The first shots were fired with Bajor at their backs, the small two-man raiders leading the interception. The few pilots who survived the engagement would later remark in debriefings how the warship, easily two or three times the mass of a heavy assault vessel, made punishing turns that would have shredded the hull of a Bajoran craft. They outnumbered the marauder, but still they were outmatched.

The darkness became a web of phaser fire and missile trails as General Coldri’s crews threw up a wall of destructive energy, fighting to cordon the invader and force it back into open space.

The Tzenkethi ship took hit after hit, but they were glancing blows that the streamlined hull shrugged off, deflector shields glittering and denying anything but the most cursory damage. The marauder’s main armament threw lances of searing white light against the Bajorans; impulse raiders caught in the nimbus were blown apart or sent tumbling, their control systems and crew flash-burned to ashes. The alien ship turned and avoided every attempt by the Guard to converge fire upon it, answering with shots from secondary disruptor cannon arrays. Assault ships were hit with pinpoint attacks that blew out power grids or targeted their warp cores, leaving them dead in space or drifting out of control toward the Denorios Belt. The gunners aboard the Tzenkethi ship seemed to know exactly, precisely where to hit them, rendering the Cardassian-made drives fitted aboard the Bajoran ships inoperative.

At last, weathering some minor damage but still combat capable, the marauder slowed to pass through the disruption it had caused in the Bajoran intercept force, as if the ship’s commander were evaluating his work. No killing shots came, no executioner’s blows; the disabled ships were left behind and the marauder moved on, turning over Bajor’s terminator toward the sunward side of the planet. Unopposed, it dropped into a low orbit, turning vertical to present its prow and the plasma cannon emitter to the unprotected surface of the world.

“Status?” said Dukat, shifting on the alien command dais.

The glinn at the oddly proportioned helm control turned to face him. “We are ready to move to phase two of the operation at your discretion, Dal.”

Dukat nodded, a faint sneer on his lips as he examined a screen showing the fallout from the engagement. The marauder was an impressive ship, of that there was no doubt, agile and lethal. It was a pity that he could not return with it to Cardassia Prime as a prize, and he made a mental note to ensure that as much data on the craft was gathered as possible before the operation came to an end. The marauder had made short work of the Bajorans, and that had been in the hands of a crew of aliens inexperienced with the vessel. Dukat wondered what it would be like to oppose a Tzenkethi ship at the pinnacle of its capacity. In comparison, these Bajorans were poor sport; they fought in space as if they were still in sailboats on the surface of their oceans. They lacked the hard-won battle experience of the Cardassian navy. He shook his head. “If that was the best they had to offer, we should have invaded this planet five years ago.”

“With respect, sir, the Bajorans weren’t using Cardassian-surplus warp drives five years ago,” offered the woman.

“Today, our tactical advantage was much greater.”

Dukat made a derisive sound. “You give them too much credit.” He glanced at her. “What are they doing?”

“Regrouping, it appears,” she replied, reading what she could from the encrypted Space Guard communications networks. “As you planned, the ships that were neutralized are clouding the channels with emergency beacons. There are other defense groups returning to the planet at high warp from the outer edges of the system, but they will not arrive in time to interrupt phase two.”

Dukat stood up, looking at the arc of the planet represented on a dozen of the small console screens. “We proceed, then.” He drew a padd from a sealed pocket and activated it with a tap of his finger. The device presented him with a string of surface coordinates and firing protocols. There was nothing else, no indication of what was being targeted or why it had been chosen for destruction. He relayed the numbers to the glinn, and when the job was done he deactivated the padd. Immediately, the device went hot in his hands and emitted a puff of acrid black smoke. The internal working fused into a mass of useless matter, and he grimaced at the object before he tossed it to the deck. The Obsidian Order do so enjoy their little flourishes of drama.

“Targets locked in. Plasma reservoir is stable. We are ready to fire.”

And now, all of them were to play their part in a different kind of theater. Dukat hesitated, looking inward. He searched within himself for the fragments of doubt that had surged to the surface of his thoughts at Ajir. I have come this far.The lives he had taken in the prosecution of this mission up to this point had been soldiers. Once he gave his word of command, it would be civilians that would be put to the sword.

Dukat studied Bajor, and his hand came up to a screen to trace the line of the planet’s curvature. He looked, and found no uncertainty. It was regrettable, but there were sacrifices to be made, and they would not be the lives of his people, his family. Never again. I will do what I must.

He gave the order to fire.

The first bolt fell from the sky in a brilliant streak, atomizing the thin clouds over Korto, a rod of incandescent energy that drew thunder behind as it ripped air molecules apart.

The polarized windows of the police flyer weren’t enough to stop the bright flare from hitting Darrah and Proka like a physical blow, and both men reflexively clutched at their faces, shielding their eyes. Darrah saw the hazy image of his bones through the flesh of his fingers, heard the screech and howl of the flyer’s controls as an electromagnetic backwash lanced through them.

“Fires take me, what was that?” Proka spat, blinking furiously.

Darrah ignored him, fighting through streaming eyes to hold the aircraft in the sky.

The concussion hit them next, buffeting the craft in a burning updraft. Proka stabbed a finger at the city; they were no more than twenty kellipates distant from the Korto limits. A huge patch of the settlement down toward the docks was burning. Clouds of vapor roiled overhead.

“Steam from the river,” said Darrah. “They hit the low districts.” He thought of the stacker blocks where he had once lived, somewhere inside that inferno.

“We’ve got to get on the ground,” snapped Proka. “We can’t risk getting caught in—” He balked and pointed at the sky. “Another one!”

Darrah was ready this time, and covered his face with the meat of his forearm. The hurricane scream of the energy bolts struck again, and this time there were more of them, hammering at the air. The flyer fought against him, desperately trying to throw itself into the ground, but Darrah resisted, riding the shock waves even as the wind shear ripped at the hull, shredding the stabilator winglets.

When he looked up again, the entire city was shrouded in smoke, a spreading black cloud pooling in the shallow valley beneath the hill districts. Only the peak and the Naghai Keep were clearly visible, rising above the spreading darkness. The entire attack had lasted less than a minute.

Darrah slammed the throttle forward to full power and threw the ship toward Korto, aiming the nose toward the hills.

“Where are you going?” Proka asked.

“Job’s done,” he snapped back. “We got Jas’s family out, now I’m going to get mine!”

The constable didn’t reply. He was craning his neck to see up into the ash-smeared sky. A new storm of killing fire lanced overhead, the angle from the attacker in orbit too shallow to strike the city again.