A sad smile. “She was, in her own way.” His leaden sigh conveyed the totality of his exhaustion. “But now she and Diego are both gone—her back to Earth, and him to God knows where. And I’m here all alone.” He reacted as if to a private joke. “Isn’t that a funny thing to say? Sitting here, surrounded by thousands of people, and I feel alone.”

“It’s not such a strange concept. Trust me: I speak from experience.”

The surgeon leaned back and folded his hands in his lap. “Bottom line: I’m too old for this kind of work. It’s time for me to go home and spend the rest of my life with my family.”

The admiral nodded in approval. “As noble a goal as any. Where’s home for you?”

“These days? Mars. My daughter has a medical practice in Cydonia.”

“Very nice.” Nogura picked up the data slate and skimmed its terse letter of resignation. “I’ll be sorry to lose you, Doctor. But I can’t fault your reasons. I’ll approve your resignation on an interim basis, but I can’t arrange your transfer home until Starfleet Command and Starfleet Medical sign off.”

Fisher nodded. “I understand. There’s nothing harder to shake off than bureaucracy.” He eyed the slate. “I included a short list of attending physicians at Vanguard Hospital who I think would be qualified to take my place. For the time being, I’ve appointed my chief attending as acting CMO. You can decide for yourself whether you want to keep him or not.”

“Fine.” Nogura hoped the advisory he was about to give didn’t prove too disappointing. “Just so you know, the Klingons and the Romulans have been playing hell with our commercial and civilian traffic out here lately. Everyone’s running behind schedule as a result. It might take a few weeks or even longer to book you a spot on a transport headed home.”

The bad news drew a good-natured chortle from Fisher. “That’s all right,” he said. “Now I’ll have a chance to catch up on my reading.”

Sleep eluded Captain Adelard Nassir. It had always been that way for him on the eve of a mission, but this assignment left him grappling with a peculiar blend of anxiety and restlessness. He tried to chalk it up to encroaching middle age, but he knew the root cause was his temporary lack of control over his circumstances. Shipping out, even into grave peril, was an exciting time for any starship commander. Occupying the center seat, with the universe stretching past on the main viewscreen, gave one a sense of possibilities, of facing one’s destiny head-on.

On this occasion, however, the Sagittarius was being carried off in the belly of a great metal leviathan. Trapped inside the cargo hold of the Ephialtes, there was nothing Nassir or his crew could do. They weren’t in control of their fate, they were just passengers, and their ship naught but freight. It was a humbling experience, exacerbated by the open resentment and hostility of the civilian crew that had been pressed into portering them.

Agitated and wide awake, the slim and short Deltan captain stepped out of his private quarters—a privilege limited to himself and the first officer—into his ship’s circular main passageway. He drank in the sounds of routine life aboard the tiny scout ship. To his right was the bridge, located at the leading edge of the ship’s saucer. He went left, past the unisex head and showers. Water was running in one of the stalls, and clouds of vapor billowed out of the open doorway, accompanied by deep and melodious singing. The voice belonged to the senior engineer’s mate, Salagho Threx. Nassir had been enthralled the first time he overheard the man belt out what he assumed were Denobulan folk tunes. Then he’d asked Threx to translate the lyrics and had been appalled to find the songs he’d so admired were positively obscene.

Cabin 3—which was assigned to Doctor Lisa Babitz, the chief medical officer, and Lieutenant Celerasayna zh’Firro, the second officer and senior pilot—was silent. Cabin 4, on the other hand, rumbled with the sawing snore of Master Chief Ilucci. Nassir wondered how Ilucci’s cabinmates could stand it—especially Sorak, the elderly Vulcan senior recon scout, with those supersensitive ears of his.

I guess people can learn to adapt to anything, Nassir figured.

He kept on walking, past the lifeboat he prayed he’d never have to use, and then past the open space of the ship’s mess, which doubled as its conference room. Medical technician Ensign Nguyen Tan Bao sat alone at one table, picking at what appeared to be a reconstituted bowl of tofu stir-fry. Lieutenant Dastin sat on the other side of the mess, nursing a mug of something hot while reading a well-worn copy of the interstellar bestselling novel Sunrise on Zeta Minor. Each man wore the ship’s standard uniform, an olive green utility jumpsuit that had the crew member’s name stitched above the left breast and a Sagittarius insignia patch on the right shoulder, but no rank insignia. Because the ship’s typical mission profile was based on long-range pathfinding and reconnaissance, its fourteen-person crew survived long missions in tight quarters by taking a relaxed and highly informal approach to uniforms and protocol. Each member of the crew also had to be cross-trained in multiple mission specialties in order to qualify for a spot on the Archer-class vessel—even Nassir himself, who, in addition to being skilled in starship combat tactics, had trained in both cryptography and warp propulsion at Starfleet Academy.

Passing beneath the ladder that led up to the transporter bay and engineering deck, as well as down to the cargo hold, Nassir heard sounds of life from both directions. From above came the voices of engineer Karen Cahow and science officer Lieutenant Vanessa Theriault. He couldn’t discern what they were saying, but the two women clearly found their discussion hilarious: Cahow’s effervescent, unabashed laughter pealed down the ladderway, drowning out Theriault’s more demure but still enthusiastic chortling.

Wafting up from below was the huffing and puffing of exertion at a regular tempo. At first, Nassir worried he might be eavesdropping on a private moment between two of his crew—not something that had been an issue yet under his command, but neither was it verboten—but then he realized he was hearing one person exhaling with the rhythm of hard exercise. Stealing a look down the ladderway, he spied a scaly arm and leg practicing martial-arts forms and wondered whether his Saurian recon scout, Senior Chief Petty Officer Razka, ever got tired.

He wandered on, past the dark alcove of sickbay, and then past cabins 10 and 11, which were both quiet. As Nassir neared Commander Terrell’s quarters, Threx passed by on the way to his cabin—stark naked in all his beefy, hairy splendor, a standard-issue white towel draped around his neck. The Denobulan smiled and nodded without a hint of self-consciousness. “Captain.”

“Threx,” the captain said, keeping a straight face only through effort and practice. Unclothed flesh usually didn’t bother Deltans in general or Nassir in particular, but when it came to Threx, he wished the Denobulan hadn’t been raised in a subculture without a nudity taboo.

Not seeing any point to another lap around the deck, Nassir drifted onto the bridge. All the duty stations were powered down and unmanned. Lieutenant zh’Firro was alone on the bridge, seated in the command chair and scribbling with a stylus on a data slate. She glanced at Nassir as he entered, and she tensed to stand. He held up one hand. “Don’t get up. I’m just roaming.”

The beautiful young Andorian zhen smiled. “I understand.”

He ambled over to her and peeked at the slate. “What’re you working on?”

“Poetry.” She lifted the tablet with one blue hand and turned it toward him.

A memory nagged at him. “You had some poems published last year, didn’t you?”