“Nothing that suggests danger,” Deanna said. “But I still feel fairly certain he’s hiding something—something I’m intuiting may have nothing whatsoever to do with us.Either he’s being secretive out of deference to the prejudices of his convoy captains, or else he’s doing it out of sheer enjoyment of being manipulative.”

“Manipulative? Imagine that.” Riker looked directly toward Akaar. “Admiral, is there anything else you may have…omitted from the mission briefing that might have some bearing on this?” He knew that he was skirting the edge of insubordination, but the Capellan officer had been getting on his nerves increasingly the longer this mission went on. If he had fully informed Riker of all the particulars before they had gotten under way, preparations for the mission would have gone so much more smoothly.

Akaar treated him to a stern gaze that acknowledged the insubordination, but then answered him without any rebuke. “Nothing that comes immediately to mind, Captain.”

Riker clapped his hands together. “It’s settled, then. The only thing we know we have to fear is their cooking.”

“ ‘Cuisine’ might be a better choice of words,” said Deanna. “Don’t count on a lot of it being cooked.”

“That scares me more than any phaser fight,” Vale said, blanching visibly.

Vale felt her stomach roiling as a boisterous male Klingon set a second mug of warm raskurdown in front of her. Following the truly unappetizing dinner of live and wriggling gagh—she was grateful that Riker had warned her to avoid acquiring a persistent intestinal parasite by chewing the nasty things to death before allowing them to wriggle down her esophagus—overcooked roasted targ,and a salad that seemed to undulate under its own power, it was all she could do to keep from heaving the meal back up, blasting their warrior hosts right across their ridged foreheads with gut-churning peristalsis.

Keru seemed far less affected. Although he wasn’t a joined Trill, she imagined that any species physiologically capable of allowing a symbiotic life-form to join with them via a belly pouch probably could ingest just about anything. Amazingly, with three tankards downed, he still seemed as sober as a Federation magistrate, even as the Klingons around him got progressively sloppier and drunker.

Captain Riker was seated at the head of the table, to General Khegh’s immediate left. The task force had entered the Neutral Zone a mere ten minutes ago, and as a strategy session, the meal seemed less than successful. Every time Riker tried to steer the discussion to the arena of the brewing Romulan-Reman conflict, Khegh just as quickly diverted it with boasts, blusters, and heavily embroidered tales of past battles. The Klingon wanted to discuss anything, it seemed, but their coming mission to Romulus. He seemed especially interested in hearing stories about Lieutenant Commander Worf, whom he claimed to have known during his pre-Starfleet days in Minsk, unlikely though that might be.

Sitting between the boisterous male Klingon commander, Tchev, and a female Klingon named Dekri, who looked as if she were about to spill right out of her bustier-like top, Vale felt a rough hand pressing on the small of her back.

“So, what do you consider to be your greatest triumph in battle?” Tchev asked, turning toward her with a snaggletoothed leer.

Vale’s mind raced. Over the last year alone, she had spearheaded the Enterprise’s rescue operations on Dokaal, led efforts to calm the social chaos on Delta Sigma IV, and had coordinated several ground assaults during the guerrilla war on Tezwa. She wondered if any of those incidents might strike this Klingon as worthy of song or story.

“While I think I respect honor in combat and life as much as any Klingon,” she said, “I’m not certain that—” She stopped as she felt the hand on her back slip lower, onto her rear.

She looked first at Tchev, then at Dekri, both of whom were smiling and listening intently—or at least as intently as they could, given how drunk they clearly were.

“If whoever has his hand on my ass doesn’t remove it immediately, hewill become my greatest triumph in battle,” Vale hissed, low enough that only her immediate companions were likely to have heard.

As Tchev looked at Vale blankly, Dekri moved away, bringing her arm back to the table to grasp her mug. Vale shot her a withering glance, then said, “As I was saying—”

The chirping of a combadge interrupted her. She saw Riker hold up his hand apologetically toward Khegh before tapping the gleaming metal device on the front of his tunic.

“Riker here.”

“Captain, several Romulan ships are decloaking only a few klicks from the convoy.”Vale recognized the voice as that of Chief Axel Bolaji, the gamma-shift flight controller. The Klingons went silent, rising to their feet in reaction to Bolaji’s warning.

“Understood,” Riker said as the Klingon ship commanders and junior officers exited the mess hall, apparently shaking off the effects of their gluttony. He stood and addressed Khegh, who seemed somewhat slower on the draw than some of his officers. “Thank you for your hospitality, General. But I think we both need to return to our respective bridges now.”

Khegh got unsteadily to his feet and raised a dirty flagon that might have contained warnogin Riker’s direction. “Qapla’,Captain!”

Vale and Keru took up positions beside Riker as he spoke again into his combadge. “Riker to Titan.Three to beam directly to the bridge.”

Another male Klingon junior officer suddenly burst into the room, shouting something in rapid-fire Klingon just as Vale felt the familiar shimmering tug of the transporter beam. As the dingy room faded from view, she saw Khegh react angrily, and imagined that he wasn’t happy that the Titancrew had been more alert to the approach of the Romulan ships than had his own warriors.

Maybe he ought to cut back on the shipboard partying,she thought.

A moment passed, and the three of them were materializing on Titan’s bridge, in an alcove near the door that led to the head. Vale immediately wished she could excuse herself to divest her stomach of its objectionable contents, but duty was duty.

“Yellow alert. Ready shields, but keep them down for now,” Riker said urgently, intent on the viewscreen. It displayed a quintet of the sleek new Mogai-class Romulan warbirds—to Vale’s eye they looked like a cross between the huge, biframed D’deridex-class warships and the Klingons’ Vor’chaattack cruisers—arrayed in an attack pattern. Any one of them must have dwarfed Titanby at least a factor of four, and their weaponry had to be at least as potent.

Riker immediately pointed to a particular warbird that he evidently recognized. “That’s the Valdore.Her hull’s still damaged from the pounding Shinzon gave her weeks ago.”

“Let’s hope she and her friends haven’t changed their praetor’s plan to roll out the welcome mat for us,” Vale said.

“They’re hailing us, Captain,” Keru said, not turning his head from the tactical console in front of him.

Riker looked quickly over to Vale. “Did I splatter any Klingon food on my shirt?” he asked with a wry grin. After Vale shook her head, he turned back to the screen, tugging his uniform jacket downward and puffing his chest up. Vale quietly hoped she wouldn’t discover that she’d accidentally let a live gaghworm wriggle into her sleeve.

“On screen,” Riker said.

The face that appeared on the viewer was one that Vale recognized from the images from the after-action report Riker had filed immediately after the Shinzon affair. To her everlasting regret, she had been taking shore leave on Earth at the time the Enterpriseand her crew had been forced headlong into those events.