the lawman, Mace. Aren’t you supposed to be the one who is suspicious of everybody and everything?”

“I am,” replied the constable. “I’m a trained, professional skeptic, so you ought to leave this sort of thing to me.” He gave a crooked smile. “Honestly, you’ve been with Jas too long. You see conspiracies everywhere.”

Lonnic sipped the copal.“I work in politics, Mace. There areconspiracies everywhere.”

“Huh,” added Proka. “Makes me glad I’m just a watchman. I’ll stick to kicking in doors and cuffing felons. Simpler.”

“I spoke to one of them, you know,” Darrah volunteered. “His name was Dukat, one of the officers, I think.” The meeting with the alien had been preying on his mind since that evening, and something about it made Darrah want to get it out in the open. He felt as if he were doing something wrong keeping it to himself.

“When did that happen?” asked Proka.

“In the keep, on the ramparts. I was taking a walk around the perimeter, checking the security arrangements. The Cardassian was there. I think he came out to get some air.”

Lonnic was listening carefully. “What did he say to you?”

“He asked me about the Gratitude Festival. I don’t think he really understood what it was for.”

“What did you make of him, then?” Proka asked. “They seem like a stiff-backed lot from what I can figure out.”

Darrah shrugged, recalling Dukat’s words, the look of sad distance on the alien’s face. I have a son. He has yet to be named.“He seemed…like anybody else. We talked about our kids for a bit, then another one, one of the scientists, came and got him.” He chewed his lip, reviewing his impressions of the Cardassian. “They seem like us. There’s good and bad in everyone, right? Aliens included? Anyone who cares about his family can’t be a million light-years different.”

Lonnic grunted. “For all you know, they might eat their young.”

“Yeah,” added Proka, warming to the subject, “or maybe the females are like palukoospiders and they chew off the heads of the men once they’re done mating.”

“Speaking of that, how are things with Karys?”

Darrah glared at the dark-skinned woman. “Fine. She’s fine.”

“She seemed to enjoy herself at the festival.”

“We all had a good time.” He frowned. “I…I don’t get to take her out as much as I would like.”