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“Admiral…” from Comm; he raised a hand that indicated: Wait!

“You may have power enough to commandeer my ship, but once on my ship, you are answerable to me,” Tal continued, his eyes boring into Koval. “I have survived far greater threats than you. If you speak, if you so much as inhale deeply while I am speaking to their captain, I will give them the coordinates you beamed to. I wonder what they’d find there?”

Koval said nothing. He simply met Tal’s gaze squarely. It was so seldom anyone challenged him that he found it refreshing. For a moment a pair of defiant green eyes flashed across his memory and he frowned slightly. Who might that have been? He had touched so many lives, watched so many die, so many beg for mercy, so many realize at the last moment how completely he had invaded and controlled their lives without their ever realizing it, that sometimes it was hard to remember them all. Ah, well. If the admiral wanted to run this part of the show, let him. He had other means at his disposal.

Tal nodded to Comm to open the channel.

“Commander Federation vessel,” he said to the bearded human materializing on the forward screen, “challenge acknowledged. But you are as much in the wrong place as we. I await your explanation.”

Ultimately the standoff took on the aspect of a chess game. Admiral Tal dropped the warbird’s cloak (necessary after this much time, if he intended to have full power for weapons) but not her shields; Captain Leyton stood fast. For the next several minutes the two commanders traded accusations of trespass into the Zone, treaty violation, and whether there were Romulans with transmitters on Renaga. Tal made note of the frail-looking humanoid standing behind the bearded captain’s shoulder occasionally whispering something into his ear. Each time he did so, the human would frown and go on speaking.

And where was Albatross during all of this? She had come to station-keeping just within transporter range of Okinawa, her situation precarious in all senses. She couldn’t outrun a warbird, and even if she tried, it would only set the warbird in pursuit and Okinawa after her, and what a mess that would be. She couldn’t hail out and Okinawa couldn’t hail her without the Romulans hearing and knowing for a certainty that she was allied with Okinawa.

But Tuvok could monitor whatever conversations went on between the two larger ships, and he was doing that now.

Sisko, meanwhile, was getting itchy. Albatross couldn’t budge until the two larger ships had finished their business, and whatever had set off the alarm was not reading on his instrument panel; he’d have to check it out onsite.

“I’ll be in the engine room,” he announced, never more glad to get out of the center seat, and headed aft.

“I thought so!” he said ruefully, seeing the readout from the port nacelle. The phaser blast had winged her, and all those subsequent fancy maneuvers had only made the damage worse. Hairline fractures spidered out from a ruptured conduit that leaked coolant ominously. Left alone, it would eventually go critical. Sisko was confident he could patch her up well enough to get her home, but first he’d have to let her cool down.

“Steady as she goes, old girl!” Sisko comforted her, shutting down the portside matter/antimatter pod and watching the temperature monitor begin to drop back within normal parameters. An hour or so from now, he could begin to make repairs. If they were still here an hour from now.

He took his time walking back to the controls, stopped to look at the magnificent ruse of the storage containers lined up monolithically along the narrow passageway. The holo transmitter was hidden away in one of them. Only the main lab module was open and active, and Selar and Zetha were at work there, their heads together, deep in concentration on… something.

Sisko almost approached them; he wanted to ask Selar about the results of the blood tests. But he wasn’t sure he could face Zetha right now. Besides, he’d felt a lot better since they’d returned