Even if Vokar believed Harriman—which he didn’t—the notion of Federation doctors performing experimental techniques on his brain repulsed him, as did the idea of living the rest of his life in captivity. As he had been trained to do, Vokar would die with his vessel. But he also knew Starfleet, and he understood that Harriman offered this choice to Vokar not for all four of them, but only for himself; Harriman would allow the others to make their own choices.

“Captain,” the man with the bandaged hand called. “Thirty minutes.”

“That’s it,” Harriman said, looking at each of the four Romulans. “You need to make your decisions now, all of you. Are you coming with us, or are you staying here?”

Vokar waited. Valin spoke up first. “I…I’ll go with you,” he said quietly.

“I will too,” T’Sil said. Vokar felt nothing but disgust for the young officers.

“I’m staying,” Akeev declared, defiance apparently overcoming his fear. Vokar nodded his head in approval.

“Admiral?” Harriman asked.

“We’ll all go,” Vokar said. “Including Akeev.”

“Sir?” Akeev asked, his voice rising in obvious surprise.

“We’ll all go,” Vokar repeated.

“All right,” Harriman said, then called back over his shoulder, “Lieutenant.” The man in the ersatz Romulan uniform appeared again from around the bow of the shuttle and approached the group. Vokar saw that he now held only a disruptor in his unbandaged band. “We’re going to have four more passengers,” Harriman told him.

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said. He circled the group at a wide remove until he’d gotten behind them.

“Everybody up,” Harriman said, gesturing with his own disruptor. “Slowly.” Vokar and the others all rose to their feet. “Now, one at a time, I want you to walk toward the shuttle.”

Vokar peered over at Valin, ordering him without a word to go first. The sublieutenant stepped forward and started toward Harriman. Vokar waited for only a moment, and then he moved. He brought his hands up in their restraints as he rushed over to T’Sil, bringing them down around her head. “Akeev,” he yelled, hoping the science officer would understand his duty. Vokar twisted with all of his might, and heard with satisfaction the fracturing of T’Sil’s neck. He turned then, toward Valin, and saw the sublieutenant falling to the deck from Akeev’s grasp. A flash of intense blue light streaked across the shuttle compartment, and Akeev crumpled where he stood. Beyond him, Harriman stood with his disruptor aimed. Vokar took a step toward him, and Harriman fired.

His last thought consisted of a single word directed at the Starfleet captain: Die!

In the aft portion of the shuttle cabin, Gravenor executed the test sequence for the third time. Before her, the cloaking device she had removed from Tomedsat on the deck between the two equipment columns. Fiber-optic lines ran in jumbles from numerous junction nodes on the device over to the exposed circuitry of the shuttle. She confirmed the operation of the cloak, its connections to the deflector interface, and the rate of the power drain.

Finished with her testing, Gravenor turned toward the front of the cabin, to where Lieutenant Vaughn sat at one of the forward stations. She saw the sling he wore and wondered again just what he had been through here. He had reported killing a Romulan officer whom he’d believed had come to the shuttlebay to transmit a message about the commandeering of Tomed.But the spatters and smears of red and green blood on the deck, the lifeless body of a subcommander, and Vaughn’s own injuries had all testified to the ferocity of the battle that had taken place, something the lieutenant had not mentioned. That omission, as well as his reluctance to provide details of the encounter, troubled Gravenor. Of more concern to her, though, was Vaughn’s manner in the hours since the incident. He continued to behave and act professionally, but where he had always been open and communicative, he now seemed reserved, almost closed off. Gravenor had initially suspected the lieutenant to be suffering a post-traumatic reaction to his experience, but she now suspected that there might be larger matters at issue.

With a few minutes before they needed to launch, Gravenor stood up and walked to the front of the shuttle. “How are you doing, Elias?” she asked as she took a seat beside him. She rarely used his first name, and she did so now as an indication of her concern for him.

“I’m fine, Commander,” Vaughn said, looking up from the console for just a moment. “Thank you.” Although polite, the response promised no elucidation.

“Are you in much pain?” she persisted. Vaughn had initially treated himself with a Romulan medkit he’d found in the shuttle, but Harriman had later tended more carefully to his injuries. The captain had also provided him with medication for his pain, but the analgesic hadn’t been able to mask it completely.

“There’s some pain,” Vaughn admitted, now keeping his focus on the panel, “but I’m getting through it.”

“Good,” Gravenor replied. She wanted to say more, wanted to help her colleague deal with the issues affecting him right now, but she also knew that there would be a better time than this to do so. Instead, she glanced down at the chronometer on the console. In just thirteen minutes, she saw, the shuttle would have to launch. “What’s Captain Harriman’s location?” she asked Vaughn.

The lieutenant worked his controls, and then said, “He just arrived at the brig.”

After Harriman had stunned Admiral Vokar and the other Romulan—Akeev?—he’d wanted to load them back onto the antigrav stretchers so that he could take them to the brig. Gravenor had considered the decision an overly cautious one, since the two Romulans would not regain consciousness prior to Tomed’s destruction. But the captain had insisted, and Gravenor had realized that he’d had a reason other than caution: justice. The two Romulan officers had murdered their own crewmates, and Harriman had wanted to see them spend the last moments of their lives paying for those crimes—and in Vokar’s case, she was sure, for other crimes as well. It might have been only a gesture, but she believed it to be an important one, and she respected Captain Harriman for making it.

She thought about trying to discuss the matter with Lieutenant Vaughn, but decided instead to allow him the solitude he seemed to need right now. “I’m going to run one more test sequence,” she said as she stood from her chair.

“Understood, Commander,” Vaughn said simply.

Gravenor returned to the rear of the cabin and attempted to pinpoint once more just what the chances were of the special ops team ever seeing the Federation again.

Harriman watched as the stimulant he’d administered took effect. Vokar’s eyes blinked open, and he lifted his head from the antigrav stretcher and peered around the small cell. When he spotted Harriman standing outside the doorway, he froze, and then said, “So, are we to die together?”

Harriman said nothing. On his way here with his two prisoners, he’d thought of many things to say, but he realized now the pointlessness of whatever words he might utter. Vokar had lived a life devoted to beliefs and actions impossible for Harriman to justify rationally, and nothing he or Vokar might say now could change that.

Vokar rose from the stretcher and paced toward the doorway. “No, I guess we’re not going to die together,” he said, “because you’re going to run away before that, aren’t you?” Harriman maintained his silence. “You’ve set your plan in motion, and you’re going to slink away before it’s done. And no doubt you’ll cast the blame my way for all the deaths you’ll cause, all in the name of the survival of the glorious Federation.” Vokar stopped about a half-meter from the forcefield that sealed the cell.

“Actually,” Harriman said, “you arethe cause of these events.”