ELIZABETH WU WAS LYING on her bed, staring at the ceiling of her quarters as if she might somehow find all the answers she wanted from Ulelo displayed there.

She ran her conversations with him over and over again in her mind, sifting them for just a nugget of something she could use. But it was to no avail.

The second officer was so intent on her introspection, she barely heard the chime that announced someone at her door. And she had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t the first time it had rung.

Getting up from her bed, she left her bedroom behind and emerged into the adjoining anteroom. Then she said, “Come in.”

As the doors opened, Wu saw that it was Jiterica. The ensign was looking remarkably like a humanoid in her new, improved containment suit. But if the look on the ensign’s face was any indication, she was anxious about something.

“Good to see you,” said Wu. She indicated a chair on one side of the room. “Please, have a seat.”

“Thank you,” said Jiterica.

Not so long ago, she would have found it painfully awkward to sit down. Her new suit seemed to have eliminated that problem.

“Is everything all right?” Wu asked.

Shortly after Jiterica came on board, the second officer had appointed herself the ensign’s unofficial guardian. Back then, Jiterica was lonely and unsure of herself, uncomfortable in an environment built for higher-density beings.

Fortunately for Jiterica, that had all changed, and she didn’t need a guardian as much as she used to. However, Wu had yet to relinquish the position.

“It’s Ensign Paris,” said Jiterica.

Ah yes, thought Wu. Paris.

Jiterica and her fellow ensign had become rather close over the last couple of months. And the second officer, who harbored a liking for both of them, had been delighted to see how much they enjoyed each other’s company.

Of course, there was that brief period where Paris appeared to want to avoid Jiterica, when he had pulled back from her. It had bothered Wu to see it, almost to the point where she had said something to him.

But thankfully, that phase had passed, and Paris and Jiterica had become constant companions again. So it was perfectly understandable if Jiterica was concerned about her friend.

“You want to know about the shuttle,” Wu concluded.

“Yes,” said Jiterica. “Has there been any word?”

Wu wished she had better news. “Not yet.”

Clearly, the ensign wasn’t pleased. “Shouldn’t we have received a message by now, either from another ship or from a starbase?”

The second officer nodded. “Perhaps we should have. But I’m not going to jump to conclusions. Unless I hear something to the contrary, I’m going to assume Commander Ben Zoma and his crew found safe haven.”

Jiterica took a moment to consider the remark. “You believe they’re uninjured?”

“I do,” said Wu.

The ensign smiled. “Then I will believe that too.”

Wu was gratified that Jiterica placed such faith in her. She just hoped that when it came to the Livingston, neither of them found a reason to be disappointed.

On the Cargo Hauler Iktoj’ni, Nikolas eyed the plate in front of him, which was heaped high with slender, pale tubers drowned in thick, black sauce.

“It’s better than it looks,” Locklear assured him from his seat on the other side of the table.

“I don’t see how it could be worse,” said Nikolas.

The cargo hauler wasn’t equipped with the state-of-the-art replicators that had become standard on Federation starships. The one they had wasn’t able to work fast enough to create a variety of dishes every night, so they had it make mass quantities of the same dish instead.

This evening, it was a Fayyenh specialty that Nikolas couldn’t even pronounce. Translated, it was rays-of-sunshine-in-old-dark-mud. Somehow, he wasn’t tempted by it.

It occurred to him that if he left it alone for a while and came back to it, it might not seem quite so unappealing. Pushing his chair away from the table, he looked around the mess hall.

The captain, a Vobilite, was discussing something with a couple of her mates on the other side of the room. Like all of her ruddy-faced species, Rejjerin had to speak around the curved tusks that protruded from the corners of her mouth, a condition that made her look argumentative sometimes.

But not this time. As she sat there trading remarks, she seemed confident, relaxed—and for a good reason. The Ik’tojni had nearly cleared Starfleet’s danger zone. In another day at their present speed, they would be home free.

Of course, there was still a chance that the captain would come to regret her decision. But to that point, it looked like she had made the right one.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” asked Locklear.

Nikolas saw that his friend was studying Rejjerin as well. “I guess you could say that.” He didn’t think Captain Picard would have taken that kind of risk—not unless there was a lot more at stake than a cargo delivery.

Locklear chuckled. “I remember how nervous you were when I told you the captain was forging ahead.”

“No,” said Nikolas, “actually that was you.”

His friend looked at him, his brow creased down the middle. “Now that you mention it, maybe it was. Anyway, I’ll be damned if her luck isn’t holding.”

Nikolas couldn’t argue with the facts. “I just hope our next job takes us somewhere far from this danger zone. I don’t think I’d want to push Rejjerin’s luck twice.”

Locklear turned a little pale beneath his freckles. “Amen to that.”

Nikolas took a fresh look at his dinner plate. Unfortunately, it didn’t look any more appealing than it had before. If anything, it looked less so.

It almost made him wish that the mystery marauders would show up after all. That way, he wouldn’t have to eat the stuff.

Ben Zoma watched the alien vessel’s docking port loom nearer and nearer, until it was so close that he could see the scratches on its hatch plate.

Only then did he say, “Ease her in, Mister Paris.”

“Aye, sir,” said the ensign. Then he turned the shuttle sideways and gently applied port thrusters to nudge her toward her target. After a moment or two, he married one surface to the other with a metallic thunk.

Unfortunately, the shuttle’s door didn’t fit the docking port precisely, and anything less than a perfect accommodation would leak dangerous amounts of oxygen. However, Starfleet’s engineers had long ago foreseen such an eventuality.

Using a separate set of controls in the corner of the console, Paris extended a flexible seal around the docking port. Then he reinforced it with a transparent electromagnetic barrier, not unlike the one used in the Stargazer’s brig.

Ben Zoma put a hand on the ensign’s shoulder. “Are we good?”

“We are,” Paris confirmed.

“Good work,” said the first officer. Then, glancing at the others, he said, “Don suits and check phasers.”

It took a couple of minutes for everyone to do that. As it happened, McAteer took the longest. But then, it had probably been years since he even looked at a containment suit, much less confirmed the charge in a phaser pistol.

“Ready?” said Ben Zoma, his voice sounding tinny as it came to him over his helmet’s receiver.

Everyone nodded in their helmets. Even the admiral, though he was the highest-ranking officer aboard and could have led the mission himself, if he had wanted to.

“All right,” said Ben Zoma. And he depressed the stud on the control panel that would open the shuttle door.

As it slid aside with a soft exhalation, it revealed the supply vessel’s hatch cover, which had six sides and was made of the same dark metal alloy as the rest of the ship. There was something protruding from it that was clearly intended to be a handle, indicating that the aliens had appendages not a great deal unlike Ben Zoma’s own.

He turned to Chen, then Ramirez. “Open it.”

The two security officers slipped their phasers into the appropriate slots on the exterior of their suits. Then they advanced to the hatch door and bent to the task of turning its handle in a counterclockwise direction.

Of course, it might not have been designed to rotate in that direction. It might not have been intended to rotate at all. But it certainly seemed to be the required approach.

For a moment, nothing happened, leading Ben Zoma to wonder if their expectations had led them astray. Then finally, the handle turned, and they heard a distinct clunk—suggesting that the hatch’s locking mechanism had disengaged. Chen and Ramirez looked at each other, then pulled.

With a slight puff of equalizing gas pressure, the hatch door swung open. As Ben Zoma had anticipated, there was an airlock beyond it—dimly lit and cylindrical in shape—and a similar door on the far side.

Hunkering down, he entered the lock. Then he gestured for the rest of the team to follow. When they were all inside, Chen and Ramirez pulled the hatch door closed behind them and relocked it with an interior handle.

A moment later, Garner and Horombo started working on the opposite hatch. This one yielded more easily than the first, perhaps because they were turning it with more confidence.

As the hatch swung aside, all Ben Zoma could see beyond it was darkness. He stuck his head through the opening and confirmed it—nothing but darkness in every direction. But then, the ship was unoccupied. Why waste energy on illumination when there was no one there to benefit from it?

Activating his palmlight, Ben Zoma took a few quick stabs at the place. It seemed immense. His beam traveled a long way before it finally hit something solid.

And even then, it wasn’t a bulkhead. It was a sprawling terrain of squat, cylindrical containers. But that was good news. It meant they were in the vessel’s main cargo hold.

“Come on,” Ben Zoma said. “Let’s take a look around.” And he moved out into the benighted expanse.

One by one, the others followed—first McAteer, then Paris, and finally the security officers. Their palmlights sliced through the darkness like knives through fat, dark flesh.

Fortunately, the soles of their containment suits were soft and padded, unlike the soles of their boots. Otherwise, they would have announced themselves with every echoing footfall.

Not that there was anyone there to hear them. But eventually, there would be. At least, that was their hope.

Ben Zoma checked his tricorder. The news it gave him could have been a lot worse.

“Heat,” said Garner, reading off her own device.

“And breathable air,” Horombo added.

“Don’t get too comfy,” Ben Zoma warned them. “That could all change in a heartbeat.”

Ramirez was nodding. “I was on a space station once where the humidity content of the air went from twenty-five percent to ninety percent every ten hours, to accommodate the needs of the species that had built her.”

“They should have made up their minds,” said Garner.

Ramirez chuckled. “You can say that again.”

Ben Zoma liked the banter. It kept them loose. On a mission of such importance, that could only be an asset.

Seeing nothing that might deter them from pursuing their plan, the first officer turned to Paris and said, “All right, Ensign. You can let her go.”

“Aye, sir,” said Paris.

He looked a little reticent to comply. It was understandable, considering he was the member of their team who had piloted the Livingston and therefore knew her the best.

On the other hand, her continued presence outside the supply ship was a danger to them, as she would alert the enemy that there was someone within. Removing a remote-control device from a pocket of his suit, Paris closed the Livingston’s door. Then he disengaged her and sent her on her way.

It left them alone in the alien supply vessel, without a way to get off it in the event of a problem. But with luck, they would have another way to get off soon enough.

Picard was standing in front of his captain’s chair, hands clasped behind his back as he watched the stars shoot by on his viewscreen. Not much longer now, he thought.

“Sir,” said Gerda, “I’ve got them on sensors.”

Picard didn’t turn around to face her. He didn’t have to, already knowing what she was talking about. “On screen,” he said.

The steady stream of stars vanished. And in their place, there were starships—a great many starships. Most of them resembled the Stargazer. A handful had the sleek, dynamic look of the Excelsior-class. And a few others were modeled after the larger, more powerful Ambassador prototype, still being perfected in the fleet yards at Utopia Planitia.

Picard had seen many of them at one time or another, in orbit around a starbase or at some rendezvous point. However, he had never seen them all in one place, amassed side by side against the backdrop of space.

He glanced at the monitor and read the list to himself. The Jor’fasi, named after the great liberator of the Vobilites. The Victory. The Magellan. The Hathaway. And a couple dozen others, with additional reinforcements still on the way.

They had gathered at these coordinates for one reason, one very important purpose—to defend the Federation. And in most cases, Picard would have felt confident in such impressive company. But not in this case. Not when the aliens had demonstrated an ability to plow through a starship’s defenses as if they were no more durable than spiders’ webs.

En route, Picard had received a message from Admiral Mehdi. Captain Sesballa, the Rigelian who commanded the Ambassador-class Exeter, would be giving the orders when they joined battle with the invaders.

Sesballa had distinguished himself in one of the Federation’s last clashes with the Romulans, more than two decades earlier. He had achieved success several times since then, even earning a medal or two, but it was his performance against the Romulans for which he was still remembered.

Picard had never met the fellow, but he had studied Sesballa’s tactical philosophy back at the Academy. It was conservative, methodical, an approach the young Picard had found distinctly unappealing. However, he couldn’t argue with Sesballa’s track record—not then and not now.

It came as no surprise that Starfleet Command had placed Sesballa in charge of the defense formation. He had more experience than anyone else there, and he commanded more respect from his peers. Had Greenbriar been present, the job might have fallen to him instead. But with the Cochise crippled and far away, Sesballa had to be considered the next best option.

“Hail the Exeter,” Picard said.

A moment later, a ruby-eyed Rigelian appeared on the viewscreen. The corners of his mouth were lifted in something like a grin, though his tone was anything but merry. “Sesballa here,” he said. “Welcome to the front, Captain.”

“Thank you,” said Picard. “I have been told that you will be calling the shots. Do you have a preference as to where I deploy the Stargazer?”

“For now,” said Sesballa, “no. We can deal with that after I see who joins us and what we’ve got to work with.”

“Did you receive my communication?” asked Picard, keeping his question vague for the benefit of Sesballa’s bridge officers. “The one concerning my officer?”

“I did,” said Sesballa. “And I have discussed the matter with the other captains here. To this point, none of us has experienced a similar problem.”

That was good news, at least. “Nonetheless,” said Picard, “we should continue to monitor the situation.”

Sesballa nodded his hairless, silver head. “My thought exactly. We will speak again, Captain.” And he signed off.

Once again, Picard found himself looking at the defense formation. He turned to Wu, who had come up to join him.

“None of them have rooted out an informant,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t have any.”

The captain shrugged. “Captain Sesballa said they would continue to investigate.”

Of course, there was the possibility that Ulelo had been one of a kind—the only informant in the entire fleet. If that were so, Picard had to marvel at the fate that had placed such an individual on the Stargazer, and the Stargazer alone.

Ben Zoma would have worn himself out ribbing his friend about it. Only you, Jean-Luc.

Frowning at the viewscreen, Picard wondered where his first officer was at that moment. On a starbase, he hoped—somewhere safe, somewhere far from the aliens’ pattern of incursion.

Of course, if the invaders continued to have their way with Starfleet’s finest, no place in the Federation would be safe for much longer.

Ulelo sat in his cell and kept his eyes closed as long as he could. That way, he could avoid distractions and focus on the images assailing his mind—the images that seemed more important to him now than ever before.

Because he wasn’t just seeing places anymore. Now he was seeing people in those places. In the forest, at the diamond-dust shore, on the parched, black plain…

Some of them were engaged in activities Ulelo readily understood, running a race or collecting leaf samples or some such thing. But others were doing things he didn’t understand at all, things that didn’t look the least bit familiar to him.

And—this was the strangest part of all—the people he saw in his visions didn’t look alien to him. They looked like humans.

Why should that be? he asked himself. Were there others like Ulelo in those places, dedicated as he was to serving the aliens who lived there? Had he seen them at some point? Known them?

Had those other humans gone back to their starships as he had, their missions much the same as his? Were they serving on their ships even now, operating undercover as he had operated undercover—unaware that Ulelo had been apprehended by his crewmates and incarcerated?

Not that he could do anything about it. He was penned up in the brig. He had no way to contact anyone, to tell them that they were doing wrong.

But what really troubled him wasn’t the possibility that there were others like him, transmitting data on other starships. It was what had troubled him all along—the fact that he couldn’t remember for certain, one way or the other.

That morning, as he woke from sleep, he thought he had caught a glimpse of the truth that had been eluding him—an image that looked back at him squarely, rather than sliding past the corner of his vision. It was a human, like himself, but a female. She was in a room, not unlike Ulelo’s quarters on the Stargazer.

And she was speaking to him. He couldn’t hear her, but he could see her mouth moving. She was trying to tell him something—something important, judging by her expression.

But for the life of him, Ulelo couldn’t figure out what it might be.