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So now, as he stood on the bridge at Captain Fujikawa’s request, he felt better than perhaps at any other time in his life. He watched the stars rush toward them on the forward viewscreen. Though he had seen this sight hundreds of times before, it all seemed new because of the current circumstances. He could scarcely wait to make love to Dree while viewing those stars from his luxurious guest quarters.

Then, the ship had shuddered, interrupting his self-satisfied reverie. In the instant before the computer systems triggered an alarm, he felt it, a sensation almost imperceptible to anyone not intimately familiar with the vessel’s innermost workings. He knew what had happened even before the computer announced it. An explosion in the engine room. But he didn’t knowwhy it had happened. And he couldnever have predicted what was about to happen next—

“Dr. Ra-Havreii? Are you all right?”

The voice was insistent, calling to him from another time, another place, another disaster. Dr. Xin Ra-Havreii forced himself to open his eyes, feeling pain flaring through his shoulder. The acrid air assaulted his delicate sense of smell, carrying with it a perspiration born of fear. He also inhaled the metallic aroma of ozone, and a bouquet of scents that reminded him uncomfortably of barbecued sweetbreads.

The voice that had awakened him belonged to Ensign Crandall, an eager-to-please young human engineer who talked far too much. But Lieutenant Commander Ledrah liked him, and since it was her engineering team, RaHavreii never said anything untoward to the youthful babbler.

Ra-Havreii had quickly collected his thoughts, taking stock of his physical being as short-term memories flooded back into the forefront of his mind. “Yes, I’m all right,” he said. He had come down to engineering at the first sign of trouble with the Remans, having viewed the approaching conflict from the VIP quarters Commander Troi had provided for him. As always, the gracious—and quite fetching—Ledrah welcomed his aid and advice, especially once Titanhad sustained a direct attack that threatened to compromise not only her shields, but also her structural integrity fields.

A second attack had prompted Ledrah to dispatch the none-too-bright Rossini twins to the bridge to fix the main viewscreen there. Ra-Havreii suspected that the pair had barely passed their engineering classes at the Academy, and would have thrown them off the crew, along with Crandall, at the first available opportunity, had this been his crew. But, as he kept reminding himself, this was nothis team. He felt fortunate that he got any play at all in Starfleet these days, given that the bastards at the Starfleet Skunkworks were less forgiving than a menopausal Betazoid. And he assumed that if he wanted to maintain his welcome aboard Titanfor any appreciable length of time, then he’d best keep his intimate past relationship with one particular menopausal Betazoid discreetly concealed from Captain Riker’s wife.

While Ledrah had worked feverishly at one engineering station, trying to bring the shields and structural integrity fields back up to full power, Ra-Havreii had worked at another console, located near the warp core. Then, the comm units had chimed.

“All decks, brace for impact!”Captain Riker had shouted.

Ra-Havreii couldn’t remember what had happened next, until the moment when Crandall had shaken him awake.

“What happened? How long have I been out?”

“Something crashed into the ship,” Crandall said. “Most of our systems are down.”

An atonal voice called from the other side of the room, past the warp core. Ra-Havreii recognized it immediately as that of the partially cybernetic Choblik trainee, Torvig Bu-Kar-Nguv. “We need help over here. Commander Ledrah is hurt!”

Crandall helped Ra-Havreii to his feet, and the pair of them limped around the room. The other dozen or so engineers converged on the spot as well. By the time Ra-Havreii approached, one of them was already by Ledrah’s side, scanning her with a tricorder.

The Efrosian shipbuilder didn’t need scans to tell him what his keen olfactory senses already had. Ledrah had been cooked by the explosion of one of the plasma relays. The relay’s suddenly unchecked energies had ripped through her console and literally roasted her where she stood.

TwoLuna- class ships. Two engineering disasters.

He was suddenly back aboard Luna,where it sometimes seemed his career had both begun and ended.

“Sir?” Crandall was saying, probably not for the first time. “We really could use your help.”

This child seems to be in even worse shape than I am,Ra-Havreii thought, suddenly ashamed of his despair and emotional paralysis.

Then he decided that there was only one thing he could do to keep himself from taking a dive straight into the warp core.

He stepped to the bulkhead and tapped a console there. “Captain, this is Dr. Ra-Havreii. Lieutenant Commander Ledrah is dead. Unless you have any objections, Iwill take over the engineering section for the duration.” Or until I blow it up, just like theLuna.

Long ago, Ra-Havreii had heard an Earth phrase: “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Right now he wanted to kill whoever had said that.

“You ought to have stayed clear of the combat zone, Captain. You have my word, Captain, that your ship will not be deliberately attacked. At least not so long as you continue to refrain from firing onour vessels,”Colonel Xiomek said from the main bridge viewscreen, his long fangs bared.

“I’ve already instructed my officers to cease fire,” Riker said, sparing a glance at Tuvok, who had agreed to take over Keru’s tactical station for the time being. “But you realize that we were only targeting your weapons, not actively seeking to destroy your ships.”

“Truly, it matters not,”Xiomek said in supercilious tones. “Were you not allied with the Klingons, and were you not holding Ambassador Spock hostage, your ship would have been destroyed for attacking us after you allowed your ship to wander too close to our battle against the Romulan oppressors. You should consider yourself fortunate.”

Riker didn’t rise to the bait. He could feel Deanna, Vale, Akaar, and Spock all watching him to see what he was going to do next. The situation was precarious, and no scenario he could think of, either from his Academy training or from his two decades serving aboard Starfleet vessels, showed him an easy way out. There didn’t seem to be any practical way to separate the Romulans and the Remans before a lot more blood was spilled, and the promise of peace was lost, perhaps forever.

Come on, Will,he thought. Outside the box.He was uncomfortably aware that Xiomek was still waiting for a response, though he had probably been silent only for a second or two. Finally, he reconsidered a far-fetched idea he had briefly considered earlier, only to allow his own reticence to quash it.

“Colonel Xiomek, I have a proposal to make to you and the Reman people. What if the Federation were to offer you official protectorate status until such time as full-scale power-sharing talks with Romulus can begin? That way, you could—”

Xiomek snorted, interrupting him. “You can barely protect your own crew. How do you propose to protectus ? Humans, it would seem, are too soft and weak to properly protectanything. And need I enumerate to you how many of my people’s current woes were caused by a human? Shinzon hadmany grand plans, but the benefits they brought to the Reman people were fleeting at best.”