Studying the displays on her own instruments, Daehla nodded in agreement. “Confirmed. The alien programming is being shunted out of primary core systems.”

“Great work,” Riker said, exchanging triumphant smiles with Donatra as he reached for his combadge.

U.S.S. TITAN

Keru lay in one of the sickbay biobeds, reclining against a pile of pillows as he sipped from a glass of cool water. He was as restless as he had been at any other time in his life. Dr. Ree had kept him in sickbay for observation ever since he’d regained consciousness a couple of hours earlier. Of course, he couldn’t blame Ree for his caution; Keru’s chest remained bandaged, despite multiple surgeries and dermal regenerations, thanks to the all but mortal wounds he had sustained during Titan’s skirmishes in Romulan space.

He was grateful that Ree and Ogawa had brought him up to speed on most everything that had happened over the past several days, including the death of Chief Engineer Ledrah, the birth of the Bolajis’ child, Titan’s unexpected relocation to the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the disappearance of Commander Donatra’s hidden fleet, which had evidently been spirited away by some sort of emergent life-force.

I spend a few days on the disabled list, and the whole damn universe spins down into utter chaos,he’d thought more than once, though he knew all the while that such self-centered notions were completely preposterous.

He was also frustrated in that he had been able to learn precious little about what was going on presently. All he knew for certain was that his captain was off the ship—against Keru’s recommendation—leading a boarding party onto one of Donatra’s vessels. His captain was in danger right this minute, as was Commander Tuvok, the man who was currently filling in for Keru as Titan’s tactical officer and security chief.

And Keru knew he wouldn’t be able to do a damned thing to help either of them.

Keru hadn’t forgotten that he had been prepared to leave Tuvok behind on Romulus during the Vikr’l rescue after that operation had begun coming apart at the seams. And although he had merely been following both regulations and the mission profile that day, he still hadn’t quite been able to forgive himself.

You’d better get the captain back aboard in one piece, Mr. Tuvok,he thought. And yourself as well. Otherwise you and I are going to havewords .

A piercing shriek interrupted his reverie, causing him to send most of the contents of his glass splashing onto the bed and the deck beneath it.

Despite the pain that lanced through his chest, he swung his bare feet to the floor, discarding his suddenly emptied glass as he turned toward the source of the sound.

In the opposite corner of the sickbay lay Mekrikuk, the hulking Reman whom he’d helped rescue from Vikr’l Prison. Every muscle and tendon in the Reman’s large, chalk-white frame seemed to strain as a scream of pure fright issued from some primal place deep within him.

Keru moved unsteadily in Mekrikuk’s direction, though he saw that Ree and Ogawa were already converging on the Reman’s biobed. Mekrikuk had already stopped screaming, though his eyes remained huge and terror-stricken.

“Tell your captain he must stop what he’s doing!” Mekrikuk said in a surprisingly mellifluous tenor voice. “Now!”

“Maybe he’s hallucinating,” Ogawa said as she prepared a hypospray with a prestidigitator’s speed. “He could be having some sort of drug reaction.”

Or maybe not. Some Remans are pretty damned strong telepaths,Keru thought, stumbling slightly before righting himself against one of the biobeds. The time he’d spent on Trill, tending the telepathic symbionts who dwelled in Mak’ala’s deep, aqueous caverns, had taught him never to dismiss any being’s apparent telepathic impressions completely out of hand.

Keru watched as the head nurse slapped the hypo into the doctor’s outstretched claws. Ree quickly placed the device against Mekrikuk’s battle-scarred neck. The hypo’s contents instantly hissed home and the Reman went slackly unconscious a moment later.

Keru noticed then that Ogawa was glowering at him, though in a good-natured manner. He was, after all, Noah’s adoptive “uncle,” a member of her chosen family because of their shared history of pain and loss. “You need to get back into bed, mister. Or do I have to have you restrained?”

Keru offered her a weak smile and lofted his large hands in a gesture of surrender. Then he noticed a slight draft coming from the air circulation system, and realized only now that his sickbay gown had left his aft section entirely unshielded.

“All right, Alyssa. I’ll go quietly. But I need to call the bridge first.” And some pants might be nice, too,he thought.

Seated in the command chair on Titan’s bridge, Christine Vale watched the constellation of viewscreen blips that constituted Donatra’s runaway fleet and felt vaguely uneasy. Occasionally she glanced at the main science station, from which Jaza was conspicuously absent.

Belay that thought, Vale. The bridge is no place for infatuations,she told herself. Then she paused for an instant to consider Riker and Troi, whose relationship had gone about as far past infatuation as imaginably possible. On the other hand, I ought to be able to get away with marrying him.

Looking away from Jaza’s console, which was now occupied by Lieutenant Eviku, Vale noted that Frane had remained standing beside the turbolift. He watched the screen, as still and silent as a gargoyle. Admiral Akaar, who had come up from the main transporter room a few minutes earlier, also stood nearby, apparently keeping an eye on Frane as much as on the viewscreen. Frane, for his part, seemed to be studiously avoiding the Capellan’s piercing basilisk stare.

“Riker toTitan .”

Will Riker’s voice, though filtered through her combadge, sounded calm and businesslike, which reassured her somewhat. But onlysomewhat. Her faint sense of dread persisted.

“Vale here. Go ahead, Captain.”

“We’re making excellent progress here. We should have manual control over the entire fleet in just a few minutes. The entity inhabiting the computers knocked everyone unconscious with anesthezine gas. We’re reinitiating all environmental and life-support protocols right now, to blow every deck of every ship clear of the stuff. I’ll advise you as soon as the operation’s complete.”

The captain signed off, and Vale slumped back slightly into the chair, sighing in relief and simultaneously blowing a stray hank of her fine auburn hair away from her face.

Dakal turned from the forward ops station and fixed her with a puzzled stare. “Commander, I’m picking up some pretty strange readings.”

Vale rose and glanced at the Cardassian cadet’s console. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, until she glanced to the starboard science station, where Eviku was obviously studying the very same readings.

“This is not good, Commander,” Eviku said, the Arkenite’s seashell ears twitching on either side of his elongated head.

Titanrocked, forcing everyone on the bridge to grab at chairs, railings, or consoles until the inertial dampers compensated, leveling things out a second or so later. It felt as though the ship had been struck very hard by something large and blunt. But Vale had seen the data on Dakal’s console, so she knew that no such thing had occurred.

She also knew that what had apparently just reallyhappened might turn out to be infinitely worse.

“Yellow alert, Mr. Dakal. Raise shields.”

“Aye, sir,” Dakal said. “But I haven’t quite figured out yet what hit us.”

Vale breathed a pungent Klingon oath under her breath. “Open a channel to the capt—”