Good-bye, my love.Kaldarren’s face wavered in her vision, and the hot burn of tears pricked her eyes. Good-bye.

She stood then, her heart full of grief, her will stronger than steel. “I’m ready,” she said, cupping Jase’s hot cheek with her right hand. Their eyes met, and for an instant, she imagined that their minds joined, and that Jase knew what his parents had shared. Or maybe it was just an illusion.

Then Garrett pulled on her gloves and retrieved her helmet. She clipped her helmet to her waist, and the snap was crisp and sharp. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 35

The problem with a stationary orbit, lunar or otherwise, is that it’s very boring. Same scenery, same bunch of coordinates. Same old, same old. Talma yawned. Well, at least, she was comfortably bored.

Only one real glitch so far: an odd signature about an hour ago. At first, she’d thought nothing of it. It had been a simple variance in the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum—there briefly and then, just as quickly, gone. Hunkered down behind the planet’s larger moon, she had no way to study the blip further. Sure, it could have been a ship, but then where had it gone? Her mind drifted to the Cardassian scouts she was sure were only hours away, if that. But a Cardassian scout ship would have continued its sweep, and she would have seen the ship on sensors as it came out of her blind spot. So, probably just a glitch and this was understandable, what with all the junkin this system. Talma smiled. How apt.

And speaking of Vaavek: Talma rechecked the ship’s chronometer, saw that it was only five minutes later than when she’d last checked, and cursed. He was late.

Why? Two possibilities: Either Vaavek had found the portal and was simply delayed, or he hadn’t. Following from those conclusions, if Vaavek had found the portal, Halak was dead. If he hadn’t, Halak was still alive but wouldn’t be for long. Ditto for Vaavek, actually. (Her mother always said she never hadlearned to share.)

Of course, if she was planning on vaporizing Vaavek, likely the Vulcan had worked out a way to do the same to her. She’d have to be careful around him—doubly so if he’d found the portal.

She’d manage. That was the problem with Vulcans; they could exaggerate, but they weren’t devious. So Talma doubted that Vaavek had bothered to sabotage the T’Pol’s engines the way she’d sabotaged the shuttlepod. If they hadn’t found the portal and Halak was still alive—something she could ascertain in a flash before the shuttlepod even got close—all that would be required was one phaser hit in just the right spot…

Her concentration was broken by a shrill bleat from the T’Pol’s comm. Talma started, her heart ramping up a beat or two as a squirt of adrenaline coursed through her veins. The bleat came again, and Talma confirmed: Vaavek’s signal, all right. Set on a prearranged frequency, piggybacking onto the periodic signal emitted by the neutron star. Any ship in the vicinity (a Cardassian scout, say) wouldn’t hear or suspect a thing, not unless it knew what to look for. Vaavek was on his way back, with the goods.

A signal within a signal: again, simple. Elegant. Clean. Just the way she’d done with the Enterprise,coning her signal inside another signal. A grin tugged at the corners of her lips. Those dopes. Out-thunk by a dirt-poor kid from one of the roughest planets in the galaxy.

The signal came again.

Engaging her sensors at maximum— the better to avoid unpleasant surprises in Cardassian trappings, my dear—Talma nudged T’Polfrom lunar stationary orbit. She was delighted that the scenery was about to change.

“Got something,” said Glemoor.

Bat-Levi, who was seated in the captain’s command chair, leaned forward. “What?”

“Movement,” said Glemoor, and he was reminded of his perusal of old Earth history: literature of submarine battles and then of classic Starfleet maneuvers. James T. Kirk, as he remembered rightly: a splendid warrior, Glemoor decided, and superb tactician. Kirk’s first run-in with Romulans, for example: a classic and required reading for any tactical officer interested in the principles of stealth warfare.

“Movement?” Bat-Levi echoed. She stepped down from the command chair and hovered behind Glemoor’s left shoulder. “What? A warp signature? Impulse engines?”

“No,” said Glemoor. “I mean, movement.”

Castillo, who had called up the same display on his station, shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”

Bat-Levi’s eyebrows mated as she bent to study Glemoor’s readings. “He’s right. There’s nothing there.”

“No, there is. It’s simply that you don’t know what you’re looking at.” Glemoor’s tone wasn’t smug; he was just imparting facts. “There’s too much interference in this general vicinity to distinguish easily between true vessel signatures, or plasma trails and ambient ionized plasma. So, in addition to my usual sensor scans, I’ve calibrated the sensors to detect changes in the wave particle fronts surrounding both the planet and its moon, on the theory that a ship might be hiding there.”

In response to Bat-Levi’s quizzical expression, Glemoor added, “Think of it as trying to scoop up a cracker from a bowl of thick soup. If you chase your cracker, you set up a displacement of the soup itself.”

Castillo brightened. “I get it. There’s so much stellar soup out there you looked for compression of wave fronts.”

“All right, I’m impressed,” said Bat-Levi. “So, is it the T’Pol?Or a Cardassian?”

“The T’Pol,I think. The degree of displacement is too small for a Cardassian.”

“Shall I plot course for intercept?” asked Castillo.

“What about that, Glemoor?”

“Nothing from the planet’s surface yet, Commander.”

“But there must be something,” said Bat-Levi, “otherwise, the T’Polwouldn’t be moving out.” She glanced over her shoulder at communications. “Bulast?”

The Atrean shook his head. “Nothing.”

Bat-Levi pursed her lips. “Then why is she moving? There’s got to be something…”

“Wait,” said Bulast, suddenly. His fingers stroked the controls at his console. “Got it. Same trick she used before. Coned inside the periodic bursts from that neutron star. A signal.”

Glemoor cut in. “Something else, Commander.”

“The captain?”

“No,” Glemoor said. “On long-range sensors. Company, closing fast.”

Seated in the pilot’s chair of her shuttlecraft, Garrett opened a channel to Halak in the Vulcan shuttlepod. “Think she got it?”

“Positive.” Halak’s voice was marred by pops and crackles of static. “She ought to be moving out from behind the larger moon any minute now.”

“Let’s hope.” Garrett looked over at Stern who sat in the co-pilot’s chair. “Well?”

“Too much damned interference,” Stern muttered, twiddling with the shuttle’s sensors, “like pea soup, I don’t see how you expect me to look for Cardassian scouts, they’d…ah! Got ’em.”

“How many?”

“Two. Closing fast. They’ve got a bug up their thrusters, all right.”

“That bug would be us,” said Garrett, bringing the engines on-line. “Or the T’Pol.Let’s hope it’s the latter. What about the Enterprise?”

“Still nothing. She’s gone, all right.” Stern gave Garrett a narrow look. “You sure you don’t want to just sit this one out?”

“We’ve got a much better chance if we’re moving. Hunker down here, and we might as well hand out invitations for those Cardassians to take potshots.”