“Sulu to bridge.”

“Chekov here, Captain.”

“Pavel, I’m in the main brig with our ... guest. I’d appreciate it if you could pipe down an exterior view of our current dilemma.”

“Understood, sir. Right away.”

Seconds later, the viewer displayed full views of both Excelsiorand the crippled Neyel vessel, undoubtedly provided by the new sensor drones Tuvok had recently launched to analyze the Tholian energy web. The potent, crackling energies of that web were visible, forming an apparently impassable, lethal-looking cage about both ships.

Burgess gestured toward the viewer. “Whatever you may suspect about us, Jerdahn, the Tholians obviously regard us as enemies at the moment. Just as they do the Neyel.”

“Your images might be false,” Jerdahn rumbled. “Treachery and hydrogen are the two most abundant things in this universe. That’s why Neyel always think it safest to regard all Outsiders as enemies, until proved either harmless or useful.”

“That’s a pretty bleak philosophy,” Sulu said.

Jerdahn shrugged. “It is reality. It has kept us alive ever since the sojourn into the Outer Darks first began. Such has been the Neyel way since the times of our helpless, soft-bellied Oh-Neyel ancestors.”

Neyel,Sulu thought. Oh-Neyel?

Sulu felt a sensation of déjà vusuddenly descend upon him. And just as abruptly, a memory, a very old memory, [207] clicked into place. And the seemingly impossible—yet undeniable—shared genetic heritage of humans and Neyel suddenly began making sense, albeit sense of a far-fetched sort.

Oh-Neyel.

“O’Neill,” Sulu whispered, stunned by the implications of those two mythology-encrusted syllables.

He noticed that both Jerdahn and Burgess were regarding him with obvious curiosity.

Facing Jerdahn, Sulu said, “It’s clear to me, Jerdahn, that your people and ours are bound to one another. We really do have a great deal in common—besides being trapped by the Tholians.”

Jerdahn still appeared skeptical. “What could our two species have in common, truly? You do not even looklike us.”

Sulu smiled. “For one thing, there was an asteroid colony, long ago. A great rock in space known as ... Vanguard. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

Burgess scowled, as though Sulu had just tried to pass off a fairy story about Trevis the Talking Tree as peer-reviewed science. After all, the destruction of at least five of the O’Neill Colonies during the tumultuous postatomic horror years was well documented, despite the often fragmentary nature of many mid-twenty-first-century historical records.

Jerdahn’s face, however, bore a look of startled recognition. Sulu also thought he might have noticed a trace of fear there as well.

He realized now that he stood at the threshold of reconnecting with a long-lost branch of the human species. And at the same moment, he began to understand his earlier feeling of déjà vu.

Chapter 17

Stardate 1709.2 (2266)

A year after transferring from the physics department of the U.S.S. Enterpriseto take the starship’s helm, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu was already no stranger to untimely death. He had first been touched by the random hand of violence as a preteen living with his parents in the village of Ishikawa on Ganjitsu, a wild border world which was frequently the target of Klingon raids. It had been unimaginably different from the safety and sophistication of San Francisco, his birthplace on Earth.

But today was the first time he had witnessed another human being’s demise as it happened, right before his eyes. When Commander Hansen’s image appeared on the bridge viewer, the man already looked dead on his feet. Obviously suffering from grave injuries, Hansen was smeared liberally with soot from the electrical fires that were consuming what remained of Neutral Zone Outpost 4’s wrecked command center. At Captain Kirk’s request, the commander had linked the outpost’s external viewer system into that of the Enterprise ,allowing everyone on the bridge to glimpse whatever had delivered so much devastation through the more [209] than one and a half kilometers of iron asteroid that sheltered the outpost.

The Romulan ship that appeared across the placid starscape seemed literally to come out of nowhere. It swooped straight toward the rapidly approaching Enterprise —or rather toward the still-distant outpost, Sulu reminded himself—like the savage bird of prey it resembled.

Despite Captain Kirk’s efforts to warn the aggressor off, the hostile vessel continued on its course, still too far away to be concerned about any challenges coming from the Enterprise .Even hurtling toward the outpost at warp 8, the Federation starship was still some five minutes out of weapons range.

Sulu watched helplessly as the alien ship opened fire, sending a large, greenish cloud of plasma straight toward its hapless target.

As the outpost’s communications circuitry was scrambled by the impact, Sulu caught another glimpse of Hansen’s battered control center. He watched the blast throw the commander about like a rag doll before the communications link between the Enterprise and the outpost was destroyed, returning the screen to its view of the local starscape.

Sulu knew that the raider would be long gone by the time the Enterprise reached whatever remained of Romulan Neutral Zone Outpost 4. I hope Hansen and his people died as quickly as everyone on outposts 2, 3, and 8 did,he thought, feeling desolate as he stared out at the indifferent, uncaring stars.

A short time later, Sulu quietly took a seat at the corner of the conference room table. To his right sat Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott and Lieutenant Stiles, the alpha-shift navigator. Glancing to his left, Sulu watched a grim-faced Captain Kirk seat himself at the table’s opposite corner, where he was flanked by Dr. Leonard McCoy and the half-Vulcan science officer, Commander Spock.

A little earlier on the bridge, Spock had succeeded in [210] tapping into the cloaked Romulan ship’s communications as it made its leisurely way back toward the Neutral Zone; he had displayed a visual of the Romulan control center—and of the vessel’s decidedly Vulcan-looking commanding officer. It was hard not to conclude from that image that Vulcans and Romulans were virtually the same species, though so far only Stiles had used the incident to impugn Spock’s loyalty.

Spock must be going through hell right now,Sulu thought. He could only imagine how he would feel were he to suddenly discover that a hostile alien race actually belonged to humanity’s family tree. But he also knew that Spock, being half-Vulcan, wasn’t likely to let any of his shipmates observe whatever emotional turmoil he might be experiencing.

Holding a jagged fragment of curved metal in both hands, Spock took a seat beside the captain. Moving the piece of debris to his right hand, he spoke with the equanimity so characteristic of Vulcans. “From the outpost’s protective shield. Cast rodinium. This is the hardest substance known to our science.”

The science officer flexed his right hand slightly, and the metal fragment shattered, showering dozens of smaller pieces across the table.

So who says Vulcans don’t have a flair for the dramatic?Sulu thought.

“The lab theorizes an enveloping energy plasma, forcing an implosion,” Spock said.

Kirk looked expectantly toward the entire group. “Comments?”

Everyone sat in silence, staring at the rodinium shards. Sulu wondered what a weapon like that would do to the Enterprise,despite its superior screens and shields. He looked toward Stiles, who seemed to be seething with barely controlled anger. That makes sense,Sulu thought. He knew that Stiles was very knowledgeable about his family’s history, particularly where it intersected with the Earth-Romulan wars of more than a century ago. Several of Stiles’s ancestors had [211] died serving Starfleet on the front lines of those bloody conflicts, including at least one command-level officer. What Sulu had trouble understanding was why the navigator seemed to work so hard to keep those century-old wounds from healing.