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“I’ll be in the captain’s ready room,” Ro said, turning and striding toward the door.

“Aye,” the ensign replied, with evident relief.

As soon as the doors hissed shut behind her, and she was alone in the ready room, Ro wheeled around and struck out with her fist, pounding the bulkhead. It didn’t damage the wall in any measurable way, and wasn’t doing her knuckles any favors, but Ro couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit of the tension bleeding away. Or were her knuckles actually bleeding?

Pacing wasn’t doing her any good, nor was punching walls, nor was hounding the bridge crew with questions, or glancing at the chronometer every thirty seconds. They were little more than eleven hours into the twenty-four that the captain had instructed her to keep the Enterprise out of sight, and already Ro felt at the end of her tether.

She remembered what Chakotay had said about waiting and stillness. She could hear his voice as clearly as if he were standing at her elbow.

The most difficult part of any engagement, the instructor had said, was not the fighting, was not the risk of injury or the loss of energy, was not the enemy or their weapons or their tactics. If Ro learned nothing else in Advanced Tactical Training, Chakotay had insisted, she would have to learn patience. The hardest part of any engagement, he’d told her, was the waiting.

It was the same for the captain engaged in ship-to-ship combat as it was for a single soldier engaged in hand-to-hand, the same for an admiral on a flagship as it was for an operative deployed undercover behind enemy lines. The greatest adversary was never the enemy, but was rather impatience, and the inability to judge the appropriate moment for action. One could too easily tire of waiting for the other ship, or the other combatant, or what-have-you, to make the next move, and so rush to action before the appropriate time. And then you would have surrendered any advantage to your opponent.

What the skilled tactician had to remember, Ro had been taught, was that it was sometimes better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing.

Of course, the reason Chakotay had drilled the concept into her head again and again was that Ro’s first instinct was always to do something, even if it was the wrong thing. A lifetime of scuffles in the dirt, of barroom brawls, of having to fight just because of who she was and where she came from, had taught Ro that the advantage in combat fell to whomever made the first move, and that meant never waiting around to see what the other person was going to do. Chakotay had insisted that she unlearn that lesson, and instead teach herself how to be patient.

She’d done her best, but it wasn’t easy. Even though she knew that there was very little she could do in the present circumstances, she couldn’t help but feel that she should be doing something.

“Damn it, Captain,” she said, glaring around the empty room as if looking for something on which to take out her frustrations. “It should be you up here doing nothing. And me down there doing…something.”

She glanced at the chronometer on Picard’s desk.

There were nearly twelve hours to go.

“I hate waiting,” Ro said.

There was no one to hear her but the fish in the wall-mounted spherical tank, but if they were bothered by what she said, they didn’t show it.

Even though he’d only been on the surface of Turing a short time, and still knew comparatively little about the androids who called it home, Isaac could not help identifying with them, and sharing their concerns about the presence of the Romulan troops.

Since Lal had first contacted him via subspace, relaying the captain’s words to him, and his to the captain, Isaac had been tied into the Turing communication system. It was something of an odd sensation, like eavesdropping on the Federation Council, able to listen but not given leave to speak. He could hear all of the debate now buzzing over subspace as the population attempted to reach consensus, but he was not permitted to voice an opinion