CHAPTER 4

Hoshi was nursing the worst headache she'd ever had. The slightest sound made her head ring violently, and although it hurt to listen to him, she was grateful that Kleth had a soft voice -- for a Klingon, that is.

"This will help, little one," he said from where he sat at the table in her cabin.

Wincing, she pushed herself up into a sitting position on the bunk. Without a word, she held out her hand and Kleth thrust a mug into it. Holding it to her lips, she inhaled the aroma and almost gagged. Blood wine. Kleth swore it would lessen the pain from being stunned.

She drew a deep breath, exhaled it, and tilted the mug up, swallowing several times in order to down the entire thing. "Ew!" she gasped when she finished, then put a hand to her head as her own voice sent sharp lances of pain shooting through her temples. She looked sourly at Kleth, who was chuckling.

"No other Human could have done that in your condition," he said admiringly. "The crew should have seen that."

"Oh, shut up," she said, but not as harshly as she might have. Kleth had been right -- the pain was already beginning to subside. With that distraction being pushed away, she was able to concentrate on the matters at hand.

"Status?" she barked hoarsely.

"We are now cruising at warp 2 in the scheduled search pattern," he responded immediately, his attitude that of a first officer reporting to his captain. "We sustained no damage from the Starfleet vessel. However, the transporter malfunction is a warning we should not ignore."

Glaring at him with one eyebrow raised, she nodded for him to continue.

"We must find someplace to obtain supplies and perform maintenance," Kleth said. "We have been lucky to have remained unscathed by our recent...activities. But it has been at the cost of diminishing supplies and impaired efficiency of the ship."

Hoshi turned her face aside, considering his words. He was right. She had been so focused on her course of action that she deliberately ignored some things which shouldn't have been overlooked. Once again she was gratified by Kleth's trust in her. On any other Klingon ship, it would have been the first officer's duty to remove her for such negligence.

But this was her dead husband's ship, and Kleth had served him faithfully. Now she and Kleth were bound together in a quest for revenge and justice. Still, she knew he would only give her one chance in such a situation. That was one more chance than Klingons usually allowed.

"Have helm lay in a course for the nearest place we can restock and do maintenance," she ordered.

She leaned back against the bulkhead behind the bunk as he used the comm panel to relay her order. A guttural response acknowledging the order came over the comm before the connection was cut. Hoshi felt the ship tilt slightly as the course change was implemented. That alone was enough to tell her she was on a Klingon ship -- their stabilizers weren't as good as those on Earth vessels.

"Well, Kleth," she said. "That was a bust."

"A bust?" he asked curiously.

"A waste. Totally unproductive."

"Ah," he said as he understood the meaning of the word in relation to their attempt to capture the freighter. "There will be other opportunities."

"I know, but I can't help but feel as if time is running out since Starfleet showed up," she said, heaving herself off the bed. She was still wearing her body armor and full captain's regalia, and the damned stuff was heavy. She moved to sit at the table, and poured herself more of the blood wine from the flagon Kleth had thoughtfully brought with him.

She fell silent as she stared at the dark alcohol, finding her thoughts going to her husband. She missed Matthew so much. He would know what to do in this mess, but then, she thought ironically, if he were here, they wouldn't be in this situation. As she conjured up his face in her mind and mentally caressed it, another face slowly superimposed over his, and with a start she realized it was the dark-haired man she had seen on the freighter. She had only seen him for a few seconds, and yet she had felt an attraction.

Shame immediately washed over her. How could she be thinking about another man when Matthew had been dead less than six months?

Pushing the image of the compelling man away, she stated what Kleth already knew. "We've got to have a ship to give Shidak, or we won't be taken into his organization. That's the only way we can get close to him."

"He will pay, little one," Kleth said with a calm assurance. "My honor on that."

Reed had transferred a computer tie-in to his quarters where he could work in private. He accessed everything he could think of, from government records to news articles, in his search for more information about Hoshi Sato.

After three hours, he had very little to show for his search. She had worked on an independent freighter running between Earth and some of its colonies for three years. Then she had married the owner of a freight line, and his company was renamed H-S Shipping when her husband had named her half owner of the company as a wedding present.

Some wedding present, Reed thought, impressed. H-S Shipping had a fleet of twenty-two cargo vessels of varying sizes, and had a reputation of being fast and reliable. The company had a large profit margin, and its record was clean, with no indication of any connection to piracy other then being preyed upon by pirates on numerous occasions in the last year or so.

He frowned as he read the most recent news article, dated six months ago. Matthew Hayes had been killed when one of his ships had been boarded by pirates. He'd been on the freighter specifically to see what kind of conditions his crews were operating under in regard to the threat of piracy.

Looks like he found out, Reed thought. The idiot shouldn't have fought back. Most freighters were ill-equipped to deal with pirates. They were too slow to outrun the pirates, weighed down as they were with cargo, and were poorly armed, if armed at all. To fight led to only one outcome -- death.

Reed scanned through some business articles, and came across a brief story that reported Hoshi Sato, who had assumed full control of H-S Shipping upon the death of her husband, had sold the business. He could find no further mention of her after that.

It didn't make sense. Her husband had been killed by pirates, and now she was a pirate herself? A piece to the puzzle was missing, but Reed was damned if he knew what it was.

He leaned forward and set the computer on a new search. Sometimes old ships found their way into unusual hands. He sat back, expecting a long wait, as the computer starting looking for any information about ships of Klingon origin owned by Humans. He was surprised when almost immediately the computer beeped, indicating a match.

"H-S Shipping," he read out loud. A Klingon warbird, Falcon, was listed as one of the company's ships prior to Matthew Hayes' death. Cross-checking the manifest of ships operated by the new owners of the company, he found no ship named Falcon. Thinking for a moment, he counted the number of ships and found there were only twenty-one. One was missing.