If it could ever be over and done with.

“Phlox!”Archer again, just outside the chamber.

“I’m so sorry, Captain,”Phlox was saying in tones that dripped with grief. “He’s gone.”

A pause. Then Phlox spoke again: “Computer, record that death occurred at nineteen hundred and thirty‑three hours, fourteen February, 2155.”

Feeling unaccountably calmed by the knowledge that the deed had finally been done, Trip opened his eyes. He looked up again at his reflection, which looked bizarre and funhouse‑distorted in the curved, too‑close metal ceiling of the chamber. He could see that the Denobulan physician had certainly managed to make him look gruesome, in spite of the haste with which he’d had to work. A large, livid burn snaked down his neck, and a profusion of other wounds and smudges covered both his flesh and his torn uniform.

So this is what it’s like to be dead,he thought, really trying on the idea for the first time. Funny. Doesn’t hurt quite as much as I thought it would.

Or maybe it hurt far worse; after all, he’d always assumed that dead people couldn’t feel pain, or anything else for that matter.

A ratcheting noise near his feet interrupted his reverie. The chamber door opened and sickbay’s bright lighting flooded into the relative darkness inside the tube. He shut his eyes quickly, and felt the pallet on which he lay slowly move out of the chamber. He held his breath, pretending to be dead, just incase someone other than Phlox, Malcolm, or the captain happened to be present. He wondered how long he could pull it off.

The pallet’s movement stopped.

“It’s all right to breathe now, Commander Tucker,” he heard Phlox say. “Everyone here knows the truth.”

Trip brought his hand up to shield his eyes from sickbay’s bright overhead lights, and moved to sit up. He felt someone place a hand behind his back, and knew it was Malcolm, just from the slight smell of his aftershave.

His eyes adjusting as he blinked, Trip saw that Archer was pacing in front of him. Malcolm was standing next to the table as Trip swung his legs down to stand on the deck.

Phlox put one hand on Trip’s shoulder, turning the engineer toward him. “This will hurt a little bit,” he said, reaching for the horrible fake burn at the side of Trip’s neck. He pulled it off, along with what felt like a few layers of skin.

Trip winced. “Did everything go okay?” he asked, looking over to Archer and Reed as he rubbed the sore spot. Glancing toward sickbay’s entryway, he saw that Phlox had stretched a white privacy curtain across the transparent aluminum doors that separated the ship’s infirmary from the rest of E deck.

Archer sighed. “As well as can be expected. I have a monster headache, but we’ll take care of that shortly.” He rubbed the spot on the side of his head where one of the “pirates” had clubbed him.

“We’ve got to get you off the ship now,” Malcolm said. “ Enterpriseis going to pursue the pirate ship any moment. I’ve taken measures to make sure that we don’t quite catch them.”

Phlox held up a pile of garments. “Get into these, Commander, quickly. Where you’re going, you won’t want to have any trace of Starfleet on your person. And we’ll need your uniform for the…burial.”

Trip undressed quickly. “Try to make sure there aren’t too many broken hearts, please?”

Malcolm managed a slight smile, but Trip could see that there was little humor behind it. “Actually, there will probably be widespread relief among the crew, especially in engineering. They’ve always said you were a tyrant.”

“I’ll do my best, Trip,” Archer said. “I’ll contact your family personally.”

Trip was soon dressed again, in a nondescript utilitarian brown jumpsuit.

“The materials I pumped into you while we were trying to ‘save your life’ were actually several wide‑spectrum inoculants,” Phlox said, handing him an enzyme‑infused medical wipe to clean the burn smudges away. “It’s unlikely you would have ever before encountered the pathogens they protect against, but you’re venturing into unknown territory now. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Trip turned to Phlox. “Thanks, Doc. For everything.”

Phlox nodded, his eyes almost as grief‑filled as though Trip had actually died.

Trip moved over to Malcolm, taking a device that his friend offered. “ Thisis how they’re going to lock onto you,” Malcolm said. “And it contains the onlycodes you’ll be able to use to communicate with us, if you need to. Wipe them as soon as you have them memorized.”

Trip put one hand on Malcolm’s shoulder, and stuck his other hand out. They shook hands, looking into one another’s eyes.

“Thank you, Malcolm. I’m sorry you won’t be with me on this mission.”

Malcolm smiled grimly again. “Just remember the first rule of being a spy: Don’t fall for the girl. They’re alwaysworking for the bad guy.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Trip said, turning toward Archer. He held out his hand again, but was surprised when the captain pulled him into a bear hug instead.

“I’ve known you too long,” Archer said. “You come back to my ship. That’s an order.”

“I will,” Trip said. “You just make sure you do yourpart to save the galaxy while I’m gone.” He felt his eyes watering, and pulled back from the embrace.

Trip stepped to the center of the room and depressed a button on the device Malcolm had given him.

“It’s been a pleasure and an honor serving with you all,” he said. “This isn’t a good‑bye, though. Just a ‘see you later.’”

Even as the words were still leaving his lips, he felt the unnerving tug of the transporter, and the eerie sensation of momentary freefall that accompanied it.

Like a Valkyrie, the beam carried him off to his next life.

It had been three hours since Trip had materialized aboard the “pirate” ship, where he had finally met the men who had been paid to “raid” Enterprise.

Wungki was the captain’s name, and he was scarcely any friendlier now than he’d been in the corridors of E deck, where he had played the role of the head “pirate.” He hadapologized, however, for having been so rough on Captain Archer. Captain Wungki’s crew of eight consisted entirely of mercenaries, all of whom seemed willing to work for just about anyone capable of paying them.

That meant that they tended not to ask questions, and therefore were likely to be counted on to be discreet. “You’re not the first person whose death we’ve helped fake,” Wungki had said with an ugly smile, immediately after Trip’s arrival on his ship. “There was a Betazoid man once, whom we helped ‘kidnap’ from his own wedding. Actually, it was a rescue.” He snorted. “That was a tough assignment, given those people’s empathic talents. And the fact that everybody there was naked really distracted my men.”

Trip nodded as though he knew what Wungki was talking about. He assumed the Betazoids were some race he’d not yet encountered, though he had no idea why they would be naked at a wedding, nor whether or not he would find a nude Betazoid wedding party distracting.

Wungki’s crew had avoided capture by Enterprisethrough a sort of bait‑and‑switch operation. They had apparently been carrying a smaller, decommissioned vessel in their cargo hold, which they set to self‑destruct via a remote signal, and then released into space. They had then landed their primary vessel in a large crater in the asteroid field Enterprisewas searching, and shut down all unnecessary power, using some form of dampening device to hide their life signs and residual energy emissions. Trip had attempted to learn more about the dampener, but it seemed that the crew wasn’t eager to share their secrets; most of his questions had been rewarded with silence.

Now, with almost three hours having passed since the detonation of the decoy ship, Wungki and his crew finally felt safe enough to power their systems back up and venture out into open space again.