The impact made his head ring and the glinn dropped away, moaning.

“Gwen!” shouted the other woman, racing to the side of her companion.

Gwen. At least I know the name of one of them.“Is she dead?”

“Not yet.” The reply was a snarl. The one who called herself Alla pulled her friend to her feet. Gwen was barely conscious, her right cheek discolored from the nimbus of a near hit from the phaser shot.

Klaxons began to wail. Scanners must have registered the weapon discharge.He took a step toward them and nodded toward the hatch in the floor. “Get her out of here. You have what is needed. Take it and go.” The overhead lights set in the ceiling snapped on one after another, banishing the shadows. Suddenly they were exposed, pinned by the stark illumination.

“He…he’s coming with us,” groaned Gwen.

Jekko ignored her and pressed an isolinear chip into the other woman’s hand. “This is your escape route. I have a warp-capable courier at the starport in Korto. Use it and get out of Bajoran space. Go to your people, show them what’s happening here.”

“I will,” the agent promised. “Thank you.”

“He’s coming with us,” Gwen repeated weakly.

Jekko bent down and scooped up the unconscious Cardassian’s phaser, turning his back on the women. Farther down the length of the blockhouse a door slid open and more armed guards came running.

He took careful aim and started firing.

Everything passed in a blur of pain and hazy images. Jones’s right side felt like it was on fire, every nerve across the bare skin of her face throbbing with waves of burning pain. She couldn’t see properly, just indistinct forms and blobs of dark and light.

“Damn it, girl, keep moving!” Nechayev’s breath was hot and close in her ear, and she could feel the whipcord muscle of the intelligence operative where the woman was pressed against her, supporting Jones’s sluggish flesh. “One foot in front of the other, come on!”

The grumble of stone on stone threaded down the tunnel behind them, and Jones tasted acrid dust in her mouth. “I hear thunder,” she slurred.

“Grenades,” was the curt reply. “They’re sweeping through the tunnels after us, blasting as they go. Trying to flush us out.”

“Oh.” The information was washed away in another wave of agony. “Jekko?” Just working the muscles of her face was painful, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Where?”

Nechayev’s answer was forlorn. “He covered for us. Held them off.” She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “The man bought us time. We owe him not to waste a second of it.”

Jones nodded brokenly. Up ahead, she could make out the tunnel entrance as a circle of fainter shadow.

“Report,” demanded Dukat, crossing the Vandir’s bridge to the communications station.

“Alert from the Korto Enclave, sir,” said the glinn. “Details of an intrusion into one of the staging areas by three unidentified Bajorans.”

A nerve in Dukat’s jaw rippled. “Show me,” he growled, throwing a look in Tunol’s direction. “Those facilities are supposed to be secure.”

“They couldn’t have beamed in,” offered the woman.

“Any transporters would have been blocked by the inhibitor screen.”

Still images drawn from a security drone appeared on the main viewscreen. Dukat saw a Cardassian at the feet of a bald male Bajoran and two more females, one supporting another. Part of a tank was visible in the corner of the frame. “They can’t be allowed to speak of what they’ve seen,” said the gul.

“The male intruder was terminated on-site,” continued the communications officer as a grainy representation of the bald man appeared. “The two female intruders are currently unaccounted for. Search is ongoing.”

Tunol skimmed the report on a padd. “Apparently, they entered the complex through the old agricultural infrastructure.”

Dukat’s eyes narrowed. “Two females,” he repeated. “Enhance that image. I want to see their faces.”

The glinn obeyed, and Dukat found himself looking at two Bajoran women, one fierce in aspect, the other lolling in her arms, apparently injured. It’s them.The certainty of it struck him immediately.

“Sir.” Tunol approached him, seeing the same thing. “Do you think that—”

“They match the Xepolite’s description of the women he brought from Draygo,” he snapped. “Contact detention and have him make a formal identification to confirm it.” Dukat turned and strode toward the turbolift. “In the meantime, I want a cutter and a security detachment ready to depart for Korto City by the time I get to the shuttlebay.”

“This alert is on the wideband, Gul,” Tunol added.

“Every security operative on the planet, Cardassian and Bajoran, will know their faces in a matter of hours. Is it necessary for you to take a personal involvement in this?”

He paused at the door. “If Ico locates these females first, they will vanish as if they never existed.” Dukat shook his head. “I won’t allow that to happen.”

Darrah Mace lolled in his chair, hovering on the edge of a shallow doze. An untouched cup of spiced dekatea on his desk had gone cold, and out beyond the shuttered glass enclosure of his office the precinct was quiet. He had lost track of time; his days seemed to do that more often than not. Sometimes Darrah would look up and realize that he hadn’t left the building for a week, sleeping in his office or up in the bunk room for the shift staff. He didn’t enjoy going home anymore. The house was too big for one person, and he rattled around inside it whenever he was there; but then, he couldn’t bring himself to think about selling it. Even after the divorce, that seemed like admitting defeat. At the precinct there was always life and clamor. He could rest around that; he needed the noise and commotion to center himself. The silence of empty rooms kept him awake at night.

His back was tense and he got up, stretching. Motion caught his eye outside, and he opened the door. Myda and Proka were standing around a monitor console, downloading a priority report onto padds. “What’s this?”

Myda nodded. “A security alert from the Cardassian enclave.”

Darrah grimaced. “Let me guess. Some kid sprayed ‘Spoonheads Go Home’ on the walls again?”

“It’s a bit more serious than that, boss.” Proka’s tone brought him up short. “Several fatalities. One intruder dead at the scene, two fugitives unaccounted for.”

Darrah pushed forward. Suddenly he was wide-awake. “Let me see.”

“They’re claiming three people broke into the enclave,” Myda explained, “killed a bunch of Cardassians, and tried to blow up some civilians. ‘Suspected Tzenkethi or Circle agents,’ it says here.”

“A man and two women,” added Proka, passing Darrah a padd. “I was about to run a facial match with the criminal records database and the citizen register, see if we can pull some identities.”

Darrah tapped the keypad, and the image of the male suspect appeared before him. His blood ran cold. Jekko?His old friend’s face stared up at him, slack in death; the image had clearly been captured only moments after he had been killed. “When…” He heard his own voice as if it was coming from miles away. “When did this happen?”

“Within the last hour,” said Myda. “This is going out to every precinct on the planet.” She sniffed. “As if we don’t have a big enough caseload.”

Proka was watching his commander carefully. “Sir? What do you want us to do with this? It’s a priority alert, immediate attention required.”

“If the other intruders, the women, are mobile, it’s likely they’d be heading straight here,” noted Myda. “They get into the city, they could disappear.”

The inspector’s knuckles were white around the padd. “I need to…I need to look at this,” he managed. “Don’t move on it until I give you the word.”