“That is exactly what I am telling you,” the gravel-voiced flag officer said, his head magnified to epic proportions on the Endeavour’s bridge viewscreen. “Their mission to Eremar is of vital importance, and we need you to escort them to safety.”

Lieutenant Thorsen looked back from the forward console at Khatami. His gloomy mood told Khatami the situation hadn’t improved in the last thirty seconds. “That’s going to be difficult,” Khatami said. “All twelve Tholian ships are locking their weapons on the statite inside the pulsar’s emission axis. There’s no telling what’ll happen when they open fire.”

Nogura’s fierce presence seemed to jump through the screen. “You need to make them hold their fire until the Sagittarius is clear. After that, the Tholians can do as they like.”

“We’re not exactly in a position to dictate terms, and the Tholians don’t seem interested in talking, but I’ll do what I can. Khatami out.” She glanced at Estrada and made a throat-slashing gesture with her thumb. He took the cue and terminated the comm channel to Vanguard. “Yellow Alert! Hector, find a way to punch through the pulsar’s interference and get a warning to the Sagittarius.” Swiveling her chair to the right, she said to Stano, “Hail the Tholian fleet commander again. Tell him we’re demanding a parley.”

Tense seconds bled away while Estrada and Stano worked at adjacent consoles, trying to raise anyone involved in this fiasco on a comm channel. On the main viewscreen, the Tholian fleet fanned out into a formation optimized for group bombardment of the underside of the statite upon which sat the Sagittarius, unaware of and unprepared for the Tholians’ impending assault. Obeying a gut instinct that told her this situation was likely to degenerate quickly, Khatami shot another look at Thorsen. “Charge shields, arm phasers, and load all torpedo bays.”

He checked his readouts as he worked. “Ninety seconds to weapons range.”

Khatami looked back in hope at Estrada, who shook his head.

Then Stano turned, one hand cupped over the Feinberger transceiver in her ear, and nodded. “I have the Tholian fleet commander.”

“On-screen,” Khatami said. The ring of Tholian warships on the viewscreen blinked to a fiery red haze, within which she discerned the faint outline of a Tholian. The multilimbed, crystalline arthropod gesticulated with his forelimbs and screeched like a drill bit grinding against neutronium. The universal translator rendered the noise into Federation Standard on a quarter-second delay. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?” It was a testament to the translator’s superb programming that it preserved the tonal quality of the Tholian’s outrage.

“Tholian fleet commander, this is Captain Atish Khatami, commanding the Federation starship Endeavour. We request that all vessels in your fleet power down their weapons so that we may carry out a rescue operation.” It was an off-the-cuff lie, one for which she hadn’t rehearsed her bridge crew. She hoped they would be able to improvise and keep up. “Another Federation vessel has crashed on the statite your fleet is targeting, and we have orders to render immediate aid to that vessel and its crew.”

“Captain Khatami,” said the radiant, nearly transparent creature on the screen, “I am Commander Tarskene of the Toj’k Tholis. What is that ship doing on the statite?”

“They were conducting a spectral survey of the pulsar when they experienced a malfunction in their navigational system.”

Tarskene slowly rubbed his forelimbs together. It struck Khatami as a cogitative gesture. Then he lurched forward and loomed large on the screen. “I do not believe you, Captain. If your lost vessel had successfully transmitted a distress signal, we, too, would have received it. But given the disruption the pulsar causes to subspace signals—especially within its emission field—I think it is extremely unlikely you have had any contact with a vessel on the statite. That leads me to two possible conclusions. First: There is a vessel on the statite, and you know about it because you are an accomplice to whatever covert mission led it there. Second: There is no vessel on the statite, and you are attempting to delay the completion of our assignment so that you may gain access to the statite. In either case, our course is clear: We proceed as ordered.”

Khatami sprang from her chair and strode toward the view-screen, mimicking the Tholian’s aggressive posturing. “Commander Tarskene, I assure you, there is a Starfleet vessel stranded on that statite. In the interest of interstellar amity, I am begging you to order your fleet to stand down until we have completed our rescue operation.”

“Your petition is refused. If there is a Starfleet vessel on that statite, its destruction will be its just penalty for trespassing. Now I will advise you to stand down and withdraw, Captain. If you attempt to interfere in our mission, your ship will be destroyed.”

The transmission ended, and the viewscreen reverted to the image of the dartlike Tholian ships deployed in a ring, their tapered bows all aimed at the statite. Khatami shot a look at Stano, who said, “They’ve closed the channel, Captain.”

“Hector! Any luck hailing the Sagittarius?”

“Negative, Captain. I still can’t break through the pulsar’s interference.”

Her pulse throbbing in her temples and clenched fists, Khatami felt the situation spiraling out of control. Her ship was outnumbered twelve to one, which made any solution predicated on the use of force perilous at best. Complicating the matter was the contentious political situation between the Federation and the Tholian Assembly; any act of overt aggression could instigate a full-scale war between the two powers. But if she stood by and did nothing, the Sagittarius would be destroyed, along with its crew and whatever they had been sent to find. Worse, she would have to live with knowing she had been a witness to mass murder, and had done nothing to stop it.

If only I had another minute, she realized. We could jump into the statite’s shadow and have a chance of hailing the Sagittarius. But what if they aren’t ready to leave? How would we buy them more time? How do we convince Tarskene not to—

Before she could finish weighing her options, the Tholian fleet opened fire.

Easy does it, Terrell cautioned himself as he lowered a Tkon crystal into the padded packing crate mounted on the back of his rover, Ziggy. Detaching the crystals from their spokes inside “the Pit,” as Chief Ilucci had nicknamed it, and then carrying them up to the rovers wasn’t strenuous work, but it was slow and tedious, and for once Terrell was glad that even on a tiny ship like the Sagittarius, rank still had its occasional privileges. As the designated driver for Ziggy, he got to break the monotony by making regular runs back to the Sagittarius to drop off each filled container and replace it with an empty one. He was pleased to see that Ziggy’s latest crate was almost topped off.

Through the faceplates of their environmental suits, he had observed the anxiety etched on the crew’s faces. None of them liked visiting the Pit, and a few of them—Ilucci, zh’Firro, and Threx—had said outright that it made them nervous. If the sinister aura that infused the alien arena was having any ill effect on Sorak or Razka, however, they were masking it expertly.

Razka and Threx emerged from the gap in the Pit’s outer wall. Each of them clutched a single Tkon artifact in their gloved hands. The Saurian scout stowed his fragile cargo inside the container on Ziggy’s rear flatbed, then the hulking Denobulan did the same. As they trudged back inside, Lieutenants Theriault and zh’Firro passed them, cautiously ferrying two more artifacts to the rover.