His sharp words seemed to make some impact on Hadlo, and the old man stiffened, regaining his poise for a brief moment. “This is the time. This is the moment I warned you of when we spoke in the library of the Naghai Keep. The purge has begun. All our churches are burning, Bennek. Burning.”

“Purge?” The word almost choked him.

Hadlo nodded, the image jerking and fracturing. “Kell’s promises to us have been finally broken, open to the world. The military are rounding up everyone who follows the Way. Shattering the masks and setting the scrolls to the torch.”

“No!” Bennek gasped. He glanced at the leather bag on a nearby shelf that contained his copy of the Recitations and his recital mask, suddenly needing to reassure himself they were still there.

“Listen to me, boy!”said the cleric, his eyes wide. “I have gathered as many of the faithful as I can, and we are fleeing the homeworld.”

“You…you’re on a starship?”

“Yes.”Interference turned his words into a buzzing rattle. “I cannot say much more. They are searching for us, and they may track this signal. It is scrambled, but I do not know how long that will remain secure. Listen!”His face came forward, filling the screen, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “We make for the space beyond Quinor, where the plasma storms will keep us hidden.”

“The Badlands,” said Bennek. He had heard the Bajorans use the name for the area; it was a dangerous place to seek sanctuary, rife with furious plasmatic clouds. Many ships had been lost there, so the stories went, some swept away leaving nothing behind, not even wreckage.

Hadlo was nodding. “In time we will be reunited, but for the moment you must stay in sanctuary on Bajor. Oralius will keep you safe there.”

“No,” Bennek replied. “Master, it is notsafe here! We are isolated and unprotected, and the enclaves are no longer places of shelter for us. We must come together and—”

“No!”Hadlo shouted, the feedback from his sudden outburst crackling over the static-filled transmission. “I forbid it! In Oralius’s name, you shall not leave that place! Sanctuary, Bennek, sanctuary! You will ensure the Way remains, I have foreseen it in my vision…That is your path, boy! You will do it! You will do it!”Without warning the image vanished, becoming a seething wash of gray static.

Benneck snapped off the console and crossed the room, every footfall leaden and heavy. “I can’t do this,” he said to the air. “I…I am not strong enough to do this!” He savagely grabbed the leather bag and ripped the recital mask from it, gripping it in his fingers. “What do you want from me?” he demanded of the wooden face. “Have you forsaken us? Have you?” The cleric let the mask clatter across the table and he sat heavily. His eyes fell across a bottle of kanarthat was discreetly hidden in the lee of a support brace, and he reached for it. The bottle was a quarter empty; it had already served him as a panacea in moments when his weakness had overcome him. The cleric twisted off the cap and filled a glass, draining it and letting the mellow fire of the liqueur race through him, steadying his nerves.

There was a knock at his door, and Bennek’s hand cracked the glass with a jerk of fright. “They’ve come,” he whispered to the discarded mask. “Come with guns to kill us all.” He swallowed another measure as the knocking became more strident. “It’s open,” he said loudly. “Enter and do as you will.”

But the figure that came in from the storm was not a soldier with a phaser rifle. “Bennek,” said Tima, shrugging off a rain-soaked cloak. “I didn’t know who else to turn to…”

In spite of his own concerns, the emotion in the woman’s voice made him push everything else to one side. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Ranjen Gar. He’s lost…He was in a flyer with Pasir and they never arrived at their destination.” She blinked back tears. “Oh, Bennek, I think something terrible could have happened to them.”

“Pasir? No, I can’t lose him as well…” It was too much for him. Suddenly, as if a wave of despair had dragged him under, the Oralian cradled his head in his hands. “Tima…Tima, everything is disintegrating around us. I’ve been forsaken…”

She came to him, putting her arm around his shoulders. “Bennek, no.” The Bajoran woman took a shuddering breath. “You must tell me what troubles you.”

“But your friend—”

Tima held him, and he found himself wanting only to do the same to her. “His friends are helping him. Let me…Let me help you.”

With a trembling voice, every fear and every hope poured out of Bennek as the storm battered the walls around them.

The rain lashed across the blackened disks of the flyer pads in hard, windblown waves that made the Watch officers curse and pull their jackets and caps down tight. Darrah glared at the cloud-wreathed sky, daring it to do its worst. And it will,he thought to himself. This is only the leading edge of the storm cell. There’s more to come.

He faced his men. “You’ve all got the pattern, you all know your assigned sectors. Coordinate through Constable Proka and Myda back at the precinct. The instant you find anything, you radio it in. Clear?” There was a chorus of assent, and he threw a sharp gesture at the parked flyers. “Then get going. But no heroics. I don’t want to lose anyone else out there.”

As the crews ran to their craft, Proka tugged on Darrah’s arm. “Boss? Got a problem. We’re a man short. You need a copilot and we haven’t got one.”

Darrah grimaced, making for his flyer. “I don’t give a damn about regulations,” he shot back. “I’ll search my pattern on my own.”

“Can’t let you, boss,” Proka insisted. “It’s filthy sky up there. You take a lightning strike or something—” He snorted. “No heroics, that’s what you just said.”

“I’m going,” growled the inspector, “and that’s an end to it.”

Proka nodded. “Thought you’d see it that way. So I got you a civvie volunteer instead.”

Darrah threw open the gull-wing hatch of the flyer and his gaze fell on the Cardassian sitting in the copilot’s chair.

“Inspector,” said Pa’Dar. “I was stranded at the port when the weather grounded my shuttle to Dahkur. I overheard the constable, and—”

Darrah looked at Proka. “That’s a very creative solution, Mig.”

The Watch officer stared back at him. “Needs must. He’s a scientist, isn’t he? He’ll know how to handle the scanners.”

Darrah waved the other man off and climbed inside the flyer, dropping smartly into the pilot’s couch.

Pa’Dar cleared his throat. “I realize it might be unusual for you to work directly with a Cardassian,” he began.

“Why are you doing this?” Darrah cut him off. “The missing Cardassian, Pasir. He’s an Oralian and you’re not. I get the impression that most of your people wouldn’t miss one of them lost in a storm.” Applying power to the thrusters, Darrah guided the flyer shakily into the turbulent sky.

After a long moment, the alien replied. “There are times when things are not as they seem, Inspector. I would think that as an officer of the law, you would be aware of that.”

“I suppose so,” Darrah admitted. “You know what? Right now, I really don’t care. I just want to find my friend, so work those sensors and help me do that.” He steered the flyer on a westerly course, and the ungainly police craft shot into the storm.

It was hard to reckon the passage of time in the flyer’s enclosed cockpit. Pa’Dar’s flight became a single round of chaotic rises and falls as the Bajoran forced the complaining ship through churning air. Outside he could see nothing but the sluice of hard rain streaking the canopy, and every few minutes there was a brilliant glare of blue-white as lightning surged. Pa’Dar glimpsed what could have been towering anvils of cloud or possibly mountain canyons; the image burned a purple blur into his retinas.