*   *   *

“What are we going to do, exactly?” Fabian tried to keep that from sounding like a complaint. He actually wasn’t all that worried—they’d gotten out of situations worse than this before. Then he thought about the situation again, and decided that maybe they hadn’t. But he was sure they’d find a way out again, as usual.

“We could take off when they aren’t looking,” Pattie said, but Tev shook his head.

“Their scanners have sufficient range to cover this sun completely,” he said. “Any movement would be spotted.”

“And even if we could get clear without their seeing us,” Sonya added, “without a slingshot this ship can only do warp two, max. They’d catch us.”

“We could destroy them, though.” Fabian waved aside Tev’s look of scorn. “I know, I know—they’d call their buddies the minute they saw us move. Can we jam their signal?”

Soloman spoke up from his console. “Androssi systems are highly resistant to our interference, and with each new encounter they’ve upgraded to prevent previous methods from working.”

“Right, hence Corsi’s Androssi Protocols One, Two, and now Three,” Sonya agreed. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.” She tapped her combadge. “Corsi, can you beam up to the bridge, please?”

An instant later, the air next to Sonya shimmered, and Corsi appeared. Fabian was amused but not surprised to see that she was carrying a phaser rifle in addition to her usual type-1 phaser—even though the Androssi had never had a chance at getting onto this ship, their security chief believed in being prepared. He filed away a mental reminder to tease her about that later, when they were alone.

“Yes, Commander?” As usual, Corsi looked calm, collected, and ready to commit violence.

“We have a situation, Domenica, and I was hoping for your input.” Sonya gestured at the forward screen—it was no longer split in half, and now showed a graph of the area around the star, including the red dot that was the Androssi ship. “That is the Androssi ship that’s guarding us. We can’t go after it because it’ll just call its friends back. We can’t run or it’ll chase us—and call its friends back. And we can’t just sit here, because the engines will overload eventually.”

“In three-point-six-five days,” Tev added. Sonya ignored him, a trick Fabian was still hoping to learn someday. Then again, it was easier for Sonya—she was Tev’s commanding officer.

“So we need to take him out before he can send a message,” Corsi said, and the others all nodded.

“Any ideas?”

Corsi smiled and sighted down her warp rifle, aiming it at the blip on the screen. “Of course, Commander. Taking out the bad guy is one of the things I do best.”