She sighed. “At least promise me you will not antagonize Hadlo’s aide any further. When we reach Bajor, it would not do for the first sight the aliens have to be Bennek’s hands about your throat.”

“Let him try. Soft little priest with his soft little hands. I’d soon teach him that blind zealotry is no substitute for focus of will.” Kell took a gulp of the fluid.

“Like it or not, we need them. We need that zeal.”

He nodded with a grimace. “Yes, I suppose so. And so I will tolerate them, for Cardassia.” He saluted the name with his glass. “At least until this is over. Once they’ve served their purpose, the Union can go on about the business of erasing them from our society.”

Ico paused as she ate and cocked her head. “You really do detest the Oralians, don’t you, Danig?”

He stared into his drink, musing. “They’re the worst of us. The very last vestiges of the old race we were before Cardassians came to understand their place in the universe. Throwbacks, Rhan, nothing but anachronisms.” Kell’s lip curled. “That arrogant young whelp, he’s a perfect example. He has the nerve to accuse the military of impoverishing our nation, we who defend it!” The gul tapped a balled fist on his chest plate, touching the copper sigil of the Second Order affixed there. “But it’s his religion that is to blame! They’re the ones responsible for the state of Cardassia, not us!” He turned in his seat, his ire building again, and fixed her with a look. “How many centuries were our people forced to live under the yoke of the Oralian Way? With every measure of wealth, every stone and scrap of jevonite going to build towers of worship? Places where the people could huddle and listen to hollow promises of salvation and redemption, when there was nothing!” Kell waggled a finger at Ico. “They repressed us, kept Cardassia from advancing. If Hadlo and his kind had their way, we would still be living in crude huts, our learning stunted by their dogma. You, Rhan, what would you be? Not a scientist! Some temple servant, perhaps, or a doting wife walking ten paces behind your husband!”

Ico said nothing. The years when the church had been the governing force behind Cardassian society were long gone, but there were many who still carried a strong resentment toward the customs of the old credo. It mattered nothing to Kell that Hadlo’s faith was now only a pale shadow of the religion that had once dominated Cardassia’s pre-spaceflight era. The gul’s ignorance of the tenets of the Oralian Way was obvious by his words, but she knew that correcting him would gain her nothing. She simply nodded and let him continue.

“The future for Cardassia lies out here,” he growled, jerking a thumb at the oval viewport high on the wall, at the stars outside turned to streaks of color by the ship’s warp velocities. “Not in some ancient doctrine.” He grimaced again. “Were I First Speaker, I’d have fed the lot of them to the Tzenkethi by now. They held us down, they wasted our resources. If not for the military, we would still be a downtrodden and backward people. Now every day we have to struggle to claw back the time those foolish priests cost us.”

“And yet here they are, with us on this most sensitive of assignments. Do you find the irony in that as I do, Kell?”

The gul eyed her. “The Detapa Council believes those ridge-faced primitives on Bajor will be better disposed toward a Cardassia that exhibits some of the same childish fealty to religion that they do. Hadlo and his band of fools are only here to maintain that fiction. To mollify the aliens, nothing more.”

She nodded. “From a certain point of view, such a tactic might be seen as a desperate one.”

“What do you mean?”

Ico took another sip. “Has the Central Command grown so unsure of itself that it must enlist priests to help it gain a foothold on Bajor? Are our proud warfleets spread so thin that we cannot simply take Bajor by force of arms?” She gestured around. “One ship, Danig. Is that all the Orders can spare from the wall of vessels protecting our space?” She knew the answer to those questions as well as Kell did, but neither of them would dare to say it aloud. Not here. Not yet.

His eyes narrowed. “I would advise you to watch your tone, Professor.”

“Forgive me, Gul Kell,” she replied. “In my line of work, it is the nature of a scientist to make suppositions and voice theories.”

Kell looked away without even bothering to grace her with a response.

2

B’hava’el was low in the sky across the rooftops of the dockyards and the port hangars, throwing warm orange light through the clouds, but the chill of last night’s storm down from the mountains was still hugging the ground. For most people in Korto, the day hadn’t really begun. Trams on the main thoroughfare were filled with workers coming in from the habitat districts, the rail-riders passing equally full carriages going the other way packed with night servants, cleaners, and members of professions that shunned the light of morning. Darrah Mace walked the edge of the city’s port field, occasionally glancing to his right to watch the highway traffic on the other side of the chain-link fence, but for the most part keeping his gaze northward, across the hangars and landing pads, over the grassy spaces around the runways. Ships clicked and ticked to themselves as he passed around them, some vessels dripping with runoff from the rain, others bleeding warmth from atmospheric reentry. He raised a hand and threw a wan salute at a group of laborers clustered around the impulse nacelle of a parked courier; they were using a crude steel plate to fry eggs on the ship’s heat exchangers. One of them offered him a greasy slice, but Darrah shook his head good-naturedly and walked on. The scent of the makeshift cooking lingered in the air, following him on gusts of wind that made his overcoat twist and flap.

He’d heard there had been some trouble here last night, something about a fight interrupted, threats, and an issue or two unresolved. It was hardly atypical for the port. Darrah experienced a moment of memory from his childhood, triggered by the cook-smell: walking along after his father to go see the big lifter ships where the old man had worked, the loaders and dockers all laughing against the grim exertion of their chores. Then an argument had broken out, and one man had beaten another with a bill-hook. His mother had been furious that the boy had been allowed to see that. She’d never let Mace follow his dad to work again. She’d never understood that the blood, the violence, hadn’t frightened him. Mace had been with his father, who protected him. He thought about his own children for a moment, about hisjob; a bitter smirk formed on his lips as he imagined what Karys would say if Nell or little Bajin asked to follow himto work. “She’d pitch a fit,” he said aloud.

Darrah hesitated at the edge of the landing apron, his chilly amusement turning swiftly into a frown. There was nothing here, and he’d done his part by just turning up, just taking a stroll around the port so people knew he was there. The laborers had seen him. They’d spread the word that Darrah had been around. That was probably enough. He pivoted on his heel, hesitating just for a moment as engine noise caught his ears. He stopped to watch as a slim, wire-framed freighter rose up on vertical thrusters from one of the elevated pads, turning a snake-head prow toward the sky. With a sharp report of ion ignition, gouts of smoky exhaust puffed from the ship’s engine bells and it shot away like a loosed arrow, roaring right over his head toward the south and the ocean. He watched it go, receding to a dot, for a moment being the young boy again; and then he realized that the noise of the liftoff had been hiding something else. Angry voices, from close by.