It was a rhetorical question, but Neera was determined to make Ganz answer it for himself. She planted delicate kisses on the side of his thickly muscled neck and said, “I’m sure you can reason it out, my love.”

An angry sigh flared Ganz’s wide nostrils. “Because he’s been freelancing without permission.”

“Which suggests ambition or greed or both.” Shifting her amorous attention to the other side of Ganz’s neck, Neera added, “No matter which it is, it’s not good.”

“No, it isn’t,” Ganz said. He pulled away from Neera. She got up from his lap and let him stand. When he was anxious, he liked to pace. He circled around his desk. “We’ve spent a great deal of time and a considerable sum of money working on a way to get back into Admiral Nogura’s good graces,” he said.

“And it’s almost within our grasp,” Neera said as she slinked seductively into Ganz’s chair.

He began pacing in front of his desk. “But all that time, treasure, and blood will have been spent for nothing if Zett implicates us in a terrorist attack on Nogura’s starbase.” He cast a pointed stare at Neera. “And we need that safe haven, now more than ever.”

“I know,” she said, easing the chair forward so she could rest her elbows on the desk and fold her hands in front of her. “But before that can happen, I think we need to accept that Zett might now be more of a liability than an asset.”

Ganz’s countenance was at once sad and grim. He nodded. “I agree.” With a plaintive look, he asked, “What should we do?”

Devious schemes coaxed a half smile from Neera, who narrowed her eyes and told her loyal front man, “Let me handle this my way—discreetly.”

27

July 30, 2267

“We’ve been cooped up in this bloody tin can for more than four months,” Pennington complained across the mess cabin table. “If I get arrested by Starfleet, will this period of captivity count as time served against my sentence?”

T’Prynn replied without looking up from her soup, “I think clemency on such grounds would be highly unlikely.”

Pennington’s head drooped, and he couldn’t help but turn a weary frown at the bowl of bland seaweed broth T’Prynn had prepared for that morning’s meal. The traditional Vulcan dish was the only thing she ever made for breakfast.

He sighed. “Pass the salt, please.”

“ Plomeeksoup has a delicate flavor,” she said as she handed the shaker to him. “Adding too much salt or other seasoning will mar its subtleties.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for.” He shook enough salt to cover the entire surface of his soup. After stirring it gently into the liquid, he lifted a spoonful into his mouth and swallowed it. Then his face puckered and he winced in revulsion.

T’Prynn’s calm was preternatural as asked, “Is there something wrong with your soup?”

He glared at her, stung by the irony as he said, “It’s too salty.” Even though the statuesque Vulcan woman did not react, he was certain that behind her placid mask of detachment she was laughing at him.

She ate another spoonful of her soup and said nothing.

Pennington stood, picked up his tray, and placed it in the reclamator. After the panel slid closed, he heard the whirring and clanking of dishes and utensils being washed and organic matter being flushed away for purification and recycling.

“I thought I might spend today counting my nose hairs,” he said to his inscrutable companion.

She swallowed another spoonful of soup. “You should use a tricorder. Its results will be more accurate, and it will take less time to compile.”

“Maybe,” Pennington said. “But can it braid all those tiny little hairs together?” He pointed at her and exclaimed with a manic gleam of triumph, “I think not!”

Unfazed, she replied, “Even for a human, your behavior is most peculiar. Do you require a medical examination?”

“No, just a change of scenery.”

She finished her soup, got up, and carried her tray to the reclamator. “I advised you before we embarked on this mission that it would be time-consuming and monotonous. You cannot say I misled you as to its nature.”

“I never said you did. Doesn’t make drifting in the dark any more interesting.”

She consigned her tray and dishes to the food slot. As it hummed from behind the bulkhead, she and Pennington walked out of the mess hall to the main corridor. “Perhaps you would prefer—”

An automated alert over the ship’s PA system cut her off. “Signal intercept in progress,”said the synthetic male voice.

They dashed to the cockpit and scrambled into their seats. Pennington locked in the signal, boosted the gain, and verified they were recording it. T’Prynn fed the signal through the ship’s rebuilt main computer and applied her formidable array of code-breaking algorithms.

“Signal’s five by five,” he said. “Recording confirmed.”

“Decryption has begun,” she said. “The message was coded with a Klingon cipher.” Flipping switches on her console, she added, “Routing the original message to the forward monitor. It will replay from the beginning.”

The forward display stuttered, and the picture rolled for a moment before it stabilized. The first image to appear was that of a male Klingon soldier in a dimly lit space. It didn’t look like a ship’s bridge, so Pennington assumed it was the man’s private cabin. He said, “Kutal toAli Baba, respond.”

T’Prynn quickly explained, “The Ali Babais a private vessel that frequently docks with Ganz’s ship. It belongs to a suspected thief named Joshua Kane.”

“Good to know,” Pennington said.

The other side of the transmission cut in, and the image automatically split-screened on the Skylla’s display. The second man was a human with dark hair and a fair complexion. His hair was close-cropped, and his beard was neatly trimmed. “ Captain,” he said to Kutal. “ Right on time.”

Kutal asked, “Have you been granted permission to accept our contract, Mister Kane?”

“Yes,”Kane said. “Have the funds been transferred?”

“The first half has been sent,”Kutal said. “You’ll get the rest on final delivery.”

“Very good.”

“Do you have any last questions for our expert?”

“No,”Kane said. “I have all the intel I need. Have you selected a rendezvous point?”

Kutal tapped an interface off-screen. “I am sending you the coordinates now. Meet us there exactly eighteen days after you finish the assignment.”

“Understood. Coordinates received.Ali Baba out.”

The signal terminated, and the screen went black.

T’Prynn stared intently at the darkened monitor. Penning-ton verified there was no more signal to record, and he shut down the intercept system. “Well, we’ve got their rendezvous coordinates,” he said. “Of course, we have no idea what they’re talking about.” He slumped in his seat. “What a waste of time.”

“Quite the contrary,” T’Prynn said. “This intercept has yielded a great deal of valuable information.”

“Were we listening to the same conversation? How do you figure that was anything but a bust?”

She cast a sly look across the cockpit. “First, we now know the Klingons are using pirates and criminals as cutouts in the Taurus Reach. Second, whatever it is that Mister Kane has been hired to obtain for the Klingons, it entails a final delivery at a location whose coordinates we now possess. And third, the Klingon captain has let slip a critical piece of top-secret intelligence.”

Pennington shook his head. “He did? When? What intel?”

T’Prynn tapped a key and replayed the intercepted transmission. She paused the playback just after Kutal asked, “Do you have any last questions for our expert?”