DIKEMBE ULELO HAD A JOB to do.

With that idea firmly in mind, he approached the bridge’s communications console, where his superior, Lieutenant Paxton, was still compiling a report on message activity during his shift.

“You’re early,” Paxton said without looking up. “Of course, you’re always early.”

His tone, usually a good-natured one, sounded a trifle less so this morning. Ulelo chalked it up to the fact that Paxton wasn’t used to working the graveyard shift—and wouldn’t have done so this time either, except for the fact that one of the junior com officers had come down with a virus.

The transporter’s biofilter strained out most alien parasites, but not all of them. Hence, the virus, which Greyhorse, the ship’s chief medical officer, had been pleased to declare was “not much worse than a head cold.”

Still, Paxton had been forced to replace the patient on her shift. Another com chief might have appointed someone else to do it, and gotten his usual hours of rest. But not Paxton. He never asked anyone to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself.

Ulelo attempted to respond in a friendly, even playful way. “Are you complaining, sir?”

He wasn’t by nature a playful person. However, he had come to realize that such banter was expected of him. It was expected of almost everyone on the ship, now that they had all gotten to know each other.

Paxton looked up at him and smiled a weary smile. “Not at all, Ulelo. Don’t mind me. I’m a little…tired, I guess.” With that, he finished what he was doing, got up, and moved aside.

Ulelo took the vacated seat and reviewed his superior’s report. Nothing unusual, he noted as he went over it. Nothing that would pique anyone’s interest.

That was fine with Ulelo. He didn’t want anyone to have a reason to take a look at the com logs, so the more routine they were, the better.

“See you later,” said Paxton. Then he headed for one of the aft consoles on some other bit of business, as he often did when his shift was over.

Ulelo waited a moment, until he was certain that Paxton wasn’t coming back. As he sat there, he could hear the soft chirping of the other consoles, the even hum of the warp engines. He had gotten so accustomed to them, he hardly noticed them anymore.

Finally, the lieutenant took a quick look around to make certain no one was watching him. No one was, of course. No one ever watched him.

But then, why should they? Ulelo was an officer in good standing, a trusted member of the Stargazer’s crew. His record showed that his actions were beyond reproach.

That was why he had been given the responsibility of sending and receiving any number of subspace messages, some of them containing delicate and even classified information. But not the kind he was preparing to send now.

The transmission he was setting up at that particular moment contained strategic data on the Stargazer’s operating systems. Ulelo had gathered it painstakingly over the course of the last few days.

None of his superiors had asked him to either gather it or send it. In fact, they would have been shocked to know of his actions in this matter, which was why he was working in secret—just as he had done so many times before, over and over again, since the day he first set foot aboard the Stargazer.

After all, there was more to Dikembe Ulelo than met the eye.

On the surface, he was like anyone else on the ship. But inside, he was the minion of another set of masters, and it was on their behalf that he pursued his clandestine mission.

His preparations complete, Ulelo tapped in the command that would send out the packet of information. Then he returned the data to the file it had come from—a personal file, never seen by anyone else—and erased any evidence that it had ever been accessed from the communications console.

Done, he thought.

But before Ulelo could take any pride in the notion, he felt something strange—something he hadn’t ever felt before on the bridge of the Stargazer.

Scrutiny.

Turning his head ever so slightly, he cast a glance in what he felt was the appropriate direction. It was then that he realized he was right. Someone was watching him, all right.

It was Lieutenant Paxton.

Why? Ulelo asked himself. Why was Paxton looking at him that way? What had he done to attract the man’s attention?

Trying not to give anything away, Ulelo turned back to his console and forced himself to do some work—legitimate work, this time. But his heart was pounding so hard against his ribs that he thought they might break.

What is Paxton doing? he wondered, filled with a strange mixture of fear and curiosity. But he didn’t dare glance in his superior’s direction a second time.

Maybe he’s not doing anything, Ulelo thought, and liked the sound of it. Maybe he just happened to be looking at me for a moment. Maybe he still has no idea what I’ve been up to.

Then he heard Paxton’s voice, calm but firm: “Get up and step away from the console, Ulelo.”

Ulelo turned to his superior again—he had to, having been addressed—and saw that Paxton was almost on top of him. He did his best to feign surprise: “Sir?”

“Step away from the console,” Paxton repeated, a little more forcefully this time. His gaze was uncharacteristically hard and unyielding.

Ulelo’s mind raced, seeking a way for him to wriggle off the hook. But he couldn’t think of one.

Just then, the turbolift doors slid open and a couple of security officers stepped out. One was Joseph, the acting head of the section. The other was Pfeffer, one of the friends to whom Emily Bender had intoduced Ulelo.

Pfeffer’s expression was unmistakably one of regret. Obviously, she knew what she had come for.

It was only then that Ulelo realized the extent to which he must have incriminated himself.

Paxton hadn’t sent for the security officers. They had been waiting in the lift. So Paxton’s suspicions weren’t brand-new. He had known about Ulelo for some time.

A trap, Ulelo reflected.

“Come with us,” said Joseph.

“Don’t make it harder than it has to be,” said Pfeffer, her eyes beseeching him to cooperate.

The other officers on the bridge had turned to them, wondering what in blazes was going on. Ulelo thought about protesting his innocence, stalling for some time.

But there was nothing to be gained by it. Without another word, he got up from his station and allowed his colleagues to escort him to the brig.

“Well,” said Lieutenant Bender, as she set her tray down on the rectangular mess-hall table, “I hope I ordered the right thing, because I can’t see worth a damn.”

She had been studying alien microbes under a high-powered microviewer for the last several hours. If she hadn’t officially gone blind, she had certainly come close enough.

Bender’s friends at the table, Kochman and Vandermeer, glanced uncertainly at the food on her tray. Then they turned to each other, looks of grave concern on their faces.

“Should we tell her?” asked Kochman, one of the Stargazer’s junior navigation officers.

Vandermeer, a transporter operator, shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe she likes heart of targ.”

“Heart of targ…?” Bender echoed, pulling her chair out and depositing herself in its accommodating plastiform curve. What in blazes was heart of targ?

“A Klingon dish,” Vandermeer explained. “Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never seen it myself.”

“Until now, you mean,” said Kochman, tilting his head meaningfully toward Bender’s plate.

Vandermeer raised her hand to her mouth, obviously to conceal a smile. “Of course. Until now.”

“Actually,” said Bender, happy to go along with the gag no matter how lame it was, “I’ve always been curious about Klingon cuisine. It’s probably time I gave it a try.”

And with that, she dug her fork into her pile of chicken cacciatore. Raising a piece of dusky meat covered with tomato tatters to the level of her eyes, she peered at it for a moment. Then she opened her mouth and slipped it inside.

“Mmm,” she said, purposely speaking with her mouth full as she rounded up another forkful, “tastes just like chicken.”

Bender had expected to get at least a chuckle from that, but none was forthcoming. Looking up, she saw that neither Kochman nor Vandermeer was even looking at her anymore. They were quite clearly looking past her.

The com officer cast a glance back over her shoulder to see what was more interesting than a mouthful of chicken cacciatore. What she saw was the advancing figure of Pug Joseph, the ship’s acting security chief. Judging by the clouded expression on his face, Joseph hadn’t come to the mess hall to satisfy a sweet tooth.

That was the first observation Bender made. The second, which came just a moment or two later, was that Joseph was headed precisely in her direction.

When he finally stopped in front of her, he didn’t smile or greet her. He just said, “Lieutenant.” And his tone was every bit as grim as his expression.

Joseph was acting downright ominous. And judging by the stares he was attracting from Bender’s friends, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

Joseph didn’t answer her question. All he told her was “I need you to come with me.”

“What’s going on?” Vandermeer asked.

The security chief didn’t make any further reply. He just stood there, waiting for Bender to accompany him.

“Yes, sir,” she said a little uncertainly.

Getting up from the table, she exchanged looks of surprise with her companions. Then she did as Joseph had asked and followed him out of the mess hall.

Andreas Nikolas, formerly of the Stargazer, peered into the dense, twisted nest of finger-thick conduits glinting in the eerie beam of his palmlight.

“Obviously,” he said, “this isn’t the first time this power relay has been repaired.”

His pal Eddie Locklear chuckled, his freckled face and unruly red hair thrown into sharp relief. It was Locklear who had gotten Nikolas a job on the cargo hauler Iktoj’ni, where he could put some of his Starfleet experience to work.

“I’ve personally dug into it at least a half-dozen times,” Locklear told him, “and I only shipped out on this bucket a couple of years ago.”

“Comforting,” said Nikolas.

“Shut up and pass the hyperspanner,” his friend told him.

Nikolas rummaged through the leathery bag of tools with his free hand. Finally, he came up with the one Locklear had asked for—a metallic, Y-shaped device designed to seal off old conduits and open new ones.

“Here you go,” he said.

As Locklear took the device, he cast a grin at his friend. “I’ll bet you never saw anything like these on those big, shiny Federation starships.”

“Not once,” Nikolas conceded.

He watched Locklear turn the hyperspanner on, a yellow-white energy field appearing between the tool’s upper projections. Somehow, even that managed to look sickly and second-rate.

“This shouldn’t take long,” said Locklear.

“Meaning what?” asked Nikolas. “Twenty minutes?”

His friend didn’t say. He just laughed, leaving the answer to Nikolas’s imagination.

Clearly, the Iktoj’ni didn’t have the state-of-the-art equipment found on the Stargazer. And judging by the tangled mess of conduit cables in the power relay, she didn’t have the expertise one found on the Stargazer either.

Still, Nikolas was certain that he had made the right choice in putting Starfleet behind him. He saw that more clearly with every passing day.

On the Iktoj’ni, he didn’t have to worry about seeing Gerda or Idun in the mess hall or some corridor. He wasn’t constantly reminded of what he had lost when Gerda Idun vanished.

Of course, he missed his friends from time to time, his buddy Obal in particular. The Binderian had really grown on him in the short time they had served together.

But Nikolas didn’t regret moving on. Not in the least.

Or so he told himself.

Bender had never seen the inside of Captain Picard’s ready room. She had only heard about it.

It was a good deal smaller than she had imagined, a good deal closer and more confining. Or maybe it was just her discomfort in being there that made it seem that way.

Technically, she wasn’t alone. Pug Joseph was keeping her company as she stood there. But for all the talking he was doing, she might as well have been alone for real.

“You’ve got to tell me something,” she said at last.

The security chief looked sympathetic, but he didn’t make an attempt to satisfy her curiosity. All he said was “The captain will be here soon.”

Bender frowned. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what was going on.

Suddenly, she saw the door slide open, yielding to a familiar figure—that of the captain. As Picard entered the room, he looked every bit as grim as Joseph did. Not a good sign. But at least Bender would find out why she was there.

“Lieutenant,” said the captain, acknowledging her presence. He came around his desk, clearly in no great hurry, and sat down. “Thank you for coming.”

I didn’t know I had a choice in the matter, Bender thought. “Can you tell me why I’m here, sir?”

Picard nodded. “It’s Lieutenant Ulelo.”

Dikembe…? “Is he all right?”

“His health is not the problem.”

Bender didn’t understand. “Then what is?”

“Apparently,” said Picard, “Lieutenant Ulelo has been using his position as com officer to transmit technical data on the Stargazer to an unknown party.”

He might as well have said that Ulelo was a Regulan bloodworm. It would have made as much sense.

“There must be some mistake,” said Bender, her throat uncomfortably tight all of a sudden.

“I wish there was,” the captain said, with what seemed like utter sincerity. “Unfortunately, there is no question as to Ulelo’s guilt in this matter. He was caught red-handed—in the act, as it were.”

She couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. Not from Ulelo. “Can I speak with him?”

“Not at this time,” said Picard, “but soon enough.”

It wasn’t what Bender had hoped to hear. “If I could see him,” she asked, “get his side of the story…”

The captain frowned a little, but remained unmoved. “Clearly,” he said, “this comes as a shock to you. I expected no less. However, you are Ulelo’s closest friend on the Stargazer, and—as you can imagine—it is important to us to identify the recipient of his transmissions.”

There is no recipient, Bender insisted inwardly. It didn’t matter what anyone said. Ulelo couldn’t have done it.

Unaware of her thoughts, Picard went on. “Do you recall his having said anything, at any time, that might shed some light on this matter for us?”

She shook her head—too soon to give the captain the impression that she had fairly considered his question. But he didn’t take her to task for it.

He simply said, “Perhaps later, when you have had some time to think about it. Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

Bender was about to ask again to see her friend, but she could tell it wouldn’t do any good. Feeling numb and a bit unreal, she left Picard’s ready room and—abandoning the idea of eating anything—wandered in the direction of her quarters.