AUTHOR'S NOTE

This chapter contains important plot developments. If you decide to review – and I'm always happy when someone does! – I would be ever so grateful if you could refrain from "spoiler" references, for the benefit of those who like to look at the reviews before reading a story. Cheers!

Chapter 13 – Casualties of War

"Are you sure that this is a good idea?" the Doctor asked, in his most skeptical voice. "These people down there are certain to have sophisticated defence systems in place. You won't know what kind of booby traps you might run into."

"True," Tom said, "but I was thinking rather along the lines of setting our own booby trap, before we go in." He turned to Nicoletti. "Can you determine where their main environmental systems are? They must be pretty substantial, since they're dependent on them for everything."

Sue clicked away at her console for a few minutes. "Yes, here they are. North-north-west of the main complex, based on local polarity. Round shape, almost cylindrical, with a secondary back-up. Standard small ground station set-up, Rigellian manufacture. Easy to take out, if we need to."

"And there's still only six of them?"

"I checked again, and that's what I get from the station. As I recall, this particular model of station sleeps up to ten in a pinch. There's an outbuilding further away on the south side that's not standard; probably a cargo hold or maintenance port of some sort."

Even if the station did not have its full complement, they could take a maximum of three people down to the station, if they wanted to be able to run the Flyer against the freighter, should that become necessary …

Tom allowed the thought to peter out as he weighed his options, lower lip firmly between his teeth. One day you're going to chew right through, B'Elanna was fond of teasing him about his favourite thinking mode. He hadn't yet, but he was coming close this time around; the coppery taste of his own blood brought him back to the now – and a decision.

"Doc. Remember your first – or was it your third? – time as a reluctant commando? When we sent you to the Alpha Quadrant, and you took out those Romulans with a couple of canisters of – what was that? Neurazine?"

The Doctor drew a deep breath, and grew a few centimeters in blissful memory.

"How could I forget! That was the moment when, thanks to my superb efforts, Voyager finally managed to advise Starfleet that we were merely lost, not dead." The EMH basked just a little in the achievement.

"The first time I met your father, Mr. Paris, an encounter that no doubt was instrumental to convincing him that holograms …" He stopped when he felt Tom's glare on him, hot enough to melt down his chatterbox subroutine on contact. "And yes, it was Neurazine. Sorry."

Tom sighed. It was disconcerting just how much he and the Doctor were alike in some ways. Neither of them had ever fundamentally understood, let alone mastered, the concept of shutting up – the difference between them was merely a matter of subject matter and nuance, when you thought about it. No wonder they bugged each other so much, and got along so well …

"How much would we need to disburse through the whole station, and how long would it take before we can be confident that it's taken effect?"

The Doctor walked over to Nicoletti's console, and absorbed the slightly fuzzy image of the tritanium construction on the planetoid. She showed him the estimated volume of the station. "Four canisters should do it. Without knowing how fast the air circulation is in a system like that …"

"Half-hour tact," Nicoletti tossed over her shoulder. "If it's standard."

"Fine, I would give it forty-five minutes then."

"And another forty-five to clear, I assume, so when we go in to pick up the pieces we'll need to wear breathing gear inside for the first hour or so."

Chemical warfare as a concept had never sat cleanly with Tom Paris, but he was prepared to make a moral distinction between knocking someone out temporarily so as to spare possibly greater injury, and asphyxiating them with a view to causing death or permanent incapacity.

Then again …

"Doctor?"

The EMH gave a great sigh and cast his eyes heavenward. "I was wondering how long it would be before you'd ask."

Tom grinned, taking the response for resignation, if not consent. "Thanks. We want to make sure no one down there suffers lasting harm. If they're involved in slavery, I'd like to see them live out a long and healthy life in a penal colony somewhere. Plus, your coming instead of Coulthard will free him up to put the Flyer down in one of those crevices. Think you can handle that, Paul?"

He smiled at the junior pilot. The previous day had improved the young man's confidence to the point where he was prepared to nod; the Captain's apparent readiness to remind him of the previous day's piloting cameraderie eliminated any residual hesitation.

"Yes, sir!"

"Good. I thought so." Coulthard visibly basked in the implicit recognition, and surreptitiously looked around the room whether any of the others had caught it. Schmidt winked at him rather ostentatiously, and the younger man blushed a little.

"Will transporters work through the particle soup out there, Sue?"

Nicoletti punched in a few more commands and nodded. "Transporters are unaffected."

"That's unusually good news. What were the odds for that…? Never mind - I'll take it. Let's do it then, folks."

The Doctor used his medical codes to replicate the chemical, while Nicoletti determined the best location within the environmental system into which to transport the four cylinders. Programmed to open a few minutes after transport, they would release their contents into the ventilation system, from which it would spread through the station.

Half an hour later, the two human officers donned their breathing apparatus – the Doctor making the occasional unfunny remark about the general inadequacy and inefficiency of organics as they did so - and prepared for transport.

"Are the bio signs stationary?"

"No movement in the last five minutes," Nicoletti confirmed. "All strong, though. I've got the spot where most of them are located."

"Schmidt, you got the restraints?"

Much as Tom hated to have to rely on mechanical means to prevent putative captives from escaping, the Flyer's limited capacity didn't permit them to be brought aboard. They would have to be held on the ground until Voyager and its brig arrived on the scene, and Tom did not want to waste time setting up containment fields in an unknown operational environment. Sometimes the old-fashioned way of immobilizing adversaries was still the best …

"Aye, sir."

"Right." There was really not much more to say.

"Three to beam down."

…..

They materialized in a room roughly the size of the Flyer's cabin, and configured as a small lounge. Several armchairs were arranged in a semi-circle before a holovid projection stage, on which three Orion women without much in the way of clothing were gyrating lasciviously to the pulsating beat of a generic soundtrack. Schmidt's eyes widened, but he made no protest when Tom shut off the transmission.

It was clearly the station's entertainment and rec center; describing it as 'grotty' would have been an understatement, and Tom was uncharacteristically grateful for his well-filtered artificial air supply. The room's occupants, two Rigellians and one Narovian, all male, lay passed out on three of the chairs. The Narovian had been holding a glass, the contents of which had spilled all over his chest; one of the Rigellians had obviously been appreciating the show on a rather deep and personal level, and been knocked out in a state that made Tom glad that Nicoletti had stayed on the ship.

"Restraints on ankles and wrists; leave them on the chairs. May as well keep 'em comfortable," he ordered curtly. "And cover that guy up. No point in public humiliation."

He cast another long look over the three figures. Organized Crime – ah, the glamour of it all. There used to be a time when people thought criminal operatives were cool, interesting and worthy of attention, even surreptitious admiration. The twentieth century movie library contained countless so-called gangster films, and B'Elanna, while looking to augment the library for the little TV she had built him, had once even come across a whole television serial featuring criminals as the heroes. Having spent more time than he cared to think about in the company of the real thing at Auckland, Tom had failed to see the allure and never bothered with any of those shows. The sight of the creatures before him confirmed to him that he'd been right.

The Doctor ran his tricorder over the three men, and nodded. "All in fine health. They'll wake up in about half an hour."

Nicoletti provided the away team with the coordinates for the bio signs of the remaining three men, and they soon joined their colleagues in the screening room, equally secured if less comfortably seated.

"Just in case, Doc, we should do a careful scan from down here, in case Sue's instruments missed something." Tom called up the station's internal schematic on one of the consoles in its small ops centre, and all three members of the away team spent the next thirty minutes or so carefully scanning all recorded apertures and potential hiding places for additional life signs. None were found.

"Well, that was kinda … anti-climactic," Schmidt observed, when the away team had assembled in the ops centre. The EMH had given the environmental all clear, and both humans disconnected their breathing apparatus with considerable relief.

"What did you expect, Ensign, fireworks? A six-headed hydra? I for one am happy that my neurazine treatment was as effective this time as it was the last," the Doctor replied.

"It's amazing, when you drill down into the world of organized crime, what you get is essentially just different qualities of lowlife," Tom mused. "Some move in the most select circles, look like successful businessmen, and fly their own personal mahogany-clad shuttlecraft. Some are vicious thugs, in it for some kind of visceral gratification. Most, I think, are gormless sleazebags like Mr. Happy Times there, who just run along for the money. But at the end of the day, they're all the same – creeps with the decency chip missing. The only difference is, the guys in the suits are a damn sight harder to catch. Even if they trip up, they can usually buy their way out of trouble."

Schmidt snorted. "Ain't that the truth," he muttered. Nearly a year on, and the trial of the politicians whose corrupt practices had led to untold misery in the DMZ and the creation of a secret Romulan prison camp where he had lost a decade of his life, was mired in legal wrangling, and the two main protagonists were out on bail. One even had briefly tried to revive his political career and had a vocal, if small, following … "Sometimes I wonder why we bother trying to fight these guys."

Tom shrugged. "We do what we can," he said. "Step by little step. We have to. I mean, you've seen what they did to those women. People who work with the Syndicate just don't give a shit about what they do to people in their quest for profit. And if we don't, who will? We can't afford to cave just because we may not get results fast enough, or win every battle. We have a responsibility to people who can do nothing, to do something. And as Lemarr would tell you, acceptance is surrender."

…..

"Lieutenant, I am detecting a series of objects in subspace!" Icheb's voice was a mixture of surprise and indignation. "I cannot tell what it is, but …"

With a sudden vrroompff, the ship was shaken hard, and Baytart had to hold on to his console to avoid being flung out of his seat.

"What the hell was that?" he snarled, as his fingers started to play the conn like a piano, trying to stabilize the ship. "We're losing the warp field!"

"Try keeping the field intact," Asil ordered – rather unnecessarily, the pilot thought a little sourly, talk about stating the obvious - just as a second pounding shook the bridge. Then a third.

"Subspace mines, sir," Icheb announced. "Most likely from the freighter. The ablative armour has prevented any fissures in the hull, but the concussive effect has caused some casualties in Engineering. Main deflectors are off line; we won't be able to maintain the shield oscillation. We'll be visible to them again in three … two … one seconds."

"I think they already knew we were there," Ayala observed from Tactical. "Those mines … that was no coincidence. They were laid just for us. I don't know how, but they knew."

"Maybe somebody told them about our little trick?' Baytart's hands had not stopped moving, but now he slapped them on the console in frustration.

"Sorry, sir. I lost the warp field. They're gone."

Asil's eyes momentarily stared off into the distance, looking for answers and solutions that would not come, even to her Vulcan logic. "Bridge to Engineering. How long before you can get the warp drive back online?"

"Torres here. We've lost the secondary coupling in the matter-antimatter chamber when that console went down. It's not critical, but we'll need at least twenty minutes., especially with three of my people out And I heard Baytart. I agree – they must have known we were still on their tail."

Asil looked at Ayala, raising an eyebrow in unspoken question.

"No transmissions off this ship since last night," the security officer confirmed after a quick check. "I don't know how they might have gotten this information, unless …" He swallowed, hard, when it hit him.

"Commander Tervellyan. Tom … the Captain told me that Maquis tactics and some of the things we came up with in the DQ were extremely popular in tactical seminars when he was at the Kirk Centre."

Ayala couldn't quite bring himself to finish the sentence, as two possible scenarios seared his mind, equally devastating: either the Commander had given the information voluntarily, which made him the traitor they had been trying to find, or it had been … extracted. Having met a number of survivors of Cardassian interrogation techniques, Mike Ayala was only too aware of the many ways in which even the strongest individual could be broken.

Asil stood still for a moment, the same considerations having been considered in her well-ordered mind, and assigned their relative priority. "For the time being, it is irrelevant how or why the freighter was able to detect us. The fact is that it has, and we are presently not in a position to continue our pursuit. Please inform Captain Paris that The Flyer is on her own for the time being. We will get to Alnitak as soon as we can, assuming that is where the Rigellian is headed, but we will be behind schedule."

…..

"Flyer to away team, incoming. Five billion klicks." Coulthard's voice crackled over the station's comm system which Nicoletti had managed to link up with the shuttle's. "Whorfin class freighter, by what I can read of its signature through this soup."

"How many onboard?" Voyager's delay had been unwelcome news on principle, but the idea of facing the Rigellian ship and her crew with only the Flyer's small complement did not appeal to Tom's sense of what constituted decent odds. At least they would have the element of surprise on their side, even if one half of the pincer he'd hoped to deploy would be missing.

"Thirteen, sir," Nicoletti confirmed. "Looks like the original crew, plus three others. My guess is that they took on a couple of people from that other freighter."

Naming the ship of death would, Tom speculated briefly, be forever more an exercise in euphemisms for all who had been there. That other freighter would have to do for the moment …

He could hear Nicoletti's fingers click over her instruments. "Total of five Orion, four Narovians, three Rigellian and … one human." She swallowed audibly, and her voice shook a little.

"Captain … Tom? The human life signs … they're failing."

…..

Tom cursed under his breath as complete silence descended over the station's grimy operations centre. He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, their normally warm blue had turned to grey ice.

"Doctor, I'm afraid you'll have to revert to your Narovian personality. Pretend you're one of the ground crew but don't let them come into port. I want them somewhere the Flyer can fire on them freely, if needed. Tell them there's a technical problem down here – say, a recent asteroid strike took out the guidance system, and we're working on it."

Schmidt was already on his way to the Doctor to reset his emitter; there was no time to lose. He held out his arm for the ensign with an air of pained resignation.

"Coulthard, prepare to come out of hiding on my mark, or if they give any sign of getting ready to take off. Target their propulsion systems at first go; we can't afford to let them get away. Since theirs isn't a battleship I assume the mines they got Voyager with came out of a cargo bay. Who knows what else they've got in there, but whatever it is, hit it and hit it hard."

Coulthard's jaw ground a little; hesitantly, he ventured, "But … sir, won't you … won't you be on board if I fire?"

Tom shrugged. "I've been on a ship that's been hit more times than you can shake a stick at, Ensign. The key is to hold onto something when it happens. We'll be fine, just as long as you don't haul out any disruptors."

Seeing that Coulthard did not seem mollified, he added, "And I promise we'll stay out of that cargo bay."

…..

The Doctor's performance was up there with his finest renditions of Nessun Dorma – every note in place, with just the right amount of emotion. His particular brand of reflexive annoyance was well suited to the bored ground crew attendant, who had been hauled off a good holovid to look after unwelcome guests.

The story about the asteroid strike was accepted without much question; in an environment such as this it was more than plausible. If the freighter crew found the change in arrangement peculiar, they gave no sign of it. Minutes later, the freighter confirmed its position in a geostationary orbit around the planetoid.

Tom paused for breath, for the very briefest of moments, B'Elanna's words ringing in his ears. Don't be too much of a hero. He was a father now …

But there was no question as to what he would do. What he had to do, as Captain of Voyager. Hell, what Tom Paris needed to do.

"We'll use the station's transporter to get the two of us …" Schmidt was already unholstering his phaser, checking the charge. Tom looked at the EMH, who nodded grimly.

Life signs are failing …

"… Get the three of us onboard that freighter, as soon as they've landed."

"Aye, sir."

…..

Schmidt materialized in the freighter's engine room, where three of the crew were found, phaser in hand. He fired without hesitation, just as soon as he had acquired molecular cohesion, taking merciless advantage of the fact that his arrival came without warning. His shots were none too fast; no point in missing thanks to undue haste. His cool, methodical approach paid off; one by one the freighter's engineering crew fell where they had stood. None even had the time to raise an intruder alert.

He paused for a second, rather pleased with himself, before comming his success to his shipmates. Not bad, for a first combat scenario in over a decade …

"Engineering secured. Should I head out to look for more?"

"Hold until further notice," Tom Paris' voice was slightly strained. The whirr of intense phaser fire was audible in the background before he gave a quick curse and cut the line.

Schmidt hesitated only for a split second. His Captain … the man who had saved his life … under fire on the bridge. He headed down the corridor, weapon in hand.

The shot that felled him came from a door he had just passed; he had no time to curse his own stupidity for proceeding without pre-scanning the way ahead with his tricorder – not to mention against the Captain's orders - before the blackness took him.

….

Tom and the Doctor had beamed straight onto the bridge, where the most resistance could be expected. Its four occupants were as surprised by their sudden appearance as the engine crew had been by Schmidt's, but a bit speedier in their reactions. Two of them managed to pull out their phasers before they were shot.

With an air of bored nonchalance, the EMH, who had not bothered seeking cover, drew what fire the two crewmembers managed to get off. Tom was able to pick them off relatively easily, from his shelter behind the ops console, only briefly interrupted by Schmidt's status report and his own response.

As soon as all four were down, Tom tapped his comm badge. Five to go. Plus his First Officer.

"Sue, lock onto me and the Doc and transport us straight to where you found Jarod's bio signs."

"Aye, sir. It appears Ensign Schmidt is down though. I can't raise him, and his life signs are weakening …"

A moment's hesitation, no more, and the decision he knew he must make. "Damn. Send the Doc to him. Me to the Commander. Now."

"Aye sir. There are two others in that room… but the Commander …"

The rest of her words were lost in the tingle of the transporter, and just for one moment longer Tom was able to deny what, deep down, he knew would be.

"… the Commander is gone."

…..

The room where he materialized was unremarkable, the Master's office by the look of it. It was blandly furnished but spacious and well-appointed, indicative of the ship's success at business. A Rigellian - its owner, judging by the expensive cut of his clothes - sat hunched forward on the couch in a corner, arms crossed in a half-defensive posture over his considerable bulk, as if warding off some potential peril to himself. But his eyes were alight with something akin to … need, almost desire, and there was a drop of spittle in the corner of his mouth.

The scene that had been mesmerizing this evident connoisseur of the macabre would be burned forever into Tom Paris' mind: An Orion woman, lithe and beautiful in the way of a deadly snake, was standing over the sprawled – no, spread-eagled - body of his First Officer. All four of his limbs, stretched out from his body as if in mute supplication, bore the mark of a single phaser blast, one on each hand and foot. The weapon in her hand was still pointing at the small of Tervellyan's back, where three charred holes had formed a hideous line. The central shot was located in the middle of Tervellyan's spine; the killing blast. His blistered skin was still steaming.

The woman whipped around when she heard the transporter's tell-tale tingle, and her phaser pivoted in Tom's direction. He fired before she had completed the motion, and the weapon rocketed out of her hand. She hissed out a curse and instinctively grabbed the paralyzed hand with the other.

The Rigellian uncrossed his arms, as if about to reach for a weapon of his own, even as he made a guttural sound of surprise. Even if his entrepreneurial success had made him fat, he had apparently not lost the fighting instincts that had gotten him where he was.

"Don't you fucking move," Tom spat. "I have time to get off two shots, even if she shoots me. And this phaser is set to kill." A lie, but they couldn't know that … he hoped.

The Rigellian stilled, his eyes calculating.

"Captain Paris, I presume?" The woman's sibilant voice was almost a caress. She did not seem surprised, nor particularly perturbed, by his sudden arrival. Here voice did not betray the pain of her injury, and there was a cold serenity about her that Tom found deeply disturbing. "What a … surprise. You have proven most inconvenient. We thought we had managed to get rid of you and your pesky ship."

"Well, sorry to disappoint you," he ground out. "You two can consider yourselves under provisional arrest for kidnapping and murdering a Starfleet Officer, and for conspiracy to enslave sentient beings and to deprive a civilian population of medication needed for their survival."

Whatever else Tom's views on his captives' position was, it remained unarticulated, as the door to the Master's room whooshed open and two men burst in, another Rigellian and one Orion. They started firing almost immediately and it was only the fact that the Orion woman stood between them and their intended target that caused one of them to miss entirely, and the other to merely hit Tom's left shoulder.

He returned fire, unheeding of the still unarmed woman, but dimly aware that the Rigellian on the couch had successfully drawn his own weapon. Ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder, Tom dove for cover behind the closest piece of furniture, a desk. He had almost made it when he felt another stabbing pain, in his left calf this time.

Four against one. Lousy odds, he thought even as he got off a shot that hit the freighter's master squarely in the chest and knocked him into the wall. The man slumped and lay still.

Three.

Tom fired again, over the head of the Orion woman who, despite being in the crossfire, was bending down to reach for her weapon with her uninjured hand. He missed when the pain in his shoulder caused his body to spasm, and the blast from his phaser glanced harmlessly off the doorframe.

To Tom's surprise, the man collapsed anyway, followed by the other in short order. Schmidt was down and the Doc was still in Narovian mode. Had Coulthard ignored his orders to stay with the Flyer?

Refusing to be distracted by the mystery of who might have come to his aid in such a timely manner, he gave another shot with his phaser, this time aiming for the Orion woman, who had palmed her weapon again. She spat out another curse and fell on her knees, both hands dangling uselessly now, the left twitching a little. Tom found himself taking a vicious satisfaction in her incapacitation, even as his own leg and shoulder started to throb mercilessly.

The weapon had clattered out of the woman's hand and slid across the floor. It stopped at the feet of a man in Starfleet uniform, now standing beside the body of Jarod Tervellyan. Tom blinked, trying to focus through the red curtain before his eyes. Who…?

"Whatever happened to the buddy system, Tom? Going into this kind of situation by yourself is not the smartest thing, you know. And B'Elanna's going to be totally pissed at you for getting hurt again."

"Harry?" he managed to croak out, as the familiar voice filtered into his pain-fogged brain. He pulled himself upright with the assistance of the desk he had tried to shelter behind. "What the hell …"

"And hello to you, too. Buster Kincaid, at your service, Captain. " Although he could not resist saying the words he had been saving up for just such a moment for years, Lieutenant Commander Harry Kim's voice was grim. The sight of the dead officer on the floor, only now taken in fully, had evaporated whatever drop of humour he might have found in the situation at another time.

"We were taking some senior Federation types to Rigel when the orders came in from Headquarters to back you up at Alnitak. We went into the belt with shuttles; it's too dense for the Enterprise. We contacted your Flyer and they told us where you were, so six of us beamed over here to lend a hand and mop up. Looks like we made it just in time. So who's this?"

His weapon pointed at the woman who was kneeling on the floor, her face tight with pain from Tom's phaser blasts, but betraying no emotion – and certainly no fear. She stared at them in silence, her yellow eyes cold and unblinking as a snake's.

"I believe she's some kind of kingpin in the Orion Crime Syndicate, who was originally on her way to the Narov system. She was onboard that abandoned freighter we found with the dead women in the cargo hold. Then, after she got picked up by this freighter and taken to Kalpak Station, it seems she holed up with what appeared to be their senior operative there for a bit before – apparently - hitching a ride back on this ship. Maybe things got too hot for her on Kalpak, what with us sniffing around."

Tom had managed to stand but he was leaning heavily against the desk for a moment, favouring his injured leg, before limping over to the prone form of his First Officer. Knowing the answer he would get, but refusing to acknowledge it quite yet, he ran his tricorder over Tervellyan's body. Expelling a breath, he snapped the device shut.

He turned to the Orion woman, cold fury breaking his voice into shards of ice.

"Why did you kill him? And why like that? Did you enjoy … playing with him before you killed him? Showing off your … skills to that Rigellian sleaze?"

A disdainful smile slid across the woman's face. It failed to reach her eyes, those very cold, very old eyes that may have belonged to someone who had chosen to turn whatever pain she had known outward, and to pay it back a thousand times.

"He made his own destiny."

Her tongue moved inside her cheek as if searching for something. Another smile curdled her once beautiful lips into a grimace of contemptuous triumph, as she bit down and swallowed.

"What the…" Harry exclaimed as she collapsed. Her body convulsed a few times and stilled, her final words a chill breath in the room.

"Failure has its price."

…..

Tom cursed and stepped forward, having momentarily forgotten about his injured leg. It gave way and he fell on his knee.

"Careful, Tom." Harry grabbed him under the arms, careful of his injured shoulder, and pulled him into a sitting position against the console. "Why don't you just sit down and rest until we get the Doc to have a look at you. I'm sorry I don't have a hypospray for the pain."

Harry walked over to the woman, ran his own tricorder over her and shook his head. "She's dead," he confirmed. "Some kind of poison, I guess." He tapped his comm badge.

"Kim to away team. Is the freighter secure?"

"Aye sir," came the response from a voice Tom vaguely recognized as one of the Enterprise's junior security officers. "We found one more hiding in the crew's quarters, and a Narovian who says he is Starfleet. He was with an injured crewman from Voyager, probably ready to finish the job although he claims he's a doctor. He is … quite agitated, sir. O'Connor tried to sedate him but it isn't working."

Tom tapped his badge in turn, wincing a little with the effort. "This is Captain Tom Paris, USS Voyager. Thanks for your help, Enterprise team. That Narovian is our EMH. You should remember him from the Trifid, we've just had to disguise him a little. Have him make sure that Schmidt is okay and when he's done, I wouldn't mind letting him have a look at me."

He signed off, his eyes drawn again to the body of his First Officer - the splayed arms and legs, the burn marks on his hands and feet, the row of three more blackened points drawn across his waist ...

And then the truth of what he was seeing struck him, as sharp as a knife and as bitter as anything he had ever tasted.

"Orion," he said tonelessly. "That's Orion. He wasn't just killed for breaking into Krall's lair, Harry. He was executed. Do you see? It's the Syndicate's … special code of honour, or what passes as that. The price of betrayal by one of their own. He made his own destiny, she said."

Harry swallowed as he, too, now recognized in that callous, horrific display of Jarod Tervellyan's body the outline of the constellation as it showed so brightly in the winter skies of Earth.

The sign of the Hunter. Shadows and secrets. Desire and ambition.

And always, always, death without mercy.

By the First Officer's right hand – beside the mark that would be Bellatrix - lay the phaser that had killed him so, so slowly, ritually, making its statement point by blackened point. The weapon whose owner would, with a wave of her hand, order the death of innocents as easily as she had administered punishment to one she considered her own.

With the wave of this weapon and others like it, coldly wielded in the name of profit and ambition, an entire Star system had been held hostage to disease and might yet be brought to its knees.

The key to power in a twisted world.