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Brant smiled tightly. “I wasn’t drawn into anything, Captain. I was simply trying to make a living and the exotic expedition business wasn’t as lucrative as I had hoped.”

“You could have returned to Starfleet,” I pointed out.

He shook his head. “Trust me, it was no longer an option.”

I remembered what Abby had told me on that count. “Go on.”

“The Trieste was about to overtake me,” he said. “I was in the vicinity of Hel’s Gate and I couldn’t think of any other way to elude pursuit, so I ducked inside the phenomenon. As I had hoped, the Trieste embraced the better part of valor and decided not to follow.”

Abby looked at her brother askance. “You went into the Gate with your engines active?”

“I did,” he told her. “But before the Gate could really work me over, my engines went off-line warp as well as impulse. That saved me. It forced me to coast on momentum.”

“And that was how you learned to make it through,” I deduced.

Brant nodded. “When I emerged, my ship was damaged but not as badly as it could have been. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where the hell I was. None of the stars around me looked the least bit familiar.”

“Tell me about it,” said Abby.

Her brother continued. “With no other course of action open to me, I began to effect repairs. At some point, my ship turned up on someone’s sensors. That someone came by to have a look at me.”

I looked about. “One of these people?”

“She was,” Brant explained soberly. “She’s dead now, but that’s another story. The important thing is she brought me to a planet very much like this one and introduced me to her comrades.”

“Comrades … in what?” I wondered.

Brant glanced at them with an air of pride. “These people are rebels,” he told me. “Not unlike the Maquis, though the analogy may not appeal to you. And that planet like this one was their base of operations, where they fought the good fight against an oppressive interstellar regime.”

“An oppressive regime,” I echoed, making a connection in my mind. “It wouldn’t, by any chance, refer to itself as the Abinarri?”

His eyes hardened. “You’ve met them, then.”

“We’ve sampled their hospitality,” I replied.

“And taken down three of their ships,” Abby added.

Brant seemed impressed. “I’m glad to hear it. In any case, they told me about their cause and before I knew it, I was hooked. Their rebellion stirred something in me in a way I can’t explain.”

Still, he searched for words to describe it. Not for my sake, I’m certain, but for his sister’s.

“It seemed to me,” he said, “that this was what I’d been looking for all my life something so right, so pure and untainted, I could put my entire being into it and never look back.”

Abby didn’t say anything. She just nodded.

“But,” I said, “at some point you came back to our universe. What were you doing there if your fight was here?”

“Good question,” said Brant. “One I would have expected from a Starfleet captain, in uniform or out.”

“It’s my duty to inquire,” I told him stiffly.

“So it is,” Brant agreed. “And believe me, Captain, I’ve got nothing to hide in that regard. I was just doing some recruiting on my old turf. That is, trying to gather people to our banner.”

“People?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Adventurous sorts who might be attracted to a good cause, even if it was in unfamiliar territory.” He scowled. “Unfortunately, it seems my efforts backfired.”

“In what way?” asked Abby.

Her brother looked at her. “The mercenaries? The ones who kidnapped me, hoping I’d lead them to the Hoard of Dujonian?”

“Yes?” she said.

“That’s how they got wind of me,” Brant explained. “Through someone I tried to recruit for the rebellion. The next time I saw that person, it was a trap. The mercenaries showed up in their Orion ship and spirited me off forced me to show them the way through Hel’s Gate.”

“But they didn’t know what they were getting into,” I ventured.

“That’s correct,” said Brant. “My comrades didn’t take long to realize a ship had come through the gate or that I was on it. In short order, they got me back and gave the mercenaries what they deserved.”

I