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Tharia paid no attention to anything anyone was saying, or to Kenneth Dalby, who came up the ladder and practically yanked Tharia toward the doorway. “C’mon, ch’Ren,” he said, “let’s get this over with.”

He paid no attention because he was turning his thoughts to his next campaign. It was obvious that Chakotay was no longer to be trusted. There’s one warp-capable shuttlecraft left, he thought. The Geronimo had two originally, but they had crashed one on the planet where Tharia found his gift.

As soon as he and Dalby reached the cabin Tharia shared with Hogan, Ayala, and Bendera, the Andorian reached out with his mind to the weapon. In turn, the weapon reached out to the ship’s environmental controls.

The traitors cannot be allowed to stop me, he thought.

“C’mon, ch’Ren, get a move on,” Dalby said, pushing Tharia toward his bunk.

As the temperature in the room lowered, Tharia turned and leapt through the air, tackling a surprised Dalby. While he lay stunned on the floor, Tharia ran to his bunk, grabbed the weapon, ran back toward the door, grabbed Dalby’s phaser, kicked him in the ribs for good measure, then headed toward the shuttlebay.

The temperature continued to lower to near-freezing levels, but Tharia only really noticed it on an intellectual level—he didn’t feel anything except for his burning need to make the Cardassians pay.

By the time he got to the shuttlebay, he reckoned, it would be down past freezing. Then he would raise the temperature to the boiling point as he left the Geronimo. The hull would start to rupture under the stress.

In his mind’s eye, he started plotting a course for the Slaybis system. The traitors there will die just as the traitors here will.

Chakotay and the others had been his comrades. But they could not see the truth. The Cardassians all had to pay, whether civilian or military. They all had to die. Seska was Bajoran, she should have understood that.

Since she did not, she would die when the hull buckled.

Ayala and Henley were doing some kind of maintenance on the shuttle when Tharia came in. Without hesitating, he shot them both. He had no idea what setting the phaser was on—the fact that they fell to the deck in a heap meant it wasn’t set to disintegrate, but that still left half a dozen possible settings—nor did he much care. If they weren’t dead now, they would be soon.

He boarded the shuttle, entering an override code. The bridge systems were probably literally freezing up by now, so there was no way Chakotay or Torres would be able to stop him.

“Bridge to shuttlebay. Whoever’s in there, get back here now!” Chakotay’s calm voice had finally broken into a shout. Tharia also could hear a shiver in his voice.

Tharia cut off the communication as he exited through the shuttlebay doors.

Once he was clear of the Geronimo, he set course for the Slaybis system. There were more people there who needed to die.

About his comrades, he didn’t spare a thought.

He was thinking about the broken bodies of his mates. And the broken bodies of the Cardassians who died on Nramia.

It wasn’t enough. Not yet.

I will help you achieve your goal.

Soon…

Cal Hudson sat in his quarters and read through the data on the optical chip Tuvok had provided. Half-remembered Academy classes in galactic history came back to the forefront of his mind as he read it. So many of those damn ancient civilizations, he thought, they all blend. The Zalkat Union, the Iconians, the Tkon Empire…

He remembered sitting in that class, bored out of his mind. Ben Sisko was in the class with him, and they’d spend most of their time the first few weeks trying to get the other one to do something stupid that would get the (negative) attention of the professor. It was childish, but they were first-year students who were eager to explore strange new worlds. A class about dead civilizations didn’t interest either of them.

Eventually, they settled down, of course—if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have made it through the Academy in the first place. Those were good