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After a moment, one of the workers—one who hadn’t been on the flight deck before; this was obviously the replacement for the one Biron had disposed of—said, “Lock achieved.”

The status board showed another hit from the da Vinci. It would be several seconds before they fired again, if the usual Starfleet pattern held. “Power down the shields and engage matter-transferral device. Engage dimensional blockers on all equipment currently present on the Cardassian station.”

Howwi, Dun, and Huuk appeared on the flight deck, unconscious. Biron remembered that Starfleet’s weapons had a setting that could do that—one of many things about Starfleet that Biron did not comprehend. They were a strange conglomeration of beings, this Federation they represented—they did not exploit. It continually amazed Biron that such an inefficient government had managed to survive all these centuries.

Biron gave not a thought to the workers who had been left behind. They were, after all, only workers and easily replaced. But good sub-overseers and officers were hard to find—even ones who groomed themselves and allowed themselves to be rendered unconscious by Starfleet. Indeed, Biron felt that some kind of punishment was in order for Howwi.

That was for a later time, however. His status board indicated that the dimensional blockers had been engaged—Gold, Gomez, and the da Vinci’s other workers would not be able to make use of the technology they had used to improve the Cardassian station. Biron made a note to retrieve the technology from Dimension 7 when they returned to Androssi space.

He also noted that the Starfleet vessel’s navigation systems were damaged, and could only accomplish an FTL of 1.02. “Set navigational course 76521. Set FTL at 15.”

Within moments, Biron’s ship left the Trivas system behind.

“They’re leaving the system at warp 8.7, sir,” McAllan said urgently.

“Wong?” Gold prompted the conn officer.

The young ensign shook his head. “Best we can manage is warp 4, sir.”

Gold sighed. “No point in the tortoise chasing the hare if the hare’s actually gonna go full bore.”

“Duf—Vinc —in. Duffy to da Vinci, can you hear me?”

“We hear you, Duffy. Status report.”

Duffy hesitated before giving the report. Gold suspected that the lieutenant commander wanted a status report of his own, but that would have to wait. Right now, Gold needed to know what was happening on Empok Nor more than Duffy needed to know the current situation on the da Vinci. “Well, sir, we had an Androssi boarding party—including our old pal, Sub-Overseer Howwi—but we took care of ’em. Unfortunately, someone beamed him and his two officers out. The workers were left behind, though. I guess they’re prisoners?”

“I suppose.” Gold rubbed his chin. “We’ll turn them over to a starbase—maybe remand them to Maeglin. How about the station?”

“That’s the weird part. Soloman screamed right as the three Androssi were beaming out. Remember last time, when all their tech just disappeared?”

“Let me guess.”

“Yes, sir, they did it again. It all fell into whatever dimension they hide it in when they don’t want us to know it’s there. As far as we can tell, they left Empok Nor the way they found it.”

“Is Soloman okay?”

“Yeah, he was more surprised than anything—the entire computer network hiccupped while he was in the middle of talking to it.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Nog said, “but Empok Nor hasn’t been left exactly the way the Androssi found it. There are several components from the original structure that are missing.”

“Biron’s people probably salvaged ’em,” Gold said. “Hate to say it, but they’ve got as much right to it as we do to the fusion core. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir.” Nog hesitated. “The structural integrity of the fusion core’s been compromised. I don’t think we can safely tow it back to Deep Space 9.”

CHAPTER

10

Nog stood in Empok Nor’s ops. It felt weird, sitting in a place that was so much like the ops he was used to, and yet so different. Half the consoles didn’t work properly, and most of them looked different without the Starfleet