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As if reluctantly, Tuvok released his hold. Thamnos was swaggering and smirking at the same time.

“Now, there’s a sensible man. Maybe once we get out of here, we can be business partners. We can sell hilopon to both sides. I’ll still want full credit for the research, of course, but-“

He never finished his sentence. The knife that severed his windpipe prevented it.

Admiral Tal got up from the command chair to pace the warbird’s bridge restlessly. Few realized how much of a warbird commander’s life was spent just sitting. Sometimes, especially times such as this, a person needed to stretch.

This place had been hard won, and over a long and storied lifetime. That incident when he was a subcommander had almost ended his career if not his life; the climb back up had been arduous, to put it mildly. Tal had gotten as far as commander without tarnishing his honor or his morals-no mean feat in the service of an Empire not always committed to either-only to find himself subordinate to that butcher Volskiar at Narendra III.

He still had nightmares about that, though it was sixteen years past. It made him wary of all orders from above, and intent on scrutinizing their origin and their purpose. As he’d tried to tell Jarok, the headstrong fool, the important thing-well, the next most important thing after honor and morality, was moderation.

The next most important thing after that was to stay offworld, and out of politics, as much as possible. Such caution had won him an admiralcy, but at the cost of rarely seeing sky above him. He had no doubt he would die someday within the confines of a ship, in the service of a world where it was not safe for the moderate to live.

Tal would fight when he believed the cause was just. But, after Narendra III, he would not fight unless he knew precisely what he was fighting for.

The admiral did a circuit of the bridge stations, communicating by a glance here, a nod or touch on the shoulder there, that he knew he could count on his crew to give him their best, for they never got less from him. As for his crew, their respect for him bordered on adulation.

Tal saw that all was in order, then settled back in the command chair.

“Well?” he demanded of Koval. “We’re almost there. What happens next?”

“There” was a world Tal had finally managed to correlate between their course and existing starcharts as Renaga, designated unallied and “to be observed.” It was the only thing in the vicinity even the Tal Shiar could possibly be interested in. Tal knew other ships passed this way occasionally in spite of the treaty; he suspected Federation ships did as well. Was that the point of this Tal Shiar effort, to provoke accusations of treaty violation and stir up trouble for no particular reason? Did the Empire not have enough else on its mind? Whatever happened, he and his crew would take the brunt of it, and Tal was not amused.

Koval had had ample opportunity to observe the admiral on their journey here as well as earlier. He knew Tal’s history, and knew from his own investigation that the admiral was politically beyond reproach. He had been seen more than once in the company of Alidar Jarok, who was under surveillance for reasons owing to a possible shift in orthodoxy, yet the content of their conversations, beyond talk of women, had never been substantiated.

Koval knew as well that Tal was no ordinary commander. Intelligent, patrician, fit and energetic despite his years, not quick to anger but, once there, implacable, this one would not be bullied. He had also reached an age where he was beyond fear.

Koval was forced to consider him a peer. Very well; it would be a challenge. Had he known how much Tal despised his soft-bellied self, he would have found the challenge all the more exciting.

In answer to Tal’s question, he said: “We wait.”

“For what?” Tal asked incisively.

He got no answer.

On Okinawa’s bridge, Captain Leyton had just asked his helmsman for an ETA at Renaga.

“Approximately 2.5 hours, sir,” the helm reported not a little nervously.