“Is that the Gus Bradford you remember?” Bart asked.

“Yes and no,” Gold said. “He’s every bit as stubborn as I remember him. But a good deal less sane, I would say.”

“Well, yeah,” Bart said. “I mean, he was a starship captain, right? He would have to have been more sane at some point. He sounds pretty much like a madman now.”

They were in Gold’s ready room, watching the recording for the third time with Carol and David McAllan, the ship’s tactical officer. It had been broadcast all over the system, and Gold had relayed it on to Starfleet. The official response had been to stay and collect Ambassador Uree, after which the Kursicans could deal with their own problems. “Collecting” Uree could be tricky, though, since Gold had no idea where on the three planets Bradford and his hostages were.

But maybe the Kursicans did….

“Get me Aulyffke,” he said. A few moments later, the Kursican Regent appeared on the viewscreen.

“Yes, Captain Gold? I have a bit of an urgent situation developing here, as you are no doubt aware, so I cannot spare you much time.”

“I don’t need much time, Regent. I want to talk to Gus Bradford. Surely you have some way of contacting him to discuss his demands.”

“He is a terrorist,” the Regent said flatly. “We will not negotiate with him.”

“I’m not asking you to; I’m simply asking if you know how to reach him.”

“I am given to understand that he is an old friend of yours, Captain Gold,” Aulyffke replied. “How do I know you aren’t working with him?”

Gold shook his head wearily. “Because I represent the Federation that he hates?”

“This is true,” Aulyffke granted.

“So, how about it?” Gold pressed. “How do I reach him?”

The Regent hemmed and hawed, then finally said, “We not only know how to get in touch with him, Captain—we know where he is.”

Gold bit back a comment about how stunned he was that the Kursican government had actually managed to accomplish something on its own. “Good. Where?”

“A base in orbit around Val’Jon. And we plan to obliterate it.”

“What!” Gold leaned forward. “You can’t do that!”

“We do not negotiate with terrorists, Captain Gold,” Aulyffke repeated. “That is a cardinal rule. There are no exceptions.”

Gold’s mind raced furiously. He pictured Deborah and little Ben—then pictured them being vaporized. “Give me an hour, Regent, please.”

“To do what?”

“What you’re not willing to do—save lives.”

“Captain—”

“You may not negotiate with terrorists, but I’ve been ordered to save the lives of Ambassador Uree and the other two Federation citizens he’s holding. Those orders came from the same Federation that you want to join, Regent.”

The look on Aulyffke’s face told Gold that he’d hit the right note. A negative report on the Kursican government’s behavior would damage their application to the Federation, and the Regent did not want that.

“Very well, Captain Gold. One hour. After that, we destroy your friend Augustus Bradford and his cabal of agitators once and for all.”

“Frnats overheard some talk among the prisoners,” Corsi reported. “I don’t like the sound of it.”

“What kind of talk?” Sonya asked. She maintained her position outside the infirmary, where the line for treatment still stretched down the corridor and around a corner.

“You know,” Corsi said. “There are only a few of us and a lot of them, they could get our phasers, even if a couple of them went down they’d still outnumber us a hundred to one. That kind of thing.”

“And they said this right in front of Frnats?”

“They don’t get many Bolians around here, apparently,” Corsi replied. “I don’t know if they thought she couldn’t understand them, or didn’t know how keen her hearing is. The point is, what are we going to do about it?”

“What can we do?” Sonya asked. “They’re right.”

“Then we should get out of here.”

“Not until they make a move, or we’re ordered out by Captain Gold,” Sonya said with finality. “I won’t run because of a couple of grumbling malcontents.”

Corsi glared at her. “You haven’t liked this assignment from the beginning, Commander,” she said. “I’m surprised you’re not willing to leave before the trouble starts.”

“You’re right, Commander,” Sonya replied, clipping the words short. “I don’t like it. But it’s the job we’ve been assigned to do. Now, if there’s nothing else?”

Corsi turned on her heel and walked away.

Sonya watched her go, knowing the security chief was right—the tension in the corridor was as sharp as a razor’s edge, the air thick with the mingled smells of sweat and fear. Something was going to happen soon. Her people just had to be ready when it did.

Ensign Wong turned to look at Captain Gold in his command chair. “We’re in orbit around Val’Jon, sir.”

“Pull within thirty thousand kilometers, and hold position.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ina, try to raise Augustus Bradford. Tell him I want to talk to him privately.”

The Bajoran nodded. “Aye, aye, sir.”

Gold opened an intercom channel. “Transporter room. Feliciano, can you get a lock on anything in there?”

A few moments later, the transporter chief replied, “No, sir. They’re using the same kind of shield that the Plat uses.”

“And there’s no way to get through it?”

“No, sir.”

“I don’t buy that. We’re supposed to be the damn problem-solvers of the galaxy—so get on it, pronto! Get Barnak and anyone else you need from engineering to help out. You’ve got less than an hour to find a way to get those people out of there, Chief.”

“We’ll get on it right away, sir.”

“Captain?”

Gold turned to the ops console. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

“I have Augustus Bradford, sir.”

It felt like there was a rock in David Gold’s stomach. “In my ready room, Ina.”

“David Gold. Imagine that. After all these years, you’re the one they send after me.”

“I didn’t come here for you, Gus,” Gold said. He was alone in the ready room now. “And I don’t care what mess you’ve gotten yourself into. I only want one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Ambassador Uree, Deborah, and Benjamin returned to me, safe and sound.”

“They’re all fine, David. You’ll just have to take my word for it. But I can’t release them to you. I’m surprised you’d think they weren’t safe and sound, to be honest.”

“I don’t know you anymore, Gus. I don’t know what you might do.”

“I’m sorry that your estimation of me has sunk so low. We were friends, once upon a time.”

“That was long ago, Gus. A lifetime ago.”

“Lives are short, David.”

“That depends on how you live them.”

Bradford laughed, an explosive sound. “I’ll tell you, when I wore a Starfleet uniform, with my own ship, I felt like every day was a lifetime long. I’ve never felt as free as I have here on New Terra.”

“The Federation isn’t as bad as you make it out to be, Gus.”

“Nor is it as good as you’d like to think. You still wear the uniform. You’ve brainwashed yourself, David. You don’t want to think that your life has been wasted in service of the wrong ideals.”

Gold turned away from the viewscreen so Bradford couldn’t see him trying not to laugh. When he had regained his composure, he turned back.

“The ideals I serve are the same ones you used to believe in, Gus. Decency, fairness, honor, duty. You remember our arguments, Gus? You were always the one defending the Federation against my challenges, my assaults. Turns out the Federation is able to defend itself. It’s not the intransigent monolith I believed it to be after all. Maybe it’s time you took another look.”

“No thanks, David.” The look on Bradford’s face, the smug half-smile that said that the argument was over—at least as far as he was concerned—was so familiar to Gold that he might as well have seen it just yesterday. The expression wiped away the years, and Gold felt a sudden wave of sorrow, as if he were looking at his old friend in his Academy days, full of pride and optimism and the sense that all the doors in the universe were open to him, and he had only to choose which one to pass through first.

“Come on, Gus. Be a mensch for once. Release your hostages and work this out the right way.”

Bradford’s answer was slow in coming, as if he had to think it over, even though, in fact, it could have been foreordained. “Sorry, David,” he said at last. “No surrender.”

Gold pounded a fist on his desk. “Dammit, man, they’re going to kill you! They don’t negotiate with terrorists, and they’re going to wipe out the base—including Deborah and Ben!”

“Their deaths will be on Aulyffke’s head, not mine.”

“What the hell difference does it make whose head it’s on? They’ll still be dead—just because they had the fool notion that visiting you was a good idea. Does Deborah deserve to die because she just wanted you to meet your grandson? Does Ben deserve to have his entire life taken away from him because you need to prove a point?”

Bradford said nothing. Just the fact that he had managed to shut Gus up emboldened Gold.

“I’m not asking you to surrender a damn thing, Gus. I just want don’t want to see a Federation dignitary and two people whom you supposedly love die, just so you can win one more argument.”

“Don’t you dare try to tell me that I don’t love my daughter, David. Don’t you dare!”

“Then prove it. Don’t murder them needlessly.”

“You don’t understand, I have to show—”

Gold leaned forward. “Oh, I understand just fine, Gus. I know how your mind works. You go out in a blaze of glory, take innocents with you, and that’ll prove you right. But it won’t help your cause a single bit. You want the Federation out of Kursican. That’s fine—but if you let Uree die with you, the Federation will be all over Kursican like matzoh balls in chicken soup. If you let them go, though, Uree can report back just what happened here today.”

“So can you.”

“Think about what I’d say if you let them die, Gus.”

The pause that followed seemed to last for hours.

Then, suddenly, Bradford cut off the connection.

“Dammit!” Gold tapped his combadge. “Ina, reestablish communications!”

“They’re not responding, sir.”

“Feliciano, any luck?”

“No, sir, but—hold on.” After a pause, he went on. “Somebody beaming onto the da Vinci from the station, sir. Three figures—bioreadings are one Deltan and two humans.”

Gold breathed a sigh of relief.