“That’s the rumor,” he said. It was as close a reference to his previous posting on the Barker—and the fact that he hadn’t been transferred to Enterpriseunder the best of circumstances—as she’d ever come. He’d given her the official version, but no one—not Garrett, or Batra, or anyone else on board—knew the whole story. Halak kept his face impassive. “You have a question?”

“No,” she said, her teeth nipping at a corner of her lower lip. “Well, yes. I know you’ve told me about that Ryn mission, right before you were transferred….”

“And?” he prompted when she hesitated.

“And I know it’s not the whole truth. Don’t bother to deny it; I’m not really asking you to tell me right now. But that’s just an example.”

Halak reached a hand to the scar along his jaw: a souvenir of that particularly disastrous mission. “An example of what?”

“Of how you approach things. You tell the truth, but only to a certain point. I feel it,” she bunched a fist over her heart, “right here.”

“You have something specific in mind?”

“Yes, I do. Why are we here?” Batra tapped a nail upon their table with a tiny click. “And why didn’t you want me with you?”

Halak blew out. “Damn, but you’re persistent.”

“Yes. So answer the question.”

“All right.” Halak took a pull of his drink, liking the way it burned a track down to his stomach before spreading out along his belly like fingers of liquid fire. “I’ll tell you what. I answer your question and you answer mine. Deal?”

She hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Okay. You first.”

He put his hands on the table and laced his fingers together. “I’m here to see an old friend. Her name is Dalal. Dalal took care of me on Vendrak IV.”

“Where you were born. This was after your parents died?”

“Exactly.”

“Is she one of your relatives?”

“No. Just an old family friend. Actually, she used to work for my father.”

“As what?”

Halak shrugged. “Housekeeper, secretary, nanny…you name it. My mother died first…you know that, of course. From Denebian fever.”

“I know. But you never really talked about how that happened.”

“How does anyone get Denebian fever?” Halak put both hands around his drink but didn’t lift his glass. “Not enough food, terrible living conditions. We didn’t have it all that great, not until my father found steady work. But she got sick before he could and then she died. I was ten.”

Batra’s eyes were full of sympathy. “That’s so awful.”

Halak tried a smile that didn’t quite work. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” (Of course, he couldn’t really describe to her what it waslike to watch his mother shrivel away bit by bit. And what she said to his father when she thought Halak couldn’t hear: I’ll never see my children grow up…)

He closed down the memory. “After that, my father…he was never the same. For one thing, he just didn’t have a lot of time for me. At first, I thought it was because of my mother, but he’d never really been there. Always gone on business. A…what’s the old saying?” Halak snapped his fingers. “A fly by night. That’s it.”

Batra’s brows met in a frown. “Fly by night?”

“Yeah, it’s an old nautical expression. This big sail,” Halak held his arms apart, gestured with his hands, “and you could rig it and forget it. But what it really means is someone who’s only interested in a quick profit. That was my father. Always some scheme. Except nothing panned out, not until…” His voice trailed away.

“Until what?”

“Oh.” Halak blinked, refocused. “Until he got involved in some business…I was too young to know exactly what.”

“And then?”

“A couple of things. One, he was gone for long, long stretches of time. Longer than before, but by that time, Dalal was there and she made sure I had food, clothes on my back. She even worked at trying to get me to go to school.”

“How did she do?”

“Well,except school.” Halak sighed, finger-combed his hair. “I was a pain in the ass. Always in trouble. I started stealing. Little things at first—you know, food, I was always good at stealing food, maybe because I always felt hungry, even when I had plenty to eat.”

“I don’t think a kid forgets going hungry.”

“No, but I think I did it to get back at my father. See, he took up with another woman not long after Dalal came to live with us, and this woman moved in. I never liked her much, and not just because she wasn’t my mother. You know, she tried to get me to call her Mom, must have been a hundred times. A thousand. I never could, and looking back on it, I think she did her best to make me like her. But I didn’t. Sort of a willful type of hate, if you know what I mean. Dalal didn’t like her either, but I never knew if that wasn’t just jealousy.”

“And you weren’t? Jealous, I mean.”

Halak ran a meditative finger over his scar. “Probably, though it’s only now that I see it. Back then, I was just an angry kid whose mother was dead and whose father was gone all the time but thought this other woman might solve all my problems. Eventually she left my father. Then, when my father died, Dalal took over. I was fourteen.”

“How did your father die?”

Halak’s fingers teased a corner of his cocktail napkin. The paper tore, and he rolled it into a tight ball. “Business deal gone bad. I really don’t know the specifics.”

“With all that, I’m amazed you made it into the Academy.”

“Makes two of us. But after my parents were gone and there was just Dalal, I think I realized that I had to do something to help myself. I’m not an institutional type of guy, but I also never felt a sense of belonging to a real family, and I guess I figured Starfleet was the place where I could. Find a family, have a sense of belonging somewhere. Anyway, that’s where Dalal fits in. I figure I owe her. So, she called,” Halak put his hands out in a gesture that encompassed the café, “and I came.”

“But she was on Vendrak IV,” Batra said slowly, as if she wanted to cement the details of his story in her mind. “And now she’s on Farius Prime. That’s a long way from Vendrak IV, Samir. How did she get here? Why?”

“Why does anyone come to Farius Prime?” Halak asked rhetorically. “They come for the money. The last I heard, Dalal was on Vendrak IV. I haven’t heard from her for years, ever since I left for the Academy. And then, you know, deep space assignments and all that,” Halak spread his hands, a what-can-I-saygesture. “Time passes.”

“So why does she want to see you now?”

“I’m not sure,” Halak said, relieved that this, at least, was true. “But I owe her, Ani. Dalal put up with a hell of a lot.”

“This still doesn’t explain why you had to sneak around.”

Halak sighed. “Look, Farius Prime isn’t the nicest planet in the galaxy. I didn’t want you exposed to that. I don’t want anything to happen to you, Ani.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I’m not saying you can’t. Hell, you’re better with a phaser than I am. But that’s not the point. Farius Prime is a rough place.”

“And how would you know?”

“Know that it’s rough?” Halak hiked a shoulder. “How does anyone know anything?”

Batra gave Halak a narrow look. “Stop playing games. You’ve been here more than once, and don’t bother to deny it. I can tell: the way you handle yourself, the fact that you seem to know where you’re going. You never once asked for directions.”

He felt a little clutch of anxiety in the pit of his gut, and he became aware that his fists were clenched. He forced his fingers to unfurl. Relax, would you, she doesn’t know; none of them know.

He kept his features matter-of-fact, and opted for the truth—to a point. “Ani, I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want you to behurt. This isn’t about you handling yourself. It’s about being smart, not taking unnecessary risks. Now, whether or not I was right to keep where I was going from you, the fact is I did. On the other hand, you followed me, and I’d love to know how you managed that.”