And there were dozens of others, all small fragmentary dramas that she had engineered, that had no relation to one another on the surface. But beneath, they all pulled upon strings that brought pressures to bear on Bajor.

The screen chimed, and a report made itself known to her. She smiled to herself and tapped a control. Ico spoke into a communicator. “Dukat.”

The gul’s voice was loaded with irritation. “This is a secure military channel.”

She ignored the comment. “The Federation spies have been traced to the Korto starport. I thought you might like to know.”

“How can you be certain of that?”he growled.

“I have assets in place,” she said languidly, watching the motion of the players on her map. Jekko Tybe’s face and his personal records scrolled over an inset screen, revealing his life, his associations, his connections. “That’s all you need to be aware of.” Ico reached for the disconnect key.

“And quickly, Dukat, quickly. I’m sure you don’t want to let them slip through your fingers.”

Gwen Jones pulled against the restraints, but no matter how she moved, the plastic strips chafed against her wrists. She felt queasy, and not so much from the shock and the effects of the drugs in her system, but from the mounting fear that time was running out for her. She kept darting looks out of the Kaska’s canopy, afraid that each time she did, she would see Cardassian soldiers swarming across the thermoconcrete apron toward the hangar.

Nechayev was trying to reason with the Bajoran lawman, who paced back and forth across the small cockpit like a caged animal. “Listen to me,” she was saying, “every minute we stay here is a minute more we could have used to put distance between us and the Cardassians. We have to get out, report what we’ve learned. Don’t you get it? We are Bajor’s only chance!”

The man rounded on her. “So I let you go, then what? Starfleet rides in with a battle fleet and rescues my planet from the Cardassian Union? I let you go, and you make this madness stop?”

“Yes.” Nechayev’s falsehood was instinctual and automatic. Jones saw it, and so did the Bajoran.

“You’re lying to me,” he snarled. “You’re telling me what I want to hear.” He turned away from them. “You think I don’t know? I’ve been a police officer my entire life, I’ve faced down liars of every stripe!” He shook his head. “Everyone lies. ‘It’s not my fault, I’m innocent, I didn’t do it, it was the other guy…’” The lawman turned back and shouted, “I’m sick of the lies! I’m drowning in them!”

“Then help me expose them!” retorted Nechayev.

“Because if you don’t, the Cardassians will take us and turn us into two more fabrications, terrorists and murderers. They’ll do the same thing to Jekko, and then they’ll do it to you!” She rocked forward, pulling at the chair. “You have to trust us, damnit!”

He sat heavily. “Give me one good reason why I should.”

Jones licked dry lips. “Because your friend did.” The man turned to study her. “Jekko knew what was at stake. He trusted us. He gave up his life so that we could take what we saw and get away.” She took a shuddering breath, wincing at the pain in her cheek. “I didn’t really know him, but you did. You know what kind of man he was better than either of us, so you tell me. Would he have put his trust in us, died for us, if it hadn’t been worthwhile?”

The Bajoran was silent for a long moment before he spoke again. “My name is Darrah Mace. I’ve spent the last ten years watching everything that is important to me slip away, moment by moment. My wife and children. My friends, my work. Bajor…” His words dropped to a whisper. “And no matter what I do, I can’t stop it. None of us can.”

“We have to try,” said Nechayev.

“You think the Federation can help us?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, and for the first time Jones felt that she was seeing the real Alynna Nechayev. “But I promise you I will do whatever I can to make sure that they do.”

Motion caught Jones’s eye, and she jerked around in the chair. “Make a choice, Mace,” she said. Skimmers were crossing the runways, converging on the hangar. “We’ve got company.”

Darrah shot to his feet and with two quick motions they were free of the restraints. Nechayev threw herself over to the pilot’s console and pressed the isolinear chip Jekko had gave her into a data slot. The vessel came alive, engines humming to power.

“Unless you want to come with us, you’d better step out.” She nodded at the drop ramp.

Jones slipped into the copilot’s chair and ran through a sequence of preflight checks; the Kaskawasn’t too different from the Starfleet shuttlecraft she’d trained on. “They’ll be here in less than two minutes,” she reported, watching the approach of the Cardassian ground vehicles. “We have to go now.”

Nechayev reached out and snatched Darrah’s tricorder from his belt, tapping in a string of numbers. “You trusted us and now I’m going to trust you. This is an authentication code and a subspace radio frequency. There’s a ship in this sector, the Gettysburg. They’ll be monitoring that channel.”

He took back the tricorder and nodded. “If I learn anything, I’ll contact you.” Darrah turned and opened the hatch. “Good luck—”

Nechayev never let him finish his sentence. Her hand struck out and she grabbed his phaser before he could stop her. A pulse of light enveloped him and he crumpled backward, tumbling down the drop ramp to land in a heap on the hangar floor below.

“You shot him!” Jones cried.

Nechayev tossed the phaser after him and sealed the hatch. “Just a stun.” She jumped into the pilot’s chair and eased the Kaskaoff the landing skids and out of the open hangar doors. “Shields up,” she ordered, and Jones complied, just in time to prevent a cascade of phaser shots from burning into the forward hull.

“But you shot him,” Jones repeated.

“If I hadn’t, the Cardassians would have known he let us go. This way, he just looks like he was unlucky.” They were moving down the apron now, picking up speed. “Honestly, I did him a favor.”

More beam fire thudded off the deflectors. “How are we going to get out of this?” Jones demanded. “Those Cardassians are contacting their ships in orbit right now. They’ll intercept us the second we break atmosphere.”

Nechayev pushed the throttle forward, and the courier leapt into the lightening sky, crashing seconds later through the sound barrier with the twin thunders of a supercompressed shock wave. “Jekko had some tricks up his sleeve.” She smiled, and jerked her thumb at a compartment in the rear. “See that? I noticed it as soon as I got on board.”

Jones looked and saw a cracked white spheroid with battered blue components at either end. It was wired into the main power bus, but it seemed out of place. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Romulan cloaking device, the kind they used to use in the mid–23rd century,” she explained, “probably salvaged from an old bird-of-prey.”

Jones gaped. “We’re pinning our escape on an antique piece of Romulan salvage?”

Nechayev gave a gallows-humor smile. “Well, as we’re all being truthful with each other, I should tell you that this courier’s practically a museum piece as well.” She shrugged. “I rate our chances of making our rendezvous at less than forty percent.”

Dukat stood over the unconscious form of the Bajoran law officer and his fists tightened. He wanted to haul the man off the ground and beat an answer out of him.

“Do you know him, sir?” Orloc asked.

The gul ignored the question and pushed the glinn out of his way. “Wake him up,” he snarled. “Find out what he knows! Now!” Dukat strode out of the hangar to the line of hovering skimmers. He slapped at his comcuff. “Tunol! Status?”

The reply he got stoked his annoyance even higher. “Sir, sensors have lost contact with the target vessel. There was an energy surge in low orbit and then it just vanished.”