PICARD SWORE BENEATH HIS BREATH as he read the information on Paxton’s monitor screen.

Two more starships had dropped off the subspace communications map. One was the Yorenda, whose Vulcan first officer had graduated from the Academy just ahead of Picard. The other was the Gettysburg, commanded by Tabitha Jenkins, ahead of even Sesbella in terms of longevity.

Neither vessel had been much farther out from Earth than the Stargazer when Command lost contact with them. If the aliens were responsible for the disappearances, they were a good deal closer than anyone had expected.

Close enough to clash with Starfleet’s line of defense sometime in the next few hours. It was a daunting thought.

And it had to be even more daunting to the rank and file, Picard reflected. No one knew that better than he, who had been one of them until a few short months ago.

He looked around his bridge, noting the air of tension that pervaded the place. Expressions were strained, shoulder muscles taut, postures painfully erect.

Not one of his officers was taking the enemy lightly. Nor could they. Not with the stakes so terribly high.

The captain wished he could say something to lift everyone’s spirits. Had Ben Zoma been there, he would have found a way—perhaps with a word, perhaps with just a gesture.

But Picard didn’t have his first officer’s knack in that regard. All he could do was move from station to station and let his people know they weren’t alone.

“Thank you,” he told Paxton.

“No problem, sir.”

Picard regarded the com officer. “How are you holding up, Lieutenant?”

Paxton smiled in his full, dark beard. “Well enough. I just can’t help thinking…” He shrugged.

“What?” said the captain.

“That I could possibly have prevented this. If I’d caught Ulelo before he sent out those specs, the invaders wouldn’t have gained an advantage over us.”

“None of us noticed what Ulelo was up to,” said Picard. “You, at least, have an excuse—you were absent from the bridge when he was transmitting his data. I was here almost all the time, just a few meters away from him.” He looked around. “So were Idun and Gerda, and Commander Ben Zoma, and Commander Wu.”

Paxton sighed. “Yes, but if I’d checked the com logs a little sooner, I would have seen that something was wrong.”

Picard dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “It is to your credit that you checked them at all. As you know, most com officers do not bother—and if I had had one of them instead of you, Ulelo would still be sending out his messages undetected and unimpeded.”

That seemed to make Paxton feel better about himself. “Well,” he said, “when you put it that way…”

Picard clapped him on the shoulder. “Forget about Ulelo. Just keep the lines of communication open during the battle, and you will have done all I can possibly expect of you.”

Paxton nodded. “Thanks, sir.”

“For what?” Picard asked with a wink. Then he moved aft to see to Urajel, who had been chosen to man the engineering station in the event of a battle.

He would ask her how she was doing, and try to answer any concerns she might have, and let her know that he had faith in her—just as he had done with Paxton. It wouldn’t accomplish much—the captain knew that. But it would be better than nothing.

As Horombo had predicted, it didn’t take long for Ben Zoma’s team to devise a way to relock the container lid.

In the end, they opted to phaser holes in the wall of the container from the inside. By continuing through the back of each lock, they obtained access to its insides and were able to reconfigure it to accept a tricorder signal.

After that, it was a matter of climbing inside. That was accomplished with the help of a couple of strong backs, Ben Zoma’s being one of them.

Garner was the last to clear the wall of the container. Having been a gymnast of some note, she was able to take a running jump and vault over it, though her form was hampered considerably by the bulkiness of her containment suit.

The next step was to drag the lid across the top of the container until it slipped into place, and then to reactivate the locks. They were already depending on their palmlights for illumination, so it didn’t get any darker when they pulled the lid over. But somehow, it seemed like it did.

And their lights had limited power sources. In a little while they would have to be turned off, so the team could make use of them again when they really needed them.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to conserve air as well. They didn’t know what conditions they might face in transit from the supply drone to a warship. In fact, the sooner they made the move, the better.

“Remove your helmets,” Ben Zoma ordered his companions, “and shut down your air intake.”

No one hesitated—except McAteer. The admiral tossed him a look that said he would have liked to give that order.

The first officer had agreed to defer to McAteer, but he wasn’t going to ask permission every time he saw a need to say something. And if the admiral didn’t like it, he could convene a competency hearing for Ben Zoma as well.

He was still thinking that when something unpleasant reached his nostrils. Something very unpleasant. And he didn’t have to look far to realize what it was.

McAteer uttered a sound of disgust. “It stinks in here!”

“So it does,” said Ben Zoma. He pointed to the foodstuff with which they had lined the container. “And here’s the culprit.”

Ramirez took a whiff of it close up, then made a face. “The commander’s right.”

The admiral turned to Ben Zoma as if the first officer had created the smell himself. “What are we going to do about it?”

Ben Zoma shrugged. “Not much we can do, sir. We could put the stuff somewhere else, but if the aliens shallow-scan the container they won’t find what they’re looking for.”

The admiral looked like he was on the verge of supporting that option, even with its obvious drawback. Then he seemed to feel the scrutiny of the away team.

“Very well,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “We’ll do it your way, Mister Ben Zoma.”

The first officer met McAteer’s glare. “Make yourselves at home, then. We’ll be here awhile.”

A few hours, in fact. At least, that was what the aliens’ pickup schedule had indicated.

It might have been more comfortable for everyone if they propped their backs up against the walls of the container. However, no one wanted to get closer to the foodstuff than was absolutely necessary, so they all clustered in the middle.

Then they waited, thinking their own private thoughts, their features sculpted by the glow of Chen’s lonely palmlight. And soon, they would have to give that up as well.

Ben Zoma felt as if he had climbed a beanstalk to a colossal castle and was waiting in a cheese larder for the giant to come home. Of course, he couldn’t imagine any cheese larder smelling as bad as the stuff around him.

But considering the magnitude of what was at stake, he would have endured a lot worse.

Picard had no sooner emerged from his ready room onto the Stargazer’s bridge than he was called over by Gerda Asmund.

“What is it?” he asked, joining her at her console.

She pointed. “I think you should take a look at this, sir.”

The screen the navigator showed him was black with red dots on it, tracking the aliens’ progress through the sector. The captain didn’t have to study it for long to understand why Gerda found it intriguing.

“You see what I mean?” she asked.

Picard nodded. “I do.”

The armada had come within a light-year of several different Federation member worlds, all of them blessed with abundant populations and natural resources. But the aliens hadn’t seen fit to attack them—hadn’t even slowed down to get a better look at what they were passing up.

For no reason Picard could fathom, the invaders were interested only in the Stargazer and her sister ships—even though they had already caught and released half a dozen of them. It was bizarre—beyond bizarre. And yet, there it was, a pattern that was documented and undeniable.

The captain glanced at Gerda. “I don’t suppose you would care to venture an explanation.”

She shook her head. “Not without more to go on.”

Picard grunted. “That makes two of us.”

Still puzzling over what he had seen, he deposited himself in his center seat and regarded his viewscreen. There was nothing remarkable on it at the moment. But in time, there would be.

Their mysterious enemy would fill it with its armada, cutting like a dagger through Federation space. And it would be up to Picard and others like him to turn the dagger away.

He would have accepted the challenge more eagerly if he thought he and his fellow captains had an even chance. But this was one battle he didn’t think they could win.

Four hours had passed in the container, and the aliens still hadn’t come for it. What’s more, the smell inside it hadn’t gotten any better.

Ben Zoma decided his team needed a distraction. Certainly, he did.

“So,” he said, “who’s got an Academy story?”

At first, everyone just stared at him. Then Horombo chuckled to himself and said, “I do, I guess.”

“Let’s hear it,” said Ben Zoma.

McAteer looked at him as if he disapproved of the idea. However, he didn’t actually come out and put the kibosh on it.

“Well,” said Horombo, “you all know Boothby, right?”

There was a murmur of confirmation. Boothby was the groundskeeper at the Academy, a very popular figure with the cadets.

But not with McAteer, apparently. He had a queer look in his eye, as if the mention of Boothby brought back a memory he would rather have forgotten.

“About ten years back,” said Horombo, “when I was attending the Academy, Boothby planted a Vulcan tuula bush. It was dark red, with slim, pointed leaves.”

“I remember it,” said Paris, and apparently he wasn’t the only one there who did.

“Anyway,” Horombo continued, “one record-cold night, a few of the other cadets got their hands on some pretty strong liquor—not Romulan ale, but something almost as potent—elsewhere in San Francisco. Two bottles altogether. By the time they got back to the Academy grounds, they had already finished one of the bottles and were half-blind.

“They figured they would sock away the other bottle for another day. But as they crossed Boothby’s gardens to get to their dorm rooms, they saw a security officer strolling in their direction. Afraid that he would ask to see what they were carrying, they panicked and slipped behind the tuula bush, and poured out the contents of the second bottle.

“As it turned out, the security officer took a different route and didn’t bother them, so they had emptied the bottle for nothing. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The next day, when they walked past the tuula bush, it wasn’t dark red anymore. Its leaves were all pink with brown spots.

“Well, all the cadets loved Boothby, and these three were no exception. They knew how hard he had worked to nurture his tuula bush, and how heartbroken he would be to see what they had done to it. And they knew also how angry the commandant of the Academy would be if he found out how the tuula bush had gotten sick.

“In the end, they decided to do the honorable thing and admit their mistake, regardless of the trouble they would face. But first, they went to Boothby to apologize—and it was a good thing they did.

“Apparently, tuula bushes change colors with the seasons, and this one got confused by the drastic change in temperature that evening. So it faded from its summer scarlet to its colder-weather pink and brown in just a couple of hours—and had already made the change when the cadets came along and dumped liquor on it.”

“So it wasn’t their fault,” said Ramirez, a smile on her face.

“Not at all. In fact, the bush had already changed back to its summer coloring. And Boothby being Boothby, he didn’t tell anyone what the cadets had done.”

Ben Zoma laughed. “Good story, Lieutenant.”

Everyone else seemed to think so, too. Except McAteer, of course. But then, he was the odd man out more and more.

“And this was ten years ago?” asked Garner.

Horombo nodded. “My senior year. Were you there?”

Garner shook her head. “Not yet. I got there the year after—when Oonnoommi took over as commandant.”

Ramirez leaned forward. “Wasn’t that the year the Parisses Squares team went undefeated?”

“That was the year before,” said Chen. “My brother—” He stopped in midsentence, his eyes suddenly wide and desolate.

“Your brother what?” asked Ben Zoma, refusing to let the security officer wallow in uncertainty.

“My brother,” Chen said a little more quietly, “was on that team.”

“And how did he do?” the first officer asked.

Chen smiled despite himself. “He did well, sir. As a matter of fact, he led the cadets in scoring.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Ben Zoma.

“That’s it,” McAteer said abruptly.

Ben Zoma turned to him. “Sir?”

“I’m tired of waiting,” the admiral said. “While we’re sitting here twiddling our damn thumbs, the aliens may be mopping the floor with our fleet.”

It was a possibility, all right. But Ben Zoma wasn’t inclined to act on it.

“We’ve got to be patient,” he said.

“Patience hasn’t gotten us anywhere,” the admiral noted. “We’ve got to expedite the process somehow.”

The first officer regarded McAteer. “There’s no need. The aliens might not always stick to their replenishment schedule, but they’ll be by soon enough.”

The admiral scowled. “Soon enough for you, maybe. But I don’t intend to stay here in this can for the—”

Suddenly, a clang went through the deckplates. It sounded as if the supply carrier had struck something.

Or maybe docked with something.

Ben Zoma hoped like crazy that it was the latter possibility. Otherwise, he would have to listen to McAteer that much longer.

“Turn off the light,” he said, “and put on your helmets. I’ve got a feeling this is our ride.”