Behind her, Li was shouting at his men to seal the bridge’s environmental systems, even as an alert tone sounded over the intercom. Lonnic dropped into the chair in front of the console, ignoring the body of the unconscious operator lying next to her on the floor. She looked down at her hands and, with a physical effort, forced them to stop trembling. The woman marshaled all the resolve she could gather and steeled herself, drawing in the studied comportment that was her usual manner in the corridors of power. Lonnic took a deep breath, and a strange smell touched her senses, sweet and cloying like rotting flowers.

She spoke into the communicator pickup, an icy calm descending on her. “This is Lonnic Tomo aboard the Bajoran Space Guard warship Clarion.We are under attack by Cardassian vessels. They have already…killed the crew of the Glyhrondand a Tzenkethi marauder, and—” She felt wetness in her throat and coughed, bringing her hand to her mouth. Spots of dark blood dotted her palm. “I—”

The rotting stink was overpowering her, and she tried to speak but nothing came. Lonnic’s eyes stung and cramps spiked through her, knotting her muscles. From nowhere, an uncontrollable shuddering wracked the woman’s body and a wash of agony came with it. The pain knifed through her and she fell from the seat to the deck. Her vision blurred and darkened as the biogenic toxin burned into the optic jelly of her eyes. The last thing she saw was Colonel Li dropping to his knees, his face a ruin as he wept streams of crimson.

Prophets, please,Lonnic begged, I don’t want to die out here!

Her prayer was not answered.

The troop of black-armored figures stepped into the command compartment of the marauder, picking their way over the heap of alien corpses at the hatch. There were gouges in the metal where the Tzenkethi had clawed at the door as they tried to escape.

Dal Dukat studied them. As if they would have found somewhere to flee to,he mused. A Cardassian would have met his fate with stoic defiance, not the panic that these creatures had obviously displayed. He glanced at one of his squad. “Ensure you gather all the corpses and have them placed out of the way. We need to retain their biomass.”

“Yes, sir,” said the glinn. She paused, cocking her head and placing one hand to the temple of her environmental suit’s helmet. “The rest of the sweep teams are reporting in. Engine core and environmental controls are secure. Secondary tiers have been vented to space.”

Dukat walked forward into the streamlined oval space of the room. “Any stragglers?”

The glinn nodded, her suit making the gesture into a broad motion. “Some. A few made it to a decontamination pod before the dispersal reached them. They’ve been terminated.”

Dukat nodded back and studied the ramps that curved up from the lower level of the command deck and inverted to meet the roof of the chamber. The upper surface of the deck was almost a mirror of the lower one, with consoles and oddly shaped chairs distributed in a circular formation. He could feel the faint shift in gravity as he moved closer; to make more efficient use of space aboard their craft, the Tzenkethi used tailored gravitational fields so that walls and ceilings could become work areas. Dukat made a face. He preferred to have all his staff spread out across a single plane; but this operation called for flexibility, so he would tolerate the situation for the duration.

The glinn was examining the sensor readings from the tricorder built into her suit. “Toxin percentile is now within acceptable limits. The pathogen has burned itself out.”

Dukat glanced up and saw an identical hesitation in the faces of his boarding party. All of them accepted the glinn’s determination, but none of them wanted to be the first to test it. Dukat smiled coldly and reached up, detaching his visor with a single swift twist of his hands. He folded the helmet back over his shoulders and made a show of taking a lungful of air. All of them had injected heavy doses of a neutralizing agent before they transported aboard the marauder, but it would have done little to save them if a pocket of the deadly germs still lingered.

The dal tasted the metallic tang of blood in the air. The ship stank of death; it would be another discomfiture to endure until they had completed the mission. One by one, his officers mirrored his actions as Dukat gave the command consoles a cursory examination. The displays showed streams of Tzenkethi script tumbling like waterfalls, lacking the obvious order of a Cardassian radial display. “Get a translation matrix uploaded into these systems,” he ordered. “I want this ship under power and ready to move as soon as possible.”

“Sir, the engineering team report that the drives are largely intact. Shields will take longer to repair.”

“Have them take whatever they need from the Kashaiand the Daikonto get the job done, men and hardware,” he replied, “but quickly. We have less than a day before the Bajorans are declared overdue.” Dukat turned away and tapped his comcuff. “Tunol, respond.”

The Kashai’s executive officer answered instantly. “Here, Dal. What are your orders?”

“You have command now, Tunol. Once we’re done here, I want you to set a course for Bajor, warp three. Make your route a lengthy one, do you understand? The timing of your return to Bajor is critical.”

“Confirmed, sir,”she replied. “I’ve taken the liberty of preprogramming target strike points into the weapons systems. TheDaikon will handle your exfiltration after the attack.”

He gave an approving nod. Tunol was an intelligent woman and she showed a methodical insight. Dukat had been quietly pleased with her utter lack of qualms when he outlined the scope of the operation to her. “Good. I’ll supervise the transfer of command from here.”

“Dal,”she added. “The Bajoran derelicts…Without power, they’ve been seized by the gravitational pull of one of the gas giant’s moons. Shall I take them under tow?”

“No.” He glanced at the glinn. “You. Weapons?”

“The plasma cannon will be operable in short order, sir.”

“See to it.” He turned back to the communicator.

“Tunol? Have the cruisers take some distance from those Bajoran scows. We’ll obliterate them before they impact the moon.”

“Confirmed, sir.Kashai out.”

Dukat found the station for the marauder’s commander and sat on the broad, cushioned disk. A cluster of circular screens and abstractly proportioned panels hung around him, suspended on the ends of metal armatures that rose from the floor or dangled from the ceiling. He toyed with them, turning and adjusting so he could sit in relative comfort and examine them. One screen showed a view beyond the blunt prow of the marauder, through the vapor of discharged breathing gases and wreckage fragments that were the remains of the skirmish between the Tzenkethi and the Bajorans. One of the assault ships was drifting past on a slow tumble, the nose turning, presenting itself to the dal.

Dukat considered the crews aboard those ships. Unlike the Tzenkethi, who were declared enemies of the Cardassian Union, the Bajorans were, under the letter of the Detapa Council’s law, an allied people—and yet he had ordered the murder of more than a hundred of them without a moment’s hesitation. And now, as a plan of his design gathered momentum, Skrain Dukat’s hand lay on the weapon that would cause the deaths of countless more Bajorans.

As his men worked quietly around him, he looked inward, searching for the moral balance that guided so much of his actions.

The morality of a Cardassian can only be understood by a Cardassian. The morality of a soldier of the Union is that which serves the Union best.His father had first said those words to him, repeating one of the great axioms of service. There had been moments in his life when Dukat had entertained doubts—and only a simpleton would be so foolish as to believe that no man could be without questions, soldier or not—but this was not one of them. Dukat considered the place where he found himself: isolated from Central Command because of the independent streak he had exhibited during the Talarian conflict… No matter that it had won him many battles!Reviled by Kell for daring to defy the jagul, for shining a light on the corpulent fool’s lack of progress with the Bajorans, and in an uneasy partnership with Ico and the Obsidian Order. More than anything, it was the latter that sat most poorly with him. The Obsidian Order represented everything that was cancerous about Cardassia; they were an institutionalized form of decay that preyed on the military and the people even as they pretended to serve the same ends as Central Command.