Didn't Expect That...

I know what you must be thinking
But you're not right
You should know I'm not your baby
Not tonight
(I never was) The kinda girl to trip and fall in love
(I never was) The kind to say enough is not enough
(I never was) The touchy feely co-dependant kind
I like the feeling but I'm not on cloud nine

You love it, you hate it
You think it, you say it
You want it, you need it
I tell ya but you don't believe it

What were you expecting?
Another lullaby?
Are you kidding?
You must be high
You must be high
'Cause it was just one kiss
(Hey, hey, hey)
(Hey, hey, hey)

I don't need your flowers, they'll just go to waste
I don't want your candy 'cause I don't like the taste
(There never was) A possibility I'd stick around
(It never was) My intention just to let you down
(I never was) The kind of girl that's good at playin' house

Ya want it, ya need it
I tell ya but you don't believe it

What were you expecting?
Another lullaby?
Are you kidding?
You must be high, you must be high
'Cause it was just one kiss
(Hey, hey, hey)
(Hey, hey, hey)

Everything about you makes me scream
Be a man and get up off your knees
Tryin' to say this in the nicest way

What were you expecting?
Another lullaby?
Are you kidding?
You must be high

What were you expecting?
Another lullaby?
Are you kidding?
You must be high
You must be high
'Cause it was just one kiss
(Hey, hey, hey)
(Hey, hey, hey)
(Hey, hey, hey)
(Hey, hey, hey)
— "What Were You Expecting?" by Halestorm

You ever wake up in a dark room and have somebody just sitting there?

Well, I just did.

My right arm snaps out for the gunbelt hanging off my nightstand and a split second later I have my Type-2 aimed at the black-clad blond man in my easy chair. I'm not as good shooting right-handed but at this range it doesn't matter.

The empty click from the trigger, though, that probably matters.

Agent Franklin Drake holds up a small square of glowing plastic. "Works better with the power pack." I swear and throw the useless pistol in his general direction. "We have a situation, Captain Kanril. Somebody wants to kill you."

"Tell me something I don't know," I snap at him, then look over at Gaarra and try to nudge him awake.

Then I notice the needle-mark on his neck and round on Drake. If I didn't know better I'd swear I just saw him flinch. "Don't worry, it's just a mild sedative; he'll be fine in thirty minutes, probably less given his body weight."

"You son of a—"

"That's not your primary concern, Captain—"

"The phekk it isn't, he's my husband!"

Drake's face has settled back into that smarmy smile of his. "From where I sit, you're by far the more important of the two: people talk about the great Captain Kanril Eleya, the Medal of Honor winner—"

"Earner," I correct him.

"—who plotted the downfall of the Iconian Empire, they don't talk about the guy who ran your shields and nav deflector. Now, that's probably unjust, but you're the one the Albino wants, not Commander Reshek. And would you mind covering up, please?"

I pull the sheet up over my bare breasts, glaring at him. "All right, I'm a little confused here."

"You're wondering who the Albino is and why you should care that he wants you dead?"

"No, it's… What the phekk are you doing on my ship?! We're at warp—how did you get here?!"

"I hitched."

"I don't remember pulling over!"

"Look, as I said, that's not important," he insists. Now that oily smirk of his is transitioning to an irritated scowl matching mine. He tosses a data solid onto my bedsheet. "Last date and coordinates are yours. Don't get up, I'll show myself out."

I'm still fuming as Tess, Biri, Dul'krah, Kinlo and I go over the data encoded on the fingertip-sized chunk of lithium polycrystal. I hate Section 31. I hate a lot of things, but a gang of unaccountable ultranationalist black-ops guys? Call me old-fashioned but when did Starfleet start taking direction from the Obsidian Order?

A furious curse from Tess jerks me back to the present. "This—I know Commander Taala'vran, I sent flowers to her widow for frak's sake!" I touch her on the shoulder but she shakes my hand off. There's a set to her jaw I've only seen a couple times. "I thought that was a reactor fault! He can't make up stories about real people!"

"I don't think it's a story," the chief of the boat says, clicking a tag appended to the report. "Looks like the Corps of Engineers had some suspicions about the 'accident', thought USS Viriatus should've had time to at least get off a distress signal, but they couldn't prove anything."

"And look here, ma'am," Dul'krah grunts. "Anatol Panar, that's the Cardassian ambassador to the Republic who was assassinated last month. The True Way claimed responsibility but we all know it did not fit their style."

The ambassador to the Republic… "Biri, there's a list of coordinates on that, isn't there? I didn't get a good look; plot them for me, would you?"

The map is exactly what I thought: the twelve sets of polar coordinates all fit in a loose blob about 1700 light-years in diameter, the former territory of the Romulan Star Empire. There's the dead wastes around Hobus, the big, green Raptor of the Republic, the smaller, darker patch of the Empire emblazoned with the eagle and dual globes, and the red cross-hatching of the Tal'Shiar junta's baker's dozen remaining systems.

And there's the clincher: seventh item on the list, the death of Imperial Fleet General Ael i'Baratan t'Nerul from a sudden cardiac arrest, derailing their planned invasion of the Keuhn system, the junta's only major shipyard. Circumstantially it's obviously an assassination, and…

Then I come back to the last coordinates, which has my name tagged to it. It's on our scheduled patrol route, three days from now when we pass close to a Bok globule.

I straighten and grab my PADD and a stylus off the desk, quickly scribbling a note which I pass to Dul'krah. "Send that and our data in an encrypted squirt. It's addressed to a friend of mine in Starfleet Intelligence."

"Yes, ma'am." He turns and trots out.

"Now, any ideas how the phekk Drake got here? Do we have a security breach I don't know about?"

"I have an idea about that, El." Biri brings a page of text up on the screen. "You know what this is?"

"I'm going to take a stab in the dark," I drawl, "and say, 'maths'."

The Trill rolls her brown eyes at me and points to a few of the equations. I'm still clueless but she's already talking like I can read it. "It's something Admiral Montgomery Scott was working on before he died. I might be able to use it."

"Keep at it." My combadge chirps. "Kanril, go."

"Captain, Conn." Park's officer of the watch at the moment. "Lieutenant Connor is waiting in your ready room. I told her you were busy; she doesn't seem to care."

And there's the other shoe dropping. "Tell her I'll be there in five minutes and to try not to wear a hole in the floor."

Rachel Connor is a grey-faced shaking wreck as she paces back and forth. Literally; her skin's a pale grey color rather than its usual brownish tan.

"Sit down," I tell her, firmly but not unkindly, as soon as I enter my ready room. She obeys. "Where's your unit?"

"I told 'em to change plans and hit the holodeck for a workout and a training sim, hostage rescue versus the Circle. It was supposed to be a four-on-one sparring match, me versus the boys." Her hands clench and unclench against her uniform pants, the seams over her shoulders straining slightly.

"You heard about our visitor, I gather?"

She nods, of course; grapevine seems to be the only thing on my ship faster than the warp drive. "He got in here undetected, to your room, and got out just as easily. He could've taken me, off of a ship in the middle of interstellar space, and nobody would have known! Where the hell am I safe?"

I'm going to have to handle this carefully. Probably shouldn't have blown off Intro Psych at the Academy in favor of Religious Studies… "I've doubled security scans as a precaution and we're keeping the shields up at random modulation, plus I've notified Starfleet Intelligence. And if Drake had taken you, there'd be a nationwide manhunt for him right now or I'd be turning in my combadge."

"It's not that, ma'am. I trust you, I know that you mean the best for all of us, I know that if anyone on this ship got kidnapped, the bastard who took them just earned himself a one-way trip to the special Hell. The problem's that they won't stop. They took my humanity, hounded me across a hundred systems, ambushed me on Earth, and now I can't even get a night's rest on a starship in interstellar space? What more do those fuckers want from me?!"

I start to say "don't worry", but it sounds hollow even in my head. Instead I clear my throat. "Look, Connor, I can't guarantee what's going to happen in the next week. We're working on a plan but it may not work. But look at it this way: if he thought he could get to you, he would've already tried."

"I… Huh." She nods slowly, thinking it through. "I suppose… maybe he thought that beaming into a room full of four MACOs and a m—an augment with superhuman senses was a bad idea." She cracks a weak smile. "Sorry, ma'am, I didn't think."

"Hey, I understand, I was spooked enough when he showed up in my chair. And besides—maybe he's on our side, just this once." She raises an eyebrow at that and I grimace. "Yeah, didn't think so either. Are you going to be good?"

"I'm… I think so, ma'am." She shudders a bit. "I'm sorry for wasting your time."

I shake my head and wave a hand at the door. "Open-door policy, forget it. Oh, and Lieutenant? Fix your skin before you head out, it's still grey."

The Bok globule designated NGC-76113 is a cloud of dark gas just off our course along the Republic border, a black patch a little under a light-year across set against the bright blue blur of the Azure Nebula visible through the warp field. I reach for the intercom. "All hands, all hands, this is the Captain. Sound yellow alert, secure ship for combat." The indicator lights correspondingly flick from blue to yellow as a tone plays on the speakers. "Stay frosty, people."

Thirty tense minutes pass. At thirty-one I call down to the galley to have them send up some coffee and sandwiches. I'm munching on a BLT when Lieutenant Esplin calls out, "Captain, I'm picking up a distress signal!"

"Details!"

"She claims to be the SS Gann vesh Wek, a Tellarite-flagged private mining ship. They say they've had a computer failure seine-fishing for trace elements in the cloud and can't get their warp drive back up."

"Conn, change course. All hands to battle stations."

"You sure, El?" Biri asks. "It's a plausible story, I've got a record of just such a ship."

"Of course it's a trap," Gaarra growls dismissively. "The timing's too close to be a coincidence."

"So what do we do, ma'am?" Park asks.

Tess smiles nastily. "Spring the trap."

END OF PART ONE