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Red Abby eyed me. “Even though you don’t know where we’re headed? Or what the dangers may be?”

I shrugged as if such matters didn’t faze me. “It won’t be the first time,” I said. “Or the last.”

Red Abby turned to Worf. “You say you’re experienced? Then tell me where you’ve served.”

My lieutenant thrust his bearded chin out. “I have served on several Klingon trading vessels,” he answered. “Unfortunately, you would not know them. I also worked the Coridanni and the Jerrok Mor.”

The woman nodded judiciously, then turned her gaze on me. “And you?” she demanded. “Where have you served?”

“On the Jerrok Mor, as well,” I said. “Also the Nada Chun, the Ferret, and the Erron’vol.”

“As what?” she asked.

“You name it,” I told her. “Helmsman, navigator, engineer.”

“A jack-of-all-trades,” she concluded.

“Something like that.”

“The rest of that saying is ‘master-of-none.’ “

I chuckled a little. “That part wouldn’t apply, then. I’m good at what I do. All of it.”

She regarded me a moment longer, then turned back to Worf. “And you, Mitoc? What are you good at?”

“I can also perform several different functions,” he said. “However, my specialty is tactics and armaments.”

Red Abby raised an eyebrow. “Really. Then you know how many prefire chambers are in a Type II phaser?”

“Four,” Worf answered without hesitation.

She grunted. “I’ll take your word for it. Personally, I don’t know anything about phasers and I couldn’t care less as long as the damned things work when I need them to.”

“Then we’re hired?” I asked.

Red Abby considered me. “As soon as my officers check your references. As it happens, I know Captain Goody rather well. I’ll want to ask him about your tour on the Ferret personally.”

“I’d expect no less,” I assured her.

Of course, both Worf and myself had been careful as to which ships we mentioned. The Erron’vol had been destroyed in a spatial anomaly the week before, about the same time the Ferret was caught smuggling weapons to the Maquis so neither of their captains would be available to refute our stories.

In the same vein, the captains of the Coridani, the Jerrok Mor, and the Nada Chun were all retired Starfleet personnel. Starfleet Command had told them enough to make them useful to us, but not so much as to leave our mission open to discovery.

In short, Red Abby would find our references impeccable. That is, if she even bothered to check, which I suspected she would not.

“One more thing,” she told us.

“And that is?” I asked.

The woman seemed to look inside me with her soft, blue eyes. “Have you got any enemies I should know about, Hill? Anyone at all?”

I pretended to think for a moment. Then I shrugged. “None that come to mind,” I said.

“And you?” she asked Worf.

He curled his lip. “None who still live,” he told her, giving her an answer worthy of a Klingon.

Red Abby nodded, then turned to me again. “See me tomorrow night, same place. If everything checks the way it should, you’ll ship out with me the following morning.”

“The sooner, the better,” I said.

Unexpectedly, she smiled at that. It was a stern smile, without any humor in it. “Always,” she replied. Then, having dismissed us, she resumed her discussion with the Orion and the man with the scar.

Exchanging glances with Worf, I headed back to our table, where our contact had been waiting for us. His eyes crinkling at the corners, he asked, “So? Are you gainfully employed?”

“I suspect we are,” I replied.

Madigoor

“AND WERE YOU?” asked the captain of the Kalliope, leaning forward in his seat at the Captain’s Table. “Employed, I mean?”

Picard nodded. “We were. And as I would find out later, I had been right about Red Abby checking our references. She hadn’t bothered.”

Dravvin’s eyes narrowed with interest. “And you took off the morning after you signed on, as this Red Abby said you would?”

“Yes,” said Picard. “We beamed up to her ship, the Daring, along with a number of other recruits.”

“What kind of ship was she?” asked Bo’tex.

“An old Ammonite vessel,” Picard replied,