"Patience?" he said, as if it were a curse.

I nodded. "That's right."

As it turned out, we needed quite a bit of it. The minutes dragged by, unmindful of our anxiety. We looked at one another, searching for answers our comrades couldn't provide.

As captains of your own vessels, you know uncertainty is a terrible thing. It can gnaw at you until your very sanity gives way. We began to get a taste of that in the Carda.s.sian transporter room.

After a while, we wondered if we had guessed wrong about the Romulans' plans. Perhaps they had already obtained the information they needed. Perhaps, in destroying our Carda.s.sian captors, they were merely eliminating a compet.i.tor for the h.o.a.rd.

I had already begun to consider alternative schemes, none of which was particularly satisfactory, when the sensors showed me what I had been hoping so desperately to see. The Romulans had dropped their deflector shields. Almost at the same time, they began to conduct transporter activity on one of their middle decks.

Encouraged, I activated the Carda.s.sian transporter system and darted across the room. The Carda.s.sian version of a transporter pad wasn't very impressive looking, but it was very nearly as efficient as the Federation model. Taking my place on it alongside Abby, Thadoc, Corbis, and three other men, I drew my phaser and waited.

In a heartbeat, we found ourselves on the Romulan bridge.

The commander of the warbird was sitting in a central chair with a rounded back. He was surrounded by seven or eight officers tending to various duties, their faces caught in the glow of bright green status screens on the bulkheads around them. Before they could register our presence or react to it, the place came alive with a host of diamond-blue energy beams.

Every one of the Romulans fell instantly with one exception, and Thadoc took that one out with a blow to the back of the neck. Worf and the rest of our comrades materialized in the next second or two, but to their chagrin there was nothing for them to do. A bizarre stillness reigned as the magnitude of our victory sank in.

Through sheer audacity, we had taken over the bridge of a Romulan warbird and as far as we knew, no one on the vessel except us had any inkling of it. Of course, that would change soon enough.

Advancing to the Romulan commander's seat, I moved his unconscious form aside. Then I turned to Thadoc.

"We need a security lockout," I said. "Can you give us one?"

I was only guessing that he'd had some experience serving on Romulan vessels. Being only half-Romulan, he might not have. It didn't occur to me that, even if he did have the expertise, he might not be willing to apply it on my behalf.

After all, we were no longer fighting for our lives in some corridor. We were on a bridge again, even if it wasn't that of the Daring. The situation cried out for a captain and Thadoc turned to the one he had in mind for the position.

In other words, Red Abby.

It was no time for politics. Taking the woman by the arm, I pulled her off to the side, where we could speak one-on-one.

"Listen," I said, "I don't care who sits in the center seat once we have secured this vessel. But for now, I need the cooperation of everyone you included."

She frowned, clearly reluctant to comply. But after a moment, she turned to Thadoc.

"Do whatever he says," she commanded.

Without a word, Thadoc opened the Romulan commander's control panel and gave me the lockout I had requested. "From this point on," he announced, "no one will be able to enter the bridge without our permission."

"Sounds good to me," Dunwoody remarked.

Thadoc turned to me. "What next?"

I didn't need much time to think about it. "Conduct an emergency override, deactivating all transporter facilities. Then check to see how many Romulans have already been sent to the Carda.s.sian ship."

Again, Thadoc complied. After a second or so, he looked up. "Transporters are all locked down. As for how many have left the warbird ..." He shook his head. "All boarding parties are still here."

"No one left?" I asked. "Are you sure?"

His expression told me he was very sure.

I frowned. "Some astute Romulan officer must have noticed our transport and called a halt to the boarding operation."

"Let's make sure the situation doesn't change," said Red Abby. She turned to Thadoc. "Raise the shields."

He nodded. "Done."

Red Abby looked at me, the epitome of cooperation. "What now?" she asked.

"Now," I told her, "I give them their walking papers. Mr. Thadoc, would you activate the ship's intercom?"

It took only a moment for him to do as I had requested. Choosing my words judiciously, I addressed the warbird's crew, trusting the system's translation protocols to make my announcement understandable to them.

"Attention," I said. "We have secured control of your vessel."

A chorus of cheers went up from the throats of Red Abby's men. Or most of them, anyway. Red Abby herself remained silent. If she harbored any resentment toward me, she didn't show it.

Not that I would have stepped aside in any case. I was clearly better prepared for this stage of the operation than she was.

"At this time," I continued, "we recommend you leave the ship by any means available to you."

Thadoc glanced at me, his brows raised in surprise.

"They are Romulans," he whispered, too softly to be heard over the intercom system. "That recommendation will not sit well with them."

"I'm aware of that," I whispered back. "But they are also painfully vulnerable under the circ.u.mstances. And though I have no desire to take advantage of their vulnerability, they have no way of knowing that."

In fact, the Romulans had no idea who I was or what I was capable of. What's more, I had no intention of enlightening them.

"It's all right," Red Abby told Thadoc. "Picard's got the ball." She looked at me. "Let's see if he can run with it."

If it was a vote of confidence, it was hardly a resounding one. Nonetheless, I went on.

"I will allow you to make use of all shuttles and life-pods," I told the crew. "If you decline to do so, I will cut off your life support and you will die slowly for a lost cause. The choice is yours."

At that point, I terminated the communication. Worf was standing in a corner from which he could keep an eye on the Romulans lying about the bridge. He nodded approvingly.

"Do you think they'll respond to your generosity?" a.s.sad asked.

"I suspect they will," I told him. "But one never knows. There are Romulans and there are Romulans."

A moment later, an indicator lit up on the commander's board. Someone was boarding one of the life-pods.

"I've got at least one taker," I noted.

In the next several seconds, I saw five more indicators. Three of them were life-pods, the others shuttles. Obviously, at least part of the crew had decided to take me up on my offer.

"It's working," Worf observed.

"So it is," Thadoc said. He looked at me. "But what do you propose to do if there are stragglers? Romulans who would rather die than renege on their oaths and abandon their ship?"

It was a fair question.

"I have a plan for them," I a.s.sured him. I jerked my head to indicate the Romulans we had knocked unconscious. "Just as I have a plan for our sleepy friends here."

"What about the Carda.s.sians?" Corbis asked.

Another fair question. To be sure, something had to be done about them.

I turned to Thadoc again. "The Carda.s.sians must be caught in some kind of tractor beam. See if you can release them."

As he got to work, I looked at the viewscreen. The Carda.s.sian warship hung there in s.p.a.ce, battered and blackened, its hull glowing a savage red in the places where it had taken the most damage.

After a few moments, the vessel began to drift away from us. With all it had gone through, its crew had no control over its movements.

"There," I said. "That should take care of the Carda.s.sians."

The warship would hang in s.p.a.ce like a broken toy until such time as its fellow Carda.s.sians saw fit to look for it. It might take quite some time, of course. However, we were showing our captors more kindness than they had shown us.

Meanwhile, the Romulan evacuation was proceeding apace, shuttles and life-pods issuing from the warbird in several different places. But it seemed Thadoc had been right to ask about stragglers. Some of the escape vehicles were being ignored, even in what should have been the most populous sections of the ship.

Red Abby seemed to have noticed as well. "If you've really got a plan," she told me, "this would be a good time to implement it."

I checked the sensor readout on the commander's control panel. Three of the shuttles had left their bays, but two were still close to the ship. I turned to Thadoc and indicated the Romulans lying among us.

"Obtain a transporter lock on them," I said, "and beam them onto one of those shuttles. Then find another half-dozen Romulans and do the same, again and again until we're alone on this vessel."

The helmsman regarded me for a full second, no doubt trying to find a flaw in my scheme. Apparently, he was unsuccessful, because he eventually bent to his task.

As he worked the warbird's transporter controls, the Romulan bridge crew began to shimmer. Almost instantly, it was gone. And in the next few minutes, the same thing took place all over the ship.

Thadoc seemed to be enjoying his work. But in time it ended, as all good things will.

Red Abby looked around and nodded. "Well," she observed, "I suppose that's one way to get rid of unwanted guests."

I found myself smiling not so much at the quip itself as at the tone she had used. It was the first time I had heard the woman even come close to making a joke.

"So it is," I agreed.

Thadoc looked at Red Abby. "We should get out of here. There may be additional warbirds in the vicinity."

She looked at me. I nodded, telling her the captain's chair was hers again. I would keep my end of the bargain.

"You've got the helm," she told Thadoc. "Chart us a course for Hel's Gate."

Madigoor "A BOLD MOVE," said Hompaq, "this transport onto the enemy's ship even if it was just a pack of Romulans."

Flenarrh looked at her from beneath his white tuft. "I wouldn't take the Romulans lightly if I were"

The Klingon snarled at him.

" me," he finished lamely.

"I'm impressed, too," said the Captain of the Kalliope. "I don't think I ever would have thought of that tactic myself."

Robinson chuckled. "Don't be so hard on yourself, lad. Where you come from, they don't have transporters."

The Captain of the Kalliope grunted good-naturedly. "That's true. Still, it was a clever maneuver."

Dravvin stroked his chin. "From what you've said, Picard, there couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen of you left to man the warbird and to effect repairs where it was damaged in the battle."

"That's correct," said Picard.

"It doesn't seem any of you would have gotten much rest," the Rythrian noted.

"Not much at all," Picard agreed, "though it was sorely needed after all we had been through."

"I can't operate without rest," Bo'tex remarked. "No Caxtonian can. If we don't get our beauty sleep, we're liable to run our ship into the nearest asteroid belt."

"I'm sure you're exaggerating," said Robinson.

"Not one iota," Bo'tex insisted. "Ever hear of Captain In'dro?"

Robinson shook his head. "I don't believe so, no."

"He and his crew were models of Caxtonian efficiency. Then they were kept up one night by engine noise. The next day, they fell asleep on their bridge and got caught in a subs.p.a.ce anomaly." Bo'tex paused for dramatic effect. "They were never heard from again."

"Enlightening," Dravvin said dryly. "But tell me this, Captain Bo'tex ... if In'dro and his crew were never heard from again, how do you know exactly what happened to them?"

The Caxtonian stared at him for a moment. "I ... er, that is ..."

The Rythrian grunted. "As I thought."

The Captain of the Kalliope turned to Picard. "While our colleague Bo'tex is trying to answer Captain Dravvin's question, you may want to go on with your story."

Picard nodded. "Indeed. As I was saying, rest was certainly on all our minds. And repairs were needed as well. But before she addressed those concerns, Red Abby had something to say to us. To all of us."

The Tale AS YOU MAY have gathered, this wasn't a woman who liked to stand on ceremony. She spoke plainly and from the heart.

"When a captain picks her crew," she said, "there's no science to it. All she can do is listen to her instincts and hope they're right more often than they're wrong."

Red Abby paused. "Astellanax was one of the best choices my instincts ever made. He was smart and diligent and faithful, and that's pretty much what you want from a first officer. I'm grateful for all he did for me, not just on this voyage but also on those that preceded it."