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“Weapons ready,” she finally said.

“Engage,” Picard said flatly.

“Sensor reading-whatever it is,” Bokri added snidely, “is in range.”

“Fire!” Damar said, staring at empty space on the viewer.

Even as he said the word, the spacescape on the screen seemed to shimmer-and then coalesce into a Sovereign-class Starfleet vessel.

Had he the time, Damar would have felt vindicated, but his support vessels had just been sabotaged, and he was stuck in a functionally immobile space station whose window of opportunity to stop Starfleet would be open only very briefly. After that, he would have to leave it to the Jem’Hadar.

“Comra to Damar-sir, we’ve lost him.”

Damar snarled. “What do you mean, lost him?”

“Shields are down!” That was Bokri.

“Damage from the Starfleet ship?”

Shaking her head, Bokri said, “No, they just-just went down.”

“Well, get them up.”

“I’m trying!”

The science officer said, “Starfleet vessel firing!”

Power junctions exploded in the aft stations. “They hit near the fusion core!” someone reported.

Well, maybe they got Garak, Damar thought with annoyance. “Get the shields back up!”

“They’re trapped in diagnostic mode,” Bokri said, “and my command codes won’t override.”

The science officer said, “There’s a quantum torpedo bearing on the core.”

Elim Garak tried to keep his breathing under control. He was quite sure that Comra and his merry band of idiots would easily find him if they heard him hyperventilating.

Or if the walls closed in on him and crushed him like a Lubbockian slime devil.

Right now, sitting crouched in an access tube, Garak considered one to be as likely as the other. He silently cursed the claustrophobia that had terrorized him since his youth.

This wasn’t how he had intended to die-mostly because Garak had never had any intention of dying. Self-preservation had always been one of his particular talents-and generally his secondary goal. His primary one, of course, was to serve Cardassia. From his earliest days in Bamarren to his days serving Enabran Tain in the Obsidian Order to his exile to Terok Nor where he discovered the truth about the new allies they had found in the Gamma Quadrant, Garak had always served Cardassia.

Which was why he made sure Odo and Kira were able to get to Federation space. Based on the message Odo had sent him, they had exposed President Jaresh-Inyo as a shapechanger. Garak had to admit he was impressed by the Founders’ audacity. Though Jaresh-Inyo was on his list, he had found it more credible that Councillor T’Latrek or Admiral Ross was the one who’d been replaced. But the president himself?

He heard explosions from nearby that sounded suspiciously like weapons fire striking the unshielded hull of Terok Nor. I’m sure Damar and Bokri are trying desperately to raise them again, Garak thought, with a touch of pride at their failure to do so. The Founder who had replaced Dukat had kept the prefect’s access codes in order to maintain its charade, which had proved a tactical error. Garak had known Dukat’s codes for years now, which, combined with a biosign filter, had granted Garak the ability to lower the shields and keep them that way. Only a legate could override that, and there were none on the station.

For a brief moment, Garak had been afraid that the biosign filter wouldn’t work, but he needn’t have concerned himself. After all, the shapechanger would need to use something very similar in order to fool the computer into thinking it was Dukat. And while Dominion technology was superior in many senses, it appeared that the Obsidian Order was their equal in at least that respect.

Comra’s voice echoed throughout the fusion core. “We know you’re here, tailor! Come out and show yourself!”

Garak considered doing as Comra asked so that the glinn’s final act would be one of success in accomplishing the mission Damar set out for him that morning. But he quickly dismissed the notion, tempting as it was to leave the crippling confines of the access tube.

It would all be