“Don’t kid a kidder,” Garrett muttered, saying it before that needling little voice started up again. She was no more likely to order one of her bridge officers to step outside the scope of his duties than she was to suddenly sprout a set of Andorian antennae. The plain truth was she had trouble letting go. Not allocating duties: she couldn’t captain the ship otherwise. But if there was extrawork, she did it. Great, when she was a kid and her mom had chores that needed doing. Terrible, now that she was a captain and short an officer, and couldn’t even tag ops to take over because Bat-Levi was still on psychiatric probation, and that new psychiatrist, Whatshisname, Tyvan, hadn’t given his blessing yet and…

She put both hands in the small of her complaining back and arched. “Next time, Garrett, you don’t let your first officer go on R and R when you don’t have backup. Next time, you tell that Nigel Holmes that he…”

She stopped abruptly—talking and stretching. Mercifully, her little voice decided this was one time she didn’t require commentary, or a restatement of the obvious: that Nigel Holmes—her former first officer and maybe a little more than just a friend, though she would never, everadmit that to anyone, much less herself—was dead and had been very dead for over six months now. Except her subconscious didn’t want to let him go, did it? Nosiree,she thought, forestalling that little voice. No, and we both know why, don’t we? Samir al-Halak’s your first officer now, and yes, heis away on R and R and itwas rotten timing, only you’re not sure you like Halak very much because he isn’t Nigel and can neverbe Nigel, and so you let him go even when you shouldn’t have, and that’s because you can’t let Nigel alone, can you? That’s why you’ve tightened up around the ship, not trusting the crew to pitch in when you need the help, right?Right ?

“Wrong,” she said, out loud. “Wrong, wrong, you are sowrong.”

Blinking, she tried focusing on the pulsing red letters that made up the duty roster—stellar magnetometry, this time around, a chuckle a minute—and failed, miserably, because the letters wavered and refused to coalesce into anything recognizable and thatwas because she was ready to burst into tears.

I don’t have time for this.She pushed up from her desk. You idiot, you don’t have time for this. Coffee, go get yourself some coffee.

Trying very hard not to think, she crossed to a small cabinet below her replicator, stooped and pulled out a grinder, her stash of beans. She popped the vacuum lid and inhaled, gratefully. Nothing like the aroma of fresh coffee beans, and nothing like a good cup of fresh-brewed coffee. Garrett didn’t trust the mess chef (nothing against the man; she didn’t trust anyone to brew a cup just the way she liked it—that damned problem letting go again), and she couldn’t stand replicator coffee. Replicator brew tasted…well, artificial. Like burnt plastic.

The grinder was whirring so loudly she almost didn’t hear the hail shrilling from her companel. Just a cup of coffee—she crossed back to her desk and killed the hail with a vicious jab at her comswitch—just one lousy cup of coffee in peace and quiet, that’s all she was asking, and why couldn’t they leave her alone? “Yes?”

There was an instant’s startled silence, and Garrett had time to reflect that she sounded as if she might just order a full spread of photon torpedoes if whoever was calling uttered one moreword. Then a reedy voice sounded through the speaker. “Uhm…ah…call for you, Captain.”

Great. Garrett blew out, exasperated. Super. Bite off the man’s head, why don’t you? Clear the decks, folks, the captain’s on a rampage. Lieutenant Darco Bulast was a fine communications officer, and however angry she was at herself for the weird twists and turns her mind was taking this evening, or this morning, or whatever the hell time it was, beating up on the rotund little Atrean wasn’t fair, or very captainlike, for that matter. “Thank you, Mr. Bulast. From whom?”

Bulast told her, and then there was another moment’s silence, only this time it was because Garrett’s emotions, now a mix of apprehension and sudden remorse, were doing roller-coaster somersaults and double loop-de-loops for good measure. And this time the only voice inside her head was pure Rachel Garrett: Oh my God, it’s Ven, and I forgot again, oh, that’s just great, that isjuuusssst perfect….

There’d be hell to pay, no way she could duck it, and could things get any worse? Could they? Sure, probably, why not, this was her lucky day, right? Quickly, she glanced at her reflection in her blanked desk monitor, and squinted. She didn’t like what she saw. Her complexion was pale, as were her lips. Purple shadows brushed the hollows beneath her walnut-brown eyes, and her auburn hair, usually so neat and smooth it looked held in place with electrostatic charge, was in disarray courtesy of her restless fingers pulling, prodding, twirling as she’d perused the duty rosters and other effluvia normally reserved for officers other than captains. Plainly put, she looked as if she’d been stranded on a planetoid for a month with a canteen, a week’s worth of survival rations, no blanket, and nothing to read. And then, in the very next instant, she figured to hell with how she looked; she doubted her looks had much to do with how Ven Kaldarren felt about her these days anyway. She said, “I’ll take it in here, Mr. Bulast, thank you.”

“No problem, Captain,” said Bulast, and Garrett heard the relief. “But I…”

“Yes, Mr. Bulast?”

“Well, it’s the signal, Captain. It’s not on a priority channel and it’s not scrambled. But it’s not registered either.”

“You mean that you can’t tell which ship it’s coming from?”

“That’s right. It’s as if, well, I guess you could say that whoever’s making the call wants a certain degree of anonymity.”

“I see.” Unregistered ships weren’t unheard of, and certainly not registering a ship that wasn’t under Federation jurisdiction wasn’t a crime. She dredged up what Kaldarren had told her about the xenoarcheological expedition he’d signed up for. Precious little: they weren’t talking much these days, even less now that the custody battle for Jason was behind them. Then she gave up the exercise as pointless. Kaldarren could do what he wanted, whenever he wanted. That was a reason they’d divorced, right?

“Thanks for the information, Mr. Bulast. I’ll follow up on it. Now put the call through, please.”

“Aye, Captain,” and then her companel winked to life, revealing the unsmiling face of her ex-husband. And, damn it, the sight of him still took her breath away. She was used to thinking of Betazoid men as being almost androgynous: slender, dark-eyed, smooth-skinned. Ven was unapologetically different. Always had been, and probably that was the attraction. They’d met in 2316, a year after Garrett’s graduation from the academy. By then, she was a lieutenant and posted aboard the Argos.Ven was part of a Betazoid delegation of xenoarchaeologists the Argoshad transported to a Federation Archaeology Council symposium on Rigel III. Ven had hulked above the other Betazoids. Standing at a hair under two meters, Ven was broad in the shoulders and muscular; unlike his comrades, he wore his black wavy hair long, and his Betazoid eyes were full and slightly hooded, fringed with a lush set of black lashes. Bedroom eyes: That was the term, and then-Lieutenant Garrett’s first thought.

Lust at first sight,Garrett thought now. A long time ago, before things went south.They’d divorced in 2333, a year after she’d taken command of the Enterprise.

“How are you, Ven?” she asked. Garrett felt the unpleasant jolt in the pit of her stomach she always did when they spoke, as if she expected a reprimand by a superior officer. So different from those first few years, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Now she and Kaldarren couldn’t stand to be on separate monitors in different rooms several dozen light-years apart.