“No, but they are arrogant, and arrogance breeds over-confidence.” Jekko nodded. “We’ve never used this way in. But I’m betting your Starfleet hardware will be able to bypass any scanners.”

The agent glanced at her tricorder. “We’ll see.” Nechayev drew her weapon and entered the conduit.

Jones followed. “Watch your head,” Jekko told the women. “It’s a long walk, so stay alert and make sure you don’t step in any barrowbug nests.”

“What the hell are barrowbugs?” Nechayev’s voice drifted back from the darkness.

Jones gave an involuntary shiver. “Like cockroaches,” she said, “but as big as your fist, and they spit acidic venom.”

Nechayev swore under her breath, and Jekko waved Jones inside. “After you.”

In the dark of the drainage conduits it was difficult to reckon the passage of time, and the repetitive scrape-thud of their footsteps made it even worse. Nechayev concentrated on the glowing display of her tricorder, using the device to scan the tunnels on the go, automatically forming a route map they could use for their egress. Just as he had in the skimmer, Jekko moved with confidence, turning at junctions and crossing over pipeway intersections, never once hesitating or stopping to refer to the faded glyphs on the curved walls. This guy is good.She grudgingly admired the Bajoran’s trade-craft. He’s committed the entire route to memory.

With Jones’s warning in mind, Nechayev gave a wide berth to the masses of yellowed cottony fibers that clung to the underside of inspection grids and the stone ceiling. At the edges of her vision, she saw spade-shaped things scuttling around them in the halo of her tricorder’s dim light and grimaced.

After what seemed like hours, Jekko halted and whispered a single word. “Here.”

There were a series of steps cut into the crumbling thermoconcrete, and Nechayev looked up to see faint light filtering through a hexagonal hatch over their heads. She flicked the tricorder over to passive scan, and a smear of color appeared on the display. “There’s an isoscanner,” she said quietly. “Detects thermal footprints from a living being over a certain size, or metallic masses like scout drones or snoopers.” She flipped open the emitter matrix panel on her phaser and dialed back the power output.

“Can you deactivate it?” asked Jones, shifting from foot to foot.

“Not a chance,” she replied. “Monitors would register the loss of coverage and the alarms would be screaming ten seconds later. No, this needs a different approach.” She stepped behind Jekko and used the man as a prop to steady her arm. “Shield your eyes.”

“You’re going to shoot it? But didn’t you just say—”

“I have the sensor’s aperture ratio from the tricorder. I’m going to blind it.” She pressed the firing stud, and a lance of orange light reached up and brushed the Cardassian device. “Now, fast!” snapped the agent. “We have less than twenty seconds before the thing cycles and resets itself!”

Jekko was the last one up, and Jones bit down a protest as the big man placed a thick-fingered hand beneath her backside and propelled her up the ladder, shoving her through the hatch. The Bajoran threw himself out of the hole in the floor, and Nechayev forced the duranium hatch back into place, a heartbeat before the sensor pod gave a clicking beep.

“Apologies,” said Jekko quietly. “You were moving too slowly.”

Jones said nothing and brushed at the film of dust over her clothes. Her heart was hammering in her chest and her palms were sweaty. She was afraid to draw her weapon for fear it would slip through her fingers. “Where are we?” she asked.

“Storage blockhouse,” Nechayev replied, glancing around the darkened space of the interior. On either side of them were high racks of skeletal blue metal, each one laden with containers. The air was dry and smelled of ozone.

Circular labels were visible on every storage unit box. Jones peered closely at one of them, frowning. Her grasp of written Cardassian wasn’t that good. “I think these are…machine spares?”

Jekko levered the top off and used a penlight to look inside. “You think so?” He reached in and pulled out a phase-compression rifle. “No power cores installed. These are brand-new, never been fired.”

“There are hundreds of those containers,” Jones muttered. “How many guns is that?”

“A lot,” said Nechayev, giving Jekko a dour glance. She picked and opened crates at random, coming across caches of sonic grenades and inserts for body armor.

Jones found a rack of oval metal clamps that she couldn’t identify. “What are these?”

Jekko took one from her hand and held it up. “Pintle brackets. They slot into sockets on the flatbeds of skimmers so that you can mount weapons on them. A few of these, some heavy phaser rifles, and you can turn any civilian airtruck into an infantry fighting vehicle.” He shot Nechayev a look. “Very useful for an invading army.”

But the agent wasn’t paying attention. She had moved into the center of the broad storage chamber, to a series of low, wide shapes that crouched close to the floor. In the dimness, Jones couldn’t make out what they were. Perhaps they were more lines of containers packed close together. The ozone odor was stronger here, and with it came the scent of lubricants.

Nechayev reached down to take the end of a plastic sheath that hung loose over the object. With a jerk of her wrist, she pulled it up and away to reveal what was underneath.

Jones let out a gasp of fright as she realized she was staring into the black maw of an energy cannon.

“Grav-tank,” said Nechayev, instantly recognizing the lethal scarab-like form of the Cardassian machine’s hull, “Janad-class. Main armament: single spiral-wave disruptor cannon. Secondary weapons: stun-field emitters and phaser turrets.” She ran her hand over the sloping hull plates. “Reactive armor. Shock bumpers. It’s been configured for urban pacification.” Nechayev’s mind caught up with her, and she panned the tricorder over the vehicle.

Jones walked around the tank, pointing wordlessly off into the darkness. There were dozens more shapes beneath sheets of heavy plastic. “How did they get them here?”

“In pieces, probably.” Nechayev gave a humorless chuckle. “In boxes labeled ‘tractor parts’ and ‘baby milk.’”

“And this is only one blockhouse,” said Jekko. “There are dozens of similar buildings in every enclave on Bajor.” He was pale with shock. “Fire’s sake, we never thought there would be things like this…” He stared at the inert war machine. “An entire armored division, right outside the gates of the city. Just waiting for the right moment.” Abruptly, the Bajoran shook off his surprise and glared at the Starfleet officer. “Is this proof enough for your Federation, Alla, or whatever your real name is? Tanks and guns, ready to be used?”

Nechayev nodded. “I think so.”

The light was so powerful that Jones was instantly blinded the moment it fell on her. She cried out and her hands flew to her face, clawing at needles of pain in her eyes.

“Stay where you are!” barked a voice. “Do not move!”

Cardassians!What Jones had thought was fear was swept aside in a tide of even more intense terror. She was rooted to the spot, her thoughts racing away in a rush of panic. They’ve found us I’m captured I’ll be left behind tortured beaten raped killed thousands of light-years from home—

She reached out toward the blurry man-shape in black armor. “Please…”

“I said, do not move!”

Her vision cleared enough to see the guard aim his pistol at her head.

Jekko threw himself over the turret of the tank and down onto the Cardassian glinn, and the beam went wide, screeching through the air. He was briefly aware of the dark-haired girl screaming, collapsing; then the alien was at his throat and choking the life from him. Jekko yanked the Cardassian toward him and butted him hard across the nose, the Bajoran’s head snapping the cartilage where he struck.