Cotor(Bajoran male) a senior vedek at the Kendra Monastery
Darrah Mace(Bajoran male) officer of the Korto City Watch
Darrah Karys(Bajoran female) wife of Darrah Mace
Procal Dukat(Cardassian male) archon in the Cardassian military justice system and father of Skrain Dukat
Skrain Dukat(Cardassian male) officer in the Cardassian military
Els Renora(Bajoran female) public defender for the Korto Justice Department
Gar Osen(Bajoran male) priest, resident of Korto District
Hadlo(Cardassian male) senior priest of the Oralian Way
Rhan Ico(Cardassian female) non-military xenologist
Jaro Essa(Bajoran male) senior Militia officer
Jas Holza(Bajoran male) Korto District administrator and member of the Chamber of Ministers
Jekko Tybe(Bajoran male) adjutant for Minister Keeve Falor, former partner of Darrah Mace
Keeve Falor(Bajoran male) member of the Chamber of Ministers
Danig Kell(Cardassian male) high-ranking officer in the Cardassian military
Kubus Oak(Bajoran male) member of the Chamber of Ministers
Lale Usbor(Bajoran male) First Minister of Bajor, succeeding Verin Kolek
Pasir Letin(Cardassian male) a priest of the Oralian Way
Li Tarka(Bajoran male) colonel in the Militia Space Guard
Lonnic Tomo(Bajoran female) senior adjutant to Minister Jas Holza
Meressa(Bajoran female) kai of the Bajoran faith
Myda(Bajoran female) officer of the Korto City Watch
Kotan Pa’Dar(Cardassian male) non-military Cardassian xenologist
Proka Migdal(Bajoran male) officer of the Korto City Watch
Tima(Bajoran female) religious novice
Syjin(Bajoran male) freelance pilot and courier
Tunol(Cardassian female) officer in the Cardassian military under Skrain Dukat
Verin Kolek(Bajoran male) First Minister of Bajor during 2318
DAY OF THE VIPERS
OCCUPATION DAY ZERO
2328 (Terran Calendar)
Prologue
The priest’s hand rested on the small, carved handle that controlled the pitch of the window’s nyawood shutters. A slight turn of the wrist would be all it required to close them firmly against the lessening day outside, but he hesitated, peering through the slits at the city streets ranged below. The smell of smoke was more pronounced now, and the faint acridity made his nostrils twitch. The scent was already in the room with him, different from the wisps that issued up from the cairn of glowing stones in the chamber’s fire pit. Outside, the fires that raged were uncontrolled and full of lethality; in here, deep within the fusionstone halls of the Naghai Keep, he was safe.
The thought drew up the corners of his lips in a brief, bitter smile, his blandly handsome face turning away. Safe.The term was such a relative concept, a fragile construct stitched together by fearful men and women who marked out pieces of their world and declared them inviolate, as if they could wall off danger and forbid it to trespass. Gar Osen, vedek of the Prophets, could declare himself safeinside these walls, but he knew that the granite battlements and copper-studded gates were no more than paper to an aggressor who was determined to breach them. To think of oneself as safe from anything was foolish; a person could only truly exist in degrees of jeopardy, spending their life balancing the chances of death against moments of comparative peace. The bitter smile turned grim and stony.
Beneath the windows of the keep, far out past the ring wall and the ornamental public gardens beyond, into the city of Korto itself, Gar’s gaze ranged over the shaded boulevards of the municipality. The fading day was prematurely dark with oily gray rain clouds rolling in from across the Sahving Valley, as if the weather itself were attempting to draw a veil over what was happening down on Korto’s thoroughfares; but he had no doubts that the same sequence of events was taking place all over Bajor, in the cities of Ilvia, Jalanda, and Ashalla, across the spans of the planet from Musilla to Hedrikspool and every province in between.
He imagined he would see the same thing, hear the same sounds if he could stand at similar vantage points in those places. A woman’s scream, sharp as the bark of a tyrfox; the long rumble of a building collapsing; air molecules shrieking as disruptors split them asunder; and the regular pulsing drum of gravity-resist motors. Gar saw a trio of shapes nosing slowly over the Edar Bridge, shield-shaped things that looked like legless beetles, shoving stalled skimmers out of their way with arcing force bumpers. Each had a spindly cannon on a pintle mount that tracked back and forth, tireless and robotic. For a moment, he wished for a monocular so that he might be able to get a better look at the armored vehicles, but there was little need. The priest knew exactly what they were.
If he looked hard enough, he could just about make out the insignia painted on the sloping, gunmetal-colored hulls: a scythe-edged fan, something like a spread flower. The sigil, just like the grav-tanks and the beings that crewed them, was unlike anything native to Bajor. And yet they moved, not with the wary pace of new invaders, but with the arrogant and stately menace of an occupying army. Gar had only to watch them, and now the lines of figures in black battle armor coming up behind the tanks, to know that the Bajorans had already lost. The arrival had come, silent and steady as the sunrise, and Bajor had been looking the other way.
The more Gar looked, the more he saw. Black-suited shapes here and there, in the marketplace and the City Oval. The blink of beam fire, followed seconds later by the noise of it reaching him high in the keep. He wondered idly where the citadel’s defenders had gone. Were they still up above him on the ramparts, peering through their rifle scopes at the same sights, too afraid to do anything, too surprised to discover they were no longer safe?Or perhaps they had run, fled to the hills or back to their families in the low-caste quarters of the city. The priest doubted that anyone had been able to escape. Nothing but smoke was in the air now, and he hadn’t seen anything lift off from the riverside port since the morning—and even that craft had been so small and so fast, it was impossible to know its design and origin.