He was sweating. Trickles of perspiration raced down his face and forearms. Ragged breaths wheezed in and out of him. Catching his haggard reflection in the cockpit windshield, he was dismayed by how cruelly the years had treated him. Not getting any younger, that’s for damn sure, he admitted to himself. Runnin’ on fumes and luck these days. And I ain’t so sure ’bout the luck no more.

His left hand reached up and started flipping switches to power up the onboard systems, while his right hand worked the controls to energize the impulse drive and warp coils. As an afterthought, he spun his chair half around and turned on the subspace-radio jammer. Pretty good bet those guys who shot at me are callin’ for help. Temporarily blocking their communications would give Quinn time to leave the system before anyone could come to investigate. He had been cautious about his landing, waiting for six full days after the Sagittarius left orbit before he maneuvered his ship out of hiding and dared to set it down so close to the camp. Still, he reasoned, no point gettin’ careless—well, at least not more careless.

The warp engines were still warming up when the impulse drive indicator light changed to ready. Eager to get off this planet, Quinn keyed the antigrav circuit, retracted the landing gear, and guided the ship forward. As soon as it cleared the shale overhang he angled the nose upward and throttled it out of the atmosphere as quickly as its thrusters could manage.

By the time the Rocinante broke orbit, its warp coils had finished their start sequence. Without so much as a look back at the shrinking curve of Ravanar IV, Quinn plotted the longest, most roundabout course back to Vanguard that he could think of, given his current fuel reserves, and made the jump to warp speed. It would be roughly a week before he set foot on the station again. That should give me enough time to figure out what to tell Ganz, he figured. Or else plan a nice funeral.

Commander Dean Singer looked up as the search party returned to the narrow alley behind the barracks. “Did anyone get a good look at him?” His team responded with dour shakes of their heads. He gave the ruined sensor-screen generator a small kick and sighed. “Great. Just great.” Sweeping aside the bulky mining jacket he wore, he plucked his communicator from his belt and lifted the cover plate. It announced the open channel with a double chirp. He set the frequency to the one used by the underground survey team and keyed the transmitter.

The rest of the team milled around looking confused while Singer waited for a response from the research group working underneath the camp, which had never been more than a poor facsimile of a real prospectors’ outpost.

Ensign T’Hana answered Singer’s message, her uninflected Vulcan voice as bright as a clarion. “T’Hana here.”

“T’Hana, this is Singer.” There was an urgency in his tone. “Is it shut down yet?”

“Not yet, Commander. It will take approximately twenty-one minutes to successfully power down the entire system.”

Singer frowned, then resigned himself to circumstances that were beyond his control. “Understood, Ensign. Please expedite the process if the means becomes available.”

“Acknowledged, sir.”

“Singer out.” He flipped his communicator closed with a slap of his hand. As he bent his arm to put it back on his belt, it beeped twice, signaling an incoming message. With a flick of his wrist he flipped it open. “Singer here.”

“Commander, the subspace channel’s been restored,” said Lieutenant John Ott, the communications officer. “Opening a secure channel to Vanguard. What do you want to tell them?”

“Hang on,” Singer said. Once again fixing his search party with a fiery glare, he asked, “Can anyone tell me whether the intruder was a Klingon?” Shrugged shoulders and shaking heads accompanied the chorus of mumbled answers. “Miguel, you were the first one into the alley. Can’t you tell me anything about him?”

“Not in this light,” said Chief Petty Officer Miguel Velez. “I’m pretty sure he had light-colored hair, but I can’t really say if it was white, gray, or yellow.” No doubt reading the acute disappointment in Singer’s expression, he added, “Sorry, sir.”

“Not your fault,” Singer said. Turning back to his other conversation, he said into the communicator, “Ott, inform T’Prynn we had an intruder, identity unknown. And make sure she understands we need a new sensor screen, on the double.”

3

“Bridge to Lieutenant Xiong.”

Ming Xiong forced the last of his uniform shirts into his duffel and cinched it shut. He was packed and ready to travel. Reaching to the wall—which was uncomfortably close in the claustrophobic confines of the quarters he shared with the Sagittarius’s chief engineer, Master Chief Petty Officer Mike Ilucci—he pressed the intercom switch. “Xiong here.”

“It’s time, Ming,” Captain Nassir said. “The Bombay is standing by to transport.”

“On my way,” Xiong said, hefting both straps of his duffel over his shoulder. “Xiong out.” He shut off the intercom, made a final survey of his locker to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, then closed it. Cramped as conditions were aboard the Archer-class scout vessel, he was going to miss this ship and its crew. In the two short weeks he had spent with them—the first on his way out to Ravanar IV to examine their initial discovery, and the second now on his return to Vanguard, via painfully indirect routes both times—he had found them to be more relaxed than most of his comrades in Starfleet. As a long-range outrider with just fourteen personnel aboard, it had a close-knit feel that was enhanced by Captain Nassir’s easygoing manner. Unlike most Starfleet crews that Xiong had traveled with, there was little sense of hierarchy among the Sagittarius team. The standard duty uniform aboard the ship was a simple green utility jumpsuit without rank insignia or specialist markings, just a patch bearing the name of the ship on the right shoulder and the crewperson’s name stitched on the front left chest flap. Though Xiong had at first felt anonymized when he donned an unmarked, borrowed garment, he’d quickly grown accustomed to the less complicated apparel.

The door swished open at his approach, and he shimmied carefully into the corridor, sidestepping with his bulky, heavy duffel toward the aft ladder to the transporter pad. Passing the open galley, he noticed a savory aroma. Ilucci was standing in front of the food slot, holding a plate in one hand and a half-ruptured burrito in the other. Bits of his meal tumbled into his scraggly beard whiskers as he wolfed down his lunch. The heavyset chief engineer struggled to swallow an entire mouthful in one gulp when he saw Xiong; he half-succeeded. Through half a gulletful of semi-masticated food, he asked, “Hey, are you leaving?”

“Yeah, I’m on my way out,” Xiong said, pointing aft.

Ilucci dropped the shredded remains of his burrito on his plate and stepped quickly over to Xiong and extended his cheese-and-salsa–covered hand. “Gonna miss ya, buddy.” Xiong blinked and felt his mouth pursing as he struggled not to point out the obvious. Looking down, Ilucci realized what the problem was. He wiped his hand broadly across the leg of his jumpsuit, first the palm and then the sides, then extended it once again to Xiong. This time the slim but muscular anthropology-and-archaeology specialist accepted the gesture and shook Ilucci’s hand.

“Take care, Master Chief.” One of the first things that Xiong had learned after coming aboard the Sagittarius was to always refer to Ilucci as “Master Chief.” The chief engineer insisted on it. Tellingly, even the commissioned officers respected Ilucci’s request and frequently reminded others to do likewise. Ilucci was not a tall man, but his gift for “percussive maintenance” (hitting defective machines until they worked again), his impassioned ranting, and his uncanny ability to start bar fights had long ago earned him the nickname “Mad Man,” a moniker that now preceded him by many light-years, no matter how far he traveled.