“There is none. That’s why they’re sending us.”

“Lovely.” He gave the data slate back to her. “Hand me that towel, will ya?”

She grabbed a soft cotton towel from atop the cargo container behind her and tossed it to him. He caught it, mopped the sweat from his face, and draped it around his neck as he stood up. “Did you put in the new coordinates yet?”

“I decided to give you the honor,” she said with an insincere half smile.

Quinn headed for the ladder. “In other words, you still can’t figure out how to run my custom nav computer.”

“Let’s just say I’m not used to working with something so primitive,” she retorted, following him across the cargo deck.

“Primitive? It’s cutting edge!”

“I was talking about you.”

“Okay, that was just cold.”

He climbed the ladder and strode across the main deck toward the cockpit. I wonder what Tim would say if he could see this ol’ ship today,Quinn mused, remembering his months of bizarre drunken adventures with reporter Tim Pennington. Back then the Rocinantehad resembled nothing so much as a flying bar; now there wasn’t a drop of alcohol anywhere on board. I bet Tim wouldn’t even recognize ol’ Rosie like this. Or me, for that matter.

Bridy Mac had never asked Quinn about his former traveling companion and partner in misadventure, and he hadn’t volunteered any information about Tim—or any other facet of his past—in all the months he had worked with her. He made no secret of his being more than mildly smitten with Bridy, but even though she was a right pretty bit of eye candy to have aboard on a long haul, the truth was that he missed his friend.

Who’m I kidding?He smiled. I just liked taking his money when we played poker. Poor guy couldn’t bluff for shit.

He stepped into the cockpit, dropped into the pilot’s seat, and punched in the new coordinates. “Ready to set sail,” he said as Bridy Mac eased herself into the copilot’s seat. “Give the word, m’lady, and our next jaunt—”

“Just go already.”

Quinn engaged the warp drive. “Yes, ma’am.”

7

February 21, 2267

Reyes awoke to an ear-splitting screech that sounded like a diamond-tipped saw chewing through steel.

His eyes snapped open as he flinched from the clamor. Rolling over on his hard metal bunk, he realized the unholy racket was coming from the corridor outside the brig. He sat up and looked through his cell’s force field.

The door to the corridor slid open, and two Klingon soldiers backed into the brig. They were dragging something. Each warrior held a long pole with a hydraulic grasping apparatus affixed to the end. Trapped in the prisoner-control devices was a struggling Tholian.

Clad in a full-body environment suit of shimmering bronze Tholian silk, the shrieking prisoner thrashed and flailed wildly, fighting to break the Klingons’ grip. Pushing the crystalline arthropod from behind were three more Klingon troops; two prodded the creature forward while one labored to control the Tholian’s whipping, scorpionlike tail.

The entire group—prisoner and captors alike—stumbled awkwardly from side to side, slammed against bulkheads, and lurched forward and backward and diagonally. If not for the skull-piercing din, Reyes might have found the spectacle funny. At the very least, he respected the tenacity necessary to capture a Tholian alive.

He got up, stood at his cell’s force field, and watched the Klingons herd the screeching Tholian. They pulled the creature off balance until it toppled forward, then they shoved it into the cell opposite Reyes’s and released it. The soldier closest to the control panel for the other cell activated its force field.

The Tholian charged the Klingons. It struck the invisible barrier, which flared bright white and crackled with shocking energies as it repelled the attack. Undaunted, the Tholian charged again. There was another flash of light and a sharp electric buzzing, and the creature was thrown against the far wall of its cell.

After a moment, the Tholian fumbled to its feet but seemed to have no further intention of challenging its cell’s unseen barrier. Scuttling slowly around the tiny space, it appeared to resign itself to its captivity.

Looking worn out, the five Klingons grumbled low curses as they left the brig. None of them spared so much as a glance in Reyes’s direction. The door slid shut behind them.

Reyes stood at the front of his cell and said nothing while he watched the Klingons’ newest guest explore its confinement. The creature made a number of low scratching and clicking sounds as it probed the ceiling and bulkheads.

Then it took note of Reyes and turned to face him, but said nothing. The two regarded each other for several seconds.

Breaking the silence, the Tholian said through its pressure suit’s vocoder, “I am Ezthene.” The translated voice had an unmistakably masculine quality.

“Diego Reyes. What’re you in for?”

At first, Ezthene seemed perplexed by the question. Then he said, “I was captured while trying to reach Vanguard.”

Reyes immediately took a keener interest in the conversation. “Why were you going to Vanguard?”

Ezthene hesitated before answering. “I was a high-ranking member of the political castemoot on Tholia. After our vessel Lanz’t Tholisreturned from Jinoteur, the Ruling Conclave issued an edict calling for the escalation of military force in the Shedai Sector. I … dissented.”

“Mind if I ask why?”

Ezthene made some curious gestures with his forelimbs as he spoke. “I had met with a member of Lanz’t Tholis’s crew, a weapons officer named Nezrene. She convinced me there was more to be gained by cooperating with the Federation than by opposing it. Together, we petitioned the Ruling Conclave and asked it to sanction the diplomatic pursuit of a truce. They refused.”

Nodding, Reyes said, “And they held a grudge.”

“To put it politely, yes,” Ezthene said.

“The impression one gets of your society from the outside looking in is that it doesn’t much care for iconoclasts.”

“True. Nonetheless, we exist.” With an expansive motion of his forelimbs, Ezthene continued. “Suspecting we would be in danger after provoking the Ruling Conclave, Nezrene and I decided to seek asylum on Vanguard. To improve our chances, we split up and took separate, mutually unknown routes. I can only hope she was not captured as I was—or suffered a worser fate.”

“Well, if she makes it to Vanguard, she’ll be okay.” Reyes thought about the difficulty the Klingons must have gone through to capture Ezthene and the expense they had likely incurred by hiring mercenaries to capture Reyes himself; he suspected the two abductions were related. “Do you happen to know why the Klingons want you alive?”

“Not yet,” Ezthene said. “I was hoping you could explain that, Commodore.”

Reyes lifted his brow in surprise upon being addressed by his former rank. “You know who I am?”

“Yes,” the Tholian replied. “You became quite well known after the Gamma Tauri IV massacre.”

“Did you hear I got court-martialed and convicted?”

Ezthene made a few soft clicking sounds his vocoder didn’t translate. Then he said, “I was unaware of that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Reyes said. “But I’m not called commodoreanymore. I was stripped of my rank when I got convicted.”

Bending its lower limbs to simulate a bow, Ezthene said, “I meant no offense.”

“None taken.”

“How, then, shall I address you?”

“ Diegois fine.”

Peering across the dimly lit brig with eyes that glowed with the golden fire of molten ore, Ezthene asked, “So, Diego, do you know why the Klingons have taken us?”