“Yes, it does look impressive,” Harriman said.

“I’d love to see what Starfleet Tactical’s come up with,” Buonarroti told the captain. He had voiced such desires before, during Enterprise’s runs to the other outposts. He understood that times of military necessity often resulted inimpressive leaps of technological progress, and as an engineer—as with other engineers he knew, and perhaps allengineers everywhere—he enjoyed getting his hands on whatever advanced equipment he could. That had been one of the primary reasons he had joined Starfleet: on a starship, the opportunities to work on different technologies were numerous—from life-support and environmental control, to warp and impulse engines, to weapons and defensive systems, to sensors and scientific equipment. For him, Enterpriseessentially constituted an enormous playground.

“Sorry, Rafe,” Harriman said. “You know how careful Command is being these days.” As always happened during periods of interstellar tensions, suspicions had been raised about the possibility of Romulan operatives having infiltrated not only the Federation, but Starfleet as well. Such occurrences, Buonarroti knew, were not without precedent. The most notorious episode of Romulan espionage had occurred just three years ago at the Antares Advanced Design Laboratories, where Starfleet worked to develop, among other things, means of penetrating the latest cloaking technology; a woman who’d been working there for several years had been unmasked as an Empire spy. And Buonarroti knew that Starfleet had conducted its own covert operations in Romulan space; at least as far back as forty years ago, another Enterprisehad violated the Neutral Zone and two Starfleet officers—Captain James T. Kirk and Commander Spock, if Buonarroti remembered his history correctly—had purloined a cloaking device, an incident that had sparked the conflicting consequences of increasing friction between the two powers, and at the same time averting war because of the technological parity engendered by the theft.

“I understand Starfleet’s concerns, Captain,” Buonarroti said. But before he could say more, two short electronic tones interrupted him, followed by Commander Sulu’s voice on the ship’s intercom.

“Bridge to Captain Harriman,”she said.

Harriman touched a control on the console, opening the channel. “This is Harriman,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“We’ve arrived at the outpost along with theAgamemnon,” Sulu said. Buonarroti glanced down at the monitor and saw that Enterprisenow orbited Foxtrot XIII. “Both Commander Sasine and Captain Rodriguez have signaled that they’re ready to begin.”Buonarroti looked up at the captain, but Harriman gave no indication of anything but professionalism. Still, Buonarroti assumed that the captain’s heart must have begun to beat a bit faster at the mention of Sasine’s name; the two had been romantically involved for eight years now. Sasine had served for a brief tour of duty aboard Enterprise,but she and Harriman hadn’t become a couple during that time. She’d left the ship after less than a year as second officer to take on the position of exec aboard New York,and from there she’d moved on to commanding various starbases and outposts. After her time on Enterprise,she and the captain had met again at a Starfleet briefing on Romulan activity, and they’d been together ever since, although usually across many light-years.

“Acknowledged,” Harriman said evenly. “Lower the shields, Demora, and inform Amina and Esteban”—Commander Sasine and Captain Rodriguez, Buonarroti knew—“that we’ll commence transporting down the matériel immediately.”

“Yes, sir,”came Sulu’s brisk reply.

“Harriman out.” The channel closed with a brief tone, and then the captain said, “Let’s get going, Rafe. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

“Sir, are you sure you don’t want me to assign somebody else to this duty?” Buonarroti asked. He’d made the same suggestion during Enterprise’s stops at each of the other Foxtrot outposts, but the captain had always insisted on taking on the task himself, and he did so again now.

Harriman bent and retrieved a meter-long device covered on one long side with grappling pads, and with a cylindrical handle at each end: an antigrav unit. Buonarroti stooped and picked up his own antigrav, then followed the captain to the nearest cargo container. The two men would use the antigravs to move each of the containers onto the transporter pad so that they could then be beamed down to the outpost. It would not be backbreaking work, but it did require an effort to maneuver the massive containers without allowing them to drift into a bulkhead. There were also a lot of containers, and it would likely take the two officers more than six hours to complete the task. Having already completed a full day shift, Buonarroti knew that he would be exhausted when they had finished in the hold. Still, he felt privileged to have been selected by the captain for the task. Because of the sensitive nature of this mission, Harriman obviously felt most comfortable doing it himself, and other than the three officers at the top of Enterprise’s chain of command—Captain Harriman, Commander Sulu, and Lieutenant Commander Linojj—Buonarroti carried the highest security clearance on the ship; coupling that with his transporter expertise, the captain had clearly believed him to be best suited to assist.

At first, the two men worked in relative silence, the only sounds the slightly metallic clanks of their footfalls on the decking, the low hum of the antigravs, and the treble whine of the transporter. Having been through this process twelve times previously, Buonarroti and Harriman set to the job with a clear sense of the effort needed, along with a grim seriousness that naturally accompanied preparing for war. For his part, Buonarroti simply wanted to get past this duty, not just here at Foxtrot XIII, but at all of the outposts. The entire crew of Enterpriseno doubt felt the same, he thought, and then realized that the captain must actually have looked forward to arriving at Foxtrot XIII.

“We’re making good time,” Buonarroti said as he and Harriman settled an enormous cubic container, more than four meters on a side, onto the transporter pad.

“We are,” Harriman said, deactivating his antigrav with a tap to its control pad. “We must be getting good at this.”

“Maybe we can sign on as stevedores on a merchant ship if our Starfleet careers don’t work out,” Buonarroti said with a chuckle.

“Some days, Rafe,” Harriman said, “that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”

Buonarroti deactivated his antigrav, pulled it from the surface of the container, and then walked with the captain back over to the console. He rechecked the settings for about the hundredth time, triggered the sequence, then slid the three activator controls up the lengths of their channels. The high-pitched quaver of the transporter filled the hold, and then the container shimmered out of its existence on Enterprise.

As the two men made their way to the next container, Buonarroti said, “I think I know another reason why at least one of us is moving so quickly.”

“Oh?” Harriman said without looking up, instead simply reenergizing his antigrav and setting it against one surface of a dodecahedral container that reached to just above their heads.

“You’ve got a date tonight, don’t you?” Buonarroti asked, smiling.

Now Harriman glanced up, and Buonarroti was pleased to see a grin creep onto the captain’s face. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I do.”

“Well, say hello to the commander for me,” Buonarroti said. He switched his antigrav back on and attached it to the container.

“Somehow, Rafe,” Harriman told him, “I don’t think your name’s going to come up tonight.”

Buonarroti laughed, a hearty guffaw that echoed loudly through the hold. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose it will.”