Declassified

Zero gravity didn’t bother Kajek, but the bitter cold did. Several hours in the dark had dropped temperatures inside his ship to near-freezing. His exhalations spawned great gray plumes that dissipated ever more gradually. In the past hour, vapor condensed from his breath had started to fog part of the forward canopy. More troubling to him was the slow loss of sensation in his fingers and toes. He disliked wearing gloves in the cockpit because any that were thick enough to keep his hands warm interfered with his ability to operate the ship’s secondary control panels, which controlled such systems as sensors and access to the memory banks.

Only the passive optical sensors remained fully on line. Kajek had set them to monitor the Starfleet vessel Endeavour,which was twenty light-minutes away orbiting Zeta Aurigae IV, the same world to which Kajek had tracked Zett Nilric’s stolen argosy, Dulcinea. A magnetic disturbance above the southern pole of Zeta Aurigae III concealed Kajek and his ship from the Endeavour’s sensors, enabling him to spy on it at relatively close range while hiding in plain sight. His only concern was that if the Dulcinealaunched while the Endeavourwas on the far side of the fourth planet, he might not notice its departure until it was too late to track its escape vector.

It had been several hours since the Nalori ship had landed inside one of Endeavour’s shuttlebays. Kajek grew concerned that perhaps he had missed the Dulcinea’s exit—and then the bulkheads parted at the aft end of the Starfleet vessel’s lower hull. He spread his outer fangs in a broad grin. There you are. He permitted himself a low chortle, which clouded the air with a spectre of his breath.

As the Nalori vessel exited the shuttlebay and maneuvered to break orbit, Kajek clicked his outer fangs against one another. It was a nervous habit, one he had struggled to overcome but so far had failed to suppress, an unwelcome tic caused by his tendency to engage in obsessive-compulsive behavior. In many ways he had cha

I am not crazy, just organized.

He leaned forward to observe the sensor data. Where are you going? Show me your destination. His quarry maneuvered clear of the Endeavourand broke from orbit. Not heading back to Vanguard, apparently. The small vessel came about on a bearing that would take it toward the Klingon Empire. A bold move. Seconds later, the Dulcineajumped to warp speed and moved beyond the range of Kajek’s passive sensors. Kajek kept his attention on the Endeavour.

Patience,he reminded himself. Don’t let your lust for the hunt make you careless. He watched and waited as the Endeavour’s standard orbital pattern took it beyond the curve of Zeta Aurigae IV. As soon as the Starfleet ship vanished from his sensor readout, Kajek pulled off his gloves, switched all his ship’s systems to full power, and engaged his active sensors to confirm the Dulcinea’s heading.

Still on course,he noted. He pulled his gloves back on and briskly rubbed his hands together. He called up a star chart and looked ahead along the Dulcinea’s trajectory, curious as to what populated systems lay along that heading. They seem to be treading a fine path between Gorn space and Klingon territory. Are they en route to one of the border worlds, perhaps?He ruled out Chirlow—it was a mostly automated mining operation on a volcanic greenhouse planet inhospitable to organic life. Likewise, he doubted they would be bound for Mazur Prime, a desolate ball of sand that the Klingons used as a toxic-waste dumping ground.

Ruling out those worlds brought him to Seudath: a major port under Gorn control, it received a fair number of alien visitors and had a sizable population of aliens, as well. Checking its position against a more precise analysis of the Dulcinea’s heading convinced Kajek that Seudath was the humans’ destination. He engaged his ship’s impulse engine, maneuvered clear of Zeta Aurigae III’s magnetic field, and set his navigation computer to begin calculating a warp-speed course that would enable him to reach Seudath ahead of the ever-elusive Mister Qui

The course coordinates appeared on his helm.

Engaging the warp drive, Kajek watched the stars melt into bright streaks blurring past his ship, and he felt a surge of excitement. There was nothing he loved so much as the hunt, and never so much as when the prey could fight back.

The chase begins.

Qui

It’s not like I could’ve talked her out of it,he mused. Lord knows I would if I could. He turned onto his left side, trying his best not to wake Bridy, who lay beside him, wrapped around a body cushion like a shipwreck survivor clinging to flotsam. Her wavy dark brown hair spilled across the sage-colored pillows. As Qui

“In a minute.” She sounded groggy. “Trouble sleeping?”

“A bit. At least I can enjoy the view.” That made her smile. It had been a few months since they had escaped a bloodbath on Golmira with their lives. Since then they had shared a bed—a fact that Bridy had stressed needed to be concealed from her superiors at SI. Qui

He reached out and stroked a stray lock of her hair. It felt like silk beneath his fingertips. Can I really be this lucky? Does any man deserve a woman as perfect as her?When he was with Bridy, he could almost forget his own checkered romantic history. The death of his first wife, Denise, had stu

She opened her eyes. “I felt you staring at me.”

“I wasn’t staring, just admiring.” She furrowed her brow, coaxing him to confess, “Okay, maybe I was staring, just a bit.”

“Who could blame you?” She laid one hand on top of his. “You seem like you have something on your mind. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. I guess. I just . . .” He let the sentence trail off and fade away.

The silence seemed to worry Bridy. “What? What’re you thinking?”

He had rehearsed and rehashed this conversation in his imagination so many times that he no longer knew how to begin. “Do you ever think we could . . . you know . . .” His eyes sca

More awake now, Bridy propped herself up on one elbow. “And do what?”

“I don’t know. Just live, I guess.”

“Wow, I can tell you’ve given this a lot of thought.”