The fear scent was overpowering.

Captain S’linth snapped his jaws shut to close out the olfactory overload, to keep his anger scent in check. Then again, he doubted Suliss would even notice. His fear overpowered everything.

Slowly reviewing his crew, S’linth made a decision and rocked back on his tail, opening his jaws wide and puffing his neck muscles. Let Suliss scent his anger. Let his crew know of his displeasure. The Dutiful Burden was his vessel, and no Council-appointed overseer would change that. Outside of the blessed Council, if ever there existed a place where a Resaurian could be first egg, then by Demon, this was it!

“Captain,” the communications officer spoke up. Rotating his head toward Lyssis, his tongue flickered; she was as uncomfortable as the rest of the crew and yet, despite her third shedding, she performed her duty. If Lyssis moved for a challenge in the next cycle, she would have his support.

“Yes.”

“The alien ship continues to broadcast communications on numerous bands. I’m still working on translations, but there can be no doubt that most of those signals are aimed at the Demon.” Her tongue did not flicker once as she spoke the name so many, including the Demon-cursed Suliss, could not utter without a head-sway of fear.

S’linth did not need to glance at the overseer to feel his panic as a physical presence; he probably wishes to curl up in a nest with his females. Why does the Council burden me with such shedding leavings? S’linth’s anger pulsed once more, and he brazenly puffed his neck to expel his displeasure into the already torrid air.

So often S’linth had been forced to put up with the foolishness of Suliss; the Demon-cursed nestling carried his fear on his tongue. Now, as S’linth was on the verge of discovering the greatest change to occur in the last thousand cycles, Suliss could only sway with fear, his obsidian eyes almost completely obscured with multiple membranes. As Suliss’s fear moved toward terror, driven by changes he could not accept (the subspace signal from the Demon and the arrival of an alien vessel) S’linth’s anger moved to rage. He knew Suliss would attempt to block all moves of contact; S’linth had never been so close to baring fangs on his own bridge.

The tableau was interrupted as Third Councilman Sha’a slithered onto the bridge. All rotated heads toward Sha’a and bowed, nictitating a single membrane; as captain, S’linth need only bow his head, yet he nictitated as well. S’linth needed to bleed off anger; it was not appropriate in Sha’a’s presence. The Third Councilman would know of the emotions on the bridge regardless, but continued anger would only knock his own tail out from under him. Additionally, S’linth truly respected Sha’a. The councilman had been a full supporter of the captain’s crèche for long cycles. What’s more, Sha’a had to know fear from this travel (only his second departure from Nest) yet no fear scent hovered about him. This was a Resaurian to nictitate to.

“Third Councilman,” S’linth said.

“Captain.”

“We requested your wisdom due to the presence of a strange vessel over the Demon.”

The councilman slithered sinuously toward the giant forward screen. S’linth noticed he moved entirely without the use of his front legs as he navigated the unfamiliar decking through the bridge; such grace was in high contrast with the stumbling movements of Suliss. Coming to rest, Sha’a settled back comfortably on his tail, his flowing carmine robes gathering around his form as a second skin.

“What has been learned, Captain?” S’linth had noticed no overt flickering of Sha’a’s tongue, but was confident he knew all that had occurred. There was no hiding in the Nest from a councilman.

“Communications has verified that most of the signals broadcast by the strange vessel are cast into the Demon.”

“And?”

S’linth paused for a moment, tasted the air to see if he could find Sha’a among the emotions that clogged the bridge (it was impossible, the councilman was too adept at keeping his own glands in check). “I would approach this strange vessel and make contact.”

“And?”

Shaken from his trance, Suliss stumbled into the conversation. “Councilman…our traditions! This alien ship cannot be contacted. Other ships have come and gone, as regular as sheddings. This too shall slough. There can be no doubt. There can be no contact.” He speared the ship’s captain with a glare. “There cannot be another Klingon.”

S’linth firmly closed his jaws, but could not keep Suliss’s fear from coating his tongue with its filth. His lips trembled to peel back. To bare fangs.

He held his anger in check. “I am versed in our traditions. The captain’s crèche, as it has since hatched, knows its duty and the laws. But never has the Demon spoken. And now the arrival of this vessel…The two cannot be independent. The one leads to the other. You must see this.”

Sha’a did not even rotate toward S’linth, but the captain instantly knew he had overstepped his boundaries. This was a battle that required submission as much as aggression.

“I’m well aware of our traditions, and of the gravity of this situation,” Sha’a began, as though unaware of the raging scents around him. “However, I do believe this ship is tied to the strange occurrences within the Demon; we shall not depart until it does.”

S’linth had an overwhelming urge to peel back his lips and puff his neck in triumph; such an unseemly display was not worthy of a captain, especially in front of a councilman, and he withheld.

“Nevertheless, we have no scent of this ship. We must know more before a decision can be made.

“We shall wait.”

“What the hell are they waiting for?” the captain asked, staring at the alien ship that hung on the viewscreen.

Shabalala divided his time between the screen and his panel. A gravimetric wave rocked the da Vinci, upsetting the delicate sensor balance he had achieved, but he corrected for the disturbance with a light touch. The alien vessel was not going to slip away from him. Especially since verifying that its ion trail was a perfect match for the vessel that had recently visited the black hole.

The vessel was wedge-shaped. An uninspired design—with poor warp drive characteristics, he’d bet. But it had slipped up behind them, and now sat between the da Vinci and open space.

“Shall I hail them, Captain?” Shabalala asked.

Gold tapped his chin in thought. Whatever was on his mind, he held it close to the vest. Shabalala liked that about the captain. No histrionics. Just good, solid leadership.

“Give them another few moments,” Gold finally said. “I want to see what they’ll do.”

Another tremor shook the bridge. Shabalala corrected sensor calibration again, but noticed that a wash of static lapped at the edges of the main viewscreen. He sighed and hoped the captain did not wait out the aliens too long.

What did Commander Gomez do? Tev sniffed the air, as though his superior olfactory sense could span the distance from the da Vinci to the space station and aid him in determining what error the away team made.

How did they cause his system to fail?

Sucking on a piece of Faulwell’s candy, worrying it between his teeth, Tev studied the transporter interface. His large, almost pudgy fingers moved over it with grace and ease. For what seemed the hundredth time he recalled all data surrounding the transport and could find no anomalies of which to speak. He sent a query down through the probes and back again with no difficulty.

All systems nominal.

Nevertheless, after initialization of the energy matrix and the successful transport of the away team, he’d instantly lost transporter lock. What’s more, the da Vinci had been unable to even contact the away team.

The captain, of course, was upset by this turn of events.

Tev had tried to explain that the system was in perfect working order; the tests had worked flawlessly, and he found no reason to believe that the away team had not arrived safely onto the station. Though he could think of nothing Gomez and her people could’ve done to disrupt the system’s ability to track them, he nevertheless conceded that humans had surprised him on numerous occasions with their ability to derail the simplest protocols. This was likely the case.

Suggesting this had seemed to anger the captain. Why should the truth be difficult to accept? Tev had been slightly disappointed with Captain Gold at that moment. Especially when the captain offered to send down another crew member to help.

The man would only have gotten in the way.

He bit down on the thinning wafer, finishing off his candy with a satisfying crunch and wash of flavor—a sticky, sour but not unpleasant aftertaste that not even a drink of jota could fully banish.

Perhaps if he sent down additional probes, he could boost the signal and then triangulate the away team’s positions? He idly pulled on his beard. Perhaps a thermal print….

Tev put the transporter station on standby, surrendered it to the duty chief, and jogged toward the door. He tapped his combadge. “Transporter to bridge. Captain?”

“This is Gold. What’ve you got for me?”

“Captain, I believe that I can drop additional probes, setting up an imaging grid to sweep the station, triangulating on their thermal print. As the station is probably long dead, their thermal signature should be easy to locate.”

“What if the station’s not dead?”

Tev summoned the lift, organizing his thoughts as the doors whisked open and then closed. “Bridge,” he ordered. Then, “Even if the station is fully operational, with numerous active targets, the thermal print of a Nasat is rather unique. It should help us pinpoint their location.”

“Make it happen, Tev. We’ve got a situation of our own up here—stand by to hail them, Shabalala—so let’s get our people back. Inform me when you’ve gotten a lock. Bridge out.”

Tev did not bother to inform the captain he was already en route to the bridge. From where else did you program probes? Gold had sounded distracted, though. Hail them? Hail whom? Still trying to contact the station, which had ignored every attempt at communication since the da Vinci’s arrival?

Not exactly. As the door to the bridge slid open, and Tev stepped out of the lift, he was just in time to see a wedge-shaped vessel dissolve from the main viewer, to be replaced by a static-laced view of an alien bridge with half a dozen reptilian beings staring back with glassy eyes and wide, blunt-edged mouths.

Captain Gold should have informed him about this! How else was Tev to render him the best possible service and advice?

But he had his orders. As Captain Gold opened a dialogue with the aliens, Tev moved to an open science station and set about reprogramming some probes.