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Picard raised his face and shot Riker a 1ook—a look, nothing more, but the first officer knew his captain well enough to read the order there. He gave a quick nod, then rose and headed toward the turbolift, pausing to call over his shoulder, “Mr. Worf…”

Then the two of them were gone. Picard stepped forward to gaze at the horrendous sight on the viewscreen, thinking again of fire and death, and the pale-haired scientist with the desperate eyes.

The smoky haze and smell of fire were gone, courtesy of the observatory’s air-filtration system, but the gloom and silence had increasedmor perhaps, Riker decided, it was simply the fact that he knew that, outside the observatory walls, the Amargosa star had collapsed into darkness. He turned to Worf and silently gestured for the Klingon to search the upper level of the main operations room, while he scoured the lower.

Within seconds, Worf returned, shaking his head: No sign. There was only one direction left to go in—a corridor that led to several separate cells. Riker wasted no time making his way down it, then paused at the closed doorways in front of him. One was recessed behind a bulkhead panel that had been slid back—a hidden entrance. Riker turned, nudged Worf, who followed close behind. “This one.”

In the instant after the door opened, Riker got a brief impressionrathe stark contrast of light and dark, a spike-straight tuft of silver hair, white skin against a black tunic. In front of a rack of probes, a man sat at a console; the man he had uncovered from the rubble, the one named Tolian Soran. Soran’s expression was no

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longer dazed, but as intense as the solar flares he watched on his monitor.

Riker opened his mouth, but never got the chance to speak. Soran whirled. Some atavistic instinct propelled Riker backward into the corridor and behind the bulkhead in the split-second before Soran fired the disruptor in his hand; the blast gouged a smoking groove into the metal doorway.

He raised his head and looked over to see Worf crouched against the bulkhead on the other side of the doorway; the Klingon had a better view of the room’s interior. “What the hell’s he doing?” Riker called softly.

Worf cautiously rose to peer into the room; another disruptor blast, this one going clean out into the corridor and burning a hole in the bulkhead, made him sink swiftly down again. “Lieutenant La Forge is unconscious,” the Klingon whispered. “I cannot see Commander Data.”

“Enterprise to Commander Riker.” Picard’s voice filtered clearly over Riker’s comm badge. “You have two minutes left.”

“Soran, did you hear that?” Riker shouted. “There’s a level-twelve shock wave coming. We’ve got to get out of here!”

In reply, a disruptor blast angled through the open door, glancing off the doorway and searing the deck at Riker’s feet. He pressed closer against the wall and grabbed his phaser—but it was no use; he could not get at the proper angle to get a clean shot at the scientist. Soran had the advantage. Riker glanced around in frustration, looking for a better hiding place… and suddenly noticed a figure huddled in the corner of the room.

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“Data!” he called, sotto voce. “See if you can get to Geordi!”

The android looked up, golden eyes wide with terror. “I… cannot, sir. I believe I am… afraid.”

Riker stared at him, at a loss, then tensed as, inside the room, a communicator beeped shrilly. At the sound, Soran leaned down to scoop up the unconscious Geordi by the collar. Riker heard the hum of a transporter beam and watched in surprise and frustration as the two dematerialized.

He hit his comm badge and said, with a sense of defeat, “Transporter room. Three to beam up.”

A minute earlier on the Enterprise bridge, Picard was drawn away from the sight on the viewscreen—a dark, roiling shock wave, headed straight for the Amargosa Observatoryruby the sound of an alarm on the tactical console. He faced Hayes just as the young ensign was swiveling toward him.

“Sir.” Hayes’s eyes were wide, his tone urgent. “A Klingon Bird-of-Prey is decloaking off the port bow.”

“What?” Picard wheeled back toward the screen, to stare at the dying star—just as the Bird-of-Prey wavered into view on the observatory’s far side. “It’s an old Class D-twelve, sir,” Hayes said. “Those were retired a decade or so ago,” Picard murmured. This particular one looked like it should have stood down two decades earlier; the hull bore a hundred different hastily patched battle scars. To Hayes, he said, “Have they activated their weapons systems?”

“No, sir.” “Then let’s—” Picard began.

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“Transporter room to bridge. I have the away team aboard, sir.”

Wasting no time, Picard turned to the con. “Helm, warp one. Engage …. “

The Enterprise sailed away as, on the viewscreen, the observatory dissolved into rapidly dimming flame.

Fueled by nova-bright rage, Soran made his way through dark, claustrophobic corridors, ducking to avoid overhanging cables, recoiling at the grime-smeared bulkheads, the sticky deck. The aging ship groaned and shuddered unceasingly—and stunk of warm, wet animal, making him long for the pristine, silent corridors of the Enterprise.

No matter. None of it mattered, none of it was real—at least, not to him—and the unpleasantness with the Duras sisters would soon be over, and forgotten eternally.

He emerged at last onto the dimly lit bridge, and at the sight of Klingons turning to regard him, his upper lip twitched faintly. They smelled the same as the ship; and though Soran had always believed himself an unpreju-diced man, this particular species tested his limits. He strode past the all-male bridge crew—he was not a small man, but they dwarfed him—and paused before the two women in the command seats, who stared in amazement at the dead star on the screen.

The younger of them, B’Etor, rose to face him, her dark waving hair sweeping down over leather-clad breasts, her hideous features lit up by a leer that revealed protruding, jagged teeth. “You’ve done it, Soran!” He leaned forward and struck out, full force, catching

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her squarely in the jaw. She flailed, fell back against the console; immediately, several of the males leapt to their feet, disruptors in their fists.

“Wait!” WEtor waved an arm as she rose unsteadily to one knee; an El Aurian woman, Soran knew, would never have gotten up from that punch. She touched the back of a hand to her mouth, frowned at the violet stain there, then glanced up at Soran.

“I hope for your sake that you are initiating a mating ritual.” The edge in her tone was dagger-keen, dangerous.

Soran stood, utterly unafraid of the disruptors still pointed at him, disgusted by the thought of intimacy with this female, this… primate, clad in metal and skins and drunk with territorial power. Even if he did not completely possess the upper hand, he could not fear these creatures, could not fear death. Annihilation, simple nonexistence, did not frighten him; but life without hope of the nexus, of Leandra and the children, seemed unbearable. To be this close, this close, and be denied it…

“You got careless,” he said harshly. “The Romulans came looking for their missing trilithium.”

WEtor pushed herself to her feet. “Impossible. We left no survivors on their outpost.”

“They knew it was aboard the observatory,” Soran countered. “If the Enterprise hadn’t intervened, they would have found it.”

The older sister stepped over to B’Etor’s side. “But they didn’t find it … and now we have a weapon of unlimited power.” Her voice was calmer, deeper than her sister’s, her manner more reserved—but she could be, Soran knew, just as treacherous.

His lips thinned. “I have the weapon, Lursa. And if you ever want me to give it to you, I advise you to be a little more careful in the future.”

The last word had scarcely left his lips when B’Etor suddenly sprang toward him and secured his hands with surprising strength. An evil smile played on her lips as she lifted a double-edged Klingon dagger to his throat. “Perhaps we are tired of waiting,” she hissed. Soran did not quiver, did not so much as flinch as the cool metal pressed into the tender skin of his neck, slid over his Adam’s apple.

“Without my research,” he said coolly, “the trilithium is worthless—as are your plans to reconquer the Klingon Empire.”

B’Etor’s lip curled with disappointment; Lursa reached out and patiently pushed the dagger’s blade away from the scientist’s throat.

Soran repressed a smile of triumph. “Set course for the Veridian system,” he ordered the two women. “Maximum warp.”

B’Etor said nothing, only narrowed her eyes with resentment; the implacable Lursa turned toward the helm, and issued a guttural command.

Soran had turned, thinking to head for his cramped, uncomfortable quarters, when a guard entered, dragging the unconscious Starfleet officer kidnapped from the observatory. The guard nodded at the human’s sagging body. “What shall I do with this?”

“Bring him with me,” Soran said. “I need some answers from Mr. La Forge.”

At that moment, Will Riker was thinking of Geordi La Forge as he headed with Worf for sickbay. Clearly, Soran