Текст книги "Days of the Vipers"

Автор книги: James Swallow

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As if in reply, the jagul took up a glass of springwine and sipped it. “Cardassia endures,” he intoned. “Even beyond her borders, Cardassia endures. Tell me, how many more of the Oralian rabble have you brought here?”

“One ship, the Lhemor.”Dukat answered the question even though he knew Kell had all the details of the freighter and Bennek’s pilgrims. “Other vessels are known to be preparing for voyages. The Oralians in the cities have been encouraged to vacate the population centers. They are being increasingly corralled in the outer territories, in shanty towns.”

“Enclaves…” Kell mused. “Rather like here on Bajor.”

“Central Command estimates that a full third of all declared followers of the Oralian Way are offworld at this time.”

“Following the pilgrim path to learn from the Prophets,” mocked the jagul. “Well. That would seem to indicate we have them where we want them. Diminishing and ineffectual. The Union will be all the better for it.”

“‘And the betterment of the Cardassian Union is the goal of all the nation’s sons,’” Dukat replied, the axiom coming easily to him. “If I may ask, sir, how have you fulfilled that edict?”

Kell’s eye twitched at Dukat’s open challenge, but he opened his hands to take in the office. “Look around, Dal. While you loitered with the Talarians, I have worked to cement Cardassia’s foothold on this world.” He frowned. “Perhaps not with the swiftness that Central Command wishes, but then the road to control must be taken with care.”

Dukat made a noncommittal noise and glanced at a small sculpture made of jevonite. “I wonder. Do the Bajorans living here in Dahkur have any inkling of what lies inside the blunt planes of this building?” He raised the object to his eyes, studying it. “They would be most displeased to find you have inserted a covert military base into one of their major cities.” He nodded to the walls. “I saw the secure hatches along the corridor.” Most of the interior spaces of a facility like this one were prefabricated rooms that locked together like a child’s construction blocks, modular components beamed directly into place from ships in orbit. “I’m curious. How did you prevent the Bajorans from detecting the transporter signatures? Scattering fields, perhaps?”

As he expected, the jagul couldn’t resist the opportunity to brag. “The trade with our homeworld has provided the Bajorans with some new sensor technology, which they use quite widely,” he noted. “Of course, it is possible that those who built those sensors know them well enough to exploit any…blind spots.”

“Ah,” Dukat nodded. “But it’s my understanding the Militia also operate sensor arrays using components of non-Cardassian origin.”

Kell mirrored his nod. “They do. Hardware that the Xepolites sold them.” He sipped at the springwine. “Interesting to consider: Who might it be that sold the Xepolites theirtechnology?” The jagul smiled slightly. “You see, Dukat, there’s nothing to cause any dismay among our gracious hosts.”

“And this?” Dukat pointed at the holoframe. “That’s not dismay,as you call it?”

Kell gave an arch sniff. “Embassy matters are classified at the highest level, Dal. I’m sure you understand.”

“You need not worry about my clearances, Jagul. I’m here at the behest of the Central Command, and my orders are to evaluate the circumstances on Bajor.” Dukat detected the twitch of annoyance in Kell’s brow, but the other officer hid it quickly.

“It seems I was mistaken,” Kell returned. “I was under the impression that you had been sent to Bajor, not on a mission of such great temerity as judging my command”—his voice rose slightly—“but because you had fallen out of favor with the Legates.”

It was Dukat’s turn to hide a flash of anger. The riposte was too measured to have been a chance comment. How is he aware of my circumstances?Dukat wondered. Some agency funneled that information to him. Someone with a long reach.“If you wish to ensure you don’t find yourself in a similar condition, you might wish to curtail scenes like that,” he snapped, nodding again at the rowdy demonstrators. He could make out Bajoran ideograms on the banners, and on some, in crude Cardassian, exhortations for them to quit the planet.

“On the contrary, Dukat, I’m allowing these protests to go on. In fact, I’m nurturing them.”

“Explain.”

Kell waved his hand in the air. “Nonlethal subsonics in the embassy’s defense grid. Tuned correctly, over a limited area they can create a sense of agitation in the Bajoran hypothalamus…” He shrugged. “Forgive me, I understand the theory but the science of it is beyond me.” Kell sniffed again. “When these so-called peaceful protests turn ugly, it serves us. The Bajorans become divided over the issue and Cardassia is shown to be compassionate when I send my medical staff in to help the injured in the aftermath.”

Dukat remembered the specialists in the atrium. Waiting for something.

“Look at this,” said Kell, offering him one of the padds as he snapped off the holoframe. “If Central Command is questioning my motivation, show them this as an example of my plans to better exploit Bajor for Cardassia’s gain.”

The padd’s memory contained schematics for another prefabricated facility, but this was a surface base for military starships. He saw a communications intelligence center, shuttlebays, space for a trooper garrison. Dukat paged to the end. “A Cardassian naval outpost on Bajor’s outer moon? They would never let you build such a facility!” He tossed the padd back to the other man. “Is that the best you have to show?”

Kell’s jaw stiffened. “You haven’t changed, Dukat. Not one iota. You’re still the same man you were when you were my officer, spare and arrogant.” He grunted humorlessly. “I had thought you might have matured somewhat. I see I was wrong.”

Dukat seethed inwardly, but refused to rise to the bait. “I would submit to you, sir, that perhaps your perceptions may have been influenced by your time among these aliens.”

“Really?” Kell drawled.

Dukat fixed him with a hard eye. “It is our mission here to see that Bajorans become more like Cardassians…” He let his gaze drop to Kell’s gut. “Not that Cardassians become more like Bajorans.”

“You forget yourself, Dal,” said the other man, putting a hard emphasis on Dukat’s rank. “I’ve always considered your behavior to be insubordinate—”

The door to the office hissed open and the glinn Dukat had encountered outside rushed into the room. “Jagul! There’s been an incident!”

Kell glared at him, angry at the interruption. “The demonstrators? As long as they don’t attempt to breach the compound, let the Militia deal with them.”

The glinn shook his head. “No, sir, it’s something else.”

The comcuff around Dukat’s wrist vibrated with an alert signal, and he raised it to his lips, moving away from Kell’s desk. “Report.”

“In orbit,” the glinn was saying, “the Bajoran commerce station…”

“Dal,”Dukat recognized the voice of Dalin Tunol, his executive officer. She was clipped and businesslike. “We have registered an uncontrolled energy discharge in the vicinity of the Cemba orbital platform.”

“An explosion?”

“Confirming…”There was a pause. “Dal, the freighterLhemor appears to have suffered a core breach. The vessel was completely destroyed, and the detonation has caused major integrity loss on the platform. Reading power failures across the station. It’s coming apart.”

Dukat shot Kell a look, but the expression on the jagul’s face made it clear the other man was as surprised by the turn of events as Dukat was. He spoke again. “Tunol, coordinate with all Union ships in orbit. Lock on and transport out any casualties, immediately. Give priority to Cardassian life signs.”

“We’re attempting to comply, sir, but the radiation bloom from the blast is fouling our sensors.”

“Do what you can. Dukat out.”

Kell shot to his feet, knocking over the wineglass and spilling the contents over his desk. “Did you have anything to do with this?” he demanded.

Dukat’s eyes narrowed. “A question I was about to put to you.”

11

Placing his feet so he could stand evenly on the canted decking, Darrah Mace leaned forward and put his hand on the blast door. Patches of frost were already starting to form on the surface of the duranium plating, and the chill radiated out of the ice-cold metal. He threw a look at Proka Migdal, who was worrying at a messy cut above his eyebrow. “Vented?” asked the constable.

“Vented,” repeated Darrah. On the other side of the hatch there was nothing but the airless vacuum of space, and it was steadily leaching the heat from the sealed-off corridor.

Proka indicated an air vent over their heads. “Not a trickle coming through there, which means we’re without life support. No telling how long what we got is going to last us. Couple of hours, maybe.”

Darrah turned away, walking back along the carbon-scorched plates, picking his footing. “At least we still have gravity.”

“For the moment,” said the other man. “That could drop out anytime, too.”

“That’s it,” Darrah said dryly, “you just keep thinking positively.”

“You got a plan, boss?”

He eyed his subordinate. “What? Making it up as you go isn’t a plan?”

“Not as such, no.” Proka sighed. “I tried communications and the station intercom again, but there’s nothing there. Sounds like a rainstorm coming over the channels.”

Darrah nodded. “That tells us what the blast was, then. Radiological, not chemical.”

The constable paled. “You…you think we caught a dose?”

“Likely. Don’t fret. You’re too ugly to have children anyway.” Rounding the corner of the twisted corridor, they returned to the ragged group of survivors. The Oralians and the priests clustered together, many of them praying. There were a few men and women from the station crew they had found trapped in compartments off the companionway; but far more of the rooms had been sealed tight by emergency maglocks or else they yielded nothing but corpses.

He paused, crouching where Gar was lying on the deck. A Cardassian was at his side, probing at his torso. “You know something about medicine?” The ranjen’s skin was pale and his breathing was thready.

The Oralian priest looked up. “Only a little. I’m not sure how much I can apply to one of your people.” He gave a weak, fragile grin. “I…I was just talking to him when it happened…Then the blast, and I didn’t think, I just pushed him down…”

“What’s your name?”

“Pasir…”

Darrah placed a hand on the alien’s shoulder. “Pasir, listen to me. You saved the life of a good friend of mine. That means I owe you one, so as payback I’m going to get you and everyone else out of this mess, okay?” Pasir nodded. “You just look after my friend here and let me do the rest.”

He stood and crossed to Proka. Bennek, the senior cleric, was talking in a low, intense voice to one of the Bajoran novices, a blond girl whose face was wet with tears. The Oralian priest threw Darrah a nod; he was deferring to the inspector.

“Boss,” began Proka, “You think there’s other people still alive, on the other decks?”

“If there are, there’s not much we can do for them.” Darrah heard the leaden tone in his own voice. “With all the blast hatches sealed and the lifts offline, we’re trapped on this tier. First things first, we concentrate on getting thesepeople to safety.” He paused, massaging his arm. The explosion had thrown him straight into a stanchion and popped his shoulder out of place. With Proka’s help, he’d reset it, but the agony lingered on. He pointed and winced.

“Shuttle’s on this level. We get to it, we can get away. It’s not like we’re in the deeps here, after all. We’re in Bajor orbit. I’m willing to bet the sky all around is swarming with rescue ships. We just have to get to them.”

“You make it sound easy,”

“I always do.” Darrah gave him a smile. “I’m going to move ahead, scout down the length of the corridor to the shuttle dock. You stay here, keep the civilians from panicking.”

“Got it.”

He was stepping away when he saw the unfocused glaze in the other man’s eyes. “Mig? What is it?”

Proka glanced up. “How did this happen? One second we’re walking and talking, the next…” He trailed off. “I was at the front, I just heard the noise. Dennit was at the back, and she…I mean, the hatch came down and sealed off the compartment behind us.”

Darrah nodded slowly. “Yeah. Dennit and a half-dozen of the Oralians. It would have been quick, Mig. We can thank the Prophets for that.”

“She was going to come along to the praykogame tonight,” said the constable. “I always thought she was a bit stuck-up, but—” He stopped and swallowed hard. “Right.Keep the civilians calm. Got it, sir.”

Darrah left him and picked his way between the survivors. His nose wrinkled at the mingled smells of blood, burnt skin, and the ozone from sparking short circuits. The corridor, normally square-shaped, was deformed and bent. He imagined it was like walking down the inside of a piece of bent pipe. He navigated around junctions and areas where support frames had collapsed. He was grateful he hadn’t lost his phaser in the confusion; setting the weapon to a tight-beam, high-energy setting, he cut through a girder that blocked his way. With care, he stepped around the still-glowing metal edge and found the decking angled away from him, turning into a steep slope. The detonation– and what in fire’s name had it been?—had apparently hit Cemba Station with such force that the platform had twisted under the impact. The realization made Darrah’s throat go dry. The survivors in the corridor were probably alive only by some random chance, a freak interaction of the platform’s structural integrity fields forming a temporary bubble in the middle of the spaceframe. He thought about the rooms they had been unable to get into, the way the hatches were distorted and jammed in place. Anything organic inside there that was hit by the concussion wave would be unrecognizable now, just a paste of meat and bone. The lawman’s stomach turned over at the thought, and along with the roil of adrenaline shock still coursing through his system, Darrah felt hot acid bile coming up his throat.

He sank back on the decking and panted, forcing himself to calm down. “Focus, Mace,” he said aloud. “Don’t puke. That would be embarrassing for everyone.”

After a moment, he came up into a crouch and went forward in a ducking walk, bending to get under a half-open blast door that had locked in place. His skin tingled with an electric discharge in the air, and Darrah caught the sound of a resonant humming. Beyond the blast door was the boarding tunnel to the shuttle. He laid eyes on it and spat out a string of particularly choice gutter epithets.

A short distance from where he stood, using improvised handholds to keep himself up on the tilted floor, the corridor was blocked by a wavering green force field that prevented him from advancing any farther. He glanced around and saw the glowing emitter heads set in the ceiling and the walls. He knew that blasts from his pistol would destroy them and kill the field immediately; but what had made him curse with such venom was what lay on the other side of the energy barrier.

He could see the boarding tunnel clearly, and in fact he could see the shuttle too, still attached to the severed length of the corridor. It was drifting less than a linnipate from the station’s hull, with nothing but airless space and a cloud of metallic debris between them, severed cleanly. In any other circumstance, Darrah could have covered the distance in a few moments, but with no environmental suit, no way to stop the rest of the corridor outgassing what atmosphere remained the moment the barrier went down, the damned thing might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy for all the good it would do. He swore again, and then turned back to retrace his steps.

Gar blinked, and it hurt like blades scraping the inside of his skull. There was a hand on his chest and a hazy shape hovering over him. “Careful, careful, brother. Try not to get up too quickly. You may have a concussion.”

The ranjen nodded, and that made his head hurt even more. He felt as if a heavy weight had been attached to the back of his neck, and each time he moved it pulled on him. “Ah,” he managed. “I…I’m all right. Comparatively speaking.”

The dimness around him resolved into a smoky corridor full of injured and fearful faces, and the shapes that spoke became a pair of Cardassians. “Ranjen Gar, thank the Way,” said Bennek. “I feared you might not wake again.”

“Don’t move too fast,” said Pasir. “You took a nasty blow to the head, and there are burns down your back.”

“I feel them,” Gar admitted, wincing at new pain.

“That’s the Prophets telling me I’m not dead.” He got into a sitting position and looked around. “Where…where is everyone else? The vedek?”

Arin appeared out of the shadows, lit by a flickering illuminator strip. “I am here, Osen. By the Temple’s Grace, we have lost none of our number.” He sighed. “I wish I could say the same for our Cardassian cousins.”

Gar looked at Bennek and the alien gave a solemn nod. He listened as the cleric explained what had taken place—the detonation, the shock wave, the loss of life. “But how could this happen?” he asked when the priest had finished. “Was it some kind of accident on board your vessel?”

“The Lhemorwas elderly,” noted Pasir. “And in that statement, I am being generous.”

“Perhaps,” said Bennek, “but would not any critical failure have been more likely to happen while we were at warp, when the ship was under the greatest stresses?”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow.” The law officer Proka added his voice. “Ships coming in to dock are more accident-prone than ones at sail.”

“That’s if it was an accident at all,” returned Bennek.

“You can stow that kind of chatter right now.” Gar heard footsteps, and Darrah Mace came into sight, his face grim and smeared with soot. “What matters is getting everyone here to safety. Air’s running thin and our time’s going with it.”

“Inspector, perhaps it would be best if we remain here,” suggested Arin. “The Militia know we are aboard Cemba. They won’t abandon us.”

Darrah shot the vedek a look. “That’s true, but with all due respect, it’s been my estimation that those who sit and wait for a rescue are usually the ones who don’t live to see it.”

His words sent a ripple of concern through the survivors. Gar shifted, ignoring his pain. “Mace, what about the shuttle?”

“Not an option,” he replied, in a manner that brooked no argument. “We need to come together, find a different way off this wreck.”

Gar had Pasir help him to his feet. “What else is on this level? Does anyone here know?” he called out, choking back a guttural cough.

“I do,” said a voice. The ranjen limped to a man in a technician’s oversuit. The girl Tima was bandaging his arm with strips torn from her robes. “Working this tier. Consumables maintenance.” The man’s cheek was bloody where he had taken a lick of flame from the explosion, and his earlobe and D’jarraearring were a mess of flash-burned metal and livid, liquid scarring.

“What’s your name?”

“Lirro,” he slurred.

“Lirro, tell us what’s on this deck,” said Darrah, coming to Gar’s side.

The man ran through a series of descriptions, shock making his voice dead and mechanical. After a moment, Gar stopped him. “Wait. You said cargo bays.”

Lirro nodded. “Small ones. For temporary storage.”

Gar glanced at Darrah. “Mace, a cargo bay means a cargo transporter. If there’s still power to that compartment, we could beam off!”

“Ifthere’s still power,” said Proka.

The inspector hesitated. “The thought occurred to me. But there’s another problem. Cargo transporters are optimized for inert materials. They’re fine for noncomplex structures, but the pattern buffers don’t have the density to handle organic life-forms. You put a person through one of those and you’re likely to lose a good percentage of the original molecular configuration.”

Proka nodded. “You’ll come out the other end a drooling moron… ifyou’re lucky.”

Bennek raised a hand. “All true, unless you have an operator who can compensate for the signal degradation.”

Gar glanced at the Cardassian. “You know how to do that?”

The cleric nodded. “You were not born a priest, my friend, and neither was I. Before Oralius called me to walk the Way, I was a public transporter clerk in Lakarian City.”

A crooked smile appeared on Darrah’s face. “Okay. Nowwe have a plan.”

There was a heart-stopping moment when the smoky interior of the cargo bay melted away from him and Darrah felt the transporter beam take hold. The last thing he saw was Bennek fiddling with the knot of wires dangling from the control console, then sprinting around to join him on the hexagonal pad. What is he doing?The panicked thought was barely formed before his mind, like the rest of his body, came apart in the matter stream and discorporated.

Then he was in a white space that was full of sound. He felt something cold tug at the skin on his neck, and he blinked furiously. Strong hands took his arms and guided him forward. He swallowed and took a cautious breath.

His eyes refocused on the face of a severe-looking bald man in a Militia uniform. The man waved a tricorder at the inspector and nodded. “You’re fine. The electrolytic booster shot I just gave you will kick in quickly, but for the time being don’t do anything strenuous.”

“Right.” He glanced around the transporter room and found Bennek. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Medical bay,” said the bald man. “You’re on board the assault ship Clarion.”

“My ship.” The words came from another man who approached them with a purposeful gait. “Colonel Li Tarka, Space Guard.”

“Inspector Darrah Mace, City Watch. Thank you, sir.”

Li had the stone-cut manner of a career soldier, a face that was all hard angles and a crest of regulation-length oil-black hair. “You the one who got them out?”

Darrah shook his head and indicated the Cardassian priest. “That was Bennek here.”

The other man made a small noise of surprise. “Quick thinking, Mr. Bennek, establishing a transport bridge with our ship’s systems. We never would have been able to get you people off the station otherwise.”

Bennek smiled weakly. “All matter transporters work on the same principles, Colonel. I knew that once the bridge was established, the Clarion’s integrators at this end would compensate for any signal loss.”

“There’s a lot of people who owe you their lives,” Li replied, and Darrah could sense that the other man found it difficult to attribute such behavior to an alien.

“Aside from us, how many others made it to safety?” asked Darrah.

The bald man frowned. “A few escape pods were ejected from the platform and one of the bulk lighters on the far side of the docking array. There were some beam-outs, and we’re tracking them down at the moment, but some were probably lost in transit. The numbers are grim, Inspector. Cemba Station alone had a crew of two hundred and ten people, and there were five ships of varying tonnages at dock there.”

Bennek paled. “Oralius, watch over and preserve them,” he whispered.

“I’ve already spoken to your man Proka,” Li continued in a brusque manner, and belatedly it registered with Darrah that the colonel was here to interrogate him, not to greet him. “Why don’t you tell me what you think happened, Darrah?”

“A reactor malfunction aboard the Lhemor,maybe a cascade failure from a plasma breach?” He sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not an engineer, Colonel, I’m a police officer.”

Li’s flinty expression never altered. “Then I’m surprised your first assumption is that it was an accident.”

Bennek gasped. “Someone did that deliberately?”

The colonel directed the bald man to a wallscreen. “Kored, show them,” he ordered.

The display lit up with waveforms of sensor data. Darrah recognized the basic shapes from the thousands of pieces of forensic data he came across in his caseload.

“I don’t understand,” said the cleric. “What are we looking at?”

Darrah pointed. “Scanner readouts. The Watch take the same kind of readings at crime scenes, looking for biological signatures, energy discharges, latent clues.”

“This is the raw feed,” Li explained, “and we’re not done sifting the patterns yet. The Clarionwas close by when the explosion took place. We were conducting operational drills, one of which happened to be a sensor test.”

Operational drills.That was likely a euphemism for running in combat mode close to the Cardassian ships. The Space Guard made no secret of their dislike of the alien vessels being near Bajor, and Darrah had heard that some commanders had taken to testing the resolve of the Union crews by running weapons-hot battle drills right under their noses. For a moment he entertained the wild notion that the colonel might be responsible for what had happened—what if some nervous Bajoran gunner had set his sights on the Lhemorand accidentally fired on it?—but then he dismissed the idea. The Cardassians were watching, and the sky would have been a war zone by now if that had happened.

“See here.” Li indicated a particular set of waveforms that crested from the mass of signals in the microsecond after the detonation. “Do you know what those are?”

“It’s artificial,” Darrah replied, his mind automatically kicking into investigative mode. “You can tell by the dispersal pattern. I’d say definitely not the result of a malfunction.” His lips thinned. “Someone put a bomb on that freighter.”

“The discharge originated just below the warp core,” said Kored.

“Any line on a trigger signal?” He leaned closer, running the display back and forward. Behind him, he could hear Bennek murmuring more prayers under his breath.

“Negative. It’s possible it’s there, but we haven’t been able to pick it out yet.”

Darrah nodded to himself. “A timer, then, or a proximity switch.” He halted the waveform display again and glanced at Li. “Colonel, are you seeing this as well? The peaks here and here?” He indicated two distinct energy spikes. “Those are molecular markers.”

“Ultritium and triceron. Both extremely lethal explosive compounds,” said the officer.

“That’s an exotic mix,” Darrah said immediately, his mind racing. “Undetectable by transporters and most civilian sensor suites. A military-grade munition, probably.”

“I concur, Inspector. You know your job.”

Darrah nodded. “Activists from the Circle have been making noise in Kendra Province recently. We’ve been on the lookout for bombings. I was briefed by General Coldri on some worst-case scenarios…”

“The device, it’s not Cardassian.” Li eyed the priest. “At this point, the weapon profile only fits three possible origins. Gorn, Nausicaan—”

“Or Tzenkethi,” said Darrah.

“Order! Order!”The First Minister struggled to be heard over the chaos in the chamber as everyone in the room tried to talk at once. Lonnic looked this way and that, catching snatches of shouted words and angry retorts. At her side, Jas Holza’s face was an immobile mask. He was growing more withdrawn with every day.

Finally Lale slammed his fist on the table in front of him and the sound echoed like a thunderclap. The wave of voices from the ministers ebbed for a moment, and the man drew himself up. “At last. Are we children? This is an emergency session, and a matter for serious debate, not for squabbling and posturing.”

Lonnic raised an eyebrow. It was the first time she had ever seen anything like annoyance from the First Minister, and from the reactions of the other politicians, it was the first time they had seen it too.

Lale Usbor sat, and by degrees his usual manner reasserted itself. “Now,” he said, with bland graveness, “we have all read the report prepared by General Coldri’s people.” He nodded to where the Militia representative sat, flanked by Jaro Essa and Li Tarka. The three senior officers were like statues, their gray uniforms accenting the image. “It makes a damning case.”

She heard a faint sigh and flicked a glance to Darrah, who sat nearby, his hands locked together around a padd. Much of the man’s vitality had disappeared in the hours following the Cemba incident; he seemed like a ghost of his former self, the easy smile and straightforward manner dimmed in the aftermath of the bombing. Lonnic imagined that she would have been no different, had it been she who barely escaped the station instead of him. Of all the people on the ships and the platform, Darrah’s group of survivors had been the largest. Kubus Oak had already made noises about awarding him some kind of citation, but Lonnic had gently deflected the suggestion. She knew Darrah well enough to know what was going through his mind right now: If only I could have done more.

Kubus was nodding in agreement with Lale. Seated to the far end of the long ministerial table, the politician had been joined by three of the aliens. Kell and Dukat looked quietly dangerous in their dark battle gear, while the other one, the scientist called Pa’Dar, seemed uncomfortable to be there. She found it odd that there were no representatives of the Oralian Way. The last Lonnic had heard, the cleric Bennek had played a major role in the rescue. Why, then, is he absent?

“Minister Kubus, if you would?” Lale nodded to the other man, who got to his feet.

“Thank you, First Minister.” Kubus squared his shoulders. “At the chamber’s behest and with the assistance of my honored colleague Minister Jas of Korto District, I took the liberty of making an independent verification of the sensor data provided by General Coldri and the Space Guard. It is my duty to inform you that their conclusions match those of my staff. It appears, within a probability of more than seventy-five percent, that the terrible act eighteen hours ago, which obliterated the freighter Lhemorand caused the loss of countless lives and property, was indeed the result of a timed explosive device concealed aboard the vessel. Holza?”

Lonnic’s employer stood up, and he read from a padd in his hand. His delivery was passionless and static. “We have determined that the device was of non-Bajoran origin. While other avenues of investigation are open, it appears most likely that the device was fabricated by the Tzenkethi.”