A starship captain. A flag officer. A leader.

“Hodgkinson, set an evasion course, full impulse. Sniadach, find that ship, and get the shields back up.”

“Course set,” Hodgkinson replied. “Engines not responding.”

Sniadach coaxed his stuttering, half-shorted-out panel back into service. “Hostile vessel bearing one-three-eight-mark-seventeen, coming about at quarter impulse.”

Reyes thumbed a comm switch on the armrest of his chair. “Bridge to engineering! We need aft shields! Respond!”

Static was all he heard over the open audio circuit. Engineering had been one of the first sections hit, and a coolant leak had likely forced a temporary evacuation of the deck while the crew struggled into environment suits.

“The enemy vessel is scanning us,” Sniadach said. “Closing to ten thousand kilometers.” Swiveling his chair to face Reyes, he added with surprise, “They’re powering down their weapons.”

“Are they hailing us?”

“No, sir,” Sniadach said, checking his console.

“Just like pirates,” Reyes said with disdain. “They don’t even have the courtesy to tell us we’re being boarded.” He got up from his chair—and belatedly remembered it wasn’t really hischair. “Prepare to repel boarders,” he said, grateful they weren’t facing the Klingons, who’d put a price on his head after the Gamma Tauri fiasco. He kneeled beside the slain Lieutenant Ket and took the security officer’s phaser from his belt. “Arm yourselves. We’re about to have company.”

Hodgkinson got up and sprinted to a panel on the port bulkhead. She opened it, revealing four phasers. The brunette took one for herself and lobbed another to Sniadach.

Reyes adjusted the setting of his weapon. “Heavy stun,” he said. “Let’s not go blowing holes in our own ship.”

His order received overlapping replies of “Aye, sir.”

An alert tone beeped twice on the sensor console. Sniadach glanced down at the board and confirmed Reyes’s suspicion. “Transporter signals,” the lieutenant said. “All decks.”

“Here they come,” Hodgkinson said, readying her phaser. Sniadach did the same as Reyes stepped back between them to form a skirmish line.

A low, eerily musical drone emanated from the aft section of the cramped compartment. A few meters in front of the two Star-fleet officers and their prisoner-turned-commander, a compact shape sparkled into view.

It was a fat cylinder about as long as Reyes’s hand.

“Down!” shouted Reyes, anticipating the worst.

They ducked behind the forward console. The transporter effect faded, and silence fell upon the bridge.

Then came the soft hiss of gas spewing into the air.

Pale blue mist jetted from one end of the canister and swiftly filled the command deck.

Sprinting toward the emergency equipment, Reyes snapped, “Oxygen masks!”

Hodgkinson and Sniadach were close behind him.

Reyes felt as if he were running on rubber legs. His head spun and his stomach heaved. He pitched forward to the deck. The masks were only a meter away but behind a panel at waist height and out of his reach. He struggled to pull himself forward, but his eyes crossed against his will and left him seeing the world as if through a kaleidoscope.

All his strength ebbed at once, and he collapsed to the deck, rolling onto his back as he fell.

Once more the unearthly siren song of a transporter rang in his ears. Reyes saw several figures dressed in environment suits—or was it one figure multiplied by his blurred vision?—materialize on the bridge. No, it was more than one person; they weren’t all moving the same way…

One of them checked a scanner and pointed at Reyes.

Another one leveled a disruptor at Sniadach and shot him in the back of the head, bathing the bridge in crimson light. Then he dispatched Hodgkinson with the same cold precision, another ruby flash illuminating an innocent woman’s execution.

Two other intruders kneeled beside Reyes. One pressed a hypospray to Reyes’s neck.

As his vision dimmed and his hearing dulled, Reyes reflected bitterly that he should have expected something like this. Ten years in prison? I knew I’d never get off that easy.

He gave up his breath and sank into darkness.

2

February 18, 2267

The situation was on the verge of spinning out of control, and Bridget McLellan was standing in the middle of it.

She was just one among dozens of nameless faces huddled around a weak fire in the middle of a ramshackle shelter. Outside, a frigid wind wailed in minor chords and pushed icy drafts through gaps in the scrap-metal walls.

Everyone’s attention was on Scalzer, the grizzled, fearsome leader of this multispecies rogues’ gallery. McLellan didn’t know the name of Scalzer’s species, but she’d seen his three-fanged, ridged-headed, black-haired kind a few times before, when she’d been closer to Federation space.

“Someone in this room has decided to go into business for himself,” Scalzer said, casting an accusatory glare at the assembled smugglers. His right hand flexed on the grip of his holstered disruptor pistol. “Whoever did it, I admire your guramba. But when I find you, I will take your head.”

Nervous looks traveled from one pirate to the next as the members of the circle sought to evade blame by averting their eyes. Scalzer pivoted slowly, his ire palpable. “I will not ask the traitor to confess.” With his left hand, he reached under his jacket and pulled out a Starfleet-issue tricorder. “Your guilt will speak for itself.”

McLellan’s eyes widened as she saw the device in Scalzer’s hand. She had no idea how he had acquired it, but she knew she couldn’t leave it in his possession. Bad enough he might use it for crime,she reasoned, but if it falls into the hands of the Klingons …. Her hand closed around the compact phaser in her coat pocket. Can’t let that happen.

Scalzer activated the tricorder. McLellan watched him through faint licks of orange flame that let off black wisps of smoke. He fiddled with its settings and continued his slow turn as he aimed the device around the room.

One of his cronies shouted, “What is that thing?”

“Starfleet scanning device,” Scalzer said. “Very advanced. It will tell me who was the last among you to touch the missing tannot ore.”

A Tiburonian henchman just a few meters from McLellan protested, “That won’t prove who took it!”

Scalzer drew his disruptor, aimed at the man who had just spoken, and shot him in the knee. The hireling collapsed, writhing in agony and biting back howls of pain.

“Maybe not,” Scalzer said, holstering his weapon and stalking toward his fallen retainer. “But it will give me a good place to start.” The leader continued scanning, paying particular attention to the man curled up at his feet.

McLellan understood why Scalzer was in a hurry. He’d already agreed to sell to the Klingons his three hundred kilos of tannot ore—a primary ingredient in Klingon munitions that the smugglers had stolen from a Nalori mining colony several weeks earlier. The meeting was less than a day away, and there were few things more embarrassing for a thief than to admit to having been robbed of that which he’d stolen fair and square.

Looking up from the tricorder, Scalzer wrinkled his brow in confusion. “None of you shows recent traces of tannot isotope,” he said. “But according to this scanner … one of you is human.”

That was McLellan’s cue. Artificial skin pigment and a touch of synthetic pheromones had been enough to let her pass as an Orion and gain entry to the smugglers’ cove, but her disguise wasn’t going to fool a detailed scan.

She fired her phaser from inside her pocket, a blind shot. The blue beam sliced through her coat’s cheap fabric and lanced through the tricorder in Scalzer’s hands.