He presented himself at the security arch and eyed the technician behind the monitor. There was no need for an exchange of greetings; the operator knew who he was, her console reading the ident plate fused into his armor the moment he had materialized on the dais. She gestured to a wide-spectrum scanner matrix set in the floor like a tall, thin tombstone. “If you please, Dal Dukat.”

He did as he was bid, letting a pulse of blue light flick across his eyes. In moments, the noninvasive bio-scan and retinal profile threw up a confirmation, and a light glowed on the arch. “You may proceed, sir,” the woman said, and looked away, moving on to her next work item.

Dukat passed through the arch, and a discreet door opened in the wall across from him. The turbolift inside rocked gently as it took him into the embassy’s inner spaces. The building followed standard Central Command design protocols; it was a bunker within a bunker, a hardened blockhouse constructed from reinforced thermoconcrete on a sonodanite frame, concealed inside a rectangular building made from the densest local stone available. Dukat had been in several facilities of identical form and function, from Arawath to Orias, and each was the same. The uniformity was comforting, in its own way.

The doors opened and Dukat was waved through to the jagul’s office by a muscular glinn; and there he found Kell watching an oval holoframe, the transparent display hazing the air over his desk. Dukat saw grainy images, probably from the security monitors out on the embassy walls. A horde of Bajorans, a handful of them in Militia uniforms standing with their backs to the gates, the rest churning back and forth, shouting and brandishing pennants. The officer seemed to be only half interested in the screen, his attention wandering between that and a series of padds showing some kind of schematic.

He indicated the image. “Have I come at a bad time, Jagul Kell?”

“Dukat.” Kell drew out the name, ignoring the question. “Here you are. Welcome to Bajor.”

Dukat made a show of looking around. The jagul’s office was heavily decorated with thick hardwood paneling from Cuellar, and there were artworks that showed scenes of Cardassia Prime, a shelf of antique books. It was the polar opposite of the austerity of Dukat’s own duty room aboard the Kashai.“I feel as if I have not left the homeworld,” he replied.

Kell smirked. “High rank means men are granted allowances.” He shifted in his seat and pointedly did not offer Dukat the opportunity to take the empty chair across from his desk. Dukat studied the man. The stocky, uncompromising officer who had once commanded the Kornairewas still there, but Kell had grown more portly in the intervening years. An increase in girth was to be expected as a man became an elder, of course, but the jagul was still some time away from earning that level of distinction. The tailoring of his duty armor did its best to conceal it, but there was only so far it could go. Dukat kept a sneer from his lips, holding his contempt and faint disgust for the man in check. Is this what you have been doing in your glorious posting, Kell? Growing fat on rich alien food, guzzling their drink?

As if in reply, the jagul took up a glass of springwine and sipped it. “Cardassia endures,” he intoned. “Even beyond her borders, Cardassia endures. Tell me, how many more of the Oralian rabble have you brought here?”

“One ship, the Lhemor.”Dukat answered the question even though he knew Kell had all the details of the freighter and Bennek’s pilgrims. “Other vessels are known to be preparing for voyages. The Oralians in the cities have been encouraged to vacate the population centers. They are being increasingly corralled in the outer territories, in shanty towns.”

“Enclaves…” Kell mused. “Rather like here on Bajor.”

“Central Command estimates that a full third of all declared followers of the Oralian Way are offworld at this time.”

“Following the pilgrim path to learn from the Prophets,” mocked the jagul. “Well. That would seem to indicate we have them where we want them. Diminishing and ineffectual. The Union will be all the better for it.”

“‘And the betterment of the Cardassian Union is the goal of all the nation’s sons,’” Dukat replied, the axiom coming easily to him. “If I may ask, sir, how have you fulfilled that edict?”

Kell’s eye twitched at Dukat’s open challenge, but he opened his hands to take in the office. “Look around, Dal. While you loitered with the Talarians, I have worked to cement Cardassia’s foothold on this world.” He frowned. “Perhaps not with the swiftness that Central Command wishes, but then the road to control must be taken with care.”

Dukat made a noncommittal noise and glanced at a small sculpture made of jevonite. “I wonder. Do the Bajorans living here in Dahkur have any inkling of what lies inside the blunt planes of this building?” He raised the object to his eyes, studying it. “They would be most displeased to find you have inserted a covert military base into one of their major cities.” He nodded to the walls. “I saw the secure hatches along the corridor.” Most of the interior spaces of a facility like this one were prefabricated rooms that locked together like a child’s construction blocks, modular components beamed directly into place from ships in orbit. “I’m curious. How did you prevent the Bajorans from detecting the transporter signatures? Scattering fields, perhaps?”

As he expected, the jagul couldn’t resist the opportunity to brag. “The trade with our homeworld has provided the Bajorans with some new sensor technology, which they use quite widely,” he noted. “Of course, it is possible that those who built those sensors know them well enough to exploit any…blind spots.”

“Ah,” Dukat nodded. “But it’s my understanding the Militia also operate sensor arrays using components of non-Cardassian origin.”

Kell mirrored his nod. “They do. Hardware that the Xepolites sold them.” He sipped at the springwine. “Interesting to consider: Who might it be that sold the Xepolites theirtechnology?” The jagul smiled slightly. “You see, Dukat, there’s nothing to cause any dismay among our gracious hosts.”

“And this?” Dukat pointed at the holoframe. “That’s not dismay,as you call it?”

Kell gave an arch sniff. “Embassy matters are classified at the highest level, Dal. I’m sure you understand.”

“You need not worry about my clearances, Jagul. I’m here at the behest of the Central Command, and my orders are to evaluate the circumstances on Bajor.” Dukat detected the twitch of annoyance in Kell’s brow, but the other officer hid it quickly.

“It seems I was mistaken,” Kell returned. “I was under the impression that you had been sent to Bajor, not on a mission of such great temerity as judging my command”—his voice rose slightly—“but because you had fallen out of favor with the Legates.”

It was Dukat’s turn to hide a flash of anger. The riposte was too measured to have been a chance comment. How is he aware of my circumstances?Dukat wondered. Some agency funneled that information to him. Someone with a long reach.“If you wish to ensure you don’t find yourself in a similar condition, you might wish to curtail scenes like that,” he snapped, nodding again at the rowdy demonstrators. He could make out Bajoran ideograms on the banners, and on some, in crude Cardassian, exhortations for them to quit the planet.

“On the contrary, Dukat, I’m allowing these protests to go on. In fact, I’m nurturing them.”

“Explain.”

Kell waved his hand in the air. “Nonlethal subsonics in the embassy’s defense grid. Tuned correctly, over a limited area they can create a sense of agitation in the Bajoran hypothalamus…” He shrugged. “Forgive me, I understand the theory but the science of it is beyond me.” Kell sniffed again. “When these so-called peaceful protests turn ugly, it serves us. The Bajorans become divided over the issue and Cardassia is shown to be compassionate when I send my medical staff in to help the injured in the aftermath.”