And where was Albatrossduring all of this? She had come to station-keeping just within transporter range of Okinawa,her situation precarious in all senses. She couldn’t outrun a warbird, and even if she tried, it would only set the warbird in pursuit and Okinawaafter her, and what a mess that would be. She couldn’t hail out and Okinawacouldn’t hail her without the Romulans hearing and knowing for a certainty that she was allied with Okinawa.

But Tuvok could monitor whatever conversations went on between the two larger ships, and he was doing that now.

Sisko, meanwhile, was getting itchy. Albatrosscouldn’t budge until the two larger ships had finished their business, and whatever had set off the alarm was not reading on his instrument panel; he’d have to check it out onsite.

“I’ll be in the engine room,” he announced, never more glad to get out of the center seat, and headed aft.

“I thought so!” he said ruefully, seeing the readout from the port nacelle. The phaser blast had winged her, and all those subsequent fancy maneuvers had only made the damage worse. Hairline fractures spidered out from a ruptured conduit that leaked coolant ominously. Left alone, it would eventually go critical. Sisko was confident he could patch her up well enough to get her home, but first he’d have to let her cool down.

“Steady as she goes, old girl!” Sisko comforted her, shutting down the portside matter/antimatter pod and watching the temperature monitor begin to drop back within normal parameters. An hour or so from now, he could begin to make repairs. If they were still here an hour from now.

He took his time walking back to the controls, stopped to look at the magnificent ruse of the storage containers lined up monolithically along the narrow passageway. The holo transmitter was hidden away in one of them. Only the main lab module was open and active, and Selar and Zetha were at work there, their heads together, deep in concentration on…something.

Sisko almost approached them; he wanted to ask Selar about the results of the blood tests. But he wasn’t sure he could face Zetha right now. Besides, he’d felt a lot better since they’d returned to the ship; the mysterious cough was gone. If he did have Catalyst, he didn’t want to know until he absolutely had to.

“Tell me that freighter isn’t yours, Captain Leyton, and you wouldn’t mind my destroying it,” Tal challenged. Dax took it as a hopeful sign that the Romulan was opting to talk.

“I could never sanction the destruction of a civilian vessel….” Leyton began, but Dax decided it was time to intervene.

“May I?” Dax interjected and, without waiting for an answer, somehow deftly diverted attention to himself. “Admiral Tal, I am Ambassador Curzon Dax. The freighter isours,” he said, eyes on the forward screen, grateful he couldn’t see the look on Leyton’s face. “Sent as a scout to investigate reports of Romulan transmitters on Renaga, just as your government sent a similar vessel to Imago IX some months ago to see if we had established a footprint there. Your scout found nothing, ours has found something.”

He let that sink in for a fraction of a second.

“Now, then, we both know there’s something on Renaga we are both interested in, the very reason you sent infiltrators, and that something is hilopon…”

Tal seemed to hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.”

“Let’s not waste time then, Admiral. The Empire wants hilopon;the Federation wants hilopon.There are currently no official communications between our governments, but you and I can initiate contact with the Renagans and work out a solution that will enable us both to obtain what we want without involving our respective bureaucracies.”

Tal’s eyes narrowed. Finally, he said, “Agreed.”

“Excellent!” Dax smiled benevolently. “Then we can beam down together. But first, a tradeoff. If we say we never detected your transmitters, you overlook our little freighter.”

“I need to consult with one of my…aides…” Tal said, his eyes sliding to something or someone off screen.

“Of course,” Dax said, and both sides muted comm while they consulted.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Sisko said, returning to the conn in time to hear some of this exchange. “The Old Man comes through again. We may get out of this alive after all.”

“Hilopon?”Tal demanded of Koval.

“An absolutely essential medicinal,” Koval assured him. “You’ve heard rumors of a resurgence of the Gnawing on some of the colony worlds?”

Tal wondered how much Koval knew he knew. “Perhaps.”

“Our scientists have reason to believe hiloponcould be the cure,” Koval said evenly. He watched a momentary doubt cross Tal’s hawklike face. “Or did you really think we came all this way because of a couple of transmitters? Be careful what you do here, Admiral. Diplomacy is not for amateurs.”

A lesser man would have lost his temper. Tal almost did. But unless he could make the Tal Shiar operative’s death look like an accident, his crew would be forfeit. The thought stayed him. It was the only thing that could.

On Okinawa,Captain Leyton was scowling at Curzon.

“What in blazes is hiloponand why do we want it?”

“Bacteria. Occurs naturally in the soil here. May have some use as a topical medication,” Curzon said, his back to the screen so he couldn’t be lip-read. “We want it because the Romulans want it. It’s called diplomacy.”

Admiral Tal had made up his mind.

“There will be no mention of an alien freighter in my logs, Curzon Dax. And if I make no mention of a freighter, neither will any member of my crew,” he said for Koval’s benefit. “I’m sure you’ll agree that what you thought were Romulan transmissions were really only artifacts. Natural occurrences prevalent in this region of space.”

“Agreed!” Curzon smiled. “Isn’t it fortuitous that we both arrived here on the wings of rumor? Shall we discuss when and how we shall make contact with the Renagans?”

Albatrosswas too bulky to fit through the shuttlebay doors, so Okinawatook her in tow.

“Tell your crew to gather their personal belongings and prepare to beam aboard, Ben,” Leyton told him. “That damaged engine isn’t going to hold for long.”

“But, sir, she’s not—” Sisko started to say, before he realized that of course the Romulans would be listening in. “I mean, yessir, we’re on our way.”

It only now occurred to him that there was no way they could bring the ship home with them. Okinawacould hardly tow her all the way home, and even under full power, it would take her far too long to limp out of the Zone in her present condition, unarmed, and with the Romulans now alerted to her presence. The contingency plans they’d had in place to protect Heisenberg’s little modifications from prying eyes would have to be enacted, and Sisko would have to be the one to enact them.

“Dr. Heisenberg’s going to be heartbroken,” Sisko said disconsolately, closing the channel.

“Are you in need of assistance?” Tuvok asked. His carry-bag slung over one shoulder, the orchid balanced precariously atop the case of datachips, he was prepared to leave without so much as a glance backward.

“Negative,” Sisko said as Selar and Zetha also arrived, ready for transport. “You all go on ahead. I need to initiate an antimatter breach. And I’d like a minute alone to tell the old girl goodbye.”

He watched first Selar and Zetha, then Tuvok shimmer away in the transporter beam, then went aft to work his magic. When the ship blew, it had to look from the Romulan point of view as if it were an accident. He had no doubt they realized they’d damaged the port nacelle. All he had to do was make them think the damage was enough to cause the antimatter pods to lose their magnetic containment, causing the antimatter to release, interact with the normal matter, and annihilate the vessel structure.