Lieutenant Ohq had shoved aside a half-dozen mechanics to get at the damaged sensor array components. Word of the first officer’s impending arrival in main engineering—a rare occurrence that usually presaged tremendous suffering for the person whose mistake had inspired the visit—had been called down from the upper decks, by mechanics cowed like jeghpu’wI while the commander made his livid passage to the midships ladder.

I will not relay secondhand reports, Ohq vowed as he twisted at the waist and pulled himself deeper inside the smoking jumble of slagged machinery behind the bulkhead. When BelHoQ asks what happened, I’m going to have the answer.

Ohq had been worried that some intricate system failure would have to be tracked down, at the expense of great effort and much time. Instead, he beheld the nexus of the problem in the sensor array and deduced the cause of the malfunction immediately. He called back to the mechanics, “One of you toDSaHpu’ pass me a plasma cutter, now.” A few seconds later the tool was pressed into his hand, and he bent his wrist at an awkward angle to get at a safe place to cut free the component that had caused the cascade failure.

In less than a minute he decoupled it from the part of the spaceframe with which it had fused. As it dislodged and fell into his hand, he heard BelHoQ bellow in the corridor behind him, “What’s your excuse this time, Ohq?”

The chief engineer wriggled backward through the close-packed bundles of cable and protruding junction boxes. He landed on his feet, turned, and looked up at the grizzled black beard and wild mane of the first officer. “This,” Ohq said, handing the damaged part to BelHoQ.

BelHoQ turned the misshapen hunk of metal one way and then the other. He thrust it back at Ohq. “What do you call this?”

“Sabotage, sir.” He took back the half-melted glob. “We had a gravimetric flux compensator installed where a tachyon distortion filter should have been. They look identical on the outside except for the fact we color-code them and label them on every axis. Of course, someone could disguise one as the other pretty easily—until it breaks.” He pointed out a dark red streak where the part’s outer casing had split open. “That’s the kragnite shielding—which is used only in the gravimetric flux compensator.” He lobbed the device back to BelHoQ. “Somebody in the station’s supply depot switched parts on us.”

The first officer’s fist closed white-knuckle tight around the fragged component. He stormed away grumbling foul curses and slamming the side of his fist against the bulkhead as he went.

Someone’s about to get a painstik up the bIngDub, Ohq chuckled maliciously. And for once it isn’t me.

“Could it have been a mistake?” asked Captain Kutal. “Or an error by one of Ohq’s people? Kahless knows, his tool-pushers aren’t exactly the brightest in the fleet.”

BelHoQ slammed the ruined component down onto the captain’s desk. The impact rang like a bell. “This was no accident! Whoever did this should be found and put to death in public, as a warning to others.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Kutal said. “But a manhunt on the scale you’re proposing might take a day or more, and we don’t have the time. Tell Ohq to expedite the repairs. As soon as we have the secondary array working, we can ship out. He can finish fixing the primary array en route.”

Pacing in tight circles, BelHoQ scrunched his face with rage. “This sends a bad message to others, Captain. They will think we are weak, that we let crimes like this go unpunished. It will invite more of the same.”

“Doubtful,” Kutal said. “I suspect this will prove to be an isolated incident, intended to delay us from reaching the Starfleet ship. For all their noble talk, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Starfleet had a hand in this.”

The first officer was grinding his jaw slowly, and his hands had curled into trembling fists. “We must make an example of the scum who did this!”

“Absolutely,” Kutal said. “Flay them alive and quarter them. Set them on fire and put them out with a disruptor blast. You’ll do so with my thanks.” He rose from his chair and made certain that BelHoQ understood that his was to be the last word on the subject. “But not until after we get back. Until then, I want you focused on the mission and nothing else. Get back to the bridge, and keep a fire lit under Ohq until those sensors are working…. That is all. Dismissed.”

A low rumble of protest rolled around inside BelHoQ’s throat, but he nodded his understanding and marched out of Kutal’s quarters. As the door closed, Kutal abandoned his own façade of calm and seethed to imagine what kind of lowly petaQ would resort to sabotage. It made him sick with rage to think of the damage his unseen foes had wrought on his ship. He calmed himself by daydreaming that one of them was human; then he envisioned his hands around the human’s throat, squeezing and crushing until it all but turned to putty in his grip, and he kept on picturing that—until it finally, inevitably, brought a smile of murderous glee to his face. That’s more like it, he thought as he left his quarters and returned to the bridge.

Pennington leaned against Quinn for support, and the pilot was leaning on Pennington. Arranged like a pair of crooked book-ends, they waved their drunken salutations at the two women who had just dropped them off in front of their docking bay at the Lamneth Starport. The attractive young ladies sped away in their hovercar and ascended swiftly back into the flow of traffic.

“Nice girls,” Quinn said with only a hint of slurring.

Lolling his head to cast a cockeyed stare at the older man, Pennington said, “Maybe yours was. What was her name again?”

“Dunno,” Quinn said from beneath a furrowed brow. “What was your girl’s name?”

The journalist shook his head. “No idea.” After a moment, he added, “I think she took my wallet.”

“So did mine,” Quinn said. He looked at Pennington and let out the snort of a suppressed laugh.

Even though he was angry, Pennington was starting to laugh, too. “Brilliant!” he hollered. They stumbled apart. “Men with guns are still looking for us, we don’t have a job to get us off this rock, and now a couple of skanks have snicked our wallets!” Quinn laughed harder, which only annoyed Pennington more. “Don’t you care?”

Forcing out his reply between guffaws, Quinn said, “Not really.” A few hilarious gasps later he added, “Mine was empty.” He straightened and brushed his fingers through his tangled mess of bone-white hair. “Relax, will ya? It’ll be okay.”

Pennington asked, “How will it?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said with a shrug. “It’s a mystery. You just have to roll with what comes. Most of the time, things get sorted out on their own.”

Eyeing the pilot’s disheveled state, Pennington quipped, “Well, that would certainly explain the paragon of wealth and success who stands before me now.”

Miming a chest wound with exaggerated gestures, Quinn weaved and stumbled comically. “A hit, a palpable hit! You wound me, newsboy!” He tripped deliberately over his own feet and sprawled onto his back in a man-sized X pose on the tarmac. As Pennington strolled over and stood beside him, Quinn waved him away with mock pride. “Just leave me here. Sun’ll be up soon.”

“Get up, you ridiculous sod,” Pennington said.

Quinn made a pillow of his folded hands. “Not until you admit you had fun tonight. Don’t deny it. I was there.”

Rolling his eyes, Pennington admitted, “Maybe a bit. Except for the getting shot at.”

“What, are you kidding? That was the best part!” Quinn flashed a devilish grin and extended his hand to him. “Help me up, will ya?”

He reached down and lifted Quinn to his feet. “I’m wiped out, mate,” he said. “Mind if we bag it for the night?”