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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Historian’s Note

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

HISTORIAN’S NOTE

The main events in this story take place in November 2385, after the recall of Starship Titan and the election of a new Federation president (Star Trek: The Fall—Peaceable Kingdoms).

One

Ralph Waldo Emerson had never met the Breen.

Peace, the poet had said, could not be achieved through violence; it could only be attained through understanding. Christine Vale didn’t know much about Emerson, who had died almost exactly four hundred years earlier, but she knew his quote, one of several inscribed on her commission documents as a Starfleet commander. And she knew it was almost completely useless advice in practice, so far as the Breen were concerned. The Breen lived not to be understood.

The Breen had no match when it came to obfuscation: Federation agents had learned that much about them. The multispecies Breen Confederacy ensured equality by forcing its members to hide their physical appearances inside suits of armor—and it even made them use electronic vocoders to disguise their voices. Vale, of course, had no Breen helmet to unscramble the snarl of squawks coming from the glow-eyed figure on Starship Titan’s forward viewscreen. He—if it was a he—was angrily repeating his earlier demand—if he was angry, and if it was a demand. Vale had no clue.

“Modan?”

The golden-skinned cryptolinguist at the far station on the bridge shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine,” Ensign Y’lira Modan said. The Selenean’s turquoise eyes widened apologetically. “They’ve changed encryptions again.”

From her seat in the captain’s chair, Vale focused on the Breen’s single eyeport, a glowing green horizontal slit in the alien’s gray helmet. The strange being was unleashing another torrent of angry-sounding chirrups. “He knows we don’t understand. I swear he’s talking just to annoy us.”

Modan threw up her hands. “He could be trying to share a recipe for all we know.”

“I very much doubt it,” the dark-skinned Vulcan seated to Vale’s right said. “There would be no need for three Breen vessels with shields raised and weapons powered to participate in such an exchange.”

“Thanks for that analysis, Tuvok.” Vale rolled her eyes. The Vulcan had a titanium-strong grip on the obvious, but it didn’t hurt for her to be reminded. The Breen ships Titan was facing weren’t of the familiar battle-cruiser type but were somewhat smaller vessels of a class yet to be identified; from their configurations, they appeared to be troop transports rigged for space combat. Titan’s crew had been calling them “landers,” expecting full well that they might also pose a threat in space.

But Vale had her orders—and she had a plan, which she could initiate as soon as the pointless attempt at communication with the Breen was over. Eyes on the nattering figure in the image, she leaned forward in her chair and clasped her hands together confidently. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do—”

“Admiral on the bridge!”

That phrase, she understood. Christine Vale looked back to see William T. Riker striding into the room. Attention fixed on the forward viewscreen, he circled the tactical console and headed for the command chair.

Vale looked up at him and smiled primly. “This seat’s taken,” she said.

“I’m already acting just like an admiral,” Riker said, grinning. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Starfleet’s newest rear admiral looked down at the chairs on either side of Vale. Commander Tuvok, the Starship Voyager veteran now acting executive officer, busily worked the control console attached to his seat’s armrest. Deanna Troi, ship’s counselor and senior diplomatic officer, looked up from the other chair and gave her husband an awkward smile. “I suppose we haven’t worked out the seating arrangements yet,” she said.

“Forget it.” Riker faced forward. “What’s the status?”

“The status is I’d find a seat soon, if I were you,” Vale said. “I’m putting us at red alert.”

The on-screen Breen ceased his chatter and disappeared, replaced by the external vid feed. The Breen landers circled in space outside, a short distance away from the cause of the confrontation: Zellman’s Find. The yam-shaped asteroid teemed with trilithium—and it had the misfortune to sit in contested space coveted by the Breen and their Typhon Pact allies, the Romulans and the Tzenkethi. Some six thousand settlers of various nonaligned races called the tumbling body’s dome-covered mines home; Titan, now, was their only defense.

“The Breen are making no move to threaten the asteroid,” Tuvok said, operating his console. “I would say we arrived just in time.”

“In time for the standoff,” Riker observed.

Tuvok templed his fingers and looked up at the admiral. “Two parties desire to occupy the same location—a physical impossibility. Conflict is inevitable without communication.”

“We’ve covered that.” Vale stared at the scene. “Helm, put us into an elliptical orbit around the body, geodesic curves oscillating randomly over the asteroid’s center. They’ll be looking to land troops and heavy equipment on whatever side we’re not on. So we’re going to be everywhere at once.” She looked back for Riker, finding him standing respectfully but watchfully alongside the junior officer at the tactical console. “Does that sound about right to you, Admiral?”

“You’re the captain,” he said, scratching his beard. There was only a little gray in it. “I’m just along for the ride.”

Vale knew that wasn’t true, but it felt good to hear in any event. She wasn’t officially the captain of Titan; the command was temporary. Will Riker had been tapped to become a Federation representative; the admiral was currently using his old command as his flagship to put out fires in the Beta Quadrant ignited by the activities of the Pact powers.

Earning a command chair was the goal of half the cadets at the Academy, and Vale’s getting it by her early forties was a rare thing. But getting it this way wasn’t as satisfying. Perhaps it was because of the horror stories she’d heard in the past. Captains as distinguished as James T. Kirk had suffered the indignities of being second-guessed by Federation commissioners they were ferrying—but at least those know-it-alls weren’t in the service. Her former captain, the newly minted admiral, had promised a smooth interaction, and so far Riker had been as good as his word: He’d dealt with the same kinds of problems before, as captain and commander. But it was hard for any officer to hold the complete attention of the crew during a ship-to-ship conflict when the designer of the “Riker Maneuver” was on the bridge.

Well, it’s not a conflict yet, Commander Vale thought, and that applied to both their relationship and the situation outside with the Breen. “Looks like it’s working,” she said. “No single one of these ships wants to take us on. They seem to be backing off—”

A proximity alarm sounded. “New arrival,” Tuvok announced.

“—they seem to be backing off to make room for reinforcements, I meant to say.”

“No. It’s Aventine, Captain.”

“Aventine?” That was Ezri Dax’s ship—and it was not supposed to be here. Vale looked back at Riker.

“Don’t look at me.” The admiral seemed just as puzzled.

“Open a channel,” Vale said. “Captain Dax, you’ve come on a busy day. What can Titan do for you?”

“It’s what we can do for you,” replied the dark-haired Trill woman on-screen. “We’re here for the vigil.”

“Glad for the help. We were starting to get dizzy.” Vale rubbed her hands together. “With a second ship, we can cover all approaches and turn them back—”

Dax interrupted, “Admiral Riker, we have a message from Starfleet Command, which we’re sending on a secure channel.”

“They sent Aventine with it?” Riker asked. His face grew grim.

It had to be important, Vale knew.

Riker turned. “I’ll take it in my—er, the captain’s ready room.” He started walking.

“Be my guest,” Vale replied. But he was already gone.

Vale sighed and looked back up at Ezri. “Heard any good jokes lately? These Breen aren’t much for conversation . . .”

Christine Vale had experienced long, awkward silences before in life but never while under red alert. Aventine had joined Titan’s patrol over Zellman’s Find, and while the presence of the second Federation starship hadn’t scared the Breen off, their landers weren’t coming any closer. And neither was Vale any closer to getting an explanation about Aventine’s arrival. If Dax knew anything, she wasn’t saying.

Admirals and captains, she thought. You’re not quite in the club yet, Christine.

Vale looked in the direction of the ready-room door again. Still shut. No sound from it, of course, nor would there be from a room where conversations were intended to be kept private. For the second time, she thought about piping in a status report to Riker, just in the hope of getting a hint about what was going on.

Thud!

That, she heard. A muffled thump against the door.

From the ops station, the Cardassian ensign, Zurin Dakal, looked over at the door. “That sounded like someone threw a chair.”

“Keep your eyes on the Breen, please.” But Vale glanced over to see Troi’s worried look. She wasn’t about to ask the woman to provide an empathic read on what was going on with her husband, but the Betazoid’s expression said enough.

Troi took a deep breath, as if about to say something—when her combadge beeped. It was Riker. “Deanna, I need you.”

She bolted immediately upright. “If you’ll excuse me, the admiral—”

“Unh-huh,” Vale said.

The acting captain watched the curly haired counselor walk to the doorway. The second Troi reached it, the door slid open and Riker’s hand yanked her inside. Muffled conversation followed. After a moment’s silence, Riker popped his head back outside the door.

“You’d better get in here too, Christine—er, Captain.” The admiral’s face looked ashen. “And Mister Tuvok.”

The Vulcan gestured to the forward display. “But, Admiral, the Breen—”

Tuvok stopped in midsentence when Riker’s eyebrows joined in an expression that said to anyone watching that he really wasn’t interested in a debate.

“The Breen,” Tuvok began again more slowly, “aren’t going anywhere.”

Vale nodded. “Mister Hachesa, you have the conn,” she ordered.

Riker disappeared back inside the room. Vale rose and walked alongside Tuvok. “You’re catching on to his expressions,” Vale whispered.

The Vulcan nodded. “That one I learned from Kathryn Janeway. I call it ‘full stop.’ ”

The ready-room door sealed behind Vale as she and Tuvok stepped past the overturned chair. Riker stood with his back to them and his hands propped against the far wall. “Aventine’s been sent to take our place,” he half growled, not turning to face her. “We’ve been recalled from this assignment.”

Troi looked at her husband with concern. “It’s something bad, isn’t it?”

“It’s worse,” Riker said. He turned toward them and clenched his teeth together in a fake smile. “The Federation wants me to be the peace envoy to Garadius IV.”

Troi blinked, appearing to finally understand. “Oh.”

“Oh, yes.” Riker shook his head.

“Oh, no,” she said, more quietly. Fumbling for the back of a chair, she turned it around and sat down. “Oh.”

Puzzled, Vale crossed her arms. “Garadius IV? What’s wrong with Garadius IV?”

“What isn’t wrong with Garadius?” Riker said, finding a seat of his own and collapsing in it. He started gesturing blankly to the air. “I’d be happy to stay, to fight the Breen. To invade the Gorn homeworld, unarmed. To do anything—anything but this!”

Will Riker was infamously cool under pressure; Vale had never seen him agitated like this. And over a peace mission? She approached the conference table and looked at the schematic on the tabletop display. Garadius IV was a mostly liquid-covered world in the Beta Quadrant, valued for its undersea resources.

“As I recall,” Tuvok said, righting the fallen chair, “the dispute on Garadius IV is limited to two relatively small groups of settlers.”

“Population eighty thousand,” Vale read aloud. “Doesn’t sound like much of a conflict.”

“It was once eight hundred thousand people,” Troi said. She searched for her husband’s eyes. He continued to stare off into the distance.

“I once crash-landed on a Galaxy-class starship,” he muttered. “I would do that for a living, hourly. And happily.” He looked at Troi and felt on his collar for the rectangular insignia with its single gold pip. “I’ll tell you, if this is what this promotion is going to be about . . .” He trailed off.

Troi brought her chair closer to him and started to offer a comforting hand—before she thought again and shrank back into her chair. “Garadius.”

“I do not understand, Admiral,” Tuvok said. “How could a peace mission be anything but a respite from the hostilities we’ve been facing?”

Troi sighed and shook her head. “We were there for the last peace conference—with Enterprise-D, under Captain Picard. Sixteen—no, seventeen years ago. You had to be there . . .”

Two

2368

This place stinks!”

“Now, Number One. Let’s be diplomatic, shall we?”

Commander William T. Riker exhaled, glad to get any part of Garadius IV out of his body, if even for a second. “Whew.”

It was one more occupational hazard of travel by transporter. Yes, beaming had no harmful effects on the body. But human lungs weren’t accustomed to dramatic changes in the temperature and composition of consecutive breaths. Riker had just gone from the pleasant refined air of Enterprise to a steamy sulfurous mix that made his throat clench and his eyes water. Troi wasn’t handling it much better, Riker saw over his shoulder. Blinking rapidly, she looked at him weakly and tried to smile.

He didn’t know if Jean-Luc Picard was aware of what awaited them or was better at steeling himself for such changes. But the captain, looking natty in his uniform, was already taking deep breaths and surveying the scene around him. There was the colossal central spire, rising up into the haze; there, below, were the half-standing remains of a war-torn city.

And here, as expected, were the Ekorr: squat humanoids in battle gear, ringing the transport site.

One of them stepped toward the visitors. Riker could see the Ekorr woman had no nose beneath her combat helmet: only a vee-shaped skin flap that flared outward when she spoke. “Federation?” she asked in a high whine.

“Correct.” Picard nodded.

“Repair crew?”

“Diplomatic detachment.”

The Ekorr guardswoman gurgled in aggravation. Her black eyes rolled upward in their sockets. “You people just don’t know when to give up, do you?”

Picard straightened. “If you wish our help, all we ask is a little painless discussion.”

“Wasting your time and ours.” The Ekorr woman sighed. Her skin, once ivory colored, was smudged and dirtied—unsurprising in a place where war was the permanent state of affairs. She waved her disruptor rifle toward the east. “Very well. Zorrayn awaits you in the forward bunker on Prophets Plaza. Your other advance teams have already arrived. They’ll meet you there when their work is complete.”

“Excellent,” the captain replied. “We’ll see them at the summit meeting.” He looked back pleasantly at her. “And your name?”

“Orica. Go, and try not to get shot.”

A gap between the guards opened, and Picard led his companions down a street between rust-colored ruins. Every third building had been reduced to rubble; Riker could see smoke rising over the rooftops. Blasts echoed from the north, and then the south.

“The locals didn’t exactly put the war on hold for us,” Riker said.

“More’s the need for mediation, then.” Troi looked about sorrowfully. “Such a small place for this kind of hardship.”

“Small is right. It’s like two dogs fighting over a cracker!”

Riker didn’t think he had exaggerated much. The largest landmass on Garadius IV was tiny as seen from orbit—when it could be seen at all. A peanut-shaped mesa thirty kilometers from end to end, Sanctum Isle sat alone in a fog-enshrouded crimson sea. A bonanza of rare elements lay beneath the ocean’s slick sheen, but the water’s highly acidic nature made exploitation difficult. Taming the planet would have been a challenge for the greatest of minds.

And it had been. “The Vulcans established a colony here, well over a century ago,” Picard explained. “They sought to terraform—or Vulcaniform, if you will—with the machinery you see here.” The captain pointed to the large cylindrical tower looming over the center of the island. “There are also four large buildings situated at the corners of the landmass, treating water for the citizens’ consumption. The atmosphere did become breathable—”

“That’s open to debate,” Riker said, flashing a weary but wry smile.

“—but the Vulcans still weren’t able to effectively mine the seas with the technology of the day,” Picard continued. “So they abandoned the site.”

“And then came the squatters,” Riker said. “I read the briefing.”

“It’s something to see it in person, though.” Picard seemed to marvel at the mass of buildings clustered around, despite their condition. “A factory first, then a city, enlarged purely through the use of local materials. A city torn in half, almost from the start.”

Riker glanced at the diminutive sentries posted along the street. None of the Ekorr stood any higher than his shoulders. They were survivors from some civilization the Federation had yet to encounter. Discovering Garadius IV ninety years earlier, they had found it to their tastes and settled on Sanctum Isle. Having no noses must’ve helped, Riker thought.

But another spacefaring culture had staked a claim at the same time. Picard scaled stone steps to a long colonnade, splitting the city—and the island itself—in two. At the far side of the clearing stood several massive green figures, some behind cover. All of them appeared to be armed.

“Lurians, aren’t they?” Riker asked, squinting to see. At this distance, it was hard to see much more than the fact that they were twice the size of the Ekorr, but he was familiar with the species. The things were all chin, with tiny ears situated high on their heads.

“I met one at a bar while on assignment somewhere,” Picard said. “Morn was his name. Told me some of the most interesting stories.”

“But the Lurians are a peaceful race.”

“Our friends across the way are not. Outcasts, I suppose; for whatever reason, they settled here, taking the name Baladonians. They don’t like to share, or so I’m told.”

Riker shook his head. He felt as if he was witnessing the prelude to an ancient Napoleonic battle. The Ekorr stood watch along one side of what the guard had called Prophets Plaza, weapons raised and facing off a somewhat smaller number of Baladonians lined up on the other side. A hundred meters separated the parties—and Riker could see bodies strewn across the space between them. A stone barricade, pounded half to bits, was erected partway across; Riker could just make out an Ekorr there, waving in their direction.

Picard looked at him and cocked an eyebrow. “Shall we?” Turning, the balding captain stepped gamely into the no-man’s-land. Riker looked at Deanna once before both followed.

“Seventeen failed peace expeditions,” Riker whispered. “How is that possible?”

“I’m sensing nothing but suspicion and bad feeling here,” Troi said. If the fetid air wasn’t giving the empath a headache, the local emotions were. “It’s unmistakable.”

“Well then, we’ll know when we’ve succeeded,” Picard said. “We’re here on a mercy mission, so we might as well stage a conference.”

Riker nodded and glanced up ahead, where the big cylindrical tower left by the Vulcans stood. Fifty meters high, the air scrubber blasted jets of cleaner air at the surrounding landscape; the dense smog above kept it circulating close to the ground. Both the air- and water-filtration systems, using old Vulcan technology, needed repair calls every few years. This visit, like those in the past, had been motivated by just such a request. It gave the Federation its chance for arbitration.

“Can you tell, Number One? Mister La Forge’s crews have started their work up there. We’re breathing easier already.”

“I’m not sure I can say that with dozens of disruptors pointed in my direction,” Riker said, continuing to walk. “Both these groups are warp-capable. Why do they stay when there isn’t room for both groups to—”

“More genius analysis from the genius Federation geniuses!” A helmetless Ekorr stomped toward them from the barricade. He had a lonely swig of brown hair pasted to his head in a spiral—and a voice more annoying, if that was possible, than that of the guard who greeted them. “Of course we’re staying! You want us to abandon the holiest of Ekorr holy places to the enemy? And you would say that here? Here? Do you know where you’re standing, Federation-man?”

Riker bit his lip and looked around. “According to the original schematics, this clearing was designed to be the main landing zone for the Vulcan transports, years ago—”

“He calls Prophets Plaza, our venerable and holy promenade of enlightenment, a ‘landing zone’! Brilliant! Why don’t you take your ‘expert’ expertise and peddle it where things are peddled?”

Riker was taken aback—but Picard spoke quickly, presenting his hand. “Peacebroker Zorrayn, I presume.”

The Ekorr didn’t accept the hand. “Wait!” he declared in a tone a Ferengi would find grating. “I demand to see your documents! You could be enemy agents of the enemy!”

“Not a problem.” Picard fished for the padd in the pocket of his uniform.

“Time-wasting wasters of time!”

Puzzled, Riker examined his combadge. “Is there something wrong with the Universal Communicator? You seem to be saying things twice.”

Zorrayn snapped the padd from Picard’s hand. “If your holy place was infested with oafish and dunderheaded oafs, you’d repeat yourself too!” He glanced for half a second at the padd. “This information is worthless. So you must be from the Federation!”

He flung the data device in the air. Startled, Riker reached out to grab it. Passing it back to Picard, he saw the captain’s expression.

I know that look, Riker thought. It’s “Here we go.”

And there they went—speaking next to Overlord Jakoh, across the battle zone. Lime-faced and muscular like his companions, Jakoh was far hairier than the bald Lurian whom Picard described meeting years earlier. And the overlord claimed a royal bloodline, as grandson of the great Baladon, who had led his Lurian followers to Garadius years before.

The Baladonians also referred to the landmass as Sanctum Isle, but as Riker immediately found, that was the sole point of agreement between the two warring parties. The massive Jakoh made plain within the first minute how hard it would be to reach common ground: “I’m not sure who these Ekorr are that you’re talking about.”

“Excuse me?” Picard said.

“These Eee-korr.” He sounded the word out with his impossibly deep voice. “You know, I don’t think I’ve heard that before.”

Riker smiled. “Is this some kind of joke? The people across the tarmac there. The folks who’ve been bringing down half the city with you.”

Jakoh, seeming genuinely puzzled, looked to his lumbering rifle-toting aides. “Are you getting any of this? Anybody?”

The other Baladonians, still keeping their sights set on the Ekorr barricades, shrugged.

“Got me,” said one.

“Ekorr. That’s a new one,” said another.

Picard stopped himself from wincing. “Come now, you must be—”

“Ooooh,” Jakoh said, the word rumbling deep in his diaphragm. “Wait a minute. There were those—what were they, the vermin my grandfather found when he got here. Some little rodents he stamped out. Ekorr, yeah.” He looked directly at Picard and Riker. “They’ve been gone for a long time.”

Troi goggled. “They’re standing just across the way!”

“You’re aiming at them!” Riker added.

“Sorry, I can’t help you.”

Picard flashed a curt smile and put up his index finger. “Excuse us.”

The three Starfleet officers stepped away, while the Baladonians continued to chatter back and forth, debating. “Wasn’t rodents, Overlord. Weren’t they some kind of bugs?”

Picard leaned in to speak with Troi. “This is all for humor, right? There’s no real cognitive dissonance going on. They can see the Ekorr, right?”

“I’m certain of it,” the counselor said. “You’re hearing wishful thinking, amplified by their own prejudices. They do consider the Ekorr to be less than nothing, pests they’d like to rid themselves of. So in a sense, while they are lying, they believe what they’re saying to you.”

“Marvelous,” the captain said. He looked at Riker and winked. “Welcome to the art of diplomacy, Number One. I think this will take some time . . .”

Three

Deanna, watch out!”

Disruptor blasts filled the air over Prophets Plaza again. Riker grabbed Troi’s shoulder and shoved her forward, out of the crossfire. The two collapsed to the shattered concrete just in front of the Baladonians’ makeshift barrier.

“Hold fire!” Jakoh said.

It would help if they told that to the other side, Riker thought, as more rifle shots struck the ground nearby. He scrambled to his feet. Troi reached safety behind the Baladonian barricade seconds before he did.

“So much for the ‘promenade of enlightenment,’ ” she muttered.

Riker glared at Jakoh, who was congratulating his gunners. “Dammit, Jakoh! If the Ekorr don’t exist, what are you shooting at?”

“Everyone needs to practice sometime,” the Baladonian said, smiling toothily.

“Right.” Riker withdrew, sullen.

Picard, he saw, was already here—and no happier for his correct prediction. It had taken time—hours of the would-be diplomats crossing back and forth between the rival camps. So far, their efforts had produced absolutely nothing—apart from a few scorch marks on Riker’s trousers. “We’d better start beaming back and forth, Captain. These truces are as flimsy as a Ferengi contract!”

“I’m just trying to get representatives to the same physical place,” Picard said. “Only a hundred meters between them, but it might as well be light-years!” He appealed for Jakoh’s attention and handed him a padd. “Overlord, the Ekorr have provided me with what they say are terms for an in-person meeting. If you would just have a look . . .”

Jakoh glanced at the document and snarled. “Meaningless markings!”

Picard nodded patiently. “I am sure there are at least some points here on which you can come to an understanding.”

“No, I mean the markings are meaningless. It’s written in Ekorr!”

Riker snorted. “I thought you’d never heard of the Ekorr.”

Picard turned to Riker and glowered. Riker raised his hands. Okay, I’ll shut up.

Picard looked again at the document. “You don’t have any way of translating this?”

“Why would we need such a thing?” Jakoh boomed. “I told you, the Ekorr don’t—”

“Of course,” Picard said. He touched his combadge. “Enterprise, patch me to the Ekorr camp.” A beep sounded. “Zorrayn, if you’re on this channel—can you provide a copy in the Baladonians’ written language?”

Zorrayn’s whine came through loud and clear. “The Baladonians? Of course. Everyone knows how to speak their language.”

“Very well, then—”

“N-n-naaaagghh!”

Picard scowled as he listened to the obnoxious sound coming from his combadge. “Excuse me?”

“N-n-naaaagghh! N-n-naaaagghh! The Baladonians sound just like eltorfs, braying beasts of burden from our ancestral homeland. So this is the only way to communicate with such beings! N-n-naaaagghh!” Several other Ekorr voices joined the cacophony.

Jakoh snarled. “What are these sounds?” He loomed over Picard. “What is the meaning of this?”

“N-n-naaaagghh! N-n-naaaagghh! N-n-naaaagghh!”

“Come now,” Picard said, struggling to be heard over the noise from his own communicator. “This is childishness!”

“Childish?” Zorrayn said over the channel. “I’ll have you know these sounds are coming from our Board of Elders! Wait, I’ll bring the communicator closer to them so you can hear better.”

Hearing the braying start again, Picard tapped the combadge off in aggravation. He looked up at Jakoh and shrugged. The overlord stalked off.

“It’s the diplomatic Kobayashi Maru,” Riker said.

“We’re not beaten yet,” the captain replied. Suddenly, he brightened. “Ah, there’s a happy sight!”

Lieutenant Commander La Forge approached from the east, silver tool case in hand. Adjusting his visor, the engineer pointed to a spot back in the haze. “Water-treatment facility four is in working order again.”

“It’s good to see you,” Riker said.

“It’s good to be seen.”

Riker chuckled. Only on a mission as bad as this one would La Forge’s recent experiences be anything to smile about. Enterprise’s visit to Garadius IV had been delayed by its attempt to render assistance to a damaged Romulan vessel. The Romulans were trying to use a molecular phase inverter to create an interphase cloak. If successful, they would have been able not only to hide their starships from Federation eyes, but also hide them within other matter, such as stars, asteroids—or even other starships.

Instead, the experiment went awry, temporarily knocking Geordi La Forge and Ensign Ro Laren out of phase with the rest of the cosmos. For hours, they had walked the halls of Enterprise, seeing and hearing its occupants while unable to be seen or heard themselves. They could also walk through walls, an act that left chroniton residue in normal space; that phenomenon eventually became the mechanism by which Data recognized their presence and engineered their return to reality.

Riker hadn’t said anything at the time, but the whole episode had unnerved him. As an ensign on the Pegasus a decade earlier, he’d been there when Captain Erik Pressman tested a similar system in violation of the Treaty of Algeron, which forbade cloaking tech on Starfleet vessels. Dire consequences had followed, and Riker had been lucky to escape with his life—and his career. It was one of the rare things he had never shared with Captain Picard. He didn’t feel he could.

La Forge’s experience, meanwhile, sounded horrific to Riker even as it fascinated him. What must it have been like to exist as, for all purposes, a ghost? “Have you figured out yet why you were able to breathe?” he asked.

“I’ve got some ideas,” La Forge said. “I’m also trying to figure out how gravity acted on us. You’d think with our bodies unable to interact with normal matter, we’d have fallen through the floor—or tumbled backward through space, with Enterprise leaving us behind.”

“So you could keep that poor Romulan company?” Riker shook his head. It was almost a joke, but thinking about the phased Romulan who’d been kicked out into space by Ro Laren chilled him. What had he endured?

“It’s one for the books, all right,” Riker said. “Maybe you’ll write one.”

“I’m half ready to forget it. I was afraid I would starve to death watching the rest of you eat food I couldn’t touch!” He looked to the captain. “Data’s and Barclay’s teams should be finished with their treatment plants shortly. The machinery’s seen a lot of use.”

Staring at the distant Ekorr line, Picard nodded. He took Riker aside. “Will, we’re going to have to divide and conquer here. I will speak with the Baladonians—as will Data, when he arrives. Go back across—beam, this time—and see if you and Troi can get the Ekorr to make even the most basic concessions to civilized diplomatic discourse.”

“Reminds me of elementary school. I just want them to quit with the farm-animal noises.”

“Well, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” Picard said, continuing to stare off at the Ekorr. “Let’s take what we can get now and try to work our way up to that.”

Five days had passed on Garadius IV. Riker knew, because he had checked the time once every five minutes that he’d been awake.

The final water-treatment plant had proved difficult to service, giving the Enterprise negotiators additional time to work with both parties—but Riker felt that a decade wouldn’t be enough. In the last seventy-two hours, Picard and Riker had tried everything they could think of.

Their best hope, inviting both Zorrayn and Jakoh aboard Enterprise for a one-on-one meeting, was a total flop. Jakoh had provided a list of dietetic demands in quantities so massive that it soon became clear he was trying to wheedle leftovers for his entire command team. Zorrayn, for his part, had such exacting requirements for the negotiation room that they doubted the holodeck would be large enough.

“Garadius is our holy place,” Zorrayn had said, “and the Altar of Bothmune the symbol of all our hopes and aspirations. No true Ekorr could be far from it for long. I demand that it be represented in the negotiation room. Life size, and with real matter—none of your fake holographic fakery!”

The Altar of Bothmune, Riker knew, was a slab of metal almost the size of a shuttlecraft—and, in reality, nothing more than a massive anvil, part of an enormous industrial press that the Vulcans had left behind in their fabrication center. The Ekorr probably knew that too, but didn’t care: They had somehow moved the thing to the Lyceum Garadius, the former Vulcan meditation sanctuary, where it had become the center of the Ekorr religion.

Negotiations had thus stayed on the surface, with Picard and Riker deciding to switch parties at the end of each day. It was frustrating. The Baladonians had proved lacking in imagination—they constantly cast everything into martial terms and managed to miss the point of anything else.

“So,” Jakoh had asked, “in this ‘peace’ you’re describing, we would still be able to kill Ekorr, right?”

Riker hadn’t known what to say to that. Data had left after a few hours with both parties, his befuddlement threatening to damage his neural net. At least the android hadn’t been forced to suffer the experience of dining with the Baladonians. Tasting their food, Riker understood their tendency to miss their mouths while eating.

Today was his third go-around with the Ekorr—and here, in Zorrayn’s bunker, he was wishing he could phase through matter and disappear. He was leaning back in a metal chair that was too small for him, exhausted and trying to focus. Standing wasn’t a good idea, since all the buildings the Ekorr had constructed for themselves had ceilings low enough to brain the average human. Riker had found that out the hard way more than once.

Troi sat at the far end of the table. Her eyes were open but she was plainly asleep. He envied her.

“Okay, let’s see if we can reset things . . . again,” he said to Zorrayn. “Captain Picard believes that we should start by looking at what the current zones of control on the island are.” He held up his padd. “This schematic is what our sensors show, with our life-signs superimposed upon it. Do these positions look right to you?”

The fat-footed Ekorr leader glanced up from his pedicure. He looked first at the padd in Riker’s hand, then up his arm to his head. “You know, Federation-man, I don’t like your hair!”

“Excuse me?”

“Your hair. It offends. And that beard! Won’t do at all. Did you grow it just to offend me? Makes this impossible process impossible. The Baladonians have hair where it doesn’t belong too. We’re surely sure of it—it must be what’s fouling the filtration systems. I can’t speak peace with such a hairy person!”

“You haven’t spoken peace at all yet,” Riker said. He sighed. “And your title is Peacebroker?”

“That’s Peacebreaker. You Federation-type people never get anything right. We were born to inherit this world, this one world in all the universe created just for us—”

“Not counting your homeworld.” I’m beginning to suspect they threw you out, Riker did not say.

“Your hairy-person nonsense aside, this is our world, and the very concept of peace with interlopers is a sacrilege. A betrayal of the timeless truths inscribed on the sacred altar!”

“I read that inscription. It’s the manufacturer’s address on Vulcan, Zorrayn. It’s an anvil.”

“To you, yes! To us—”

Riker shook his head. “Never mind. I give up.” He stood, this time avoiding knocking himself silly on the ceiling. He looked at Troi, whose eyes had flickered shut. “Come on, Counselor.”

She stirred. “Huh?”

“Let’s get some air,” he said, ducking beneath the door frame and stepping out into the twilight. The local atmosphere was still putrid, and yet it felt like a marvelous relief to be outside.

Wearily, Troi joined him. She shook her head. “There’s always the captain, Will. Nobody is better at navigating rough diplomatic waters—and that’s coming from a Betazoid. He’s the best there is. He’s probably already got it figured out. You’ll see.”

“I hope so.” Riker looked across the clearing to where Picard had just passed through the Ekorr checkpoint. “Maybe he’s got some good news.”

They strolled up to him. Picard was staring back at the Baladonian lines, seemingly unaware of his officers’ arrival. At last, he turned to them, his eyes tired. He rubbed his forehead with his palm. “You know,” he said, “I think I’ll just quit.”

Riker and Troi looked at each other.

“They are impossible,” Picard said. “This is an intractable conflict, between impossible peoples!” He looked back and forth between the two sides’ front lines. “They will not talk. They will not talk about talking. They will barely even grant, on one side, that the other party exists.” Wearily, he looked back at his officers. “It’s enough to make you doubt that peace is the way.”

Riker nodded. “There’s more give in a Klingon blood feud.”

The exhausted men stepped away from Troi to look from the edge of the battlements. There, through the cover, they could see Ekorr and Baladonians again blasting at each other—while all around, parts of the city that could still burn were newly alight. “You know, I thought I could solve this,” the captain said. “It was hubris. Ninety years of fighting, and yet I thought that I—”

“I don’t think Spock could have solved this,” Riker said.

“Don’t you know? Spock was the first. He advised that the Federation keep sending someone back.” He looked up at the tower. “He thought the fact that the environmental systems needed regular repair would give us ample opportunities.” He shook his head. “Heaven help the people on this planet—and whoever’s next to try to help them.”

Riker shook his head and exhaled. “I know this kind of work is part of the job, Captain—” He didn’t need to say the rest: Heaven help me if taking care of these situations is ever my main duty. I’ll resign my commission and fly freighters!

“It’s all right, Number One. Enjoy your years of exploration. Soon enough, you’ll see that problems like these are the perks of promotion.” Picard sighed and straightened himself. “Ah, well. Speaking of Klingons . . .” He slapped his combadge. “Mister Worf, I think we’re about done here.”

“Understood, Captain,” replied a gruff remote voice from Enterprise. “Mission accomplished?”

“Most emphatically not.”

“With emphasis,” Riker added.

“Has Mister La Forge completed his work on the final water-treatment facility?” Picard asked.

Worf replied in the affirmative. “But he’s still finishing up inventory planetside. A few items are missing—”

“Tell him to forget them. These people aren’t covered by the Prime Directive—by any directive, really.”

“Could I be of assistance to your mission?” Worf asked. “Perhaps if I joined the away team—”

“No!” Riker and Picard said at the same time. “Picard out.” The captain clicked his combadge twice.

Picard and Riker looked at each other, exhausted. Then Picard chuckled, in spite of himself. “Can you imagine Mister Worf down here?”

Riker smiled. “It would be like dropping a bomb on the city.”

Picard giggled. “He’d be hitting the Baladonians—”

“—with the Ekorr!”

Now both men were laughing aloud. Troi approached, looking at the two of them as if they’d lost their senses. “Never mind,” she said.

Picard blinked away tears and hit his combadge again. “Enterprise, beam us the hell up.”

Four

2385

The Titan bridge was abuzz with activity. “I want all the teams ready,” Admiral Riker said. “No mistakes, no delays. Every second is critical.”

“Aye-aye, Admiral.”

“Critical, do you understand?”

“Aye, Admiral. We’re on it.” Commander Vale watched as he stalked back into her ready room.

Ensign Dakal relaxed from attention. “Can we breathe now?”

“I’m not planning on it.” Vale shook her head at the Cardassian ops officer. “Check again with me in a few days.”

Vale had participated in many battle preparations before. Against the Romulan pretender Shinzon, against the Borg, against the Typhon Pact powers—she knew what it was like in the hours and days before a great conflict. There was never enough time to do everything that was necessary. The more worried a crew was, the harder they prepared—so as to leave no spare moment available for trepidation.

This, however, was different. There was, to her mind, nothing to worry about on Garadius IV. Yes, Riker had endured an exasperating stay years earlier as part of the Enterprise expedition. As Troi had recounted the story back in the ready room, Vale could see the admiral grimacing. Before her tale was over, Riker had called down to Doctor Ree to get something for a headache. The counselor herself, normally centered, seemed similarly impacted, her voice getting a little wobbly before the end. The Baladonians and Ekorr sounded like prizes, all right.

Just not dangerous, so long as you stayed out of their crossfire.

And yet after the tale was told, Riker had wasted no time in starting the crew on crash preparations for his return visit. Starfleet had indeed sent Dax, with her experience dealing with the Breen, to continue the watch at Zellman’s Find. Leaving Aventine behind to block the Breen landers, Titan had made best speed to Garadius IV. Every second of that time they had spent figuring out how to fulfill the letter of the Federation’s directive without becoming mired in another round of insanity.

The admiral took the lead. At great pains to his psyche—as Troi had put it—Riker had reviewed the logs of all the past peace missions, from Enterprise-D all the way back to Ambassador Spock. He’d looked paler than Ensign Dakal when he was through. But he seemed to think it necessary.

The past failures weren’t anyone’s fault but the warring parties’, he’d concluded—but in the case of his own expedition, he now saw a dozen things that could have gone better. “Because we had to divert help to the Romulans—and then lost La Forge and Ro temporarily in that phasing accident—we didn’t have time to prepare as we should have.” Riker had put every idea he’d had in the years since into action.

He reemerged from the ready room, two different padds in hand. “Are we triply sure on those Vulcan water- and air-treatment facilities?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Tuvok said. “Mister Ra-Havreii’s engineering squads are divided up and ready. All five squads have full data, not just on the original systems but on every modification that’s been made since.”

“I want a backup team standing by for each of those squads,” Riker said.

“Each?” Vale cleared her throat. “Admiral, I could see a single backup team if something should prevent one squad from—”

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” Riker said. “They’ve had years more to fight. Our old beam-in areas could be under piles of debris at this point. If any away team has trouble reaching its repair objective, I want another ready to go.”

Ensign Dakal blinked. “This—this is just a repair mission, right? We’re not sending teams to storm a fortress.”

Riker turned his eyes on the Cardassian. “No, Mister Dakal, this is a peace mission. But the peace mission only has to last as long as the repair mission does. We complete that quickly, then we’re out.”

Dakal stammered. “That—that makes it sound as if you expect the peace mission to fail.”

Riker looked back at Vale. “You tell him the story, will you? I don’t have time.” The admiral and Troi had only shared the goriest details of the Enterprise expedition with her and Tuvok. He turned to the tactical console. “Mister Tuvok, let’s go over our approaches again to the two parties.”

The Vulcan nodded, shooting a covert look of concern to Vale as he followed the admiral. The door slid shut.

Behind the tactical station, the elevator doors opened. Troi stepped out, looking upset. “Commander—”

Vale folded her arms. “Really, Deanna, this is getting a little crazy.”

Troi shook her head and walked around to Vale’s side. She’d sensed her husband’s angst, all right. “You have to understand,” she said in a quiet tone, “Will’s a bit of a . . . well, let’s just say he likes being in control. Our trip to Garadius was like stepping through the looking glass to a world where nothing made sense, and where you couldn’t talk sense to anyone.” She paused, searching for words. “It was like . . . reasoning with cats. Cats carrying phasers.” She bit her lip, clearly thinking that wasn’t the right simile.

“You’re both parents of a small child now. After dealing with Natasha, it ought to be more up your alley,” Vale said, smirking.

“Just give the admiral time. He’ll get his bearings.”

Vale looked over her shoulder. “Maybe it’s already happened.”

Riker stepped out of the ready room and stood in the doorway. He seemed calmer. “I’m sorry if this situation has alarmed anyone,” he announced, starting to pace. “It shouldn’t. The fact is, I fully expected that no Federation mission would have to return to Garadius for at least another dozen years. Repairs made by Commanders La Forge and Data should have lasted at least that long—but someone set off the signal calling for our help.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “That alone would be enough to warrant a mission by someone. We got the call because the Federation is concerned that with the Typhon Pact vying for satellite worlds, Garadius IV might be in play. Now, I can’t imagine anyone wanting this mess in their backyard, no matter what minerals are down in that ocean—but it’s not my call.”

He walked to the front of the bridge and turned. “But I can see to it that the away teams inspect the situation and do their work quickly—so that we can get back to the real conflict, without getting bogged down in the local nonsense. Understood?”

“Entering the Garadius system,” reported Ensign Lavena from flight.

Riker looked strangely at peace. “Okay. This time we do it right. Ensign Modan, you’re with me. Are you prepared?”

The golden-skinned cryptolinguist stood at attention, the spiny tendrils from the back of her head bristling. “I’ve studied Ekorr and Baladonian written languages as requested, Admiral, in case there’s another treaty problem.”

“They also speak nonsense down there . . . never mind. Tuvok, you’re with me as well. Logic seems to be the thing in shortest supply in this conflict—let’s see what you can do.” He looked about. “Okay, that’s it. Deanna—”

“—is going too,” his wife said. “No need to shield me from this. If you can take it, I can.”

The admiral shook his head and smiled. “I hope you won’t regret that.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad this time. Things change. Shall we?”

Funny the little things you remember, Riker thought. This time he had remembered to take a deep breath before being transported—which he released when he materialized on Garadius IV. He followed it up with small sample breaths this time, so as not to shock his system with the stench. It turned out that it wasn’t as bad as he remembered. La Forge’s work on the air scrubber had held up fairly well over the years.

Tuvok put a finer point on it, as he was wont to do. “I am reading levels of noxious gases thirty-five percent above recommended limits, Admiral.” He held his tricorder aloft. “It is better than when Enterprise-D was here, but there will still be work for Mister Ra-Havreii’s teams.”

Riker nodded and looked around. If the air had marginally improved, Sanctum Isle’s appearance hadn’t. Rubble piles had replaced buildings that had stood near the transport zone years earlier—and craters now existed where ruins used to be.

“Movement up ahead,” Tuvok said, pointing to figures up a street. “Perhaps our greeting party?”

“I don’t think so.” Riker peered through the haze—which, this time, seemed a purely natural phenomenon. No fires were burning anywhere. It didn’t take long for him to recognize the figures were Baladonian.

“They see us,” Troi said, standing alongside Ensign Modan. “But they’re in no hurry to say hello.”

“I infer that the Ekorr lost control of this site,” Tuvok said, eyes wide and wary.

“Everything changes hands all the time,” Riker said. And yet, seeing other Baladonians wandering through side alleys, he began to doubt that this was just a normal day on Garadius IV.

“Something’s wrong,” Troi said. “Something’s missing.”

Riker punched his combadge, which beeped. “Vale. Give me a life-sign sweep of this island. Push the sensors to the max.” They hadn’t done a focused check on entering orbit, other than to see that the number of residents had predictably fallen again due to the warfare. “I want species counts.”

Tuvok squinted into the air. “It may be difficult given all the complex carbon compounds in this atmosphere, Admiral.”

But Vale didn’t miss a beat. “We find twenty-seven thousand metabolic patterns corresponding to expected parameters for Lurians. Plus or minus three hundred.”

Riker nodded. “Those are the Baladonians. And how many Ekorr?”

“A moment, sir.”

Vale went silent. And in that moment, Riker looked around some more. It wasn’t just that there were Baladonians in the area once controlled by the Ekorr. They seemed absolutely unconcerned—and except for a couple, all were unarmed.

“What . . . is it, Chris?” Riker asked, knowing what the answer was and feeling it already gnawing at his gut. “Tell me.”

“I just rechecked, Admiral. Number of Ekorr: zero.”

Five

Look out, Modan!”

Y’lira Modan ducked out of the way. The metal beam the Baladonian workers were carrying on their shoulders barely missed her head. Riker pulled her out of the foot traffic.

“Sorry, Admiral,” she said, a slight orange blush coming to her cheeks.

“Just want to keep you alive until we find something for you to read.”

The Ekorr sector had become something that Garadius IV hadn’t seen in ages: a construction project. Battle-damaged hovels designed for creatures the Ekorr’s height were being dismantled and rebuilt. For their new owners, Riker imagined.

“To the victors, the spoils,” he said—loudly, so the passing Baladonian workers could hear.

They didn’t respond. No Baladonian had, to any of his or Modan’s questions about the Ekorr. Instead, the first Baladonians they’d met had merely directed the Starfleet envoys to a location in the west—to what had once been the capital building for the Ekorr. The Enterprise away team had visited it years earlier.

The transporter room on Titan had reported that a transport inhibitor was preventing their beaming to that location. A new piece of technology for Garadius IV, Riker had thought. But he hadn’t minded walking, figuring they’d find out quite a bit along the way.

They hadn’t learned much. The most Modan and Troi had been able to pry out of an old Baladonian woman they’d encountered was that the Ekorr had “left,” but he already knew that wasn’t true. Titan’s scans had confirmed that the colony ships the Ekorr arrived in nearly a century earlier were still mothballed, unused. The Baladonians had not blocked his personal examination of the hangar at all.

“Peace has come here at last,” Troi said. “Relief. That’s all I sense. Relief and hope.”

“A hell of a way to get it,” Riker said, his righteous indignation rising. He tapped his combadge. “Riker to Xin. Instruct your teams to hold position at the filtration plant worksites and do nothing.”

“Nothing? Is there a problem, Admiral?” the Efrosian engineer responded. “The maintenance work here looks straightforward.”

“There might have been a genocide here. We’re not doing anything for the Baladonians until we learn more. Riker out.”

He looked at Tuvok, who had been surreptitiously using his tricorder to scan the city as they passed through. “The Enterprise reported there were forty thousand, six hundred and thirty one Ekorr here,” the Vulcan said. “I am finding remnant DNA on some of these former housing units. Dead skin cells, as one loses every day.”

“How long have they been gone?”

“Cellular degradation suggests weeks, not years. No more than a month. But the margin of error is high. A more detailed analysis—”

“Will need to wait. If I don’t get some answers from Jakoh, I’ll bring enough personnel down here to turn this place upside down.” The Ekorr were far from his favorite people, but the prospect of their total eradication turned Riker’s stomach. “I’m not seeing any mass graves. I wonder how long it takes for that ocean to consume a body.”

“Admiral, may I remind you that both cultures have advanced technology, even if they do not choose to use it to leave this world. They have transporters that could beam corpses anywhere.”

“Why corpses? They could have targeted the Ekorr for beaming into space.” That was a particularly dirty way to fight, Riker felt. If the Baladonians had indeed acquired transport-inhibitor technology before the Ekorr, that might explain everything.

They won’t get away with it, Riker thought. The Baladonians, with their uncontested claim to the planet, would continue to expect their little service trips from the Federation. They might even seek broader trade, or membership. It wouldn’t happen if William Riker had anything to say about it. Despite the cartoonish diplomatic pantomime he had endured years earlier, he could tell the battle between the Ekorr and the Baladonians had been bloody and costly. He’d seen it in the eyes of the children of both races he’d met during that mission.

Whatever had happened here was, more than likely, something else. Enemies don’t just vanish!

The Titan away team turned a corner into a long plaza. The Lyceum Garadius stood at the far end—a vast building dedicated to the spiritual advancement of the Vulcan workers who once called Garadius home. A large ivory-colored dome towered twenty meters above the rest of the building, its pinnacle statue of peace replaced by a discordant-looking Ekorr communications mast. A newly hung Baladonian flag flew from it in a display of dominance.

The Lyceum Garadius had been, for three generations, the cultural and political headquarters of the Ekorr—home to all their most important relics. It was a place they had put all their industry into repairing, despite repeated bombings by the Baladonians. And now it was a flurry of construction work again as Baladonians chucked out Ekorr artifacts in order to move their new furnishings in.

Riker paused outside long enough to call Titan. “We’re going in.”

Vale was concerned. “Be careful, Will,” she said, “you’ve caught them red-handed.”

“It depends on how stupid they are—and how stupid they’ve been. I’m hoping standing down our repair crews will give us some leverage.”

“We’ll keep an eye out,” she said, referring to the Titan. “Good luck. Titan out.”

If you’re prepared, you don’t need luck, Riker thought. But we’ll take it if it’s offered. The admiral led the others up the steps.

It was an anvil.

Enormous. Gigantic. Sized almost beyond any rational need. Six meters from its bottom to its upper face, with a base so wide it could hide an entire family on the other side—in their shuttlepod. At the top, a mind-boggling fifteen meters of titanium ran from its heel to its angry horn, jutting so far into the lyceum rotunda that it nearly pierced the dome.

It was just where Riker had seen it before: a thousand-metric-ton slab sitting right in the middle of the great room. The Vulcan icons had long since been removed from their alcoves, the tapestries pulled down from the walls to establish the Ekorr holy place. Now the Baladonians were junking whatever they could find. But not the “Altar of Bothmune.” It was just too damn big.

Tuvok looked around the rotunda, slightly disconcerted. “It is illogical that the Ekorr would have taken this industrial item to value, while disregarding the Vulcan works of art.”

“People pick their own possessions to prize,” Troi said. “I think perhaps the Ekorr value industry, when they’re not fighting. This would seem to represent that.”

“It’s junk,” said a husky female voice from behind. Riker and his companions turned to see the approach of a tall Baladonian woman—green-skinned, with long brown hair tied off in braids. In contrast to the workers in the room and outside, she still wore military fatigues. She walked up and slapped a big hand on the anvil. “It’s a monster, for sure. Can you imagine those puny Ekorr moving it into here?”

Riker stiffened his shoulders. “I want to see Jakoh.”

“And he wants to see you,” she said. “Or anybody. I’m Shayla, his daughter. Follow me.”

Shayla led the four visitors through a hallway into another large room—a former library for the Vulcan settlers. There, in a Baladonian-size chair that clearly didn’t belong, sat Jakoh, the leader Riker had met once before. His skin was weathered and faded, and he wore a bandage over his eyes. Several beefy Baladonian guards stood to either side of the makeshift throne, while still others carted more furnishings back and forth through the middle of the room.

“Sorry about the mess,” Jakoh said to the air. “I don’t know who triggered the signal calling the Federation for repairs—it wasn’t us. We’re not ready to entertain here.”

“Overlord Jakoh,” Riker said.

“Is that young Mister Riker?” The stocky Baladonian laughed heartily. “Welcome, welcome.” He pawed at his bandage. “I’d get a look at you if I could, but there was an Ekorr concussion grenade a couple years back. Fragments tagged me.”

“Sorry. But—”

“You had a guy with you last time,” Jakoh continued hopefully, “your engineer, who had a visor that helped him see. Got any more of those thingies up there on your ship?” He smiled, revealing a mouthful of broken teeth.

Riker stiffened. “Are you asking for medical help, Jakoh? I’m wondering about the forty thousand Ekorr. Did they ask you for help?”

“Will!” Troi whispered. Riker turned back to her. She spoke in quiet tones as she eyed the guards. “I’m not sensing any duplicity here.”

“There is none,” Shayla said, stalking past the visitors to her father’s side. “Except on the Federation’s part, Overlord. I have reports that their repair teams are refusing to work on the filtration facilities.”

“We want to know what happened to the Ekorr,” Riker said firmly.

Jakoh grinned. “I don’t see any Ekorr.”

“Not that again,” Riker said, “and not very funny. We don’t see them either. I’d be willing to bet they were the ones who sent the signal triggering our visit now.” His voice boomed through the high-ceilinged room. “Now, where are they?”

“Gone,” Jakoh said, raising his hands innocently before his face. “Vanished. Poof.” His jowls shook with glee. “Good riddance.”

Tuvok stepped forward. “Are you saying they transported somewhere?”

Jakoh’s smile left. “That’s a new voice.”

“Vulcan,” Shayla said.

“Great, then maybe he can tell us how to fix the equipment here ourselves.” Jakoh snorted. “It’s pretty simple, really. We broke through the front lines in one sector of the city a few weeks ago—and there was nobody there. An entire neighborhood had been abandoned.”

“They fled?” Riker asked.

“In what? To where?” Shayla pointed to a map of the island on the far wall. “You know there’s no other landform of any size on this world—and that it's impossible to build undersea. And there are no caves below of any kind.”

Riker glanced at Tuvok, who was in deep thought. “Could there be caves now? Maybe they tunneled—”

“Go ahead, use your widgets and devices,” Jakoh said, indifferent. “You’ll see as we did. They’re not here. Even our prisoners are gone!” He shook his head. “Nothing else has been out of the ordinary. Some drops in the reactor’s power generation, and a few thefts. That’s just Baladonians celebrating.”

“Celebrating?”

“Of course!” He straightened in his chair. “The war on Garadius IV is over, Riker. Isn’t that what you wanted? We’ve gotten what we wanted: They’re gone. They were never here, as far as we’re concerned. We have what my grandfather’s people wanted for us: a home.”

Riker’s eyes narrowed. Something smelled here, and it wasn’t the air. He looked closer at the glowing lamp on the tall stand off to the side. It wasn’t a light fixture, he now saw. “That’s a transport inhibitor,” he said. “You didn’t have those when I was here last.”

“How is old Picard these days? His headache any better? He had a bad one when he left here—”

“Jakoh.”

The Baladonian grumbled. “Age hasn’t suited you, Riker. All right, yes. A while back the Ekorr took to beaming bombs into our camps—that’s how they got me. We did the same to them. So we started using transport inhibitors to defend against that.” He shook his head. “Problem is, they got inhibitors too.”

“From where? And where did you get them?” Standing near the inhibitor’s base, Tuvok eyed the Baladonian leader. “You did not invent this technology on your own, and no Federation member would have provided it without consultation.”

Jakoh rubbed his head above the bandage. “Such long words, this guy. You couldn’t bring the pretty one?”

“I’m here,” Troi spoke up. “And thank you. Could you please answer the question?”

Shayla stepped in front of her father. “I don’t think you need to say anything else, Overlord.”

Riker stared directly at her. “If someone’s started supplying either side in this war, the Federation wants to know. And if they had anything to do with the Ekorr’s fate—”

The Baladonian overlord sighed loudly. “Just like the last time—talk, talk, talk. Are you going to fix my eyes or not?”

Riker scowled. “I’m not sure medical science can fix what’s wrong with you people.”

Jakoh sighed. “Have it your way. Shayla, our other friend has helped us so much. What would he say now to a gift?”

Shayla looked to the right and smirked. “Ask him yourself,” she said. “He’s been here all the time.”

Riker and his comrades spun to see the armored eavesdropper emerging from behind an arras. “I should’ve known,” Riker said. “The Breen!”

“His name is Thot Roje, or so he tells us,” Jakoh said, even as his guards pulled their disruptors on the Titan away team. “He’s our new trading partner. And what we have to trade today, Riker . . . is you!”

Six

This is outrageous!” Riker said, and he hated himself as soon as he’d said it.

It was what ambassadors said, of course. Ambassadors and Federation commissioners and bureaucrats of all kinds—and Rear Admiral Riker was now one of the tribe. “This is outrageous!” was the stick that had been waved in diplomatic protest at everyone from Kaisers to Klingon chancellors. Riker was sure someone had thrown it at Alexander the Great once, with just as effective results.

Cadet Riker, Commander Riker, even Captain Riker—those men would have wrestled for the disruptor rifles pointed at him. Not in a stupid or foolhardy fashion, but when the opportunity presented itself, around a hallway corner or inside a doorway. They wouldn’t have surrendered their own weapons with nothing but a harmless epithet.

But he wasn’t just Will Riker anymore. Nor was he just Enterprise, or Titan. He was the instrument and embodiment of the United Federation of Planets on this world. And while he might direct—had directed, would direct—Starfleet officers to risk their lives, he had a duty to stay alive, to keep his away team alive and to see Federation policy enacted.

The problem was, the Baladonians knew this—which made him something else: a target, a bargaining chip. The commodity that Jakoh had talked about. Riker wondered now whether the Baladonians had triggered the repair call, hoping to entrap a starship captain. They had gotten a rear admiral. He would be of great value to the Breen. They had lost standing within the Typhon Pact after the demise of their secret slipstream project. Riker would be taken, and interrogated, and eventually traded for something the Typhon Pact really wanted.

That would be their idea, for sure. But it would never come to that, because Riker was not a diplomat. He had weapons beyond outrage at his disposal, resources on the ground and in the sky. Even now, when the away team was being escorted to an underground prison cell.

“Inventory,” he said, after he heard the guard step away from the sealed door.

“They missed this,” Troi said, pulling her combadge from the waistline of her slacks.

“And this.” Riker slipped a tricorder—his—from its position under his sleeve. “We’re not a family to turn your back on.”

Tuvok took the tricorder from the admiral and eyed it. “Unfortunate that you could not conceal a phaser in that manner.”

Riker smirked. “I’ll take that under advisement for next time.”

“There might not logically be a next—” Tuvok stopped, finally recognizing the joke. He looked at Ensign Modan. “Did you have anything?”

“No, sir. I surrendered it all,” the linguist said. “I was afraid getting killed wouldn’t look good on my record.”

Riker took Troi’s combadge. “We’re usually captured by a much better class of jailer. This? This was more about flushing out the truth. For all that Jakoh complains about empty talk, he and his daughter spent enough time jawing to tell me much of what I wanted to know.” He clicked the combadge. “Riker, calling from the lion’s den. Or, more specifically, from the basement . . .”

Riker didn’t think he really needed to speak quietly into the combadge, but he did so anyway. The comm signal was unaffected by the transport-inhibitor field that kept them from being beamed out, although Titan did report a number of unusual but harmless types of radiation in the vicinity.

Riker resisted Vale’s intention to send down a rescue team immediately. “Jakoh’s daughter seems to be running the show. She let slip that the Breen were sending a vessel.”

“A warship?”

“I don’t know. They’re coming to fetch their representative Roje, and whatever it is they need to finalize the deal they’ve worked out with the Baladonians. I believe the Breen are responsible for whatever happened to the Ekorr.”

Vale agreed. “They don’t care about the niceties. They’d want a victor crowned, so they have someone to deal with. It’s the prelude to an alliance. But don’t the Baladonians know they’d be junior partners?”

“They’re not that smart.” Riker chuckled as he rolled the combadge around in his hand. “The Baladonians never know what they don’t know, and I want it kept that way. Prepare our rescue, but make no moves to execute it until I give the word. Tell Shayla that you will instruct Xin’s engineers to begin working again on the filtration units. But, Chris, have them slow-play it—”

“—while they snoop around to see what might have happened to the Ekorr.”

“You got it,” Riker said, and he was glad. It was good they were thinking alike. As important as getting off Garadius IV before the Breen ship arrived might be—or before the Baladonian dinner service, a potentially worse fate—it was just as important to know what had happened to the Ekorr. If the Breen had the capacity to cleanse entire species from a world without leaving evidence behind, the Federation needed to know about it. “If the Breen ship arrives, pull out the repair teams, then you try to get us out of here. Riker out.”

Tuvok was working with the tricorder. “Titan was correct: There are a number of unexpected particles about, and in this particular region. Fascinating.”

Sitting against the stone wall, Troi seemed less than fascinated. “The place seems right out of a holonovel,” she said. “Dungeon in Early Primitive.”

“I speculate these were living quarters hollowed out of the stone for the Vulcan monks,” Tuvok said without looking up. “They would have required few amenities.”

Modan idly touched etchings former prisoners had made in the wall farthest from the door. “Admiral, I should be doing something besides translating graffiti,” she said.

“Consider it practice,” Riker said, preparing to settle against the wall next to his wife. Then something occurred to him. “Modan, what language is it in?”

The Selenean traced her fingers across the writings. Some messages were gouged into the porous stones with sharp rocks; others were in chalk. “Most of them are in Baladonian.”

“As one would expect,” Tuvok said with a hint of impatience, “this having been the Ekorr’s base for many years.” He didn’t look up from his tricorder analysis.

“But not all,” she said. She pointed at several fresher-looking scrawls. “These are in Ekorr. Here, here, and here.”

Riker and Troi looked at each other. The counselor rose and joined Modan at the wall. “They’re more recent, all right,” Troi said. “On top of some of the others. What do they say?”

“Not ‘happy to be here,’” Riker guessed.

“None of them say that,” Modan said, nodding. “But the Baladonians’ messages are of disgust with being captured. The thrust of the Ekorr messages is more surprise at being put in their own jail.”

Tuvok looked up, suddenly interested. “So whatever occurred to change the balance of power on Garadius did not happen all at once. Some Ekorr survived to see their base captured.”

Modan knelt, pointing out, “The freshest message is this one, with the arrow.”

Riker’s eyes widened. “Arrow?”

“Yes. It says ‘Friend, find your freedom.’ And the arrow . . .” Her voice trailed off as she followed the scratching downward. It terminated at a stone that jiggled when she touched it. “Spines of the Mother! There’s something behind here!”

The ensign pulled at the stone. It gave way easily—for the obvious reason that only half of it was there. The rest of the hollowed-out section revealed by the stone’s removal contained a small silver cylinder, little larger than a glass tumbler.

“There’s an inscription,” she said, holding the object up to the weak light of the overhead fixture.

Riker stood and walked over to her. He squinted at the item. “Is that an inscription in Ekorr? Looks like the same character over and over again.”

Modan eyed the writing. “An excess of exclamation points, basically. The Ekorr are an excitable people in print as well as in person.”

“I’ve noticed.” Riker shook his head.

She read aloud. “Push . . . Ekorr . . . and be saved.”

“Let me see.” Riker took the cylinder from her and shook it. He heard no sound. “Seems like there’s something in there.” But pressing the sides of it did nothing. “I don’t get it.”

The linguist paused for a moment before brightening. “Wait! Maybe the secret’s not in Ekorr, but Elvish.”

Riker looked puzzled. “Excuse me?”

Tuvok rose and approached the others. “The ensign is referring to a constructed language found in the writings of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, a human author.”

Riker knew the name but not the relevance. “And so?”

“So let me try something,” Modan said, picking up a straw from the ground. “If I may, Admiral?”

Riker handed the cylinder back—and he and Tuvok watched as the linguist searched the text of the inscription. Finding what she was looking for, she pressed the straw into a tiny indentation. With a little hiss, the end of the cylinder snapped open.

Seleneans did not blink involuntarily, but Modan blinked now. “I can’t believe that worked!”

Riker stared. “What did you do?”

Tuvok was impressed. “The Ekorr appear to have borrowed an idea from an ancient human novel.” He pointed at the cylinder. “The instruction was to ‘Push Ekorr,’ and so she pushed the glyphic character for the word. It appears that before the Ekorr emptied my people’s library here, they read some of the books.”

Troi smiled. “How did you learn that, Y’lira?”

“I had a long-distance cryptolinguistics tutor once—Bart Faulwell—who turned me on to Elvish as an exercise,” Modan said. “He figured if you learned an artificial language, learning Klingon should be a snap.”

“Well done,” Riker said, grinning. The ploy made sense: A Baladonian wouldn’t have understood the language, much less the reference. It was a good way to slip a message to an imprisoned Ekorr, he thought. Riker wondered how they got the device into the prison wall to begin with. “What’s inside? A key?”

Modan pried loose the tightly packed contents. She rolled the black object over in her hand. “A wristband.”

Riker took it. “More like an old wristwatch.” But where the timepiece should have been was, instead, a small disk with a single red button. “A signal device, maybe?” When he pressed the button, nothing happened. “Tuvok?”

The Vulcan took the wristband and analyzed it with his tricorder. “There are sensor workings on the underside of the disk,” he said. “I would speculate that it requires contact with a wearer’s skin to function.” He flexed the wristband. “It is designed for an Ekorr, but I may be able to get it to fit.”

The Vulcan pocketed the tricorder and wriggled his hand into the wristband. Looking up at Riker for permission, he pressed the button—

—and vanished!

The remaining prisoners could only stand and gawk at the empty spot where Tuvok had stood. “He . . . just disappeared!” Troi said.

Riker’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on here?”

“I don’t know,” Modan said, similarly mystified. “But I think they’ve gotten their Tolkien chapters mixed up!”

Seven

Physical reality is consistent with universal laws,” Spock had once said. “Where the laws do not operate, there is no reality.”

Tuvok had been in some strange situations before as part of Voyager’s crew. But becoming suddenly immaterial—and invisible to his companions—at the push of a button was something novel. It wasn’t just physics that depended upon constants, but his worldview. To see everything change in an instant: That was a troubling prospect.

And yet it had happened. He had spoken and waved to the admiral and the women repeatedly: They were completely unaware of his presence.

“Do you think he was teleported somehow?” Troi asked.

“We didn’t see any signs of that,” Riker replied, agitated. “He just blinked out of existence!”

That sounded hyperbolic, and in other circumstances Tuvok might have said so. But it was clear now that they could neither hear nor see him, and he was not given to repeated futile attempts. Worse, he was no longer entirely sure that Admiral Riker’s statement was incorrect. He stepped back to the wall where the cylinder had been found and put his hand to the stone surface. Tuvok could see the contact his fingertips made with it, but he felt nothing—and a moment later, he pushed his fingers, his hand, and then his full arm through the wall. It was immaterial.

Or he was.

He stepped back. Tuvok could feel the boots against his feet, his uniform against his skin, the bulge of the tricorder in his pocket, and the band against his wrist. He pushed the button again. Nothing appeared to happen, but then nothing had appeared to happen before. Removing the wristband also seemed to have no effect.

Interested to test his new situation, Tuvok cast his eyes toward the doorway. He did not excuse himself to Admiral Riker in taking his leave, as instinct demanded, but he did walk around him. It didn’t seem polite to pass through the body of a superior officer. Reaching the prison door, he stepped through it.

The Baladonian guards were here: two of them, seeming bored. Like his crewmates, they registered no awareness at all of his presence.

“Phased,” the Vulcan whispered—even though he knew well there was no reason to speak softly. “I’ve been phased.”

Commander Troi had told of the rescue of the Romulan ship in her report of Enterprise’s botched mission years earlier to Garadius IV. However, Tuvok was already aware of the rescue, for it was legendary within Starfleet intelligence circles. Commander La Forge and Ensign Ro were knocked out of phase with reality, during which time they experienced what Tuvok was going through now. An intense burst of anyon radiation returned them back to normal. Commander La Forge published a paper on the event.

It set the scientific community abuzz. Some researchers began referring to the phased realm as the La Forge/Ro Continuum. The Enterprise engineer had initially resisted the colloquialism, and later, the Bajoran’s tenure with the Maquis caused official Federation science journals to quietly drop the reference entirely. It wasn’t clear that what La Forge had experienced was a separate continuum; rather, it appeared to be a new peculiar material state.

Tuvok had been captivated by La Forge’s experience. Science wasn’t his professional calling, but he was as curious as any Vulcan, and it had implications for security. Phase research was controversial within the Federation: When the Pegasus incident finally came out it had resulted in the court-martial and conviction of Admiral Pressman. It stood as one of the few black marks on the record of William Riker, who as a green ensign had tried to protect Pressman from the mutiny that his illegal research into an interphase cloak had sparked. Tuvok felt it was correct that Starfleet had seen fit to spare Riker, a man who had been a credit to the service.

But it was while serving on Voyager that Tuvok had occasion to consider the espionage possibilities. He had encountered the Voth, an advanced species whose members spied on his ship using a personal interphase cloak. Voyager’s interaction with the Voth was too brief, however, for him to learn any answers to his questions—and they were many.

If a phased individual could pass through normal matter unaffected, Tuvok had wondered, how could he or she stand and walk on the decks of a starship? Further, what were La Forge and Ro breathing if the ship’s atmosphere was still in the “normal” realm? How were light waves from the real world reaching the phased observers? They shouldn’t have been able to see anything at all.

La Forge had developed some hypotheses in his paper, but little testing had been done. Even now, phased-matter research was still in that nether zone. A pun, I suppose, Tuvok thought dryly. But here he was now, in a live experiment, accidental or otherwise.

He walked through the opposite wall of the dungeon hallway, emerging into a kitchen. No one was present; it looked like a quiet place for him to think things through. Tuvok brought out the tricorder and passed it across his own body.

The readings gave him his first answers. The tricorder and all solid matter in contact with Tuvok when he disappeared now read as infused with chroniton particles. The disk on the wristband, he inferred, must have somehow directed an explosion of chronitons into his form, without affecting those around him. Perhaps that is why I cannot reverse the process, he thought. That would require an anyon emitter, operating on him from the nonphased world.

The instrument also revealed that the process had not phased the atmosphere around his body. And yet, somehow, he was inhaling nonphased air. He closed his eyes, working to remember the exact words from La Forge’s report.

“Chronitization changes the parameters for matter within a system, but the matter remains in the system,” the engineer had written. “Some nonphased world conditions influence phased matter, just as phased matter influences some nonphased particles.” La Forge’s rescue years earlier had proven the latter. His wraithlike state had created chroniton fields on Enterprise, which Commander Data had eventually noticed. Now Tuvok’s instrument was seeing proof of the former. Phased carbon dioxide was being added to the existence around him: His own breaths were converting nonphased air into phased matter.

Yet his exhalations were not being explosively directed across an airless phased void. That too was a prediction implied by the Enterprise experience. The La Forge/Ro Continuum—if a continuum it was—might be empty, but it was something other than a vacuum. In the normal universe low-density matter such as gases apparently had a second quantum state allowing temperature and pressure to influence the phased realm.

“Fascinating,” Tuvok said, and he heard his word aloud. His sound waves rippled through a medium that existed only in the real world, altering the quantum states of its molecules in a way perceptible only in the phased realm. He could hear his voice—and the voices of the prison guards outside the kitchen door—but no unphased person would hear him. A like thing was happening with light waves: Nonphased photons reached his eyes in a secondary state perceptible to him and continued in the real world unaffected as they passed through his phased form. He could see, but he could not be seen.

It was fascinating. Tuvok contemplated the wondrous nature of the universe: home to particles leading secret lives, acting on and partially perceptible in multiple dimensions at once. It was a symphony of science, performed in an endless auditorium that no one else could perceive. But to Tuvok’s tactical mind, it also held security implications. The seepage of air into the phased plane might help protect against phased spies in the future. Real-world observers wouldn’t notice the disappearance of a little air from a starship deck, but a ship’s internal sensors would.

Garadius IV was a planet; therefore, no one would notice the extra consumption of oxygen. Riker and the others were aware that Tuvok was missing, but the Vulcan worried about straying too far from the cellblock. He walked back through one wall, and then another, to his former prison. He’d expected Riker might be discussing his disappearance with Vale. Instead, the husky Baladonian jailers were inside, carrying water for the prisoners. They seemed to be having a crisis of arithmetic.

“No, seriously. Weren’t there four of you?” the first jailer said. He was new to the shift.

“Not unless someone counted twice,” Riker said.

The second jailer was also new. “Wait. If someone counted twice, shouldn’t there only be two of you?”

“That’s if they counted all of us twice. They counted one of us twice.”

“Which one of you?” asked the confused first guard.

“That is a puzzler,” the admiral replied. “I can see how it would make a difference.”

The debate took a turn into nonsensical algebra, losing the jailers entirely. Tuvok had already known the Baladonians were no geniuses, but the exchange told the Vulcan something else: The admiral knew something had happened to Tuvok, but he didn’t think the Vulcan was in imminent danger.

He thinks he has a “hole card,” Tuvok thought, remembering what he knew of the admiral’s favorite game. Unfortunately, there was no way to provide confirmation. He wouldn’t be able to contact his colleagues as La Forge and Ro had, by passing his hand through objects and leaving telltale chroniton fields. Their only tricorder was with Tuvok.

He stared at Riker, and then the empathic Troi. Was it possible to mind-meld with someone who was in a different phased state? It shouldn’t be possible, Tuvok knew. But the mind was an unusual and surprising thing, and mental energy multifaceted and infinite.

He quickly dismissed the idea. If it did work, it was potentially dangerous, and a link with an unprepared and unsuspecting mind violated Vulcan morality. There were footsteps coming down the hall. Someone who knew how to count?

Tuvok stepped into the corridor to see a squat bipedal figure at the end of the hall, holding a disruptor. Another appeared at the other end, to his right. He knew they represented no danger to him in his state, but nonetheless he instinctively jumped through the wall before him, back into the kitchen.

Standing embedded in a food-preparation table, he looked back to see two gun-toting females emerging from the wall behind him.

“That’s far enough,” one said in a shrill voice. “We see you. And we promise—these work here. Don’t move.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” he said calmly. “You are Ekorr, I presume.”

Eight

Well, there’s one thing for sure,” Troi said, looking at the bluish glob in the tin bowl. “The food hasn’t improved. This is the same slop they were serving seventeen years ago.”

Modan paused between bites. “The same recipe?”

“No, the same exact batch of stew,” Riker said, smiling wanly. “I recognize the aroma. But I’m glad you like it.” He’d declined to touch the food at all, but the linguist was devouring it hungrily. Seleneans must have stronger constitutions, he thought.

Riker returned to the problem at hand. After the befuddled guards trundled out of the room, he’d reported Tuvok’s disappearance to Titan, still orbiting overhead. Its life-sign sweeps had shown no evidence of the Vulcan anywhere on Garadius IV.

And Tuvok wasn’t the only person Titan’s sensors couldn’t discover. Vale had tried to recalibrate the long-range instruments to pick up any indication of Thot Roje and his movements, but the Breen armor was hiding its wearer’s presence well.

“I still don’t understand those guards,” Modan said, putting her empty bowl down. “Did they really fall for that double-talk?”

“You’re not used to seeing an admiral who’s a flimflam man?” Riker asked, grinning.

Troi laughed. “I hate to tell you, Will, but it wasn’t all you. I sensed that the jailers weren’t at all surprised at the possibility that someone might disappear from the prison here. In fact, I think they almost expect it—and they don’t really care.”

“Then they should let us out,” Modan said.

“That’s not what I meant,” Troi said. “Let’s say the Ekorr have been disappearing—for whatever reason—as Jakoh claims. Eventually, even their prisons empty out. Given their opinions about Ekorr, they wouldn’t care.”

“But we know it’s these devices, smuggled in somehow,” Riker said, picking up the empty canister from the wall. Stroking his beard, he thought for a moment—

—and then remembered something from years earlier. It was a fact that he had completely overlooked in all his reviews of his previous Garadius visit.

Riker put down the canister and clicked his combadge. “Titan, inventory those unusual particles you were finding. See if there are chronitons.”

Her name was Orica, Tuvok had learned. She was a veteran in the Ekorr guard corps. Orica had met several of the Federation envoys years earlier, so the Vulcan’s appearance had not surprised her. His ability to see her, however, troubled her greatly.

“Damn my troops!” she said as she examined the wristband Tuvok wore. “They were supposed to have collected all the unused canisters.”

“Am I to infer,” Tuvok said, “that your people have been distributing these wristbands to Ekorr everywhere? Including smuggling them to those in prison?”

“They were the last Ekorr we had left to reach,” she said, removing his wristband. “Zorrayn tells us it’s the end of the first phase—no pun intended.”

“What is the second phase?”

“Don’t know that there is one,” Orica replied gruffly. “Ah, well. You’re here, anyway. This is useless now.” She pitched Tuvok’s wristband away. It tumbled through a nearby wall and vanished out of sight.

“You said ‘the last Ekorr.’ Am I to understand that you have phased the entire Ekorr population?” Tuvok asked. “That seems impossible. You could not all survive here in this form.”

“Shut up and see for yourself.”

The Ekorr woman marched Tuvok upstairs into the great rectangular hall that had once been her people’s operational center. It didn’t take long at all for him to realize that it was still their base of operations. For even as Baladonians lumbered about, doing the bidding of Jakoh and Shayla and remodeling the building to suit their tastes, the Ekorr were here too, in phantasmal form.

Tuvok stopped counting Ekorr at twenty. Some were merely milling about, joking and making fun of their unsuspecting enemies. Others were closely shadowing the Baladonians, listening in on their plans and taking note of who was where. It was a surreal sight: For spies, they were taking no care at all to hide their presence. Ekorr were standing next to—standing partially inside—their enemies, watching as the Baladonians did their work.

A security chief’s nightmare, Tuvok thought. The little Ekorr scouts seemed quite facile in their motions; nothing about their phased condition appeared to unnerve them. Anyone else putting his face or his foot into a visible obstacle might flinch, but the Ekorr walked through doors, walls, tables, and chairs without any evident unease.

Tuvok turned to Orica. “Your people have been in this state for some time,” he said.

“Weeks, some of us,” she said. “Keep walking.”

As he continued through the room, a skinny redheaded Ekorr darted into Tuvok’s path. Tuvok stopped to let the little man pass—but the Ekorr kept on going, slamming into the Vulcan’s midsection. Crumpled on the floor, the Ekorr looked up with surprise and anger.

“My apologies,” Tuvok said. “But you tried to walk through me.”

“Sorry,” Orica said. “He’s phased with us. Somebody screwed up big time.”

“I can tell,” the fallen Ekorr grumbled. He began to dust himself off.

A futile gesture, Tuvok thought. There was no dust at all here, save for whatever skin cells the Ekorr lost.

Orica pointed to a gray wall up ahead, and Tuvok dutifully walked through it. He momentarily considered bolting while she was still on the other side; Orica could not see him through the wall, even though she could pass through it. But he knew her disruptor fire could pass through it too, and that it was still deadly to him. Thus far, she had been willing to speak. So he waited.

“We call this realm ‘exotic space,’ ” she said, emerging from the wall behind him.

“Quixotic space might be a better term—for you can affect nothing in the real world from here. And we are both very much in danger of starving or dying of thirst.”

“Oh, really? Well, have a look over here.” She gestured for Tuvok to turn to the left. A few steps and another wall later, he realized he was in a large, richly appointed bedroom within the Lyceum Garadius—only in the phased realm, the place was filled with sacks, crates, and kegs. Some overlapped in space with the real-world furnishings; it was as if a chemical film camera had created a double-exposure of both a bedroom and a warehouse, with the bedroom part of the image taking precedence.

Orica chuckled. “That ninny Shayla has been running around directing the other Baladonians to search for us—when we’ve been using her own quarters as a storehouse!”

A three-member Ekorr work crew entered the room through the far wall. Tuvok watched as the workers each located a barrel and rolled it back through the wall from which they’d emerged. “Very clever,” he said. “You chronitized the supplies you required. I infer that you have a larger interphase generator for this process, hidden in the nonphase world of this city. The wristband is insufficient. It only contains the necessary reactant to phase an individual. The power and the activating irradiative source comes from elsewhere.”

“You’re a nosy one, aren’t you?”

“I seek only to understand. And this would explain both the missing foodstuffs and the power drain that Jakoh ascribed to—”

Motion caught his eye, and he recoiled. The Baladonian leader’s daughter entered the room through the doorway. Shayla passed through both Tuvok and a pile of boxes on her way to her dresser. Finding a change of clothing, she turned back to close the door.

“Let us move on,” Tuvok said, knowing the disrobing Shayla could not hear him. “I may have legitimate questions, Orica, but I have no desire to play voyeur with the rest of you.”

Orica laughed heartily. “Believe me, no Ekorr gets excited about seeing a naked Baladonian. I wouldn’t know about your kind. It doesn’t look like the Vulcans really lived it up when they were here.” She started Tuvok moving again.

Outside the bedroom/warehouse, Tuvok heard a loud chirp. He turned to see Orica pulling back her long sleeve, revealing a metallic armlet. A high, shrill voice emanated from the device. “Are you coming this year, guardian? The Vulcan will die of old age—or I will!”

“Just a few minutes, Peacebreaker,” she replied. Tuvok recognized the title of the Ekorr leader—and also took note of the armlet communicator. The redheaded Ekorr with whom he had collided wore one, he now remembered; like Orica’s, it had a large blue button mounted in one section. Noticing Tuvok’s gaze, she quickly covered her arm again. “We’ve wasted too much time talking. Let’s take a shortcut.” She grinned at him. “You haven’t seen anything yet!”

Another two wall breaches and they were outside in a narrow alley looking out on the plaza. When he had walked through it short hours before, it was filled with triumphant Baladonians, building their new world atop the one left by their absent enemies. But he now saw even more Ekorr there, sharing the same physical space. Hundreds of them, if not thousands. Tents and bedrolls dotted the rectangular mall, and many Ekorr celebrated as if it was a holiday. The entire civilization had gone on a phased picnic!

At the center of the plaza, he saw the figure from Admiral Riker’s briefing, standing atop a makeshift stage built on empty barrels.

“Ah, the Federation-man,” called the flinty voice Tuvok had heard over the communicator. Peacebreaker Zorrayn smiled broadly at the Vulcan. “Step over here. You’re just in time to hear my speech . . .”

Nine

We’ve lost a couple of our dance partners,” Ezri Dax reported via the comscreen in Commander Vale’s ready room. “Two of the Breen landing craft, quite suddenly. They may be coming your way.”

“Thanks, Captain,” Vale said. “We’d heard company was coming. Give the residents of Zellman’s Find our best.”

“And mine to the admiral.”

“When we see him again.”

“Aventine out.” The communication ended.

Dax had seemed unruffled about maintaining her orbital vigil; Vale was somewhat less sanguine about hers, waiting for instructions from her imprisoned admiral. Maybe Ezri, a joined Trill with a much older symbiont, had simply seen it all before. Vale had not—and neither had the unjoined Trill in her office: her security chief.

“This is ridiculous,” Ranul Keru said, pacing. He rubbed the back of his spotted neck in agitation. “There’s no reason at all we shouldn’t go down there with a team and get the admiral back. The Baladonians may have modern weaponry, but I’ve studied their records. Their tactical scheme involves stomping on whatever’s in front of them.”

“I know,” Vale said, slumping back in her chair. “We should be able to distract them by throwing candy bars. But we’ve got our orders.”

“I don’t understand why he didn’t take down a security team to begin with!”

“I think he was trying to make life miserable for as few people as possible. And that he knew exactly what we just said—that he wouldn’t have any trouble escaping.” Vale knew Riker wanted the engineers to have time to discover what had happened to the Ekorr—and then Tuvok’s disappearance had altered the timetable. That was fine for Riker but hell for her. How far would she go, having lost an admiral on one of his first diplomatic missions?

“Okay, Ranul,” she said, sitting up straighter. “Get your plan going. I won’t disobey an order, but there’s nothing wrong with stationing one of your teams in hiding down there, for when we need them.”

“Now you’re talking.” The security chief turned to leave—only to see the chief engineer, Xin Ra-Havreii, standing in the doorway.

The white-mustached Efrosian put up his hand. “Whatever you’re about to do, I’d hold off.” He looked in at Vale. “You’re not going to believe what we’ve found.”

“. . . this place, our promised land!”

Tuvok looked up wearily as Zorrayn pronounced the last word. The Ekorr leader’s speech contained no more than three minutes of content, and yet he had been speaking for three hours. But he’d hit the high note—an almost inaudible squeak, given Zorrayn’s voice.

“But that is not the end! No, at last, your patience will be rewarded with rewards, my fellow Ekorr. I have tolerated the same delays as you, lived with the same abominable abominations. For years, we have all waited, and waited, and waited, and waited . . .”

Tuvok closed his eyes and took a deep breath, centering himself. The Ekorr leader was as Riker and Troi recalled, to be sure. Tuvok, at least, had the training to tune him out.

He opened his eyes and looked about as the speaker rattled on. Very few of the Ekorr seemed to be paying attention to the speech: a learned response, and one that reflected well upon them.

He had deduced that the Ekorr were a structured and regimented society—they would have to be, to all undergo the phasing process. Every single member of the race on Garadius IV had undertaken the same interphase exodus. And they all were in close contact with their leadership; he could see they all had the same armlet communication devices worn by Orica.

Yet Tuvok had also realized something else while talking to Orica during the speech: that the Ekorr’s political structure was designed to reward stagnation. Debates were won not by the better argument, but by whoever was last to concede. That had put power into the hands of whichever Ekorr had the healthiest vocal cords—and, seemingly, the least to say. It was why the politicians so often repeated things, he surmised.

But the rank-and-file Ekorr, like Orica, seemed reasonable.

He watched the people. This was why the conflict had gone on so long: Concession was antithetical to those who made decisions, because that was not how they came into power. The Baladonians, for their part, simply seemed to enjoy brutality—striking back when struck. He could see why Captain Picard had called it an intractable conflict.

His thoughts were interrupted by the lightest smattering of applause. Zorrayn clambered off his perch and called out: “Now that was some speech—wasn’t it, Federation-man?”

“I can confirm that it was a speech.”

“Darn right.” Zorrayn took a vial of water from an underling. “Imported from the real world,” he said, and he drank thirstily. “Ahh.” He cast the empty vial to the ground, where it came to rest on the pavement without breaking.

Tuvok looked down at it. “There is something I do not understand, Zorrayn: gravity.”

“Ha! You sound like a Baladonian! They don’t know which way is up.”

“No. Mister La Forge speculated that it was the artificial gravity and the inertial dampers on Enterprise that somehow worked on his phased state, keeping his feet to the floor. Yet we are outdoors on a planet. How is it working now?”

Wiping his face, the Ekorr looked keenly at the Vulcan. “I . . . think I’ll leave that one to you to figure out.”

“I see,” Tuvok said. “Then you do not know.”

“Smarty-mouth!”

Irritated, Zorrayn looked back at Orica. “He was the only one you caught?”

“All the remaining wristbands have been retrieved and accounted for,” she said.

“It’s just as well. I saw you all when I came in—you brought that fool Riker-man with you, and the woman with the hair.” Zorrayn, now bald, snorted derisively. “You people are wasting your time here,” he said. “You can see we have achieved the most peaceful peace.” He started to lope toward the lyceum.

Tuvok followed, under Orica’s watch. “I wonder if you even realize what you have done here,” the Vulcan said. “You’ve happened upon a way for two rival parties to share the same coveted geographical location at the same time. Blood has been shed by countless billions who could not find a way to coexist. But you have taken coexistence to a new level. Or, more precisely, to a new quantum state.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Zorrayn said. “You blather like the Breen.”

“You are aware of the Breen?”

Zorrayn paused and looked back. “We see him.”

“Thot Roje has been counseling the Baladonians, you must know.”

“Maybe.”

“What have they discussed?”

“The Breen can only be understood when he wants to be.” Zorrayn quickly turned back toward the building. Spotting the burly Baladonian guards in front of the Lyceum Garadius, the Ekorr leader strutted up to them. He began kicking their rears with his phased foot—a pantomime that soon reduced Zorrayn, and the Ekorr around him, to tears of laughter.

“This is childish,” Tuvok said.

“And yet it never grows old!” Catching his breath, he looked back and grinned. “That’s not even the half of it: We’ve located one of our latrines in Jakoh’s bedchamber!”

Tuvok shrugged.

“I forgot,” Zorrayn said, the sneer returning to his face. “Your kind never laughs. Well, let me show you a cause for solemnity.”

Zorrayn led Tuvok and his guard through one wall and then another, arriving in the great rotunda the Vulcan had visited earlier. “The Altar of Bothmune,” Zorrayn said.

“Yes, your anvil—”

“Altar!”

“As you wish.” Tuvok crossed his arms. “But it brings up a valid point: You have phased supplies so that you can live in this realm—and perhaps, if you have brought enough materials, you might even become self-sufficient, drawing only upon the light, air, and heat of the physical world.” He gestured to the giant hunk of metal, taller than either of them. “But this—this can never truly be here with you. It is, to you, a phantom reminder of what you have left, is it not?”

Zorrayn stood to the side of his beloved relic. “You’re not so smart. Touch it.”

Tuvok raised his eyebrow. He stepped up next to the anvil and reached out with his hand. It wasn’t impermeable. Something was there. It wasn’t metal, but the anvil had mass. He looked to Zorrayn. “How?”

“What does it feel like?”

He felt about along the anvil’s surface, his hand partially vanishing into a blur here and there. “You have fashioned a doppelganger altar from your cargo containers. But what you have built cannot be seen, because the real-world visual is superimposed on it here.”

“That’s where we’ve been storing our empty containers,” Zorrayn said. “It keeps the place neat, and it wouldn’t do for Ekorr to walk through their own altar. Something that matters should have substance.”

“Not all things that matter require it,” Tuvok said. He looked back and clasped his hands behind his back. “Zorrayn, while this is not how I expected to meet you, I am tasked by my admiral to negotiate—”

“There is nothing to negotiate! We are here, and done with the Baladonians forever and ever. And ever!”

“Then I am also beholden to learn how this has taken place. You did not have this technology when Enterprise last visited—”

“Enterprise!” Zorrayn clapped. “How is old Pick-nose?”

“Picard. How did you learn about this technology? Did it come from the Breen?”

“We knew long before that snout-face showed up!”

“Then how?”

Zorrayn began pacing around his altar. Emerging on the other side, he stared at Tuvok. “You would look better with a beard,” he pronounced. “Yes, I demand you grow one, this instant!”

“You are attempting to put me off the subject by misdirection, as you did with the Enterprise crew. I assure you it will not work with me.”

“Pshaw! We confused your silly android.”

“But I can discriminate between your non sequiturs, and topics you actually intend to engage upon. I am sure Commander Data would have learned how to cope with you as well, had he the advantage of my years dealing with the illogical. A dubious advantage. But I repeat, how did you learn of the technique at all?”

“I’ll give you a hint,” Zorrayn said, reaching for something inside his greatcoat. “Catch!”

With a flick of the wrist, Zorrayn whisked an object toward the Vulcan’s throat. Tuvok lanced out with his arm, grabbing the projectile from the air.

“A personal access data device. A padd.”

“Genius!” Zorrayn snorted.

“This is Federation issue,” Tuvok said, looking at it. “An older model.” A couple of touches provided more information. “It belonged to Enterprise’s supply stores.”

“Basic information!” Zorrayn shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to figure it out!”

“On the contrary,” Tuvok said. “You stole this padd from one of that starship’s engineers while he was doing his maintenance work on your atmospheric units.”

Zorrayn pursed his lips and said nothing.

“I choose not to read his personal data further—but I suspect this contains the first draft of On the Nature of Chronitonically Phased Matter by one Geordi La Forge.” Tuvok stared directly at Zorrayn. “You knew of his experience, and his thoughts about it, long before they were published.”

“You’re not as stupid as the other Federation-men.”

“I do not accept your premise, so I cannot accept your praise.” He surreptitiously slipped the padd into the pocket of his uniform. “If there is nothing further, it is time that I returned to my crew.”

Zorrayn laughed loudly—and yet, his voice did not echo at all in the big room, for it had no ceiling in this state of reality. “That’s rich. Richly so, I might say! What makes you think you can go back?”

“You would have learned from Mister La Forge’s writings that bombardment by anyonic particles has the effect of eliminating chroniton fields. And you must have people returning to the normal world now and again as you require more supplies.”

Zorrayn stopped smiling.

“Don’t lie. It is obvious you have the capacity,” Tuvok said. He pointed to Orica. “I suspect every Ekorr has the capability, built into these armlets you have. You will supply me with one.”

“I can’t let you go back!” The Ekorr leader seemed on the verge of a tantrum. “You’ll give us away!”

“Then I will effect my return myself.” Tuvok turned and began walking past the giant anvil. Perhaps in the Ekorr’s pseudo-supply room, he could find another—

“No, no, no!” Zorrayn’s wrinkled face was afire with anger. He pressed a control on his own gauntlet. “This Federation-man’s audience is over. You can come out now!”

Tuvok sensed movement behind him. Armed members of Zorrayn’s vanguard stepped through walls all around the atrium.

“I’ll send you back, Vulcan—only after you’re dead. I don’t want our clean little realm littered with corpses while we’re here!” Zorrayn pointed. “Take him!”

Ten

Phaser combat, Tuvok understood well. Phased combat was something completely new. But while no training could have prepared him for the encounter he was in, he figured his survival depended on one thing: his ability to remember where he was and what the rules were.

When the Ekorr advanced toward him, he was far from any immaterial wall to dash through. But he had remembered that there was something physical right behind him: the gargantuan anvil, which in this state of reality shrouded a small mountain of cargo containers. He leapt toward it—and as he did so, he was enveloped by darkness. The anvil’s form extended out slightly beyond the pile in several places; and while Tuvok could not see, neither could those outside its boundaries see him.

Seeking handholds and footholds, he began to climb, hoping the containers would support him. They did—surprisingly so, for presumed empties. Behind him, he heard loud footsteps and hand disruptors powering up.

But Zorrayn called out first: “Don’t shoot, you fools! You could hit it by mistake!”

It had worked even better than he had imagined, Tuvok thought: Zorrayn has mistaken the junk pile for his holy relic! Realizing the Ekorr would figure that out after a second, he kept climbing higher. He’d worried that the stack was hollow inside, and that his efforts might cave the whole thing in—but the pile seemed solid.

Reaching the top of the immense pile of containers, Tuvok popped his head through the edge of darkness—the upper reach of the anvil in the real world—and peeked back down. The Ekorr were feeling around at the perimeter of the massive shape, trying to grab hold of any object in the dark.

“There he is!” Zorrayn yelled. But Tuvok’s face sank back into the shared space of the anvil, and he began to move again. Having determined the side with the fewest Ekorr, he sprang, leaping from the occulted pile and landing squarely on the shoulders of one of the unsuspecting guards. He floored the Ekorr victim, whose disruptor went tumbling away. Tuvok’s kick took out a second guard, but before he could grab the female’s weapon, he saw a third gathering speed for an assault. The Vulcan sidestepped the attack and gave a firm chop to the assailant’s shoulder. Grabbing at the Ekorr, he lifted the short creature and hurled him into the anvil.

Ker-rash! One side of the pile of boxes, already made precarious by Tuvok’s climb, came smashing down. Behind, Tuvok heard Zorrayn shriek. “Not the altar! Not the altar!”

Tuvok used the distraction to look for the first guard’s disruptor. It had fallen near the base of a large four-sided pedestal, located against the northern wall of the rotunda. A bust of Surak had once stood atop it; the Ekorr had removed the statue but not the massive pedestal, etched with the sayings of the father of logic. Tuvok dove for it—only to see a booted foot emerge from the plinth, pinning the weapon underneath.

“Two can play this game,” said the voice of a female Ekorr. The rest of Orica’s phased form emerged from the cover of the big support, her weapon raised. “I don’t want to hurt you, Vulcan. You’re amusing. But Zorrayn commands that—”

Before she could finish, Tuvok grabbed her thigh with one hand and pushed her torso with the other, causing the woman to tumble backward into the pedestal again. Phaser blasts from the other Ekorr sounded from behind, lancing through the nothingness around him. Quickly grabbing the fallen disruptor, he dove forward into the pedestal himself.

Orica was still “inside” the object, trying to get to her feet. Tuvok barreled into her. More than twice her weight, he easily pushed her through the back of the plinth—and he kept going, his driving run carrying both of them through the wall behind.

Tuvok separated himself from her and looked around. It was another part of the former Vulcan lyceum, but it was no sanctuary—as both found out when disruptor fire erupted from the wall through which they’d passed.

“Brothers and sisters—I’m in here!” Orica yelled, raising her weapon. “I can arrest him! Don’t shoot!”

“Run!” Tuvok said as another pair of bolts went past. Realizing the futility of calling out, she followed him on a dash through one wall and then the next.

“All right, I’ve heard enough,” Riker said as he listened to Vale’s surprising report. “Stand by, Titan.”

He tapped the combadge twice and looked back at his wife. “Can you believe it? This whole island is rife with chroniton fields. Titan’s sensors couldn’t read them from orbit, but once Xin’s people down here knew to look, they found them everywhere. They didn’t even have to look far. They were particularly heavy where the engineers were doing their work—and just about everywhere else.”

Troi brightened. “Then it’s just like what happened to Ro and La Forge after all. That means Tuvok is all right!”

“If we can find him to get him back.” Riker scowled. “I’m more concerned about how this happened.” His mind had been racing since he first considered the possibility. Now it stopped on the same answer: The Breen had interfered, somehow introducing interphase technology into the local conflict.

Phase technology! It had haunted him since Pegasus, when he saw to what lengths a career officer would go in order to militarize it. He’d also seen how dangerous it was, and what it had ultimately done to that starship. He’d nearly lost two friends to the Romulans’ botched experiment. And now here it was again, threatening to upend the politics of the Beta Quadrant. He didn’t know what the Breen’s angle was yet—just that they certainly had one. Riker knew that if they succeeded, phase weapons would be part of the Breen’s bag of tricks indefinitely.

“Do you think the Baladonians phased the Ekorr to get rid of them?” Troi asked.

“But this is in Ekorr.” Modan held up the empty canister. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Riker shook his head. “Enough waiting.” The admiral stood up and dusted himself off. “We’ve learned more just sitting here than I ever imagined we might—but it’s time to get out of here and sort this out. And to find our missing man, wherever he is.” He smiled at Troi. “We also have a child who’s missing us.”

“If I know Christine, Natasha has nothing to worry about,” Troi said. “I'm sure she’s already got a team standing by in the transporter room ready to break us out.”

“Let’s not leave them waiting,” Riker said. He clicked the combadge. “Titan!”

Silence.

“Vale!” Riker called. “Vale! Titan, this is Riker. Come in!”

“You’re wasting your time, Admiral!” called out a deep female voice.

Riker turned to see the open door behind him. There, in the entryway, stood Shayla and Thot Roje—both holding disruptors. The Breen snarled and squawked. Shayla, wearing an earpiece in one of her emerald ears, translated: “He says your crew up there is a bit busy at the moment. The Breen have arrived!”

“Red alert! Shields up!”

The Breen ships had blazed out of warp, weapons already armed. Titan hadn’t even had time to identify the new arrivals before the first photon-torpedo barrage.

“Forward shields at eighty-five percent,” Ensign Dakal said. “Holding.”

“Return fire, closest attacker,” Vale said, still trying to get her bearings. She had been in main engineering with her science chief, Melora Pazlar, going over the reports from Enterprise’s interphase incident from years earlier, when the Breen had arrived. Admiral Riker had said the Baladonians were expecting one Breen vessel to fetch their emissary—not four, blasting away.

“I identify the two Breen landers from Zellman’s Find,” Fo Hachesa, the third-shift watch officer, called out as he moved to the seat on the commander’s left. “A third Breen lander we haven’t seen before—and it looks like the battle cruiser Gor Taboka is with it.”

“Good eye,” Vale said. “Concentrate fire on Taboka—and watch for the landers to peel off!”

Within a second, they did, splitting off from their powerful escort in three different directions. All were still headed toward Garadius IV, but no two were close together. The Breen might not be understandable, but it was clear what they were trying to do now. Their landers at Zellman’s Find couldn’t take on Titan alone. With the battle cruiser running interference, the Breen were trying to punch through to Sanctum Isle, figuring at least one lander would make it.

“Safe to assume those ships aren’t here just to offer their envoy a ride home,” Hachesa said. “They’re after the admiral.”

“At a minimum,” Vale said, punching her combadge. “Mister Dakal, raise the admiral. Tell him he’s about to have company!”

“They’re jamming us,” Dakal said. “From two sources. The Breen up here—and the Baladonians down there!”

They’ve finally caught on. So much for talking to Riker, she thought. The same went for getting him off the planet. The transporter inhibitors in Lyceum Garadius were still operational.

“Okay, everybody hang on,” Vale said. She gripped her armrests as the ship shook. “Forget Gor Taboka. Increase power to aft shields—we’re going after the landers!”

It was the strangest chase Tuvok had ever experienced—all the more so in that he had actually succeeded in evading what was now a huge number of pursuers.

There were many of them, to be sure, and there was nothing real standing between hunter and prey. But the walls still looked like walls, and that had bought them seconds as they advanced farther ahead.

After a few minutes, the Ekorr’s aim grew wilder, their shots fewer. Perhaps the Ekorr had sanely remembered that they were firing into areas some of their own people inhabited? The danger had kept Orica from straying too far from Tuvok—that, and her duty to arrest him. But she had never had time to try.

At last, they reached another room Tuvok recognized: the library where Jakoh held court. The Baladonian leader was here, he noticed, as were several of his guards. The Breen envoy was here as well, as oblivious as the others to the phased visitors’ presence. Shayla was absent.

Then his eyes lit on the exact thing he was looking for. He locked it in his mind. He would have to remember it, no matter what came in the moments ahead.

Panting, Orica looked back. The chase had winded the woman, whose legs were a little less than half the length of his. The disruptor shots were no longer visible, and they sounded farther away. Turning, she looked up to see Tuvok right beside her, adjusting his stolen disruptor. When he put the weapon in his holster, she pointed her own disruptor at him.

“That’s enough . . . Tuvok,” she said between breaths. “Thanks for saving me back there . . . but I have a job to do.”

“As do I,” he said. He stepped closer, startling her. “And I am sorry I must do this.” His right hand shot out, grabbing her other arm.

“Wait, what are you—” Orica started to say. But before she could finish her sentence, he yanked her close and jabbed at the blue button on her armlet.

And that was when the pain really began—for both of them.

Eleven

This is outrageous,” Riker said again, without any sense of irony. It really was outrageous, being prodded along with Troi and Modan up the long dungeon hallway to where they’d be carted off as captured pawns. Titan’s plans to rescue him had almost certainly gone awry, most likely thanks to the arrival of the Breen ships. He’d let things go too long, in part because he’d hoped to have another chance to work on the Baladonians.

That infuriated him. It reminded him of times when Enterprise and other ships were endangered by politicos with aims separate from what good sense dictated. This fool’s errand had already jeopardized several members of his crew. When would the Federation next order Admiral Riker to do something Captain Riker never would have considered?

The only way to balance things, Riker knew, was to make sure that whatever he asked of Titan’s crew mattered—and that any sacrifice he asked of them really was worth it. He couldn’t be like Pressman, endangering everyone merely on a hunch about what the future held. He had to make sure the risks he took paid off. But he wasn’t yet sure how this one would. There was no sound above of any rescue party arriving. Only the clomping feet of Shayla and her companion guards, walking ahead of and behind the trio.

“Your ride’s almost here, Admiral,” the Baladonian woman said. “Thot Roje has gone ahead to thank my father.”

“I don’t understand,” Riker said, climbing the last staircase. “I’ve told you how the Federation will react. What are the Breen offering you?”

Shayla stopped as she reached the top of the stairs. “The Breen brought us peace,” she said. “The Ekorr disappearing: We don’t know how the Breen did it—but we’re pretty sure they did it. Thot Roje approached my father saying it would happen, and it did.” She glared at Riker. “After decades of Federation jibber-jabber, the Breen resolved our problem in months. The Baladonians respect strength—those who can get things done. You’re just part of our way of saying thanks!”

“But it won’t be just us, Shayla. The Breen will want access to this planet, to your oceans and all their riches.”

The Baladonian woman shrugged. “So what? We’ve never been able to get at any of it ourselves.”

“That’s because you’ve been constantly at war,” Troi said. “If you had peace, you and the Ekorr together might have figured out a way to exploit the seas here.”

Shayla rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous.” She pointed to the great doors to the library, up ahead. “Move. My father wants to, er, see you off!”

“Target two down!”

Vale pumped her fist as the second Breen lander plummeted toward Garadius and its acidic seas, expelling a shower of escape pods as it fell. It had gone better than she’d imagined. The first lander was the only one she’d expected to take out: It was the calculated risk the Breen had intended, sacrificing a single vessel to Titan’s pursuit while the others doubled back to approach Sanctum Isle.

But the Breen had made a mistake. Zellman’s Find was dotted with settlements on all sides that were objectives of the Breen, but the landers here were all heading for the same place. And so it was that even as the starship evaded the worst of the barrage coming from Gor Taboka behind them, Titan had pursued the first lander to where the other two were heading anyway.

Now only one remained—and it had just been tagged by Titan’s phaser fire. The Breen lander put some distance between itself and Sanctum Isle, its captain evidently fearful of the same fate.

It was a decision that came at the wrong time for Gor Taboka. “Hard about!” Vale ordered.

Skimming the upper reaches of the planet’s exosphere, Titan’s lower hull blazed with heat as the ship spun, a stone being skipped on a lake. The pursuing cruiser made no attempt to slow down, its sharper angle of attack causing it to buffet against the atmosphere. For just an instant, it lost control—

—and found itself unable to evade the barrage of torpedoes coming from Titan.

Titan clawed toward higher orbit as Gor Taboka broke up violently on the turbulent atmosphere below. Had the air over Sanctum Isle been cleaner, Vale knew, there would have been much to see below. Instead, the nearer sky filled with Breen escape pods.

Not a bad day’s work. No admiral around to admire it, though. Vale sat back in her chair. The red alert was still flashing, and the ship had taken some damage while in pursuit mode. “Status?”

“The remaining Breen lander has taken position above Sanctum Isle,” the tactical officer said. “They are not responding to our hails offering a cease-fire.”

Like we would know what they’re saying. “Are they moving to threaten the city?” Vale asked.

“No. The lander is stationary, accepting the arriving escape pods. Their aft photon torpedo tubes have been reoriented to face the ground, but they are not charged.”

“Clever. They want us to know that if we move against them, they can fire on the city. We’ve got them overmatched—can we take them out before they retaliate?”

“Uncertain,” Dakal piped in. “And if we did succeed, the Breen ship might well crash into a populated area.”

Another standoff, Vale thought. But it was also an opening. “Transporter room,” she said. “Mister Keru, is your team ready?”

“Affirmative,” the security chief responded. “The nearest beam-in point to the Lyceum Garadius is half a kilometer away.” The communication went silent for a second. “It’ll be a fight.”

Vale knew that was an understatement. Titan’s latest scans showed that that section of the island was crawling with Baladonians, all of whom were now certainly on the alert. But there was no shuttling anyone in, not with all the artillery pieces still on Sanctum Isle. The transporter room was the only way.

“Calm down, calm down,” Jakoh said to the squawking Breen envoy. Riker could tell as soon as he and his companions entered the room that Thot Roje was sincerely agitated about something. “Shayla!” the Baladonian overlord yelled, so loudly that his bodyguards flinched. “What the blazes is this guy upset about?”

Shayla touched her translator earpiece and listened as the Breen continued to chatter. Riker saw her eyes widen. “Titan has engaged with Thot Roje’s escort ships,” she said. “Only Pell Togah remains.”

Troi and Modan looked at Riker. He smiled, cannily. “So much for backing the strongest horse.”

Shayla’s head snapped back. “What’s a—” she started to say. “Never mind.” She turned and grabbed Riker by his uniform. “They can’t do anything to us while we have him,” she said to Roje.

But Roje wasn’t looking at her. Instead, the Breen was staring to the right—to an empty spot on the floor. Puzzled, Shayla followed his gaze. Something was flickering in midair, dancing on the shadows cast by the overlord’s smoking brazier. “What . . . what is that?”

Pain! La Forge and Ro had experienced plenty of it when they returned from their phased states to reality. Bombarded with anyons, their chronitized molecules had righted themselves, returning to their natural states. But the process was far from instantaneous—and was totally agonizing. It was as if nature itself, angry over its preferences having been so easily thwarted, had taken out its fury on their mortal forms. Reality charged a toll upon reentry.

Tuvok and Orica had felt every moment of it. Clutching the device attached to her arm, he had been enveloped by the effect too. An effect coming from . . . where? He didn’t know—and indeed, he found logical thought impossible as the torment worsened. He had trained himself in several disciplines that would allow him to ignore pain, yet these were totally useless now. There were only his bones, seemingly afire—and the madhouse images around him.

There was Orica, of course. Unlike Tuvok, she’d had no idea what was about to happen—and her face seemed frozen in a horrific, infinite scream.

There, behind her—through her?—were the Ekorr guards, melting through the walls, their disruptors drawn. They stared, stunned, unknowing what to do.

There, as Tuvok writhed, were the phantom faces of Jakoh and Thot Roje, now joined by Shayla. All looking at him—past him? Through him?

There again was Zorrayn, having followed his forces in. He was braying once more, trying to get his guards to shoot, regardless of Orica’s safety.

And there was Admiral Riker, standing beside Commander Troi and looking directly at Tuvok. It was a look of recognition—and of determination.

That brought Tuvok back to his senses. It reminded him, despite the pain, of where he was and what he was doing. And of the thing that he had to do, the first instant he could.

“What?” Jakoh snarled, pawing at his bandages and turning this way and that in his chair. “What is it? Someone say something!”

No one did. Shayla and the other Baladonians were spellbound at the sight of two glowing figures, half appearing, half not, in their midst. This was no familiar transporter effect. Shayla gawked—even as the Breen envoy started to move.

Riker and Troi looked at each other. But only once. They had seen it before. They knew!

Thot Roje did too—and he raised his disruptor. But not before Riker surprised his captor by diving forward, just as the spectral figures faded out for a moment. Seizing the Breen’s arm, Riker heaved. The weapon discharged right into the side of Jakoh’s would-be throne.

“Gahhh!” The Baladonian overlord called out, tumbling off—unharmed but definitely shocked. His bodyguards dashed to his side. Riker’s jailer started moving too, lunging to recapture him. Troi and Modan grabbed their own captors’ wrists, throwing them to the floor and slowing their attempts to join the fracas.

Wrestling with the Breen, Riker felt mighty hands grabbing at him from behind: his Baladonian captor, trying to get hold of him. Riker couldn’t snatch the Breen’s weapon away; the armored warrior had it in too tight a grip. But this wasn’t about escape, Riker knew—it was about buying a moment. A moment for . . .

Tuvok took a real breath.

Orica was still half wrapped around him—a dead weight, dazed, bewildered. He pushed her free and rose from a crouch, looking around.

Shayla, helping Jakoh.

The guards, struggling with Troi and Modan.

The admiral, lost in a pile of flesh and armor as Jakoh’s bodyguards joined the scrum.

Tuvok unholstered the Ekorr disruptor, pointed it at the tall silver fixture behind the fallen throne, and fired. A shower of sparks erupted from it.

Grappling with her jailer, Troi yanked the pouch he was carrying—and squeezed. Inside, the combadge the guard had purloined from Riker clicked once.

“Titan!” Troi yelled. “Inhibitors are down!”

Aboard Titan, Dakal called out: “The transport inhibitor is down!”

“Change of plan,” Vale said, suddenly brightening. “Transporter room, can you get a lock on the away team?”

“Too much interference. We can’t pick them out—”

“Fine. You’re going there!”

Orica looked around and blinked. She grabbed at Tuvok’s shoulder. “What did you do?” she yelled. “I’m here with them!”

Tuvok didn’t answer. He was searching for a target. He’d known to go for the transport inhibitor immediately. The next move was more complicated. Shayla had her disruptor out, and Riker was still struggling with the Breen and the Baladonians. Still more guards poured into the library. But their attention immediately went to Orica, the hated Ekorr in their presence. Remembering her disruptor, Orica began firing wildly at them.

“Get down!” Troi yelled, grasping at Modan. The Selenean was still struggling with her own captor as weapons fire ripped through the air above them.

“What in blazes is going on?” Tuvok heard Jakoh yell. The Vulcan had chosen his path by now—holstering his phaser and grabbing at the back of the topmost Baladonian on the pile atop his admiral. He heaved. Riker strained in vain to squirm free, still refusing to release Thot Roje’s wrist and his disruptor—

“Everybody freeze!”

It was a new voice, from a side of the room that had been relatively empty of chaos. Ranul Keru stood there now, with a squad of security officers, phasers drawn.

As the astounded Baladonians looked back, Tuvok yanked the last body from atop the still-struggling admiral and Thot Roje. Seeing himself overmatched, the Breen released the disruptor and rolled to his side. Scrambling to his feet, the armored figure ran for a nearby doorway.

Riker fought for breath as Keru reached his side. “We’ve got our away team!” he said to his combadge. “Repeat—we’ve got them! Get us out of here, Titan!”

“No!”

Tuvok looked back to see Orica, wild eyed and terrified and being disarmed by the security team. “Don’t leave me here!” she said. The emotion in her voice was clear even to Tuvok: She had no interest in being the only Ekorr on a planet of Baladonians.

“One extra, Mister Keru,” Tuvok said. He turned back to the fallen Riker and offered his hand. “I’m sorry to have been away, Admiral. But I have an explanation.”

“I’m . . . sure . . . you do.” Beleaguered and bruised, Riker shook his head. “I’m sure you do.”

Twelve

Tuvok looked sharp, as usual, when he entered the observation room. Vale glanced back at him. “I can’t exactly mark you as away without official leave, Mister Tuvok, since you were never really gone.”

“Your attempt at levity is noted,” Tuvok said, finding his chair.

“You’re no fun.” Vale smiled at him and looked back at the other end of the table. Riker had foregone a change of uniform—which he desperately desired—because of the urgency of the situation. Pell Togah was still hovering five thousand meters above Sanctum Isle, waiting for something. But what?

“Tuvok, does the Ekorr woman know anything?” Riker asked, rubbing his jaw.

“Very little, Admiral,” he said. “She is appreciative of us for removing her from the Baladonians’ midst, but Ekorr society is highly compartmentalized. Her legion’s charge was to round up Ekorr for transport into the phased realm—and to find the stragglers who had not yet been phased.” He thought for a moment. “She does not trust Zorrayn, but she believes in the Ekorr cause—and in the wisdom of separating from the Baladonians on the battlefield.”

Riker snorted. “Since when has the Ekorr cause been to avoid battle?”

“Since they discovered the writings of Commander La Forge seventeen years ago, I believe,” Tuvok said. “They tried to develop the technology on their own for espionage—and began to see then the prospects in it for separation from the Baladonians. They developed the grand scheme, then—”

“And then the Breen stuck their snouts in,” Vale said.

“That appears to be the case, yes.” Xin Ra-Havreii looked up from his study of Geordi La Forge’s stolen padd, which had made the journey back to reality in Tuvok’s uniform. “It appears that two years ago, a copy of this document was transmitted to a Breen courier. The record of the transaction is in the padd’s registry. It was evidently the first part of an exchange that led to that.”

The engineer pointed to the center of the table, where the metal Ekorr armband with the blue button sat. “It is the second part of a two-part system,” Xin continued. “As Orica confirmed, the Ekorr have several interphase generators secreted around their former territory for phasing objects—either directly, in the case of supplies; or remotely, through the catalyst of the small wristbands. The larger armlets are different. They make the return trip possible.”

Vale blinked. “Wasn’t it anyons from our world that unphased La Forge and Ro?”

“Yes,” Xin said, taking the armlet in his pale hands. “And it’s the same here. There’s a large anyon emitter somewhere on the island. The Ekorr armlets send out a large chroniton burst from the phased world with a particular signature that the real-world emitter can recognize, just as Mister Data once recognized Ro and La Forge. The emitter then bombards the signaler with anyons.” He nodded to Tuvok. “As you experienced.”

“I would not choose to again,” Tuvok said.

Vale marveled that Tuvok would express the extent of the discomfort that he’d felt because of the event. It must have been awful.

Tuvok steepled his hands together. “I have confirmed with orbital scans that the anyon emitter is hidden in the apparatus attached to the top of the lyceum’s dome. It was the logical place to look, as it is close to where the Ekorr are living now.”

The door opened, and Troi entered. She took her seat next to Riker. “Natasha was afraid we had disappeared too,” she said.

“No, just the Ekorr,” Riker said. He looked at Tuvok. “They were really trying to tell you they did this in the name of peace?”

“Voyager encountered a species in the Delta Quadrant known as the Voth,” Tuvok said. “They had a cloaking technology that stepped matter out of phase with the observable universe. They seemed to be able to move in and out efficiently, and without the pain I experienced.” He looked down at the table. “We have, many of us, encountered life-forms that exist in dimensions parallel to ours. It seemed to me for a moment that, if the Ekorr had technology like the Voth’s, then they might well have struck upon a way for rival groups to literally coexist.” He shook his head. “I think this form of phasing may be something different. But the hope was there.”

“Well,” Riker said, rocking back in his chair, “I don’t believe it was ever about peace, or even escape. The Ekorr would have happily condemned the Baladonians to the phased realm, if they could have. They just didn’t have the muscle—or the way to exile all of their enemies at once.”

Tuvok looked up. “I concur, Admiral. I confess I thought you were exaggerating about the two peoples here. They are exceedingly difficult to work with.”

“Sometimes the caricatures fit,” Troi said. “Sadly.”

Riker stood and began to pace. “That’s why I’m sure they’re doing something else. Commander, you said they were bringing stockpiles of supplies into the phased world. How much material?”

“As much as any expedition would take on a planetary excursion,” Tuvok said.

“That’s not enough,” Riker said flatly. “You said it yourself: Nothing exists over there. This isn’t the same as going camping. Anything they want to reach out and touch has to be converted. And you’d better believe the Ekorr know the difference. Zorrayn once harassed me for planning a holographic replica of his blessed anvil for the holodeck. He wanted actual matter.”

“He did want the anvil to have form,” Tuvok said, “although I suspect there was something else to it. And there is another point: Every Ekorr I saw had a ‘return’ armlet. Why would they, if they never intended to return to our reality?”

“I’d sure want an escape route,” Vale said. “But it sounds like they were all planning to come back. But to do what?”

“Something involving the Breen.” Riker turned and looked out the window at Pell Togah, hanging below Titan’s orbit over Garadius IV. “They’re the cause of all this. You said the Ekorr weren’t concerned about Thot Roje advising the Baladonians?”

“Not at all,” Tuvok replied. “According to Orica, Zorrayn said Roje was staying with the Baladonians while waiting for the Breen to arrive. Perhaps the Ekorr had promised to ally with the Breen in some sneak attack. But I cannot see the Breen entering what might be a costly ground campaign.”

Riker shook his head. “I’ve thought about it. The Ekorr do have something planned—but so do the Breen. I think they’ve figured out a win-win-win situation for themselves.”

Xin rubbed his neck. “Yes, I think I have an idea of what the Ekorr might have in mind. It would explain some of the odd readings my teams got—and it would make sense, given the situation.”

Vale clapped her hands together. “All right, then. The Baladonians are turning their city upside down right now. If there’s something to find, we’d better get there first. All eyes on the city.”

Xin nodded. He looked over the table to the first officer. “Tuvok, I think I have a possible answer to your question of how gravity works in the phased realm,” he said, eyes alight with enthusiasm. “Gravity operates on a macroscopic scale, not the microscopic scale on which quantum mechanics holds sway. It could be that the quantum effects of phasing are enough to eliminate the classical mechanical forces as phased and unphased objects interact—the contact force, for example. But gravity, among the fundamental forces, may still apply.”

Tuvok’s left eyebrow shot up. “Intriguing. And I have been forming a hypothesis as to the solidity of the ground. Extremely large real-world masses perpendicular to the direction of gravity may exhibit a kind of surface tension, for want of a better term, in the phased world. Thus a phased hand may pass with effort through the top of a chair, but not a phased person who attempts to sit in it, nor an item placed upon unphased ground—”

Riker slapped his hands on the table, asking, “Can we save the symposium for after we’ve settled the interstellar crisis?”

“Of course, Admiral,” Vale said. “You all have assignments. Dismissed.”

The officers rose and filed out. Vale grinned as Riker walked past. “Good call, canceling the science class.”

“Rank has its privileges,” Riker replied. He rolled his eyes. “I’ve got to get something out of this job!”

Thirteen

The Baladonians had been busy indeed. Titan’s sensors had traced the warriors’ movements; they were searching Sanctum Isle from one side to the other for the Ekorr’s hidden interphase generators.

They had found one very close to Jakoh’s new home—in a hidden chamber behind the cookhouse attached to the Lyceum Garadius. That had not come as a surprise to Titan’s crew: It was the source of many of the phased goods reaching the Ekorr. It had been abandoned, of course, its operators having long since phased themselves. When Riker saw that the Baladonians were bringing the cylindrical machine into the Lyceum Garadius—along with a suspicious shipment from one of their arsenals across the island—he knew it was time to act.

“Even too busy to bring in another teleportation inhibitor,” Riker observed, seconds after his away team materialized in the anteroom to the rotunda. The Baladonians really weren’t that swift; the admiral suspected all the thinking lately had been done for them by their Breen visitor.

Through the wide doorway he saw Thot Roje now, standing in the rotunda beside the huge anvil. In its shadow, Shayla and a Baladonian work crew moved the interphase generator closer to a meter-high dodecahedron. Jakoh stood nearby, grinning like a green fool.

“Look there!”

Jakoh’s guards snapped to attention, disruptors raised, when they saw Riker and his security officers. But the Baladonian overlord seemed unconcerned.

“You’ve come back,” Jakoh said, walking closer to the fat polyhedron. Reaching outward, he found it with his fingertips. “Isn’t it pretty?”

“You cannot see the object in question,” Tuvok said, his own phaser in hand.

“Oh, I don’t have to,” Jakoh said. “I remember it. It’s wonderful. A bomb. A big fat bomb, bigger than we ever dared set off on this island.” He stroked its silvery skin lovingly. “We call it the Cauterizer. We’ve sat on it for fifty years, afraid to use it.”

Stepping out from behind Tuvok, Orica gasped when she saw the device. She had objected to returning to the lyceum until Tuvok told her his suspicions; now she could see the proof for herself.

“We were prepared to use the thing if something crazy happened,” Jakoh said, “like the Ekorr learning to fight better than us. We’d never use it on our home otherwise—but we’ll happily send it to them.” Feeling around, he found the interphase generator and kicked at it. “You know, for years, we liked to pretend that the Ekorr were invisible to us. But now I see they’d have been a menace even then. They’ve been walking around as ghosts, spying on us—laughing at us!”

Shayla stepped to the generator’s controls. “We’ve already set the bomb to explode as soon as it’s phased. We’ll blow their spirit forms to bits—and never have to see the mess!”

Thot Roje seemed animated, concerned about what Riker’s team would do. Jakoh wasn’t. “You can’t stop it, Riker!” he said. “The process has already begun!”

Riker sneered. “Boy, Jakoh, you really are blind. Do you know that?”

Jakoh sputtered. “Did you hear that? He’s supposed to be a diplomat!” He shook with rage. “Yes, I’m blind! What of it?”

“I mean you can’t see the obvious. You’re preparing your little gift to the Ekorr here—in a place the Ekorr know about, and are certainly watching.”

Jakoh’s face froze.

Tuvok operated his tricorder. “We cannot see the Ekorr, but they can see you. And they have evidently already triggered an anyon burst from their emitter here. This bomb will not phase. Not here, not now.”

Thot Roje squawked—he could understand them—and the Baladonians panicked. Shayla called out: “Hurry! Deactivate the bomb!”

“Never mind,” Riker said. “We identified it when we saw you bringing it over here—and we’ve already beamed the fissile material into space.” He casually sauntered into the area between the parties, not worried about the hostiles still in the room. “No, we were never worried about what you would do. We were more concerned about stopping what the Ekorr had planned.”

Jakoh gulped. “What—what do you mean?”

Riker gestured to the far wall. “I mean the phased botulinus bacteria, which the Ekorr are even now making appear within your water-treatment plants. The bacteria they intended to use to kill everyone on this island—everyone who didn’t take their own water supply into hiding, that is.”

Tuvok nodded. “Our engineering teams discovered suspiciously high chroniton levels near their work sites. It took us a while to realize that they were caused by Ekorr agents, waiting to make their move.”

The Baladonians roared with surprise. “Th-they—” Jakoh stammered, “th-they were going to eliminate all of us?”

“Without harming their island,” Riker said. “They were going to wipe the planet clean, while their own people were immaterial. The bacteria would die out in two weeks. And the Ekorr would return to a world all their own.”

“I don’t believe it,” Orica said, horrified. “I never saw containers for anything like that—and I went everywhere!”

“I did not see them,” Tuvok said, “but I know I encountered them. They were in the pile of ‘empty’ containers hidden inside the anvil’s phased form. Zorrayn warned his people against shooting them, if you recall. What I climbed over to safety was actually a stack of bioweapon containment units.” If the prospect of clambering over them alarmed him, Tuvok did not show it.

Riker walked past Jakoh, who was still shuddering with outrage. “Don’t worry, Jakoh. Mister Ra-Havreii’s teams have taken all the plants offline.” He stepped toward Thot Roje, who stood still as a statue, his disruptor drawn. “Did you get that, Roje? Both your plans have failed.”

“Both?” Orica asked, bewildered.

“That’s right.” Riker pointed accusingly at the Breen envoy. “He’s been here all along—like a Greek chorus. Or maybe more like the little devil whispering into the ears of both peoples.” He smirked. “I guess it’s hard for you to have much panache as a villain when we can’t see your face or understand you—but you are the villain of the piece.”

The Breen warbled an objection, but Riker ignored it. “You approached the Ekorr, offering help with their phasing project. The arrival of your landing ships was Zorrayn’s cue to poison the Baladonians—and as soon as you knew that had happened, you were going to execute your other plan: making sure the Ekorr never came back. It was you who prompted Zorrayn to send out the message to the Federation asking for a maintenance call before he phased himself—so that when all the Baladonians died, you could blame the disaster on the Federation publicly, even as you took over the planet for yourself!”

Tuvok stared at Thot Roje. “I suspect the Breen originally simply planned to destroy the anyonic emitter to prevent the Ekorr’s return—but the Baladonians’ bomb seemed a better option. After all, Pell Togah’s sensors had told you that the poison attempt had begun. You no longer needed the Ekorr.”

Riker walked around in front of the giant anvil and put his hand to his mouth. “Did you hear that, Zorrayn?”

“He might not hear you,” Orica said. “He could be anywhere on the island.”

“Oh, no. He wouldn’t miss this.”

Thot Roje took a step back—and then another—as he saw the Baladonians glaring at him.

“Oh, don’t leave,” Riker said, cocking an eye toward the Breen. “Because I have something else that I want Zorrayn to hear. The Ekorr should know why the Romulans stopped pursuing an interphase cloak. It’s a topic I happen to have some personal experience with—as I’m sure your Breen friends have learned somewhere.

“We had an explosion in main engineering on Pegasus—trying to use the interphase cloak on the entire vessel caused the plasma relay system to blow out. The Romulan vessel that Enterprise-D encountered before our last visit here hit a similar snag, with an explosion. You can only lose so many ships before you realize a technology is too hot to handle.

“And that, Zorrayn, is where you come in. You’ve been generating a lot of chroniton fields—phasing almost as much matter as exists in a starship. So many chronitons in one place appears to raise the odds of a random decay event. It starts in the phased world—and impacts the nonphased world soon after, with some fiery results. That’s what happened to Pegasus and the Romulan ship. So you needn’t have worried about the nerve gas. Because right now, you’re the bombs.”

He paused, to let anyone listening think about it. “Oh, we don’t know when it’ll happen. But it could happen at any second, and that’s why I’m ordering the following steps to save the people on this planet. In approximately five minutes, Titan’s main emitter is going to bathe this island in anyons like you wouldn’t believe. It won’t hurt the Baladonians, no—but your people and your supplies are going to reappear wherever you happen to be. Anyone who’s presently inside something solid—well, it could get messy. But I’d rather have you materializing halfway in the middle of things, than blowing up and endangering the Baladonians.”

Orica started toward Riker. “My people! You can’t!”

“Then they’ve got to act now,” Riker said. “Zorrayn, Tuvok tells me you’ve got a public-address system over there. Say the word or not, it’s up to you.” He looked back at the Baladonians. “But I have a suggestion for Jakoh and his people: Find some mops!”

Riker’s words echoed through the room for several moments.

Then a familiar—if eerie—sight appeared. The spectral form of a small figure, writhing in pain, flickered into reality in the space before Riker. By the time the admiral could recognize the anguished form of Zorrayn—whom he had not seen since the Enterprise visit—a dozen more figures were beginning to make their appearance.

The Baladonians looked around, not knowing what to do. Riker told them, “If anyone discharges a weapon, my ship is going to beam you all into the ocean.” He glared at Shayla. “I’ve had a hard day. Don’t test me.”

Zorrayn, much the worse for his transition, struggled to regain his feet. He glowered up at Riker. “This . . . explosion business . . . wasn’t in La Forge’s notes!”

“It’s what you get for stealing a work in progress.”

Zorrayn spotted Thot Roje and jabbed a stubby finger at him. “And you! You gave us this technology—said it’d help us—and didn’t tell us!”

“Like they cared?” Riker asked. “They only cared about what’s in that ocean, and how it might help their cause. And in a choice between having Baladonians or Ekorr here as their client caretakers, I suspect they chose a third option: letting all of you die so they could waltz in and take over!”

Thot Roje warbled an angry-sounding response. But the room around him was angrier—and the Breen touched a control on his wrist. In a moment, he was gone, transported away.

“And that is why the transport inhibitor wasn’t replaced here,” Tuvok said. “Roje expected this moment might go wrong.”

“I don’t care,” Riker replied. “He heard what I wanted him to hear.” He looked back out at the room. There were no sides anymore, as Ekorr rematerialized beside Baladonians; and the same thing was happening outside, on the great plaza, if the astonished cries were any indication. Riker walked toward the eastern window and threw open the curtains.

“Both your peoples are currently unarmed and in each other’s midst,” the admiral said. “You can wrestle each other to the death—or you can talk. I can tell you which one I’d prefer . . .”

Epilogue

For her first de facto captaincy, Vale thought, things had gone pretty well. No admiral had been lost—and three Breen warships had been destroyed. A fourth had run like a scared puppy.

Pell Togah had departed seconds after Thot Roje had been retrieved; on the admiral’s orders, Titan hadn’t given chase. Vale had found that curious, after all that the Breen were accused of doing—but rather than feeling it was a case of interference, she chose to assume he had his reasons and that they were valid.

Neither the Ekorr nor the Baladonians seemed to have much energy for a final battle royale, and with Admiral Riker’s warning that the Breen might yet return in greater numbers to invade their world, both sides repaired to their homes—their original homes, in Jakoh’s case. Remaining phased supplies and laggard Ekorr were being traced and returned to reality, and a Starfleet contingent was on the way to help the people of Garadius IV on an ongoing basis. That was the Federation’s price for extending Starfleet protection to the planet, and it was one the locals seemed willing to pay. The Breen had given the Baladonians and the Ekorr someone they could mutually hate.

Titan remained in orbit, making sure the tainted water supply was completely safe and guaranteeing the peace. This gave its officers time for much-needed rest—and some return to normalcy and tradition.

“Spit in the Ocean,” Riker said, dealing the cards in his quarters.

Tuvok blanched.

“What? It’s a card game.”

“I am aware,” Tuvok said, anteing up. “But I do not understand what saliva has to—” He stopped. “Never mind.”

Troi chuckled. “So, Tuvok, are you still as impressed as you were with the Ekorr’s version of peaceful cohabitation?”

“What I saw was the illusion of peace,” Tuvok said. “Keeping out of sight of your rivals is no answer to the challenge of coexistence. It requires work.”

Vale looked at her miserable cards after the draw and folded. “Well, it worked out. I guess it wasn’t too bad dealing with those people again, after all. Was it, Admiral?”

Riker made a pained face. “No, it was bad!” Everyone at the table laughed. “But it worked. I expect you all to go on saving me from diplomatic scrapes as necessary—and to keep on shooting anybody who tries to kidnap me. Thanks again, Captain.”

Vale smiled. “Will do.”

Riker tossed more chips onto the table, prompting Troi and Tuvok to fold. “And if they try to send me to Garadius a third time,” he said, chuckling, “phase me!”

All laughed—save for the Efrosian engineer, the last in the pot. “Actually, I have a question, Admiral.”

“So do I. Are you in or out?”

“My question first?”

“All right.”

“Your ploy to get the Ekorr to reappear worked,” Xin said, “but I don’t know that it was necessary to tell them that their phased states would spontaneously deteriorate. That ‘random decay’ business. I’ve never heard of anything like that in the research.”

Riker didn’t respond.

Xin clutched his cards, and his brow furrowed. “Surely the Ekorr had enough motivation to return on their own, sir, with Titan ready to act and with their source of food and water compromised. Your announcement seemed—well, superfluous.”

“Why would your admiral lie, you mean?” Riker looked around the table.

Tuvok glanced at Riker. “A Starfleet admiral does not lie, Mister Ra-Havreii. At least, this one doesn’t. He bluffs.”

Vale put her fist beneath her chin. “He does, doesn’t he?”

Riker placed his cards facedown in his hand, without folding. “All right. Who else was listening down there? Thot Roje, of the Breen. And now the Breen believe the phasing technique may be flawed.”

“Which it may well be,” the engineer said. “This technique, that is. There are likely other methods, other kinds of phasing, where other physical rules apply. But still—”

“Can you imagine what would happen if someone put together the portable phasing technology the Breen gave the Ekorr with something offensive in nature? Something like the drones the Ba’ku used to tag the So’na for transport? You could fire at an enemy and knock them out of phase. They’d starve to death, if they didn’t go crazy first.”

“It . . . sounds like we’d need anyon emitters on every battlefield, to go along with transport inhibitors,” Vale said.

“And what would it do if the Breen took this technology—which they know we and the Romulans both gave up on—and kept on with it, putting it toward espionage?”

Tuvok spoke gravely: “We would need anyon fields surrounding all areas we want to secure. Everywhere.”

“That’ll be costly,” Xin said.

“What’s easier, then? Retrofitting every starship and starbase—or convincing the Breen that this approach doesn’t work?” Riker asked. “This way, you’ve won with a pair of threes.”

The Efrosian dropped his cards on the table. “Like you just did, you mean.”

“Sorry,” Riker said, pulling the chips toward him. “That information is Admiral-eyes only. Now, whose deal is it?”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My appreciation goes to Margaret Clark and Ed Schlesinger, and John Van Citters at CBS for making this opportunity available.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to Ronald D. Moore, writer of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Next Phase,” which inspired this story. Thanks also go to Christopher L. Bennett, whose theories about how phasing worked helped to inform my approach.

And thanks always to Meredith Miller, proofreader and Number One in my world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Jackson Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: Knight Errant, Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith—The Collected Stories, and fifteen Star Wars graphic novels, as well as Overdraft: The Orion Offensive. A comics industry historian and analyst, he has written for several franchises, including Conan, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Mass Effect, and The Simpsons. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and far too many comic books.

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