“Readings are all over the place right now,” Jaza said. “I’m picking up spatial and gravimetric distortions. Also intermittent signatures of duranium, tritanium, and polyduranium.”

Vale tensed. “Hull metals. Ship debris?”

“Possibly.” Jaza shrugged. “There’s too much spatial distortion right now for me to say for certain. I’ll try to boost the sensor net’s resolution further, but I’m not sure how much more I’ll be able to squeeze out of it. It’s too bad the anomaly doesn’t lie directly along our present heading.” He resumed working over his console, intent on his stream of scrolling data. On Jaza’s monitor, a false-color image of the anomaly began to take shape between the columns of numbers. It was an irregularly shaped green-and-orange cloud that reminded her of an angry lobster.

“Keep me apprised,” Vale said. Something about the anomaly’s appearance nudged at the back of her mind, giving her a vague feeling of unease.

Spatial anomalies and starships never seem to be a good mix,she thought, considering the hull metals Jaza had detected. She found she was unable to think of any pleasant, happy ways they might have gotten there.

Leaving Jaza to his work, Vale stepped down from the science station and took a seat in the command chair. Her eyes trained on the wide forward viewscreen, she studied the void that lay between Titanand Romulus, grateful for the sight of its countless—and mercifully nonanomalous—stars.

“I’m certain he didn’t mean anything by it, Will,” Troi said in a hushed tone. She was nearly overwhelmed by his intense feelings of frustration.

“I wish I could believe that, Deanna,” Will said just as quietly, his brows rising like thunderheads as he walked alongside her down the corridor. “But he’s been critiquing my command style since the moment he came aboard.”

Troi put her hand up to his arm, stopping him. “No, Will,” she said once she was satisfied that they were alone in the curved passage. “I’m certainhe didn’t mean anything by it. You have to grant that I can read into these things a bit more reliably than you can.”

She could hardly wait for this element of their first mission to be over with. This morning, uninvited, Admiral Akaar—all spit-and-polish, as usual—had joined them for breakfast in the mess hall. His unsolicited criticism of Titan’soff-duty casual clothing policy had rankled Will, leading to their hasty departure after the meal.

Troi lowered her voice. “Look, Will, I’m not wild about his presence here either, and neither is Christine. And I know how he feels about your placing me in your command crew. But until the conclusion of this mission— yourmission—you need to ignore his slights and to focus. It’s not worth the frustration to dwell on this.”

Will let out a long breath through his nose, his puffed-up chest and shoulders deflating a bit. His expression softened as well, and he appeared to be about to say something when an odd gurgling noise came from the doorway just ahead of them down the corridor.

The door slid open, and the gurgle became louder as Ensign Aili Lavena stepped out, drops of water from her boots spattering the carpet in the corridor. She was attired in her modified uniform, which included the hooded hydration suit that kept her skin from drying out in Titan’s standard M-class environment areas. The door to her quarters closed behind her, once again muffling the aqueous background noises coming from within.

Lavena looked down the corridor and saw Will and Troi standing there. “Good morning, Captain. Counselor.” Her voice sounded slightly muted behind the transparent rebreather mask that loosely covered her face. A small cloud of vapor rose around its edges as she spoke. “I hope the waterlock system didn’t startle you. Some of the landlubbers seem to find it a little disturbing.”

Troi recalled having seen the engineers making the retrofits that had enabled the Selkie conn officer to enter and exit her nonstandard-environment quarters. But neither she nor Will had actually heard Lavena’s customized ingress/egress system in operation before. It certainly stood to reason that the tons of Pacifican seawater the system had to restrain wouldn’t be completely unobtrusive. It sounded disconcertingly like the flushing of a humanoid commode.

“Not at all,” the captain said. “We were just having…” He paused momentarily, and Troi noticed a peculiar if fleeting emotional undercurrent that almost broke the surface before vanishing utterly.

“We were just having a conversation,” he said, his composure once again rock solid.

“Very good, sir,” Lavena said, her head cocked to one side. “I’ll see you both on the bridge.” As the ensign turned and walked away, Troi glimpsed a transitory emotional highlight coming from her as well.

Though short-lived, it was not unlike the one Will had just quashed.

Will began walking forward again, but Troi placed a hand on his arm, holding him in place. Once Lavena had rounded a bend in the corridor, she turned him toward her.

“What was thatabout?” she said, keeping her voice low even though no one else was within earshot.

He surprised her by actually blushing slightly. “Leave it alone, Deanna. It’s nothing.”

She smiled, her eyes narrowing involuntarily. “It’s notnothing. I felt something coming from both of you.” The sentiment she had barely glimpsed in them both was finally beginning to make sense to her. “It was almost… carnal,for lack of a better word.”

“Deanna,” Will said, his voice deepening, imploring. He was clearly becoming intensely uncomfortable.

No wonder Pacifica was always such a popular shore-leave destination for dashing, unattached young Starfleet officers,she thought. Grinning, she slugged her husband playfully on the shoulder. “You dog!You and Lavena on Pacifica?”

Will resumed moving forward down the corridor, his blush intensifying and spreading to his ears. “It was a long time ago, Deanna,” he said in a near-whisper. “Just once, and right out of the Academy. And I only just nowrecognized her.”

She hurried to catch up with him, savoring the all-too-rare discomfiture her otherwise easygoing husband was displaying. “Ah, so now there are twopeople in your bridge crew you’ve been intimate with. I wonder what the admiral would think about that?”

Will shot her a withering glance, but said nothing else aloud. I’m embarrassed enough about this,Imzadi ,she felt him say through the empathic bond they shared. Leave it alone, Deanna. Please.His chagrin burned in her mind as brightly as a sodium flare.

Arriving with him at the turbolift, Troi struggled to stifle the fit of giggles that had arrived unbidden. They stepped aboard, and as the doors closed, the empathic bond they shared delivered her an actual concrete image; it was a crystal-clear shard of memory.

It surprised her, but somehow failed to shock her. After all, she knew he’d occasionally been something of a “wolf” very early in his Starfleet career. But because their level of mutual trust and sharing had been so deep and intimate for so long, she simply couldn’t justify holding a more than twenty-year-old incident against him.

It happened before we even knew each other,she thought. And he must not have given Lavena a second thought after he and I met during his assignment to Betazed.

But that didn’t mean she found his charming emotional roil any less enjoyable.

Riker hoped that his flushed face wouldn’t be noticeable as the turbolift doors opened and he stepped onto the bridge. Despite his request, he knew Deanna wouldn’t let his decades-old liaison with Lavena stay buried completely. Her job revolved around talking, and she would certainly want to talk with him further about this. On top of that, she seemed to love to tease him, and often wouldn’t let go of embarrassing facts for years, if ever. At least he could count on her professionalism and public discretion as his diplomatic officer and chief counselor, not to mention as his spouse.