The Warden was incandescent with pride.

To war.

2

Admiral Heihachiro Nogura stood alone, looking down through a pane of transparent aluminum that sloped outward, affording him an unobstructed view of a wide arc of Starbase 47’s main docking bay. Dozens of meters directly beneath his vantage point, the Starfleet scout vessel Sagittarius was tethered at the airlock for Bay 2. Its pristine hull was a testament to the skills of its chief engineer and the starbase’s repair personnel, who had expertly removed all trace of the many and varied horrors the fast little ship had endured in the past few years.

All so I can send it back out to get mauled again.

Sending the ship and its crew into danger didn’t bother Nogura. If he’d had his way, the Archer-class starship would have been deployed weeks earlier. What made him livid was that, for reasons beyond his control, it was still here instead of on its way to one of the most vital missions it had ever been assigned, and that he had no other vessels suited to assume its role.

Distant footsteps echoed in the empty corridor and slowly drew closer. He glanced to his right, but the source of the footfalls was not yet visible, still somewhere beyond the long curve of the passageway that ringed the station’s core, one level above the cathedral-like main concourse of the docking level. Nogura preferred to admire the ships under his command from this more isolated location, a service level free of the random pedestrian traffic and bustling activity of the main level’s gangways. The service level was rarely visited by more than a handful of station personnel. Most of its interior sections were sealed off to serve as airspace above the cavernous repair bays that occupied more than a dozen decks inside the main core adjacent to the docking bay, which occupied the lower half of the station’s massive saucer.

The footsteps were close now, snapping crisply on the gleaming duranium floor, which reeked of pine and ammonia, thanks to a recent pass by a crewman with a mop, a bucket, and punishment-detail work orders. Nogura’s visitor cleared the bend in the corridor, and he noted with a sidelong glance that it was Lieutenant T’Prynn, the station’s acting liaison to Starfleet Intelligence. The tall, athletically trim Vulcan woman wore a red minidress uniform and knee-high black boots, and her insignia bore the emblem for the security division. Her straight sable hair reached to the middle of her back and was cinched in a simple ponytail above her shoulders. She carried a data slate tucked close at her side, and walked with her chin up, her bearing proud.

Nogura turned his attention back to the Sagittarius until T’Prynn stepped up beside him. She waited until he acknowledged her arrival by making eye contact with her reflection in the transparent aluminum window, and then she said simply, “Admiral.”

The diminutive, square-jawed flag officer’s voice was as deep as the sea and had a rasping growl like a power saw. “What’s the excuse this time?”

His brusque query seemed to surprise T’Prynn, and for a brief moment she appeared to be formulating a response steeped in classic Vulcan dry sarcasm. Then she answered him plainly. “The Romulans and the Klingons have both increased their patrols in the sectors surrounding Vanguard, and they appear to be coordinating their activities.”

“In other words, the same excuse as last time.” He shook his head, frustrated by the prospect of another indefinite delay. “We can’t just sit and wait for the Klingons and the Romulans to let their guard down. That escaped Shedai could come back at any time—and if it brings friends, we’ll be in real trouble.”

T’Prynn relaxed her pose. “I agree. If Eremar is the source of the Mirdonyae Artifacts, it’s imperative we investigate it before anyone else finds it.”

“Exactly,” Nogura said. “But it won’t do us any good if the Klingons or the Romulans follow the Sagittarius to that pulsar. Best-case scenario, they’d swoop in and steal the artifacts out from under us. Worst-case scenario, they’d destroy the Sagittarius in the process. It’s not enough to get Nassir and his ship there. We also need to bring them home with the prize.”

She proffered the data slate to Nogura. “I have a plan that may accomplish the first part of our mission objective.”

He took the slate and skimmed its contents. “Just the high points, if you please.”

“An act of subterfuge. First, we disguise a small craft as a replica of the Sagittarius, one capable of high-warp speed. Then we launch it as a decoy on a heading away from Eremar.”

Nogura scowled at the Vulcan. “And where, exactly, will we find the spare duranium, fuel, and warp nacelles to make this drone?”

“We already have them. They’re in Repair Bay One, awaiting assembly.”

Getting the sense that he was being read into a plan already set in motion, he harrumphed and resumed perusing the slate’s contents. “Go on.”

“We conceal the Sagittarius’s deployment by hiding it inside the main cargo bay of a larger vessel, which will carry it to the Iremal Cluster, a stellar phenomenon known for scrambling short- and long-range sensors. Once the ship reaches the cluster, the Sagittarius deploys on a new course while its transport continues on its original heading. There is a high probability the Sagittarius will reach Eremar undetected if it can reach Iremal without incident.”

Nogura exhaled slowly; it was not so much a sigh as a prolonged huff of irritation. “I see several things wrong with your plan, Lieutenant.”

T’Prynn cocked her head, and her face betrayed a hint of curiosity. “Could you be more specific, Admiral?”

“For starters, whatever ship you dress up as your decoy will have a dozen Klingon and Romulan warships hunting it from the moment it leaves our patrol zone.”

She pointed at the slate in his hand. “I’ve accounted for that, sir. The decoy will, in fact, be an unmanned drone, equipped with sensor feedback systems to create the illusion of a living crew. As noted on page six of my proposal.”

He paged forward in her briefing and saw that she was telling the truth. “Very well. Now maybe you can tell me how you plan to fit the Sagittarius inside another ship’s cargo hold. Don’t most ships usually leave here packed stem to stern?”

“Under normal circumstances, yes. We would need to take the extraordinary measure of commandeering a civilian vessel of sufficient capacity to execute the ruse. As a result, whatever ship we select would be deprived of its cargo and civilian passengers.”

Nogura regarded her with naked suspicion. “I presume the ship of ‘sufficient capacity’ you have in mind is the freighter Ephialtes?”

“In fact it is.”

“I trust you know Captain Alodae won’t go along without a fight.” He waited for T’Prynn to reply, but she said nothing. Despite all her claims of having rededicated herself to logic devoid of emotion during her long recovery from a mental breakdown, he suspected that on some level she was enjoying this at his expense. “All we need is for him to go crying to the JAG Office.”

She lowered her chin, lending her mien a conspiratorial air. “I don’t claim to be a legal expert, but I sincerely doubt Captain Alodae would prevail in such a dispute.”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“I strive to be prepared, sir.”

Unable to shake off his skepticism, he pored over a few more paragraphs of T’Prynn’s mission plan. “Let’s say we proceed with this scheme of yours, whether Captain Alodae likes it or not. Sending one of our ships out of here as luggage on a superfreighter, straight into a sensor blind spot that has ‘ambush’ written all over it, might be just as dangerous as letting the Sagittarius leave here undisguised. And even if this absurd ruse works, I don’t see anything in your plan for how to bring our people home safely from Eremar.”