“Sure,” said Jase, still staring into his hands.

Garrett waited a beat. “Where are you all headed, by the way? I forgot to ask your father.”

Jase shook his head. “I don’t know. Dad didn’t say. We’re just,” he made a helpless-looking gesture with his hands, “on a ship.”

“Are there other scientists on board?”

Jason nodded. “Yeah, one other, and the pilot. He’s Naxeran. And another kid. His name’s Pahl. He’s Naxeran, too.”

“Oh,” said Garrett. “Well, that’s good. I mean you’ll have someone to talk to.”

“Yeah,” said Jase, without much conviction. “It would be okay if we stayed home, though.”

Home, as in Betazed, Garrett translated silently. Betazed was home for Jase. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d visited her family on Earth. That was okay, though; she didn’t much enjoy seeing her family either.

“Are you getting tired of going off with your dad?”

“Only a little.” Jase looked wary. “Why?”

“How many expeditions does this make this year?”

“This is only the third.” That same defensive tone again. “It’s not so bad.”

Garrett let it go. She didn’t have a better alternative anyway, though maybe she ought to talk to Kaldarren about not agreeing to so many trips. Uprooting Jase and traipsing across the galaxy at every turn couldn’t be any better for him than following her to every starbase. In fact, when she thought about it, Kaldarren’s dragging Jase with him wherever he went wasn’t all that much different from packing a family aboard a starship—not that anyone did that, of course. Whether you were on a starship or a science transport, space was dangerous.

“Okay,” she said. She paused, at a loss to know what to say next. “Did you get some nice things for your birthday?”

Jase’s face lit up. “Yeah. I got this really cool easel and some new paints from Dad and Nan. You should see…”

Garrett listened as her son rattled on about his painting, and she felt a tug at her heart. Jase was so sensitive, she knew. He was more like his father. Kaldarren’s work was xenoarchaeology, but what he loved was art. Jase had the same soul, the same ability to appreciate and create beauty, and these were abilities she lacked. Oh, she liked art, all right. But make something? Hell—Garrett almost shook her head—she’d been working on the same piece of bargello embroidery for the past three years.

“I’d like to see your work,” she said, when Jase paused for breath. Her keen eyes picked up how much color there was in his cheeks, how his eyes sparkled with excitement.

Oh, my son, you’re going to be an artist someday, I can feel it, and one day when you’re grown and not my little boy anymore, you’ll have your first show and I’ll be there. I promise.

The shrill edge of a hail sliced into her thoughts. “Wait, Jase,” she said. Muting the audio so Jase couldn’t hear, she punched up another channel. “Yes, Mr. Bulast?”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” said Bulast, still sounding a little shell-shocked, “but you asked to be notified when astrocartography wanted to steal some power from the deflector array for their long-range mapping, and it would have gone all right, but engineering’s having fits because of some problems with circuit overloads and…”

Yet another thing a first officer would have attended to. Garrett suppressed a sigh. “All right, thank you. Give me a minute, Mr. Bulast. Tell engineering I’ll be right down.”

“Aye, Captain.” Bulast signed off.

“You have to go,” said Jase, when she’d turned back and switched on the audio.

Garrett nodded. “I’m sorry, Jase. There’s something I have to take care of down in engineering. Honestly, they’re like kids, and they need me to…” She heard what she was doing, stopped herself. “I’m sorry, Jase. I just…I have to go.”

Jase’s eyes were solemn. They looked very black and much too large for his face. “Okay. When will I see you, Mom?”

“Soon. I don’t know when,” she said, truthfully. “Soon, I hope. When you and Dad get back.”

“Okay.”

“Can I speak with your father?”

“I…” Jase’s eyes flicked to somewhere off-screen, and then it came to Garrett that Kaldarren must be there, just out of sight. Then Jase looked back at her. “He’s busy right now.” Jase’s hand moved forward to break the connection. “Bye, Mom.”

“Bye-bye, sweetie.” Then she had a thought. “Jase, wait…” But she was too late. Her companel winked, and went black.

Damn.Garrett stared at the empty screen. How bad had this day been? Let me count the ways.No first officer on board; duty rosters out the wazoo; a justifiably pissed-off ex-husband; her son and his father headed off for God-knows-where; and a headache that was leaking out of her ears.

Enough.The light was too damned bright, and she’d had enough badness for one day. She just wanted to be alone, a couple of minutes. Just. Alone.

“Lights, out,” she said. And then Garrett sat, alone, in the dark.

Chapter 5

She hated being in the dark, in every sense of the word.

Batra and Halak arrived in the Kohol District well after the sun had slid behind blocky monoliths of apartments and tenement complexes. Most of the alleys were already dark—the better to hide the filth—and they moved in and out of slices of thick shadow and fading sunlight. The air was chilly, perhaps because the buildings were tall and blocked out what little sun might have warmed the streets and alleys, and smelled very bad. Instead of the scent of mint tea and spiced kabobs of the bazaar Batra caught the fetid odor of human waste, boiled garbage, and something else. Cautiously, she sniffed, cringed. Copper, or iron. And a rotted, sickly-sweet smell she associated with gangrene. The smell was strong enough to leave a taste, and she turned aside and spat.

The sounds were different here. If the bazaar swirled with life, the ghetto teemed with shadows: people rustling in and out of doorways, their backs hunched, their shawls or cloaks drawn up to hide their faces. She listened, hard, but she heard very little conversation. A few whispered exchanges, the slithering of bodies sliding along walls, the slip of footsteps against slick stone. The walkways were cluttered with mounds of things that looked like clothes, though Batra didn’t trust herself to take a closer look. Although Halak still had her by the hand, she picked her way through green muck and skirted gray pools of water. Her open-toed sandals squelched through gluey mounds of water-logged paper— paper, they still use paper here—and she winced, her teeth showing in a grimace, as she felt something wet and sticky ooze between her toes.

“Are you all right?” Halak asked, sparing her a quick glance that bounced away to scan the area immediately around them.

“Sure,” she said, giving his hand a little squeeze. “It’s just…I didn’t expect it to be this bad. You’re sure she lives here?”

“Gemini Street. A few more blocks, I think, and then to the left.”

“Any idea why?”

“Why she lives here? I’m not sure. Last thing I heard, she was living on the south side of town, near the bazaar. I didn’t realize she’d moved until that message of hers. It doesn’t make any sense. She knew she could contact me if she needed help.” He sounded worried. “I can’t imagine she lives here because she likes it.”

Batra had opened her mouth to reply when a low rumble shook the ground and panes of glass set in windows rattled. The ground twitched beneath her feet, and she saw ripples dance in a pool of gray water in the center of a pitted, rubble-strewn road that she was sure no vehicle had used in years. Then she heard the muted roar of an engine, and understood.