The centurion swung into motion at Taith’s touch, bringing the muzzle of his disruptor aggressively up toward the young decurion’s face.

“Hold!” Taith whispered.

“Don’t sneak up on anyone like that!”

“I thought you’d been killed, like Decurion T’Rheis. Why are you not firing?”

“Why aren’t they?” Rhai asked.

Taith suddenly realized that the intruders had indeed ceased firing. He had been so intent upon reaching the centurion that he hadn’t noticed the abrupt silence of their adversaries’ weapons.

“They must be on the move,” Taith said, fumbling for the scanner at his belt. “They found the other exit from the holding pens.”

“Where are they?” Rhai wanted to know.

Taith’s eyes went wide when he saw the reading on the stealth‑shielded, backlit screen. “I can’t detect them, Centurion.”

“ Fvadt!They must have used their material transmission device to escape us.”

Taith adjusted his scan, attempting to confirm his superior’s idea. A moment later, he shook his head in confusion. “I don’t think so, Centurion. Their teleportation equipment left a telltale energy signature. But I’m not detecting it now.”

But Rhai seemed unconvinced. “Perhaps they’ve adjusted their equipment somehow.”

“Or else they’re still aboard, Centurion, and are cloaking themselves somehow,” Taith said.

“We must be prepared for either eventuality, Decurion. Scan our remaining prisoners. What is their status?”

Taith hastened to do as his superior had bid. When he saw the reading, his heart sank as though it were in freefall in a gas giant’s atmosphere. He quickly ran the scan a second time.

“Well?” the centurion asked impatiently.

Taith realized that he had to tell Rhai what he least wanted to hear. “I can’t even findany of them, sir. They’re gone!”

“ All right, Theras,” Shran whispered into his suit’s com channel. “Your plan had better work. The more we prolong this standoff, the more vulnerable we’ll be.”

Theras smiled in the direction of Shran’s voice. He could feel the attentive presence nearby of Commander T’Pol, Lieutenant Reed, and the two Earth soldiers. “In order to have a standoff, the Romulans would have to know where we are.”

“ What do you mean?” asked the Vulcan woman.

“I mean that I have used my telepathy defensively.They cannot see us now. Nor can they see their prisoners. I’ve made us all…disappear from their conscious minds.”

“ Good work, Theras,” Lieutenant Reed said, both his voice and his aura brimful of admiration. “ If we really are invisible to the Romulans now, maybe we can stay aboard long enough to use their own transporter to send the rest of the Aenar over toEnterprise.”

But Shran sounded and felt far less admiring. “Then we’d better get on with it–before the Romulans figure out that we’re using parlor tricks against them instead of real weapons.”

As the group slowly made its way forward, moving directly into what had been the active line of fire only moments earlier, Theras wondered just what he would have to do to gain the hard‑bitten Shran’s acceptance.

Uzaveh take him,Theras thought, concentrating instead on recovering his beloved shelthrethbondmates.

He tried, without success, to shut out Shran’s intrusive, passionate thoughts about Jhamel; he was clearly prepared to do just about anything to rescue her.

Far more, apparently,Theras thought sadly, thanI ever could.

“The intruders are still here,” Rhai said, his words still pitched at a whisper. “And unless I miss my guess, so are the remainder of our prisoners as well.”

Taith felt confused, even though he had been the first to raise the possibility. “The scanner cannot confirm that, Centurion.”

“Of courseit can’t, Decurion. Not if our prisoners have reached into our minds to alter what we can see–or thinkwe can see. Had they teleported away like the firstprisoners that went missing, they would not have bothered covering it up. Therefore, they arestill aboard this ship, and are hiding that fact from us. As are their would‑be rescuers.”

Like all the soldiers serving aboard the transport vessel T’Lluadh,Taith had been well briefed on the danger posed by the Aenar prisoners. Although they seemed possessed of far too gentle a temperament for their own good, they were powerful telepaths who could indeed tamper with the minds of their jailers, were they so inclined–and were they given the barest opportunity to do so.

“I thought we had sedated each of the prisoners, Centurion,” Taith said. “To blunt their telepathic abilities during their passage to Romulus.”

“That was mybelief as well,” Rhai said. “But suppose our prisoners had planted the notion into our minds? Suppose we never actually sedated them, or were deceived into leaving even a few of them with their mental abilities still intact?”

Taith shivered slightly, as though the spirits of Erebus were coming for him. If we can’t even trust our own memories…He allowed the thought to trail away like an errant wisp of smoke, though he could do little to shake the vivid image of the T’Lluadhsuddenly erupting in all‑consuming gouts of flame and venting atmosphere because an Aenar had influenced the control room crew.

“What can we do, Centurion?” Taith whispered.

Rhai raised his disruptor pistol. “If the intruders are still aboard, they may be trying to get the prisoners to freedom right now. Contact the rest of the security contingent, and tell them to concentrate their fire on the detention area’s aft exit.”

Taith put his scanner away and pulled his communications device from his belt, then raised his own weapon. “What about the prisoners, sir?”

“Our orders are clear, Decurion. They are not to come into the possession of anyone–save the Romulan Star Empire. Perhaps if one or two of them are hit, the remainder might be motivated to behave themselves for the duration of their voyage to Romulus.”

As Taith began signaling the rest of his fellow soldiers, he hoped that they would be able to trust that any Aenar suddenly observed “behaving themselves” wasn’t actually a ruse of the deadliest kind.

Shran and T’Pol led Jhamel and the remaining handful of sedated Aenar captives through the transport ship’s darkened, winding passageways, while Lieutenant Reed and the MACOs–one of whom now walked with a pronounced limp, thanks to a stray disruptor bolt–guarded the group’s moving perimeter. As the team made its way toward the vessel’s central core, Shran had to acknowledge his grudging admiration of Theras, who was actually taking the point in the pitch‑black corridors.

He’s a pacifist,Shran thought with no small degree of wonderment; it was, after all, a philosophical stance that stood at odds not only with Shran’s own personality, but also one that flew in the face of nearly all of his own often bitter personal experience. And he’s obviously terrified. Yet he’s willing to help us fight a very dangerous, unscrupulous foe.

Because he must want to save Jhamel just as much as I do.Though he was unable to see Jhamel clearly in the darkness, Shran was nevertheless haunted by a vision of the icy gray eyes of the woman he had been quietly in love with for the past several months. A woman whose great strength, despite her own innate pacifism, had been evident to Shran ever since the Romulans had forced her to deal with her brother’s death. He clung to the slender lifeline of the psychic bond her telepathic talents had tethered in his mind, drawing comfort from it even as he worried about the incoherence and fear he sensed in her mind. They’ve drugged her,he reminded himself yet again. Ofcourse she’s incoherent.

A sizzling energy beam interrupted Shran’s reverie, passing close enough to scorch his helmet’s faceplate. The boarding party and the Aenar immediately split into two groups, which flattened against the walls on either side of the narrow corridor.