“What now?” Jones asked.

“Now we locate our contact, and we get the data we need.”

“Do you have a name?”

Nechayev nodded. “Jekko Tybe.”

“You look well.” As soon as Mace said it, he felt awkward. The hiss of subspace interference whispered around his precinct office for the second of delay it took the signal to reach the Valo II relay.

Karys gave a rueful smile. “I wish I could say the same thing about you, Mace. You look tired.”

“It’s just work,” he said, and regretted it instantly.

“It usually is,”she replied. “ So. What do you want?”

“I had some time,” Mace lied.

“Time?”she repeated. “All civilian subspace communications traffic into B’hava’el has slowed to almost nothing. I hear the Cardassians are blocking all but the military channels.”

He nodded. “And they screen everything else. It’s part of the security program, looking for sedition or alien infiltrators.” Mace nodded at the screen. “But I have some pull.”

“You’re abusing your authority to appropriate airtime to call your family,”she replied. “Does that count as seditious?”

“Damned if I care.” He sighed. “I just…” He wanted to tell her that he had beaten a man down and it didn’t bother him one bit, that suddenly all he wanted was to see the only good things in his life and make sure they were still there; but he kept that closed off. “I wanted to check in with you, see how Nell and ’Jin are doing.”

She saw the lie but she didn’t call him on it. “Nell’s met a boy. He’s polite. Bajin has been very brotherly. He thinks I don’t know that he threatened all kinds of trouble if Nell’s heart gets broken.”

A smile crossed his face. “You tell them I love them.”

“Every day,”she told him. “They miss you. And so do I.”

The last words brought him up short. “You do? I thought the divorce put an end to that kind of thing. I just thought you would have, you know…” He trailed off.

“Found someone else?”Karys shook her head. “It’s funny, isn’t it? When we talk now, we just talk. We don’t fight. And all it took was for me to fly a dozen light-years away from you.”

He nodded slowly. “Best thing that’s ever happened to our relationship.” He sighed. “Come on, Karys, we were killing each other here. The distance stopped us tearing ourselves apart.”

She was silent for a while. “ I still think about the day of the attacks. Standing by the broken windows, wondering if you were all right.”

“I’ll say I’m sorry again, if it will help.” He blew out a breath. “I felt the same. I felt like my life had been ripped away from me.”

Karys leaned closer to the screen. “You can come here. You should come here, before it’s too late, before the trickle becomes a flood.”

“What do you mean?”

“More people are arriving each week, Mace. The colony used to be a few hundred thousand, now it’s ballooned to twice that. Life’s not easy here…”She sighed again. “But it is a kind of freedom. Come and see.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. If I leave now, this city will fall apart. They look to me, Karys. Proka and the others, they look to me. I have to hold it together, and for Lonnic’s sake and Jarel’s and everyone else’s, I have to make things right.”

“You don’t. You could just leave tomorrow. You could walk away, Mace, walk away and let it burn.”

“You know me,” he whispered, “you know who I am. You know I can’t.”

“What I know is that I don’t want my children to grow up with a dead father.”She reached for the disconnect key. “Be safe, Mace.”

The screen went dark.

Darrah lost track of time as he stared at the inert monitor, turning Karys’s words over and over in his mind.

Stay or go.It seemed like such an easy choice.

Finally, there was a rattle as his door slid open and Proka came into his office, his expression grim.

“Boss, there’s been trouble at the Oralian camp.”

Darrah glanced at him. “So deal with it,”

“Bennek raised the alarm. He wants to speak to you, and you only.”

He sighed. “What kind of trouble?”

“Someone tried to firebomb it again. Couple of minor injuries, no fatalities.”

The chief inspector got out of his chair. “What does he think that I can do about it?” Proka began to speak, but Darrah cut him off with a wave of the hand. “No, no. Don’t say anything. I know the answer.”

The two men marched out to the landing pads and took the first fast flyer, out over the city limits and into the plainsland.

19

Kotan Pa’Dar heard his name called as he crossed the docking annex. He had developed a manner of walking, whenever his duties forced him to visit Derna, in which he kept his head down and made as little eye contact with the soldiers and officers there as possible. The last thing he expected was to be waylaid heading back to his shuttle.

But the voice put him off his stride; it could be only one man, someone he hadn’t expected to see again. He turned to find Skrain Dukat studying him, the gul gauging him with all the warmth he might have shown to something he had scraped off his boot. There was no sign of the man that had befriended him aboard the Kornaireall those years ago. That intense, inquisitive young soldier was gone and in his place was someone that embodied the very model of a Cardassian officer. Arrogant and disdainful, striding about the galaxy as if it were his property.

“Kotan Pa’Dar,” Dukat repeated. “You are still here.” He said it as if the fact amazed him.

“Gul Dukat,” he replied. “I wasn’t aware you had returned to Bajor.”

Dukat’s gaze took in Pa’Dar’s ochre-colored tunic and the administrator’s tabs running along the edges of the seams. He smirked, as if in response to some private joke. “It seems you’ve had a change of vocation since we last met.”

Irritation ticked at a nerve in Pa’Dar’s eye, but he said nothing, only nodding.

The officer came closer. “What happened to your promising career as a scientist?” He reached out and fingered the tabs. “These are the grades of an administrator, a politician.”

“I…I found a calling that better suited my skill set.” Pa’Dar’s skin darkened. He refused to allow Dukat to slight him over his difference in circumstances.

“Ah,” allowed Dukat, “and here I was, wondering if your family had finally pressured you into dropping your dalliance with the sciences, at long last.” He shook his head slightly. “They did so dislike the choices you made, didn’t they?” He smiled briefly. “Odd, though. I would have thought you would have returned to Cardassia. Certainly there your family would have made far more…interesting options open to you.”

“I have duties here.”

“On Derna?” Dukat asked lightly.

“On Bajor,” Pa’Dar said, his tone hardening. “I am assisting in the administration of the enclave in the Tozhat region.”

“A civilian, in such a role? I’m surprised Kell permitted that.”

Pa’Dar’s gaze dropped. “As you noted, my family does have some influence.”

Dukat laughed coldly. “And what have you achieved in Tozhat? Do the Bajorans there appreciate the softer hand of a civilian over a soldier?”

“I worked to show a compassionate aspect to the Cardassian-Bajoran alliance, if that is what you mean, yes,” Pa’Dar bristled. “Someone has to.”

“Alliance.” Dukat picked out the word and mocked it. “That term is an empty vessel, and you’re a fool if you think otherwise. The notion of such a thing is pointless.” He shook his head. “I saw you walking there and I wondered how much you had changed, Kotan. I’m beginning to think that you have, but not for the better.”

“I look at you and I think the same.” His reply was clipped.