“We’re not exactly fast, you know. And our range…”

“Let me worry about that. Besides,” Garrett plotted a course out of the system, “there are two of us. With the T’Pol,that makes three. If I were those Cardassians, I’d go for the bigger ship because I’d know there’s no way a smaller ship would get far.”

“Oh, that’s comforting. Let’s hope the Enterpriseisn’t too far away.”

Otherwise, we’re on our own.Stern didn’t say it, but Garrett thought she might as well have. It had been Garrett’s call: getting the Enterpriseout of harm’s way if the Cardassians showed up (as they just had). If Bat-Levi had followed her orders, the Enterprisehad left the system at the first sign of the Cardassian scouts. So that meant her ship would be heading for the rendezvous coordinates: seven light years away.

She glanced back over her shoulder at Jase who huddled on a chair just behind her station. “Buckle up. I want to see that restraining harness on.”

“Sure.” Jase managed a wan grin. They’d bundled Pahl into restraints on a makeshift hassock aft. It would have made Garrett feel better if Jase were with his friend; Jase would be that much closer to an environmental suit if they had to evacuate. But Jase had refused, and Garrett hadn’t the heart to press it. They’d just take their chances together. On reflection, Garrett thought that was probably the way things were meant to be.

She watched as her son reached over his shoulders with both hands, grabbed the buckles of his restraining harness, and tugged them down. “Snug it. And hang on now, okay? It might get rough.”

“Promises, promises,” Stern grumbled, shrugging into her own harness.

“If we’re lucky, they’ll go after the T’Poland leave us be.” Garrett punched up the Vulcan shuttlepod. “On my mark, Halak.”

“Ready, Captain.”

“On three, two, one. Mark!” Garrett punched up her engines. There was a perceptible jolt, the rush of a red-hued landscape, and then the blackness of space, stars.

As one, the two ships rocketed up from the planet.

The way was dark as pitch. Chen-Mai blundered along, rebounding off rock walls, the round hump of his helmet banging against stone. He might as well be blind.

He was dead. Chen-Mai felt a bubble of panic pushing at the back of his throat and his chest heaved, trying to pull in air. Or as good as dead: He’d die down here if he couldn’t find his way back. My God, but the air was so close! He ran his naked hands along the rough stone; he’d pulled off his gloves because the fingers were too padded and once the light went, he needed to have more feeling. The walls, they were closing in, he couldn’t breathe! Chen-Mai’s chest was tight, and he struggled to breathe, breathe, breathe….

Hyperventilating. He was getting dizzy. The sour taste of bile filled his mouth, and Chen-Mai doubled over, vomited until his stomach was empty and all he could do was hack dry heaves. Sagged back against stone.

Calm, he had to be calm. Chen-Mai pressed the back of his left hand against his forehead. Sweating like a pig. Hot, so hot in here, the air so close. He had half a mind to get out of this infernal suit, then maybe strip Kaldarren or Mar—yes, Mar, because Kaldarren had something wrong with him, and Chen-Mai wouldn’t touch him, wouldn’t take the chance—yes, he could strip Mar of his suit when he found the room again because he would find the room, he would.

But he might not. Chen-Mai turned his head aside and hawked up foul-tasting spit. There was more than way out of here, there had to be. So he had to keep his wits about him. But which way was out? He had a sense that he was heading down deeper, and that was wrong. That turn he’d taken a while back: He shouldn’t have done that. But he’d been certain he was circling back, to the chamber where he’d been, where that Kaldarren had tricked him….

He tripped over something—a rock lip, a stone perhaps—staggered. Pitched forward into the darkness. He managed to get his hands out in front and caught himself, but the tunnel floor was uneven and dropped a half-meter. Then the heels of his hands banged into the hard rock, and he heard something snap in his right wrist.

Chen-Mai screamed and then he screamed again. His scream bounced off the low walls and reverberated in the darkness. Rolling onto his left side, Chen-Mai cradled his shattered right wrist against his chest. He couldn’t see his wrist, wasn’t sure he wanted to, but he knew that it was broken.

Now, something else: something wet, warm on his fingertips, the fingertips of his left hand. And an odd smell, like wet metal, damp rust. Cautiously, he wormed the fingers of his left hand around his right wrist. Grazed against something sharp, and then moist fabric. Odd. Maybe he’d torn his suit and…

Bone. Chen-Mai’s eyes bulged in the darkness. The jagged ends of bone that had torn through his skin.

Chen-Mai threw his head back and howled.

At just about the same time that Talma spotted both the shuttle and shuttlepod—and before she had a chance to even wonder about why a Starfleet shuttlecraft was in the vicinity much in the less in the company of Vaavek’s shuttlepod—she also saw the Cardassians, barreling her way.

“Hunnh!” Her breath rushed out of her lungs in surprise. For a brief instant, she was absolutely frozen in place, her mind slamming on the brakes. She watched the Cardassian scouts get larger and larger, closer and closer…

She snapped out of her shock and tried to get her mind working. The Cardassians were here, now, early.But how?

Her forehead crinkled. Could it be the signal, the one Vaavek had sent, that alerted them? But no—as quickly as she had that thought, she dismissed it—the signal had come first, then the Cardassians appeared, and then…

Her eyes went round. ThenVaavek had lifted off the surface and inthe company of the shuttlecraft. Too far away for her to figure out where the shuttlecraft had come from, which ship, though she had a fair idea.

Garrett. The Enterprise.By God! Her fist slammed onto the console. But how had Garrett figured it out? When?

And no matter that: The order was wrong. She should’ve spotted it right away, but she’d let her greed get the better of her. The order was wrong.Vaavek shouldhave lifted off first thenactivated the signal. He—or Garrett—was counting on her moving out from behind the moon.

A decoy. Talma’s brown eyes slitted. Yes, that was it. Vaavek had sent the signal. He knew, somehow, that the Cardassians were there. Using that cold Vulcan calculus she’d come to appreciate, Vaavek would gamble that the scouts would either ignore the tinier shuttlepod completely, or lose it in the confusion of weapons’ fire. How he knew didn’t matter at the moment. Nothing mattered anymore except that Talma was a sitting duck. The Cardassians were faster, more maneuverable than the Vulcan warpshuttle.

Now her mind raced over her options. They were diminishingly few. It was either run, or run.

All right. Bringing the ship’s navigational computer back on-line, she barked out a command as her hands flew over the T’Pol’s weapons’ systems. All right, two could play at this game. They wanted a decoy? Talma’s lips split in a savagely triumphant smile. She’d give them a decoy.

She picked out the shuttlepod’s port nacelle, targeting manually as the computer chittered to itself in Vulcan, spitting out coordinates for taking the ship toward the neutron star. Talma listened with half an ear; her Vulcan was impeccable and she was confident the computer knew what it was doing.

She didn’t bring the weapons on-line. Not just yet. Lock on, and the shuttlepod might see, veer off. Or that shuttlecraft might warn Vaavek. Talma tracked the blip that was the Vulcan shuttlepod. One shot, she figured, then the Cardassians would be on her— unlessshe gave them something infinitelymore interesting to look at.