Captain Gold settled in behind his ready-room desk as Gomez and Faulwell walked in behind him. The petite first officer moved off to one side, giving Faulwell center stage. Uploading data from his padd to the station on Gold’s desk, Faulwell said, “The Starfleet historical database was able to match the symbols on the pyramid.”

Symbols filled the screen, which was split into two parallel images. On the left was a detail from the pyramid that Araneus had brought aboard. On the right was an image from the archives. Even a cursory examination confirmed their similarity.

“This is from an artifact, an obelisk, that was found by the crew of the Starship Enterprise in 2268 on planet FGC-351772 III.”

Gomez looked simultaneously amused and skeptical. “That’s the planet’s name? Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”

Faulwell shrugged. “Apparently, its official name is still pending. Prime Directive issues.” He switched to a wider image of the obelisk. “The device protected the planet from asteroid impacts. The Enterprise’s science officer deduced that the symbols on the structure’s exterior were from a complex tonal alphabet and served as instructions for using and repairing the device.”

Gomez held up a hand to interrupt. “Hold on—whose alphabet? You said you knew who built the pyramid.”

“I do,” Faulwell said. Gesturing toward the screen, he continued, “That’s the language of the Preservers.”

Gold let out a long, low groan. As far as he was concerned, the Preservers were the working antithesis of the Prime Directive. Though no one knew who they were, where they had come from, or even whether they were even a race unto themselves or some kind of multispecies coalition, the fruits of their labors were well known to Starfleet. In a word, they were meddlers.

Just like that, Gold had a headache.

“Tell me one thing, Faulwell—can you make heads or tails out of those squiggles?”

“Yes, Captain. It’ll take a few hours, but—”

Pointing to the door, Gold said, “Get to it.” As Faulwell stepped quickly out to the bridge, the captain turned his attention to Gomez. “The Silgov are going to catch up to us any minute, and they don’t seem inclined to talk this out.”

She thought for a moment. “How do you want to handle it? Run or fight?”

Rising from his chair, he said, “Whichever one gets us to Mu Arae in one piece.”

At Narjam’s bidding, Maleiras entered the viceroy’s inner sanctum aboard the Silgov flagship Justice Maker. She stepped cautiously, as if fearful of despoiling hallowed ground. After months confined in the cramped quarters of the Starlit Wing, Maleiras felt strangely vulnerable in such wide-open spaces.

Space-time twisted past the wide, wraparound windows on either side of Narjam’s home-in-exile. His desk had reconfigured its normally blank surface into a detailed report from Silgos Prime. Judging from his expression, Maleiras concluded that the already bleak situation back home must be growing worse.

“Bad tidings, my lord?”

“Sadly, yes.” With a wave of his hand he blanked the desktop and looked up at her, his expression serene once more. “Your message sounded urgent.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Emerging from behind his desk, he said, “Speak.”

“I humbly request your permission to be candid, lord.”

Shooting her a wary look, he said, “Granted.”

“Forgive my impertinence, lord, but I think we might be pursuing the wrong strategy with regard to the Federation.”

His mood quickly grew defensive. “In what way?”

“Rather than make a foe of the Federation, could we not court them as allies instead?”

“Preposterous!” Narjam circled her like a predator. “Their ships are bulky and slow, at least a century behind ours. Such a backward civilization is of no use to us.”

Maleiras replied hotly, “I disagree, my liege.” She took a moment to rein in her temper. “Their propulsion is unrefined, but their weaponry is formidable. Even a remote civilian outpost was able to disable my vessel with a single volley. Such armaments would strike terror into the Vekhal.”

Passing behind the anxious woman, Narjam asked, “What are you proposing?”

“A trade, my lord. Our propulsion secrets for their armory knowledge. And perhaps an alliance.”

“Entrust our fates to an unknown interstellar power? Are you quite mad?”

“The Koas have sought them out in a time of distress—a telling detail. They did not seek refuge with the Danteri, or the Breen, or the Romulans. Why travel so much farther to reach the Federation?”

Halting in his circuit of the room, Narjam seemed to consider that for a moment. Then he shook off the notion like a winter chill. “When we disable the Federation vessel, its weapons will be as available to us as the pyramid.” He returned to his desk and sat down. “Our mobility is the only thing that has kept our rebellion from being crushed by the Vekhal. I won’t give away our most precious tactical asset to strangers.” Calling up a map of Silgos Prime on his desktop, he added, “Once the pyramid is ours, no weapon in the galaxy will be able to stand against us. And our people will be free.”

Armed with the complete Koas gene-sequence, Dr. Lense had just finished administering a series of stabilizing agents, painkillers, and tissue-regenerative compounds into Araneus’s battered body. Only after she’d determined what its outer carapace was supposed to look like was she able to see that Araneus had, in fact, been terribly burned. Why the stubborn Koas hadn’t shared this information with Dr. Safford after being transported aboard Varkala Station, she hadn’t a clue.

Through all of her labors, Rennan Konya had sat quietly with Araneus, projecting soothing moods into the patient’s central nervous system and alerting Lense when her treatments provoked distress. Amazing, she thought. All these gadgets, and not one as sensitive or as accurate as this security guard.

The doors swished open and Captain Gold entered sickbay, followed closely by Corsi. The two officers split up and took positions facing each other from either side of Araneus’s octopus-like cephalothorax. Gesturing toward the dazed Koas, Gold asked Lense, “He’s stable, you said?”

“For the moment,” Lense said.

“Wake him up, Doctor,” Gold said. “It’s life or death for us and him, and we’re out of time.”

Nodding to Konya, Lense instructed, “Carefully, Rennan.”

Concentrating behind closed eyes, Konya reached out and placed his fingertips gently against Araneus’s head. Seconds later, the Koas’s faceted eyes swiveled a small bit, then its voice ushered from its maw like a note from a whispering bassoon. “Captain…”

“Araneus,” Gold said. “Can you speak?”

Groaning with the effort, Araneus said, “Yes.”

Gold nodded to Corsi, who took over the questioning. “We’re being pursued by the Silgov,” she said. “They claim the pyramid belongs to them.”

“Lies,” Araneus said.

Lense noted the mutual eye-rolling between the captain and the security chief. Corsi continued, “We think we’ve identified the writing on the pyramid. Where did your people get it?”

Araneus hesitated. Its eyes shifted from one person in the sickbay to another. Konya, apparently sensing that Corsi was becoming suspicious of the Koas’s reluctance, gestured subtly for her to be at ease. The Koas spoke at last. “A visitor. Looked like one of us. An alien, from another star and ages past.”

Gold jumped back in. “Who was this alien?”

“Preserver,” Araneus said. “Called his people Preservers.”

Knowing glances and satisfied nods passed between Gold and Corsi. Meanwhile, Araneus continued. “Said his people made a vow to the Koas six million years ago. Their kind…almost gone. But honored their pledge. Kept their promise. Saved my people.”

Corsi leaned closer to Araneus. “The Silgov think they can make the pyramid into a weapon.”

“No,” Araneus said, drawing out the word for several seconds. “Works only once. Pyramid gone when my world is free.”

Gold straightened and motioned for Corsi to follow him out of sickbay. Lense watched the pair hurry out, then looked to Konya for a report on Araneus’s condition. Before she even had to ask, he reassured her with a careful thumbs-up.

Friendlier than my tricorder, that’s for sure, the doctor mused—while wondering if there was any way she could convince Konya to study medicine.

Gold and Corsi exited the turbolift onto the bridge, which was awash in the crimson glow of battle-stations lighting. Moving to his chair, he relieved Piotrowski, who resumed her post at tactical. Corsi situated herself behind the captain’s right shoulder. Typically, that would be the first officer’s post, but with Gomez and Tev both belowdecks leading the effort to thwart the Silgov attack, Gold was happy to have Corsi there in their stead.

Leaning forward with a cold gleam in his eye, Gold commanded, “Hail the Silgov flagship.”

Piotrowski keyed in the transmission and was answered seconds later by a beeping signal on her console. “Viceroy Narjam responding, Captain.”

“On-screen.”

The delicate features of Narjam appeared on the main viewer. “You wish to surrender, Captain?”

“Not quite,” Gold said. “But I see now that I might have been hasty in not acknowledging the possibility that your claim of ownership is genuine.”

“I see. How do you propose to remedy this slight?”

Denying himself the pleasure of sarcasm or the catharsis of harsh language, Gold said, “A simple parley, Viceroy. To avert unnecessary violence.”

“Most sensible, Captain,” Narjam said, his smug pretension galling to Gold even from several light-years away.

“If your lordship would be so kind as to indulge my explorer’s curiosity,” Gold said, “could you share with me the significance of the markings on the pyramid?”

Despite the fact that Narjam had rebuffed a similar request less than an hour ago, Gold hoped that by adopting a more subordinate tone he might induce the Silgov leader to elaborate on his assertion of proprietorship.

The viceroy did not disappoint him.

“Those symbols are part of the Silgov language, Captain,” Narjam said. “Read in sequence, they tell the history of my people.”

Wrinkling his brow in mock confusion, Gold countered, “You told your people’s entire history in just twenty-one symbols?” As trick questions went, it wasn’t a subtle one. Even a fleeting examination of the pyramid had made it obvious to Gold that there were many dozens of symbols on the pyramid, and he was fairly certain that no two were alike. Time to see if Narjam can call my bluff, he thought.

Narjam neither hemmed nor hawed; he simply kept the same vacant look of drab politeness plastered onto his bland, soft-featured face. “Silgov is a subtle language, Captain. Though it might look to you as if there are only twenty-one symbols, they contain myriad subtle differences, which, read together, lend nuance to the overall inscription.”

Gold turned to Piotrowski and symbolically slashed his fingertips in front of his throat. The dark-haired young woman muted the ship-to-ship channel. Looking at Corsi, Gold saw that she had recognized Narjam’s lie, just as he had. “He’s never even seen that box,” he said to her.

“Permission to kick his ass?”

“Granted.”

“Think faster, folks,” Gomez said to the da Vinci personnel who were gathered in the main shuttlebay while donning their specialized environment suits for damage-control duty. “The Silgov are going to start shooting any second now.”

“We know their shields are subpar,” Stevens said, shimmying into his gear. “If we hit them hard enough—”

“There’s too many of them,” Hawkins interrupted. “We’d get flanked, then fried.”

Powering up her suit, engineer Brenda Phelps said, “Let’s just ditch ’em, then.”

Security Guard Madeleine Robins shot back, “How? We’re in deep space, there’s nowhere to hide.”

Engineer Chris Turpin piped up. “Maybe we could jury-rig a cloaking device.”

Winn Mara laughed out loud. “Sure, and while we’re at it, let’s reinvent the Tholian Web.”

Stevens inspected everyone’s suits and repair kits as the debate continued. Lauoc and T’Mandra argued over whether the da Vinci’s shields could be reconfigured for metaphasic operation, enabling them to take cover inside a solar mass—until Gomez pointed out that there wasn’t a star close enough for the ship to reach before the Silgov would surround them. Rizz and T’Nel from engineering, meanwhile, vetoed several outrageous ideas in a row by security guard Makk Vinx, who then vexed the Bolian man and Vulcan woman by implying that a “tommy gun” was somehow the solution to every problem. Gomez resolved to find out one of these days what a tommy gun was.

Shabalala was growing frustrated. “Can’t we spoof their sensors? Make them think we’ve got heavy reinforcements?”

“We don’t have the faintest idea what their sensor protocols are,” Haznedl said. “Unless we learn all about their technology in the next five minutes, I’d say forget about it.”

Ken Caitano from security grinned at Gomez. “Guess it’s a bit late to say we’re sorry, huh?”

Gomez smiled good-naturedly at him. “A diplomatic solution is probably off the table, yes.” Looking around at the rest of the damage-control team, she said, “Three minutes, people. We need an idea now.”

“Too bad we’re not running the other way,” Wong said. “They’re fast, but in the slipstream we were faster.”

Engineer Cade Bennett’s face lit up. “Hang on—could we make our own artificial slipstream?”

“Sure,” Martina Barre said. “We probably have a few spares in the cargo bay.”

From across the shuttlebay came Tev’s exasperated sigh. All conversation ceased. The crew turned in unison toward the grouchy Tellarite. Gomez felt her ire rise as if by instinct. Facing him with a withering glare, she said, “Yes, Tev?”

He droned as if he were being asked to address a class of unruly children. “If the Silgov fleet pursues us into the slipstream,” Tev said, “the phenomenon’s peculiar subspace physics would make their ships exponentially faster than ours.”

“We already know they’re faster than us,” Gomez said. “That isn’t helping.”

Tev grimaced as a condescending, petulant whimper of annoyance issued from the deepest reaches of his sinus cavity. “Grease under their wheels, Commander,” he said. “Lure them into the slipstream at maximum velocity, then collapse our own warp field and let them race past us. They will be several dozen light-years away before they can correct their error.”

“Hang on,” said gamma-shift operations officer Alexandre Lambdin. “We had to modulate our subspace field harmonics to within a picocochrane to get inside the slipstream. How are we supposed to lure them in unless their warp-field harmonics match up?”

“A trap door,” Tev said. “We use our own warp field to create a zone of instability in the slipstream’s threshold, fracture it for a split second with a modified phaser discharge, then collapse our warp field before we enter the slipstream.”

Transporter Chief Laura Poynter looked dumb-founded by the suggestion. “Would that work?”

“Of course it will work,” Tev said. “Provided the rest of you pay attention while I explain…”

Listening to Tev hand out duty assignments with arrogant surety, Gomez stifled her surging desire to throw him into the brig. Issuing orders and taking action without obtaining her approval was the very thing for which she had just excoriated him, and now, mere minutes later, he was doing it again.

The fact that Tev could be so casually brilliant irritated Gomez as much as everything else about him. She waited while the Tellarite taskmaster finished giving the crew instructions. When he got to her, he seemed on the verge of delivering another order. No doubt reading her mood from the scowl on her face, he paused, then said in a less confident voice, “With your permission, of course, Commander.”

Swallowing her anger, she said calmly, “Sounds like a plan. Let’s get to work.” She put on her helmet, and the rest of the damage-control team followed suit. Leading them out of the shuttlebay, she silently lamented that fixing Tev’s defective understanding of the chain of command was far more complicated than any engineering task for which she had been trained. The brash second officer shouldered past her into the narrow corridor. Watching him move away toward main engineering, she realized that correcting his major mental malfunctions very well might be a task best left to someone else.

A professional.