"I'm not reading any of the neutrino levels that a wormhole in the area would leave." Leah frowned. "I have another warp trail, though. A different one. It looks like the signature of a Klingon warp coil to me . . ." She checked the computer's readings. "K't'inga "K't'inga-cla.s.s."

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," Scotty muttered. "We've wasted half the day followin' a b.l.o.o.d.y decoy!"

"I am setting course for the Agni Cl.u.s.ter," Qat'qa said quickly. "We should still be able to pick up the other trail when we get there."

Bok dozed in the center seat on Intrepid Intrepid's bridge. He had originally intended to claim the largest and, no doubt, most luxurious cabin on the ship, which had previously been the quarters of her original captain. When the door to the captain's cabin had opened, Bok had felt his heart sink and his bile rise, pa.s.sing each other quite uncomfortably on the way. The cabin, far from being s.p.a.cious and luxurious, was exactly the same size and color as his cell had been at Rog Prison. It wasn't any more luxurious than his cell had been either.

True, there weren't three other Ferengi squeezed into it, but it had brought back unpleasant memories all the same. There had been the ignominy of being fleeced for every strip of latinum in the reception tavern when he arrived, and then the weight of debt put upon him as part of the penal servitude. Each day he was in the prison, he was debited a few slips for the cost of his upkeep. It wasn't much at a time, but of course he had nothing after the inaugural deposit was forced from him, and then the weight and pressure of it built up steadily over time.

The hew-mons had an ancient torture, something called "Chinese water torture," in which the steady dripping of tiny water drops onto a prisoner's forehead slowly drove him insane. The acc.u.mulation of these debts had the same effect on inmates of the Ferengi prison system.

It was all worth it, of course. No price was too high to pay for making amends for what had happened to his son.

"The NX warp trail ends here." Qat'qa's announcement was the last thing Scotty wanted to hear. If he could just build a better b.l.o.o.d.y sensor . . .

"Another decoy?"

"There's no other warp trail in the system," Leah said. "But there's an increasing distortion in the warp trail we've been following."

Scotty's breath caught in his throat. Could the distortion have meant a disaster? "What are ye thinking, Leah?"

"I'm thinking the distortion looks like a cloaking field beginning to overlay the warp trail."

"Ye think she cloaked?" That might be a good sign-the ship laying the false warp trails hadn't hadn't left a signature of being cloaked. left a signature of being cloaked.

"Yes."

Hunt frowned. "Were any NXs equipped with cloaks? Those were the days before the Treaty of Algeron."

"No. But there's no reason why one couldn't be fitted."

"The ship that attacked us was Klingon, with a cloak. So, if they had a spare . . ."

"Any of us could fit a cloak to a starship if we had one to spare. The first thing we need to do is penetrate the type of cloak they're using."

"Cloaking technology is always evolving," Qat'qa said. "It is one of the shortest-lived technologies, actually. Anyone who has served on a Klingon vessel can tell you that."

"Aye, la.s.s, that it is. It was straightforward enough back in my day, if not easy. The Klingons had cloaks on their Birds-of-Prey, and the Romulans had cloaks on theirs." He shook his head. "Nowadays, everybody and his granny has some kind of cloaking technology, and they all need a different countermeasure. And that's even if the cloak we're facin' isna a new variety."

"It won't be," Nog said confidently.

"Why not?"

"Because Bok is Ferengi. The cloaks on his ships will be ones that he has bought." bought." Nog grimaced. "Secondhand goods." He seemed to pull himself up slightly "He wouldn't pay market value, so any cloaks he bought were old models." Nog grimaced. "Secondhand goods." He seemed to pull himself up slightly "He wouldn't pay market value, so any cloaks he bought were old models."

Qat'qa grunted. "That still leaves a lot of different possibilites."

"Unless one of our prisoners knows where he got them," Nog said.

"D'you think any of them might be willing to tell?" Scotty asked.

"I think I might be able to persuade them. With your permission, sir?" Scotty nodded, and Nog went to change into his best suit again. Since the Ferengi prisoners would only talk to the son of the Nagus, that was how he would go to them.

14.

"That's weird . . ." La Forge was looking through the Intrepid Intrepid's original sensor logs, in what had become the Starfleet pen, the meeting area behind the center seat.

"Commander?"

"Reg, take a look at this. What does it look like to you?"

"If I didn't know better . . . No, it's impossible."

"Nothing's really impossible, Reg. What if you didn't know better? Pretend you don't."

"Well, if I didn't know better, I'd say the upper band of this subs.p.a.ce signature looked as if it had been disturbed by something like a slipstream drive."

"That's what I thought, but I couldn't believe it either. Thanks for the second opinion."

"But this reading was taken two hundred years ago . . . n.o.body used slipstream drive then."

"Yeah, I've heard that before too . . . And like I said before, n.o.body that we know of. But there are a lot of civilizations out there that we don't know of."

"The rest of the readings don't look like any slipstream signature I've ever seen, though."

"No, but they do look familiar somehow. I wish I had access to the Hera Hera's data banks. We could compare these sensor readings with everything in the Starfleet rec-" He stopped as he noticed the baffled expression on Barclay's face. "Reg? What's up?"

"You said . . . I'm sorry, Geordi, maybe I misheard."

"I said what?"

Reg looked uncomfortable. "You just said you wished we could access the Hera Hera's database. Not Challenger." Challenger."

"I did?" Geordi was surprised. He hadn't thought about the Hera Hera in a while, and couldn't imagine why he'd have thought of it now. in a while, and couldn't imagine why he'd have thought of it now.

Reg nodded solemnly. "The Hera Hera disappeared years ago. Did you know anyone on her?" disappeared years ago. Did you know anyone on her?"

"My mother was the captain . . ."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Commander, I didn't mean to . . . well, to bring back any bad memories."

"No worries, Reg. It was a long time ago. Why would I think about the Hera Hera now? Except I wasn't thinking about it, so maybe I mean what is my subconscious trying to tell me?" now? Except I wasn't thinking about it, so maybe I mean what is my subconscious trying to tell me?"

"Maybe it's something to do with these sensor readings. Do they remind you of the Hera Hera?"

"Not consciously . . ." Geordi sat back in thought. "When the Hera Hera originally disappeared, I was so certain that it was still in one piece . . . She had to be still in one piece because that way my mother would be still in charge, and, well, still alive." originally disappeared, I was so certain that it was still in one piece . . . She had to be still in one piece because that way my mother would be still in charge, and, well, still alive."

"That's understandable," Barclay said quietly.

"So, I wanted to find her, and I thought I knew where to look. But to be sure, I got ahold of everything I could about the Hera Hera's most recent movements . . . All the telemetry that Starfleet received before her disappearance."

Reg looked at the display doubtfully. "The Hera Hera was was Nebula Nebula-cla.s.s, wasn't she?" Geordi nodded. "I can't see a Nebula Nebula-cla.s.s ship having put out telemetry like this, no matter what kind of engine modifications were installed."

"Me neither. And these readings are from two hundred years ago."

"Then what made you think about her?"

"I dunno, Reg. There must be something, if I could just think."

"Did the telemetry from Hera include her sensor logs, or reports?"

Geordi tried to remember. "Yeah . . . you know what, I think it did."

"Then maybe those sensor logs had a reading like this somewhere," Barclay suggested.

La Forge mulled the idea over. "That's not a bad idea. If I could just get access to them again, I could check."

"Which brings us back to access to Challenger Challenger's database."

"Yeah, which we haven't got."

Challenger was still at warp, both active and pa.s.sive sensors searching for even the tiniest glimmer of was still at warp, both active and pa.s.sive sensors searching for even the tiniest glimmer of Intrepid. Intrepid.

Nog was almost ready to go off-duty and in search of raktajino, raktajino, when a hiss and a moment's chatter came and went on the communications sector of his tactical console. "What the . . . ?" when a hiss and a moment's chatter came and went on the communications sector of his tactical console. "What the . . . ?"

Scotty twisted around the center seat, his face lighting up with hope. "Something?"

"I thought I heard a transmission."

"From Intrepid Intrepid? It could be Geordi or Barclay trying to contact us."

Nog tried to find the signal again. "It wasn't directed at us. I think I just caught the edge of the transmission."

"What did it say?"

"I'm not sure. Wait, there it is again." Nog patched the signal through, a high-pitched squeal. Everybody on the bridge winced, Nog most of all. "It's highly compressed." He ran it through a database. "Definitely not of Federation origin."

"Can you determine where the transmission is being sent from, or to?" Tyler Hunt asked. "Bok has used probes before, when he tried to make Picard think that boy was his son . . . If this transmission is something to do with him, it could point the way to the Intrepid." Intrepid."

Nog worked the console, never taking his eyes or ears off what it was giving him. "I think I can narrow the source of the transmission to within a couple of meters. It's small. Probably just to a relay station."

"That would fit with Bok as well. Pipe its coordinates down to cargo bay two."

Hunt rose, calling out, "Commander Hunt to transporter chief Carolan. Meet me in cargo bay two." He darted into the turbolift, and directed it to the cargo bay. Carolan was already there when he arrived in the enormous chamber, and was powering up the cargo transporter console.

"I'm ready for whatever it is you want to transport."

"Good. Can you get a transporter lock on a cube of s.p.a.ce, say four meters wide at these coordinates?" He tapped the display that had been funneled down from Nog's station.

"Need you ask?"

"All right, then, go ahead and beam in everything in that volume of s.p.a.ce. Every particle, yeah?" Hunt could feel a buzz in his gut. It was an instinct that this cube would be important.

"Every particle," Carolan agreed, operating the controls. After a moment, the familiar transporter whine filled the chamber, and a silvery shimmer rained down in the center of the room, leaving empty air behind. "That's odd."

"Wasn't there anything there?" The few molecules in such a small volume of empty s.p.a.ce would have been as close to nothing as made no difference, but empty s.p.a.ce didn't transmit signals.

"According to the transporter log, we received one hundred and thirty-six kilograms of matter." Carolan looked baffled. "It can't have been a stray singularity, as that would have played havoc with the annular confinement beam."

"Not to mention local gravity." Hunt frowned. That much material couldn't just disappear. The first officer walked carefully toward the wide transporter pad, picking up a self-sealing stembolt from a crate as he pa.s.sed it. A meter from the pad, he stopped and tossed the stembolt toward it with a gentle underhand throw.

The bolt arced gently over the edge of the pad, then bounced off nothing with a solid clang and fell to the deck. Pleased that his instinct was right, Hunt rubbed some stembolt grime from his hands. "Cloaked."

"What is it? Some kind of buoy or satellite?" Carolan stretched out a hand to pat the invisible object.

"Maybe a probe." He went in search of a phaser. "It's small enough that a wide, low-power beam should overload its cloak." He set the phaser to a medium stun setting, and washed the beam across the air above the platform until blue sparks rippled through the air, and then all of a sudden there was a two-meter-wide object sitting on the circular pad. It was a squat, stubby tube about twice the size of a photon torpedo casing, and it was a soft but dense black.

Hunt and Carolan exchanged a baffled glance. "Well well, what have we here?"

On the bridge, Leah tried everything she could think of that would detect a warp field through a cloak. When none of them worked, she started thinking up new techniques. Something was bound to help find Geordi and the others.

"There you are . . ." The something was only a few stray protons, but that was all that it needed. "Scotty, I have an energy leakage."

"Intrepid?"

"Definitely a twenty-second-century engine."

Scotty sat forward. "Can we tell where they are, and where they're heading?"

"If the leakage is to be believed, Intrepid Intrepid is on a heading of two-four-four mark six-three, at roughly warp three point five. Pretty slow for a getaway." is on a heading of two-four-four mark six-three, at roughly warp three point five. Pretty slow for a getaway."

"Aye, la.s.s," Scotty agreed, "but that's about warp five on the old scale. Close to Intrepid Intrepid's maximum speed."

"Old scale?" Nog asked.

Scotty nodded. "The warp factor scale definitions and method of calculation were changed in 2312. That's a hundred and fifty years after the Intrepid Intrepid was originally lost." was originally lost."

"Then we can catch him."

"Aye, if we can see him. But there's a better way; if we can plot his course, and work out where he's going . . ."

"I think we have enough information to know where Intrepid Intrepid is headed," Qat'qa said. is headed," Qat'qa said.