Arranged in four neat rows, halfway between the small freighter and the wide hydraulic doors that led to an underground freight-rail loading platform, were the twenty-four cargo crates Quinn had smuggled off Vanguard.

The doors opened. Broon, an unkempt bear of a man, lumbered in, his open trenchcoat fluttering behind him like a battle flag. He was followed by an entourage of ten surly-looking lowlifes, all of whom came carrying disruptor rifles.

Quinn slowly removed his right hand from its pocket, tucked back his coat, and rested his hand on the stun pistol he had strapped on for just such an occasion. “You’re late.”

“And you’re an idiot,” Broon said, his voice a guttural rasp. His men fanned out in a semicircle and surrounded Quinn.

With a nonchalant sideways puff of cherry-scented smoke, Quinn said, “I was smart enough to get this far.”

“If you had any brains, you wouldn’t have come at all.”

On the edge of his vision, Quinn caught the silhouettes of snipers inching along the top edge of the docking pit. “What? And miss out on all this?” His hand closed slowly over the grip of his pistol. “Do you want your guns or not?”

“Oh, we’ll take the shipment, Mr. Quinn,” Broon said. His men began raising their weapons in Quinn’s direction.

“Not until you pay for it,” Quinn said. “My employer told me to bring back six kilos of pure dilithium.” He ignored the malicious chuckling that spread like a virus between the gunmen.

Broon smirked. “I think you’ve misunderstood the nature of this transaction, Mr. Quinn. That cargo is not our purchase—it’s our reward.”

“No, I understand perfectly,” Quinn said. “If I got busted on Vanguard, Ganz would’ve whacked me in the brig. If I made it here, you’d kill me and take the guns.” Cautiously, he pulled his left hand out of its pocket. “I’m changing the deal.” He held up his left hand to reveal a small, rapidly blinking device. His thumb kept a small red switch on its side pressed in. “Dead-man switch. One kilo of ultritium in each case. I let go of this without keying off those detonators, anybody inside half a klick’s gonna have a real bad day. Comprende?”

No longer smirking, Broon made a slow, cautious gesture to his men to lower their weapons. He kept his eyes on Quinn the entire time. “We don’t have the dilithium,” Broon said. “It wasn’t part of our deal.”

“Make me an offer,” Quinn said, inching his pistol from its holster. “Make this trip worth my time.”

“First we need to set terms,” Broon said. “How is this going to go?”

Quinn tried to keep tabs on where all of Broon’s men were. A few had slipped behind his ship, maybe hoping to tackle him and seize the dead-man switch. He pivoted slowly to keep them at bay. “You’re gonna find some way to pay for these guns,” Quinn said. “Then you’re gonna put the payment on my ship, and I’m gonna leave.” He noted the snipers adjusting their aim. “As soon as I’m clear of the docking pit, I’ll key off the detonators.”

“Ridiculous,” Broon said. “As soon as you’re clear, you’ll blow us to bits.”

Shaking his head, Quinn said, “No, ’cause my boss is your insurance. If I kill you, he kills me. My way, we both live.”

“Until Ganz sees you alive,” Broon said. “Then I’m a dead man.” He looked at his men. “We all are.”

A puff of cigar smoke passed through Quinn’s best trust me grin. “Not if you make good by paying for the guns,” he said. “Call it a show of good faith.”

“Orions don’t believe in good faith,” Broon said. “They believe in contracts and revenge. My contract is to kill you.”

“And mine’s to sell you a bunch of guns. I prefer mine.”

Broon glowered at Quinn for a long moment, then walked slowly toward the rows of crates. “An impasse,” he said. “That’s what we have.” Resting his hands on top of a crate, he continued, “Unless, of course, one of us backs down.” He looked over his shoulder at Quinn. “I have to wonder…where would a fringe-prospecting loser like you get his hands on twenty-four kilos of ultritium?” Caressing the edge and corners of the lid, he added, “You wouldn’t just make that up, would you?” His hands cupped the flip-latches of the crate lid. “No, of course not. That would be stupid. Suicidal, even.”

Quinn aimed his pistol at Broon. The gunmen on every side of him lifted their own weapons back into firing positions.

“Don’t open that crate,” Quinn said. The pistol quaked slightly in his hand.

“Or what, Mr. Quinn? You’ll stun me?” He flipped the latches open. “Why not just blow me up?”

“Don’t make me tell you again,” Quinn said. “Seal those latches and step back.”

Broon left one hand gripping the handle of the lid as he turned to face Quinn. “Ganz told me you were a lousy poker player, Quinn. You don’t know how to bluff.” He flipped open the lid—revealing a circular disk of weapons-grade ultritium secured to its underside, as well as the blinking detonator affixed to its center. His jaw dropped in horror.

Quinn shouted, “Are you crazy? You could’ve set it off!” Broon didn’t respond, he just stood and stared at the munitions charge half a meter from his face. “Close that lid very gently,” Quinn said. “And the rest of you—put down your damn guns.” At first only a few of Broon’s men laid down their weapons, but within seconds they all did. “Slide ’em toward me,” he said, making certain to hold his dead-man switch high over his head for all to see. Looking back at Broon, he saw the big man easing the lid closed with almost comical slowness. “That’s it,” Quinn said to him, “nice and—”

The detonator fell off the ultritium charge. Then the munition fell from the lid, revealing itself as a hollow fake.

Damn cheap glue, Quinn fumed.

Broon reached for a pistol tucked into his belt. “Kill—”

Quinn’s first shot knocked Broon backward over the crate. Dodging for cover under the wing of his ship, he managed to take down a gunman who was reaching for his rifle. Only nine to go, Quinn thought. He hoped for a quick demise. On every side, he heard Broon’s men scooping up their rifles. He wedged himself inside the port-side landing strut, hoping it might limit to six the number of people who were about to kill him.

He closed his eyes and fired blind. Multiple screeching rifle shots overlapped all around him. Half a second later, he was the only one firing. He took his finger off the trigger and opened his eyes.

All the gunmen lay stunned. Quinn looked at his stun pistol, then at the unconscious men. Did I do that? He looked again and realized that whatever weapon or weapons had incapacitated Broon’s thugs, it hadn’t been his crude sidearm. Letting his pistol lead the way, he crept away from the landing strut. At the edge of the wing he remembered the snipers. Peeking upward, he saw no sign of them. What the hell? Skulking around the gunmen, he stopped when he reached Broon, who looked up at him through glazed eyes that betrayed a grudging respect. “Snipers…” he croaked. “Very clever.” A gurgling noise rattled inside the man’s throat; then he passed out.

Surrounded by artfully wrought violence, Quinn realized what had happened; there was only one “logical” explanation.

T’Prynn.

A crueller man might have laughed.

A more noble man might have felt ashamed.

Quinn bound and gagged Broon and his gunmen, collected their weapons, loaded his crates back on to the Rocinante, and went in search of another buyer for his cargo.

Kirk was unaccustomed to having so many people on his bridge when there wasn’t a crisis. The Enterprise was en route back to Vanguard under routine conditions, but in the twenty-five hours since Xiong had divulged the classified details of his mission, Spock, Piper, and Scotty had been engrossed in fevered research of the data stored on Xiong’s tricorder. Spock and Piper had busied themselves at science station one, while Xiong and Scotty had been working at the station right next to them. For Scotty and Piper, the yeomen hadn’t been able to fetch coffee fast enough this evening.