“Withouttheir slaughter, it would have beenour slaughter. He’ll just have to learn to deal with–”

“ Gentlemen,” Commander T’Pol said, stepping suddenly between them, interrupting. “There are still other alternatives.”T’Pol held up one of the small transponders. “I believe we still have a number of these, Lieutenant. Perhaps we can use several of them in tandem to restore our communications withEnterprise, and establish a transporter lock as well.”

Reed grinned. “Let’s get to work.”

“Continue evasive maneuvers!” cried Jonathan Archer, tightly gripping the arms of his command chair as the bridge rumbled and tipped all around him.

Archer wondered just how much more pounding Enterprisecould take before the constant barrage forced him to withdraw from weapons–and transporter–range. The forward viewer displayed an image of one of the two Romulan war vessels that had continued aggressively defending the transport vessel that carried the Aenar prisoners, despite the fact that Enterprisehad crippled the engines of all three ships.

The bridge shook and rattled again, and Archer was very nearly thrown from his captain’s chair. However crippled their adversaries’ engines might be, their complement of weaponry was in decidedly better shape. He knew he’d been lucky in managing to take out the engines of both escort ships while evading what could have been critical damage to Enterprise; he also knew that his luck was in very finite supply, and that it would run out entirely should the Romulans score many more hits.

“Sorry, Captain,” said Travis Mayweather, seated behind the helm, just ahead of the captain’s chair. “The hull plating can’t take much more of this. It’s down to forty‑three percent and falling.”

“Understood, Ensign. Keep trying to evade their guns as best you can. But maintain maximum transporter distance.”

Archer knew that the time was rapidly approaching when he would have to make a painful and final decision, weighing the lives of his boarding party, Shran, and the few Aenar who remained to be rescued against the safety of his ship and her entire crew.

He knew that only one decision was possible.

The ship rocked again. Archer spoke toward the intercom pickup in the arm of his chair, into the channel to D deck that he’d left open. “Ensign Moulton, if you can’t reestablish a transporter lock now, we’re going to have to withdraw.”

“Understood, sir. I’ll keep trying.”She didn’t sound confident.

Rising from his chair, he walked to the side of the helm. “Travis, take us out of their weapons range.”

The helmsman nodded grimly. “Aye, sir–”

“Captain!”The voice coming from the arm of the command chair belonged to Ensign Moulton. Mayweather’s hand hovered over the helm throttle control.

“Go ahead, Ensign,” Archer said as he ran back to his chair.

“I’ve reestablished a transporter lock, sir. I don’t know how, or how long it’ll last, but–”

“Save the explanations, Ensign. Get busy!”

“Our transporter circuits have been taking a beating from the Romulans,”Ensign Moulton said over the com channel in the boarding team’s suits, her words nearly lost in an intermittently oceanic wash of interference. “But I can’t risk transporting more than one of you at a time.”

“Take Jhamel first,” said Shran, who watched soberly as Commander T’Pol and Lieutenant Reed nodded in agreement. Now that Moulton had just finished transporting five Aenar, only Theras and his bondmates remained to be transported, along with three humans, one Vulcan, and Shran.

“ –ust a moment,” Moulton replied, continuing to fight a losing battle against the static still being generated by the Romulan shroud field. Because all attempts to shut the field down from inside the transport ship had failed, Shran had become convinced that it was actually originating from one or both of the warships currently harassing Enterprise.

Several anxious moments later, the hum of Enterprise’s transporter effect reverberated through the ruins of the Romulan transporter room, and a sheet of sparkling blue engulfed the groggy Jhamel, who had been sitting disoriented on the deck. Though he didn’t want to do anything that might put her safe transit to Enterpriseat risk, it had been all Shran could do to refrain from offering her a steadying arm to enable her to stand while she’d awaited transport.

The dematerialization effect seemed to labor more than Shran had ever seen before, as though it were having difficulty drawing sufficient power. He offered a silent prayer to all four of the First Kin to ensure that Jhamel emerged from the process unharmed.

“ Got her,” Moulton said. The com channel hissed and fritzed around her words. “Powering up for another.”

“Take Theras next,” Shran said.

“ Very well,” T’Pol agreed.

“ No,” Theras said, once again surprising Shran.

Surprised or not, Shran couldn’t suppress a scowl. He approached the wall against which the Aenar thaanwas leaning. “We can’t risk splitting up your shelthreth,Theras.”

Jhamel’sshelthreth, he thought, which she made you a part of, for whatever reason.

“Can there be room in any Aenarshelthreth for one who has taken lives?”Theras said over the com channel.

Shran had no response to that. He had once dared to hope for a positive answer to that question himself, before he had discovered that his beloved Jhamel’s future was already spoken for.

“ Let’s start with the two other Aenar while you two finish sorting this out,” Reed said.

Shran nodded in response to Reed, though he continued studying Theras’s blind, pain‑weary face, which was limned in the intermittent green glow of Shran’s damaged night‑vision gear. The transporter continued its increasingly difficult work, taking Shenar first, then Vishri, followed by the injured male MACO, and finally by the female.

Then Reed and T’Pol had vanished as well, leaving Shran and Theras alone together in the darkness.

“ I will go last,” Theras said. “I have…touched Ensign Moulton’s mind to make certain that you will be her next passenger.”

Clutching his modified transponder device nearly hard enough to shatter it, Shran searched the darkness for the other man’s milky, sightless eyes. He realized now that he had fundamentally misjudged Theras.

He raged at the realization.

He had mistaken a death wish for courage, self‑flagellation for heroism.

“You have no intention of leaving this ship, do you?” Shran said, making a blunt observation rather than asking a question.

His lips unmoving, Theras spoke inside Shran’s mind. “Good‑bye, Shran. Promise me that you will take care of Jhamel. And her bondmates.”

Shran started to protest, but the words caught in his throat as the transporter’s shimmering blue light and whining din enfolded him. A moment later he stood on Enterprise’s circular transporter stage, wobbling slightly from a thankfully brief wave of vertigo.

After he removed his helmet, the first thing he noticed was the absence of the rest of the boarding team except for the female MACO, who stood in her now‑helmetless pressure suit beside a white‑smocked human whom Shran assumed was a medic of some sort. He assumed that T’Pol and Reed were absent because Archer would have needed them urgently up on the bridge, and that the rescued Aenar and the injured MACO had already been taken to the ship’s infirmary, or elsewhere aboard Enterprise.

Shran launched himself off the stage, stopping in front of a small nearby console, behind which stood a human female whom Shran assumed was Ensign Moulton. The startled MACO raised her weapons defensively, but Shran ignored her.