“All right, Shabalala, what’ve we got?” Gold settled immediately into his command chair, Gomez and Tev stepping to either side of him. To Wong, watching from his conn station, the move looked perfectly synchronized, as if they’d practiced it. He suppressed a grin at the image of the three of them blocking the move out late at night and turned back to his station instead.

“Single ship, sir,” Shabalala said. “Configuration matches the Androssi.”

“Oh, great,” Wong heard Commander Gomez mutter. “Tell me it’s not Overseer Biron again, at least.”

“No, Commander, this ship isn’t one we’ve seen before.”

“Well, that’s something,” she said, but Shabalala wasn’t finished.

“For one thing,” he continued, “it’s at least twice the size of Biron’s.”

“Me and my big mouth,” Gomez moaned. “What else?”

“I’m picking up multiple energy readings, Commander. Each one matches the signature of an Androssi engine, but I’ve got three separate locations for it.”

“Clearly they have installed multiple engines for increased thrust,” Tev declared. Wong didn’t much care for his tone, the “any idiot could see that” way he talked to everyone. Come to think of it, nobody on the bridge liked him much. But at least he was usually right.

“I’ve got something, too, Captain,” Haznedl added from the ops console next to Wong. “Multiple communications readings as well. Also three of them, and they seem to be aimed—at each other.”

“What?” Gold leaned forward in his chair—the crew liked to joke that they could remove the rest of the seat and he’d never notice. “Three engines, three comm signals? You’re telling me—”

“Faugh!” Tev snarled, having stepped over to one of the aft science consoles. He tapped in a few commands, and an enlarged image of the Androssi ship appeared on one of the side screens. The multiple engines and comm signals were highlighted, as were the multiple weapons systems Shabalala had noticed but had not yet had the chance to point out. Then, at another command from the Tellarite, the image split into three separate components. Three equal components—each one with all the makings of a full ship.

“Captain, it’s splitting!” Shabalala called out, and they watched as the image on the forward screen changed to match the one Tev had just created off to the side. “Now we’ve got three Androssi ships, each one roughly three-fourths the size of Overseer Biron’s. And all three of them still making a beeline for us.”

“How much time do we have, Shabalala?” It always amazed Wong that the captain could stay so calm at a time like this. He was perched on the edge of his seat, of course, but his voice didn’t waver at all, and his hands were resting on the armrests instead of clenching them. I doubt I could be that calm, with three Androssi gunning for me, Wong admitted to himself with a shudder.

“At current speed they’ll be within weapons range in three hours, sir.”

“Fine. Gomez, you’ve got two hours to figure something out. I suggest you get to it.”

“Yes, sir.” Gomez and Tev left the bridge, again moving together as if they’d practiced it. Wong just hoped that wasn’t the only thing their team had been practicing.