Lonnic entered the Clarion’s triangular bridge at the apex, the hatch doors retracting into the deck at her approach. On the upper tier of the command deck men and women in gray uniforms sat working consoles, and on the lower level in the engineering pits she saw enlisted crew busy at banks of power controls. Colonel Li’s station was offset to the starboard side, ringed with elliptical panels that relayed all the data the ship’s commander required from the heavy assault ship’s systems.

The Clarionwas unlike the scouts of the Jas clan’s fleet or the civilian liners Lonnic was familiar with. The military ship was all steel walls and sparse construction; the compartment they had provided her with was barely the width of her closet back home on Bajor, with a netting hammock-bed instead of the sleeping pallet she was used to.

Li beckoned her across the bridge, speaking to one of the other crew members. “Does it match the profile we have in our database?”

The officer nodded. “Confirmed, Colonel. It’s not a target we’ve designated before, but the energy silhouette and warp trail decay curve are right on the line.”

“Good. Start a sensor file on this one, designate it as required, and then have the navigator plot me a speed course for intercept.”

“Acknowledged.” The officer stepped away, and Li turned his attention to the adjutant.

“Ms. Lonnic. I wanted to let you know. The crew of one of your scoutships, the Kylen,has reported in. They’ve confirmed a report we received of a possible Tzenkethi contact a few light-years from our current position. Those sensors of theirs are quite impressive.”

She nodded. “We’re going to approach it, then?”

“Just as soon as I have my ship in order. I want to get this done quickly and cleanly, then get home to my wife and son.” His words were clipped. Lonnic could see he didn’t want to tarry out here in the depths of the sector any longer than he needed to. Like the rest of the Clarioncrew, he wanted decisive action rather than a long, drawn-out operation.

Something concerned her. “Colonel, you said you received a report? From one of the other vessels?”

He shook his head. “A subspace signal from Bajor, relayed from the crew of a freighter.”

“Who sent the signal?”

He glanced at a console. “It was a ministerial mandate, from the office of Kubus Oak. The freighter is one of his.”

“Kubus?” Lonnic felt herself tense. “With all due respect, Colonel, can you be sure the data is, ah—”

“Trustworthy?” Li broke in. “That’s why I had the Kylenmake a close approach to the location. They confirmed it. A single Tzenkethi marauder at anchor in the Ajir system.”

Lonnic’s mistrust was acid in her throat. “All the same, perhaps we should proceed with caution.”

“My intentions exactly,” he snapped back, prickling at her manner. “And when we’re done with caution, if I detect one atom of explosives on board that ship, we’ll space them.” The colonel shot her another look. “There were friends of mine aboard a Guard cutter tethered to Cemba Station, Ms. Lonnic. Not a one of them got out alive. I intend to offer the Tzenkethi the very same.”

She fell silent. Did Kubus know that Li has a personal stake in this reprisal?The answer was obvious. Of course he does. Doubtless Li Tarka was selected over Jaro Essa to lead the mission for just that reason.

The bridge officer called out to his commander. “Ajir course plotted and laid in, Colonel. Action stations at standby.”

Li settled back into his chair. “Sound alert condition and make for maximum warp cruise. We have some unfinished business to conclude.”

Lonnic glanced up at the tripartite viewscreen just as the Clarionleapt beyond light speed, streaking the darkness with bands of white.

Gar glanced out of the flyer’s sloped window, watching the lowlands flash past in a blur of greenery. In the distance he could see the hazy peaks of the Kendran Range; below the mountains were the floodplains of the River Yolja, but it was impossible to see them through a thick bank of ashen-colored clouds sweeping eastward toward them. In the distance the priest could make out tiny bright glitters where lightning was flashing to the ground. The storm would be upon the lowlands by nightfall, and the summer tempests were always harsh, despite the work of the weather modification satellites.

The sight of the storm deepened Gar’s sense of discomfort, and he turned back to face Pasir in the pilot’s chair. “How much farther?”

“Not far now,” the Cardassian said briskly.

Gar sighed. “Pasir, please, you cannot simply expect me to remain silent while we fly about the planet. You speak of secrets, of something you call the Obsidian Order, and then take this ship without filing a flight plan…”

“I did file a flight plan,” Pasir corrected. “Just not the one we’re actually using.” The flyer hit a thermal, and the alien deftly navigated through it.

“I wasn’t aware you were such an accomplished pilot.”

Pasir shrugged. “I’d imagine there’s much about me you’re unaware of.” He said the words with cold dismissal.

Gar’s resolve hardened. “I think we should turn around,” he said firmly. “Go back to Korto, find Darrah. Whatever your problem is, he will be able to help.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Gar moved forward, reaching for the communications panel. “I’ll contact him—”

The Cardassian’s hand shot out of his robes with a compact pistol in his grip, and he cracked Gar’s fingers with it, smashing them against the plastic. The Bajoran howled in shock and pain, clutching his broken knuckles to him.

“What do you want?” Gar demanded.

“Silence,” Pasir said, in a voice that was knife-sharp.

He’s going to kill me.The thought pressed into Gar’s mind, sudden and hard. If I don’t get away from him, I will die.

The Cardassian glanced at him. “Don’t do anything else,” he began.

Gar threw himself out of his chair and into the alien, crying out again as he tried to grip Pasir’s gun hand with his ruined fingers. An impact slammed him forward, and he felt the aircraft’s throttle bar shift beneath him. There was a surge of engine noise, and the flyer’s blunt nose slipped off the line of the stormy horizon and down toward the ground.

14

The Tzenkethi ship drifted in the shallows of the gas giant’s outermost atmospheric layer, tracing faint eddies of hydrocarbon-rich mist around it. When in flight mode, the elongated fuselage resembled a smooth, seamless teardrop; the hulls of marauders of this class were inspired by ocean predators from the abyssal deeps of Ab-Tzenketh, but at this moment the clean lines of the vessel were marred by the vent hatches that lay open along its flanks. Absorption grids trawled the planet’s clouds for consumable chemicals and raw matter for the fuel stores, while mile-long antennae no more than the thickness of a hair trailed out behind. The patterns of radiation flux shifting between the gas giant and the numerous moons that crowded its orbit stroked the aerials, and the vessel drew the energy in to bolster its stores.

The ship’s mission was almost at an end. The sortie had been a disappointing one, with little in the way of prey craft to pursue and nothing but dead space and distant sightings in between. In another half-rotation, once the matter banks were fat and sated, they would furl the antennae and close the grids before making a high-speed warp sprint back into Coalition space. Home base would be under their keel soon after.

Inside the ionosphere, the play of the planet’s radiation belts ensured that the Tzenkethi marauder’s sensors were fouled by great drifting clouds of electronic fog; only a small pilot pod in a higher orbit, attached by a diamond-filament tether, floated high enough to be clear of the effects. It was the single crew member aboard the pod who detected the arrival of four starships as they emerged from the sunward side of the gas giant, their shields raised and their weapons running hot.