'That start was the planet Gramarna. Well, not the whole planet, obviously. Just a few select parts. Anyway, the Compromise came to Gramarna 'cos they'd just received Federation membership. We were really just the entourage for a bunch of VIPs and whathaveyou, so our involvement was really a bit low-key. When it came to the marking of the occasion, we ended up at a reception held by a chap named Lao Atalaya.'

Ratbat was the last to get to the champagne tray, and the first to come away empty-handed. She sighed. 'Who is this geezer again?'

Leila sighed heavily. 'Weren't you listening when Val explained it all to us?'

'Of course. First officer of the ship, all part of the duty.' She plucked a flute of champagne[1] from a passing waiter with a tray.

'Thank you,' said Leila, taking the held-out glass. 'Then you shouldn't need to ask me anything.'

Ratbat batted her eyelids at her. 'Oh, but you tell it so much better...'

Leila shook her head. 'I don't think I should be expected to tell you these things, Ratti.'

'Why not?' She turned back to the waiter, only to find her and her tray shuffling away.

'Because I don't care.'

They were enlightened by Suzy's arrival near the pair, sipping at her own flute. 'Lao Atalaya,' she sighed. 'Justice Minister in Troud.'

Ratbat stared at Suzy's glass. 'Champagne...'

'I'm right, thanks. Troud's the name of the country we're in,' she added. 'Everything's being done here because there was a big peace treaty signed right in this city thirty years ago.'

'Big war, then?' said Leila.

'You bet; a huge one against Kroy. Kind of like World War II on Earth, in a way. It would have happened sooner or later, it was just a question of when.'

Leila shrugged. 'Whatever. I stayed right out of that one. I was...bugger, I've forgotten the term. Starts with C, won't condone violence or bloodshed in the support of their beliefs.'

Suzy thought. '"Conscientious objector"?'

Leila shook her head. 'Shorter. Oh, "coward".'

Ratbat nodded. 'Well, you did have beliefs, if I recall. Pretty much that you shouldn't die.'

'So risking my life for it would have been really counter-productive, I should think.'

'This is true. Anyway, Styles, you were saying about the Great War they had here.'

'I pretty much just did, really. Troud and Kroy start getting shitty with each other, it builds up over a few years, then...blam. Four years of shooting at each other. A few other countries got involved, but they mostly ended up leaving them to it. A few cities get all but annihilated, then they kiss and make up. Thirty years later they join the Federation.'

'And here we are,' said Leila, nodding as if she herself had just concluded the lecture.

'Hrm.' Out of the corner of her eye, Ratbat saw a young woman approach her with the aid of a walking stick. 'Och, waiter,' she said quickly. 'Ye couldnae find us another champagne from somewhere, could ye?'

She turned back to Suzy and Leila. 'Well, it occurs to me...' They were both looking right at her. Ratbat slumped. 'OK, I can tell now that she wasn't a waiter...' The other two nodded. 'Obviously someone important...' They nodded again. 'Not one of the diplomatic team; I've seen all of them.' They shook their heads no. 'And too young to be the Minister's wife...' Once more, they nodded. Ratbat remembered the portrait and drew out the conclusion. 'Minister Lao's daughter?' They nodded encouragement. Ratbat held up a claw and played the final piece. '...and she's still standing behind me!'

'Well done,' said the dry voice behind her.

Ratbat spun around to face its owner. 'Uh...sorry,' she managed.

The woman stared for a few seconds longer, as if trying to elicit further cringing. 'Do you need any help getting that foot out of your mouth?'

'Hell no. I've got used to that being there; it's quite comfortable now.'

She smiled slightly - Ratbat was unsure if she was being patronising or not - and held out a hand, the one without the stick braced around it. 'Lao Nicabar.'

'Of course,' nodded Suzy. 'The Minister's daughter.'

Through gritted fangs, Ratbat called Suzy something very rude in Japanese.[2] Shaking Nicabar's hand, she replied, 'Commander Daria Sigma...'

'...everyone calls you Ratbat, I know. You're actually just the woman I was looking for. Are you drunk yet?'

'Well, not at the rate I seem to be bloody getting champagne arou-- Hey, who the cruk gave you this rap sheet on me, anyway?'

'Lieutenant Commander King.'

'Gurl, Ensign King's gonna have some explaining to do when we get back to the Compromise... Sorry, you said you were looking for me?'

'I am. Well, rather, I was. Walk with me.' She took Ratbat by the arm and led her away.

Leila and Suzy watched them go. 'Is it me,' said Suzy, 'or did Ratti just get picked up?'

Leila shook her head. 'No, it's not you. It's definitely Ratti. There's a difference.'

'What the hell kind of evening is it if Ratbat has sex and I don't? I don't think I could handle that.' She turned to Leila, looking her up and down. 'I don't suppose you'd...'

Leila shook her head again. 'Niki says that no-one should until you have that injection.'

'Aw.'

'Unsurprisingly, Styles was getting herself all worked up over nothing. Nicabar wasn't after picking me up, thank Glenda. In fact, we only really went across the room. Mind you, it is a big room. But the thing she was after showing me was just hanging there, over the fireplace.'

'Our family portrait,' she announced. Which it was, fairly unmistakably. The ornate frame held a painting of three people. Ratbat recognised one as Minister Lao, the tallest figure, every stroke the patriarch. The teenager took her a moment longer to realise was Nicabar herself, before womanhood had fully settled on her - before the crutch, too, she noticed. The third, she guessed, was no doubt the Minister's wife and Nicabar's mother. The painted woman had a maternal hand on her daughter's shoulder, though Minister Lao himself stood slightly aloof and apart from them, which fitted what Ratbat had seen of him so far - not exactly the sort of chap to do sissy things like display emotions.[3]

'Nice picture,' she said. She still wasn't sure where this was taking her.

'It is,' agreed Nicabar. 'The painter lost a hand in a catering accident.'

Ratbat scowled. 'Och, and he had to give up the art?'

'Oh, no, that's when he started. He found out then that he'd really been left-handed all his life and he'd never realised it.'

'Ooh.'

Nicabar turned to face Ratbat, apparently getting to the centre of the matter. 'All right. The reason Commander King referred me to you is because I said I was looking for a writer.'

'Really?' Ratbat spat it out before she could think of a less shocked way to express the notion. She'd certainly put finger to keyboard a few times, but it wasn't something she'd had a whole lot of chance to do lately.

Nicabar went on. 'Not to mention someone who can handle stuffing around in a stack of old facts and notes. Research, if you like.'

Confusion was still making a play for Ratbat, but intrigue got the casting vote.[4] 'Go on.'

'And I'll be honest: having someone do this who's not only not from Troud or Kroy, but not even from the planet they're on certainly won't hurt.'

'I'll take a guess here: You've got a bunch of old records, notes, whatever...and you want someone to turn them into a viable narrative.'

Nicabar smiled, and Ratbat got the impression that she was officially forgiven for the 'waiter' incident. 'That's it exactly.'

'I'm certainly interested,' Ratbat admitted. 'What's the story so far, then?'

'Look at that painting again. How many people do you see there?'

Ratbat wondered if this wasn't some kind of brain-teaser she was missing the point of, but nonetheless replied, 'Three.'

'Prezactly. Me, of course. Lao Atalaya, my father, you probably recognise. And maybe my mother, Lao Ximenes. The person you don't see is my sister, Chenche.'

'No, apparently not...'

'Which is because she was dead by this point.'

Ratbat double-took. 'Och, then at the risk of sounding tacky,[5] it might just be a good idea that she's not in the picture...'

Nicabar glared at her. 'That's not what I'm talking about. What I am saying is that this picture is typical of everything my family says when it comes to Chenche.'

'What, unperson? She never existed?'

'Not quite. They'll pretty much admit that she existed, and maybe that was a nice person, but that's it. I've been able to find out a bit more over the years, but not very much. She died not long before I was born - and that wasn't long after the war started. At least,' she added suddenly, 'that was all I knew until fairly recently.' She lowered her voice and beckoned Ratbat away from the guests. 'I went into my mother's bedroom to borrow some money...' Off Ratbat's skeptical look, she retorted. 'Hey, she said I could ...thirteen years ago. Listen, that's not the important part. I found Chenche's diary from that time, right before the war broke out.

'I know she's dead, and I know I've never met her, but she was my sister. It's not just me, there's one or two of my cousins as well, only they live over in Harvone. I just think that it's only fair that her story gets told.

'So...will you help us?'

'The Compromise had to stick around anyway, because we're Admiral Page's ride back after all the paperwork's done. That, and Graham and Nick spilt something in the warp core and we're not sure how to make it go again. I'm still not sure why I decided to grant Nicabar's request. Vanity, maybe. Not that often that my reputation precedes me - at least not in a good way. To this end Nicabar gave me a copy of Chenche's diary. On first glance it didn't look so enthralling: a whole lot of guff about how wonderful her consort was. When I really sat down to study it, though...well, the blood all rushed to my naughty gossip node then...'

The door to Ratbat's quarters hummed open, and Leila shambled in. 'Ratti...you were supposed to come in and give me coffee to wake me up.' She realised she was competing with the recorded voice Ratbat was listening to, and thus talked louder. 'Do you realise how late I got up because you didn't do that? It's 11:30! I should have been up fifteen minutes ago!'

Ratbat sighed. 'Pause.'

'Are you talking to me or the computer?'

Ratbat bit back every reply at her disposal. 'The computer. Sorry, I was doing stuff.'

'Do you know what I had to do without you there to wake me up?'

'Walk across the room, say "coffee" to the replicator all by yourself, then stomp two doors down the hall to get here?'

Leila's glare softened slightly. 'Well, at least you know what you did wrong. What were you doing, anyway?'

'Listening to Chenche's diary.'

'Oh, is that the dead chick?'

'Aye.' Ratbat tapped her console and a picture appeared on the screen. Auburn hair, round kind of face, blue eyes. A not-unattractive young woman, if you liked that sort of thing.[6] 'There she is.'

'Not bad. You really can see her mother in her.'

'Almost scary, innit? And I swear in this picture that her eyes follow you round the room.'

'Huh. So what's she been up to?'

'She's just starting to get serious with her new consort. Bolade's this chap's name, Bolade Kaczmarek.'

'Sounds saucy.'

'Dinna get too excited. Have a listen. Resume playback.'

'--fair. If only my parents, and my friends, could understand. Bolade is truly a wonderful man. If only others would give him a chance. He cannot help the circumstances of his birth. He is as caring, and loving a person as--'

'Pause,' Ratbat said.

'How sweet,' said Leila.

'It's pretty much all like that. Right little Jane Austen, this Chenche.'

'What did she mean before? When she talked about the circumstances of Bolero's birth?'

'Bolade,' Ratbat corrected her. 'Ahh, this is where it gets a bit interesting.'

'About time.'

'Chenche, of course, is from Troud. Bolade's Krojan.' She blinked, snapping herself back to 2379. 'Was Krojan. Sure, the war hadn't started yet, but things between Troud and Kroy already weren't friendly.'

'Ah, forbidden love,' Leila mused. 'I remember it well...it can be the sweetest of all the fruits...'

Ratbat blinked. 'You had a forbidden love?'

Leila stared off into space. 'Oh yes...many years ago now...me, and the son of a Neelablan diplomat...'

Ratbat sighed. 'That wasn't love, that's called a one-night stand. And it wasn't forbidden. And it wasn't even you, that was Euan!'

'I was using an allegory. Anyway, it was forbidden!'

'Jared whacked the floor with a broom so they'd stop making so much noise, that's hardly the same thing.'

Leila sighed because people understood her so little. 'Anyway, what else have you got on this Bidet guy?'

'Hrm...computer, does this file include any images of Bolade Kaczmarek?'

'Affirmative.'

'Show me one.'

On the nearest monitor, a colour picture snapped into view. A dark-haired young man, smiling for the camera. Hardly a supermodel, but good-looking in an average kind of way.

'Nice,' said Leila.

'Och, hello...here's more fuel for the fire.'

'What?'

'Dig the outfit. Look familiar?'

'Ummm...should it?'

'Well, maybe you weren't there. It was a few places, but it's pretty much the same as the Military Secretary from Kroy was wearing at the big ceremony. Bolade wasn't just from Kroy...he was one of their military. Bet Daddy really loved that.'

'Was he the Justice Minister yet?'

'Nope, but he was certainly on the way. Right near the start of the diary, Chenche told it that he'd just become Deputy Police Commissioner for the city.'

'Which probably still wasn't an ideal thing to be if your daughter's dating someone who works for a country you're going to go to war with soon.'

'No. Maybe that's why he arrested him,' joked Ratbat.

'He arrested him? What, when?'

'Actually, I don't know that he did. I just know that someone did. He was in Troudite custody when he died.'

'A death in custody? Did that start the war?'

'Dunno. Bet it didn't help. But take a look here. Soon as I found him, I went to check if he was still alive. The death certificate pretty much put paid to that one.' She showed Leila the computer screen.

'Shot while trying to escape,' said Leila. 'But is that shot while trying to escape, or Shot While Trying To Escape?'

'Good question. I tell ye, there's a lot of parts to this thing. No wonder Nicabar wanted a researcher as well as a writer. I might need a whiteboard for this one. I thought it was gonna mostly be in Chenche's diary. But no, since I started this, I've already had to log onto news archives from both countries, death certificates, cultural references...'

'Sounds like there's a lot,' Leila said. She understood how frustrating paperwork could be because of how much her own position demanded. Of course, she'd just throw it aside. Until she'd got an assistant, that is. Now Lieutenant Morgendorffer threw it aside instead. 'Hey, aren't you on shift? Hadn't you better get to the bridge?'

'Nah. I wanted to get started on this lot, so I begged Jared to cover for me.'

'Jared?'

'Yeah, Jal can handle it. I think he can pretty much sort out what an executive officer does.'

On the bridge, Euan stood to issue a command. 'All right. What we should do now i--'

'Nah.' Jared shook his head.

'It'd just be an idea if we--'

'Don't be stupid.'

Euan glared at, but ignored him. 'Sam. Can you bring the ship into--'

'Belay that order, Mr Ogborn.'

Euan sighed. 'Jared. Could you please stop--'

'Oh, that's it. You're relieved of duty.'

'I could tell that something was going to come out of all this sooner or later. With Chenche's diary as the backbone, little parts of the story were popping up all over the place. The certificates. Records. A few pictures. Here and there, confusing as buggery, and looking for all the world unrelated, but they had to be part of the same thing. It was kind of like watching Babylon 5 in the wrong order. One thing the diaries did start to keep on about was that not only was Chenche everso in love with Bolade, he loved her back just as much. And, from what I could gather, it might really have been true. Some of his letters were there too, and we're really talking heart-pounding continent-shifting burning passionate bond expressed between these two youngsters.

'Yeah, I'd give it three months. Four at the outside.

'But the interesting part of all that was what young Mr Kaczmarek was prepared to do for Chenche. Give Kroy the arse. Now, in this day and age where running about between land masses is as common as travelling between continents, that might not sound like so much. But remember, that these two countries are gearing up for war, whether they know it or not. Patriotism would've been at an all-time high. This ain't just a case of "Ta-ta, Mr Chairman, think I'll emigrate now, back for the Olympics, eh?" No, this was a big decision on his part. Of course, he didn't really get to follow through with it, what with dying an' all, but it gave me a next line of enquiry to follow. I'd run out of places to look in Troud…but Troud isn't the only country on the planet.'

Shiny governmental doors slid aside, letting Ratbat and Nicabar pass.

'This still feels strange to me,' said Nicabar. 'I'm really not supposed to be here, am I?'

'Well, we're still in the foyer,' said Ratbat. 'You're allowed to be here. And besides, this is a government building. You pay your fees. Figure that makes you a part-owner in this place. Your tax...' She thought for a moment. 'Tax what? What was your currency called until you joined the Federation?'

Nicabar looked away. 'It was...umm...it doesn't translate well in your language.'

'What?'

'To finish what you were saying, this is our...tax haddocks at work.'

Ratbat didn't say anything for a few seconds. Then: 'Maybe it's a good thing that you're moving onto Federationomics.'

'And anyway, this isn't my tax haddocks at work. We're in Kroy! There's millions of Krojan chunders went into running this...'

'Welcome to peace in your time.'

'I've never even been to Kroy before. Not one molecule at a time, anyway.'

'Well, they're all here now.'

'That's the point.'

'Eh, I figured if you want Krojan military records, you come to the Krojan Military Records Centre. And they would be in Kroy. And so would we.'

They walked to the large desk. Like many government receptions the world over, the entry point was a desk approximately seven times the tenable size for the person behind it, set into a lobby that was grandly decorated in a way the main building interior would surely not be. The typical government only gives the impression of spending far too much on décor in the places the average taxpayer will see on a regular basis.

'Can I help you?' asked the receptionist, obviously ready to tell them they'd have to leave, sorry.

'Commander Sigma, from Starfleet. We're expected, yes?'

The receptionist tapped at his computer for a few moments, then told them that they were, thanks to Starfleet, cleared to go in.

'Can I ask you something, Commander? About the Federation?'

Ratbat turned back to the receptionist. 'Go ahead.'

'Is it true that the Federation in fact has not only no pursuit of personal wealth, but also no use of personal finance at all? Doesn't this leave the state to provide everything in terms of goods and services, and by inference own all property and commodities, thereby rendering a quadrant-wide society that maintains an illusion of democracy to in fact be a socialist or even communist regime?'

Ratbat blinked at him a few times.

'I liked it better when they asked if our spaceships were fast,' she sighed as she went through.

Adunbi Szafran tried to make her dissatisfaction very apparent as she heaved the latest box of records onto the table. The two new arrivals, for their part, either didn't notice or didn't care. The rules said, of course, that records like these were classified for thirty years - something that had been done slightly over three decades ago. The idea was usually that if they were classified for that long, whatever it was that would need them to be hidden from the public would no longer be the case. Or, more likely, that said public simply wouldn't care.

In this case, it was the government who didn't care. They reasoned that anyone who found this information so necessary would have found out by their own means long ago anyway, and so a meaningless gesture of good faith was made by not going to all the trouble of going through and reclassifying the documents again.

And all this bureaucracy was going to give Szafran a hernia. Letting the table creak under the weight of the last box, she said, 'If there's anything else I can do for you, be sure to let me know.' Unfortunately, she made the sarcasm so subtle that no-one noticed it.

'So, just what are we looking for?' asked Nicabar.

'Trying to find more about Bolade's death. I tried the computer archives, but it's cross-referenced like nobody's business. And half the cross-references come back to…well, here.'

'But we know how he died. It was a death in custody. What, they don't have them on your planet?'

'Now and again…but we don't just write them off. I sincerely doubt they're that common here, either. I'm not so fond of "shot trying to escape" either, but maybe that's just me…'

'No…and you're right, they must have arrested him for something. Suspicion of being Krojan with intent? There was a war coming up.'

'I thought of that one.'

'But you didn't like it.'

'No…' Ratbat spoke absently while she checked the boxes against her own notes. 'For a start, even if that was the reason, they'd still have to make up an "official" excuse. I doubt they could write "he was a dirty stinking foreigner" on the actual arrest record.'

Nicabar nodded. '…and that was my dad in charge. He really plays by the rules.'

'Exactly. If there's one thing I've noticed about your father, it's how much he likes everything in its place.'

'Come on! You've only talked to him for all of thirty seconds.'

'Have I?' Ratbat scowled. 'Aye, I have…Chenche must be getting to me. Whenever I think of Lao Atalaya now, I don't think, Justice Minister of Troud on Gramarna, I think, Why can't he stop treating the poor girl like she's seven?'

'Tell me about it,' sighed Nicabar. 'Still kind of treats me like a glass flower.' She tapped her crutch. 'Course, this is probably a lot of it.'

'I'd noticed that…what happened? Obviously it was after that family portrait was done.' She checked some service histories and tucked them into the copy pile.

Nicabar shook her head. 'Actually, it was before. A long time before.'

'Oh?' Ratbat began her attack on another archive box.

'It's genetic. Something I was born with. I mean, not the crutch, obviously…but I've got this condition, it's called Tsung's Syndrome.'

'So what does that do?'

'Do? It's…degenerative. In words of two syllables or less, my nerves and muscles are wearing down. It's really slow, but… I was fine when I was a little kid. By the time they did that picture you saw, I had a limp most of the time. I really don't think my parents ever worked out what it was, really.'

'No?'

'I think when we found out they must have remembered Chenche or something. Which'd be pretty rare. They lost one daughter, and now the other one's hobbling herself into the ground. So, you know - not spoilt enough to actually enjoy it or anything. Anyway, that limp got worse, and now I've got the stick…but lately I've been able to tell that it's starting to spread to the other leg.'

'It's still going? Och, pauvre Nicabar…that doesn't sound good at all.'

'Well, they say worse things happen at sea - though the idea of being eaten by sharks and having Tsung's Syndrome doesn't sound like much fun either.'

Ratbat pursed her lips. 'Now I can't tell if you're being optimistic or pessimistic.'

'Neither. Both.' She handed Ratbat a folder, a change of subject coming with it. 'Is this what you were looking for?'

Ratbat looked at the cover. 'Yes…! This should at least tell us what…oh, my.' She trailed off, engrossed in the papers.

'What? What is it?'

Ratbat handed the folder back to her. 'Well, we've answered the two big questions right here. Bolade Kaczmarek was arrested…because he murdered Lao Chenche.'

'…and there we had it. We knew what had happened to Chenche, we knew what had happened to her consort, we knew why it had happened to them. We'd found the ending to the story, and all that was left was for me to put in "he said", "she said" and some speech-marks.

'By tracking to the last entries in Chenche's diary, and what was left of the legal records, I could pretty much work out what happened. After Chenche and Bolade had been together for a good few months, they decided to take a trip together. A camping trip, if you will. They got into their little campin' trailer o' fun and took off away from the lights and sounds of city life.

'That's what Chenche thought was gonna happen, anyway. Her last diary entry ever, leading right up to the last page of the book, is all about how much fun they'll have, just the two of them, the open sky, and a very cozy tent. Which doesn't sound so bad at all, really. Well, except for him killing her a few days in.

'Next thing you know, there's an accident reported on their vehicle. This accident being reported by the one survivor, Bolade Kaczmarek. The legal standpoint was "accident our arse", Chenche's metaphorical blood was on his hands (actually, so was some of her actual blood), and after some protests, he went quietly. Then, while he was waiting for trial…zap, thump.'

'What did you do?' Ratbat said to the monitor. The same picture of Bolade still stared out at her. Had he been lying all that time, how he felt about Chenche? The world's greatest actor, putting on a big show, all to…what? Just to take a pop at a pretty young thing from the other side? Maybe he'd been a spy, trying to worm his way into the other side, when it had all gone wrong? Maybe Bolade had been just plain nasty? Or mad? What made you kill someone when you loved them that much? Surely he couldn't have found her with someone else, not out there? Her diary certainly didn't let on.

Never mind that the more she thought about it, the less the story settled with her. But it was all there in black and white. Or yellow on black since she'd transferred it to the computer.

At least she could try to find out he'd really been Trying To Escape. She at least owed that much to…who? To Bolade? Not really. To Nicabar, to finish the story properly? To Chenche, who she now felt she knew well enough to feel bad about reading her diary?

'Computer, bring up Bolade Kaczmarek's post-mortem.'

'Online.'

'What have we got for cause of death?'

'Cause of death, three staser bolts on level three.'

'Stasers. Gramarnan guns?'

'Affirmative.'

'Where were these staser bolts?'

'Capital Custody Centre, Ko Sing.'

Ratbat sighed. 'Where on Kaczmarek?'

'One, left calf; one, groin; one, chest.'

'Well, that'd do it,' muttered Ratbat. 'Ye might be able to limp to safety, but not having a heart attack and with your bollocks on fire.'

She continued to tap out the narrative. Slower and slower it came, as she wondered how to write around the dark shadow over the middle of the story. After about fifteen minutes during which she'd only typed seven words (four of which she deleted), she needed to wrest herself away from it before she did her head in.

The Compromise sickbay was no longer the depraved experience it had once been. Not so much because Graham had calmed down his actions since this tour began as because he no longer felt obliged to confine his activities to the one spot. That, and if nothing else he'd learnt to put his toys away.

It was, therefore, a fairly calm sickbay Ratbat wandered into this night, finding Nicole and Graham working away before a large monitor.

'Oh. Hey, Ratti,' said Graham once he'd noticed her.

'Hey.' She stared at the monitor with them for a few moments. 'What are you guys doing?'

'Working on a new cure for yeast infections,' said Nicole without looking up.

'A new cure? What's different about this one?'

'It's based on aversion therapy,' said Graham.

'Right. Erm…speaking of cures…'

'I've told you before, Ratti - we can do it, but you can't look on implants as a cure. It's all about your own self-esteem.'

'What about a cure of Tsung's Syndrome?'

Now they both looked at her. 'I don't even know what Tsung's Syndrome is,' admitted Graham. 'It can't be an STD, I'd know that.'

'Couldn't you collect baseball cards like a normal person?' asked Nicole. She turned back to Ratbat. 'What's Tsung's Syndrome?'

'It's a Gramarnan disease.'

'Hold on...' Graham drifted into sensible mode for a moment. 'That girl you're doing that research for - the one who threw the drink in my face...is that what she's got?'

'As it happens.'

'We do have that in the Federation.' Graham took her to a smaller terminal and showed her a medical encyclopædia. 'Only we don't call it that.'

Ratbat read over the entry. It certainly seemed to be the same disorder Nicabar had described to her, and... '...we have got a cure. "Doctors at the Harvey Milk Colony reported their first successful treatment of a patient in 2299!" Could you guys do it here?'

'I don't see why not,' said Graham, because he hadn't checked.

'Eh, this'll bring Nicabar back up...' Ratbat started for the door, then stopped. 'She threw her drink on you?'

Graham's face was a protest. 'All I did was ask if she was familiar with a few Federation customs that I could show her. And then, well...she said I would obviously be too busy getting rum stains off the front of my uniform.'

Ratbat sniggered. No faulting Nicabar's taste, then.

Then she thought for a bit more, and left the room.

Graham stared after her. 'Was it something I said?'

'It's always something you said.'

'Naturally, Nicabar was well chuffed to find out about the treatment. Her planet had just joined the Federation, and what better way to welcome in a new age of equality and understanding than with a bit of preferential treatment. Not that it wasn't anything anyone'd be able to get there soon enough anyway. As commanding officer of the ship, Euan actually had to give his approval before anything like this could go on. Three days after the fact he'd realise he had the paperwork on his desk all this time and forgotten to do anything about it, so he ended up signing it so he looked like he'd been paying attention.'

Ratbat sat in 10-Foreplay, a drink in her hand, a padd in her lap and a table under her feet. The drink was something that Emma the Klingon had said was 'just what she needed right now', which had sounded sweet until Ratbat realised that Emma had no idea what she was doing or why she might need anything. Still, it was a kind thought.

The ending to the Chenche Saga had brought Nicabar down somewhat, so the thought of curing her life-long debilitating disease cheered her up a bit. Graham had insisted on the backless surgical gown, which hadn't exactly pleased Ratbat, but Nicabar said that if that was what made him happy, then he could wear what he wanted.

Lost in her own head as she was, her gaze out the windows was starting to make the stars swim before her eyes like a Magic Eye picture.

Carmen's voice interrupted her.

'Wow,' it said, 'Ratti's looking wistful. I've never seen Ratti looking wistful before. Have you?'

'No,' said Euan. 'I think she tends to go for extremes. I think we've seen deadpan or inconsolable, but not wistful.'

'Stop that,' said Ratbat. 'You'll hurt my feelings. Both of them. Besides...this isn't wistful, it's pensive.'

'How many of those have you had?'

'All right, it's pensive and slightly drunk.'

Carmen looked into the glass. 'Slightly drunk? That's a Shirley Temple!'

'Booze is a state of mind.'

Euan and Carmen sat on the seats opposite the chiropteran. 'What are you pensing about?' Carmen asked.

'Still one thing that won't lie down over this whole "shot while trying to escape" thing.'

'Ohh,' said Carmen. 'The Mystery of the Missing Sister.'

'You know,' said Euan, 'Leila thinks you're becoming far too obsessed with this whole thing.'

Ratbat scowled. 'I've barely even mentioned it to her since the day after I started!'

'She thinks that it made you far too preoccupied to listen to her problem.'

'Her problem was "Aidan smells funny".'

'Well.'

'No, listen,' said Ratbat. 'Tell me what you think of this one. If you were trying to escape from something, it'd be behind you, right?'

'If you were successful it would be,' said Carmen.

'But Bolade Kaczmarek was shot in the front.'

'Oh?'

'The post mortem said so. Staser bolts on his calf, chest and groin. Now at least two of those go on the front. Wouldn't he have been running away from the guys who were shooting him?'

'Hmm,' said Euan.

'Not necessarily,' said Carmen. 'He might have been taken by surprise or something. Oh, you know, he runs around a corner, and there they are, then...zap.'

Ratbat deflated. So much for today's great revelation.

'So...Kaczmarek was a traitor?' Euan said suddenly.

'Yeah,' nodded Ratbat. 'Hang about, I didn't think I'd told you that.'

'You didn't. But you said he was shot with a staser.'

'And?'

'And, no matter what else you guys might say about me, I do know my firearms.'

'That's right,' said Carmen. ''cos you're a gun-nut.'

'Quite. But I've been checking out the weapons on Gramarna as well. Troud don't have stasers, they have blasters.'

'No way ye'd get the wounds mixed up?'

Euan shook his head. 'Very different. One's more like a traditional projectile weapon: the flesh would--'

Carmen interrupted him by being grossed out. 'How do you know stuff like this?'

Euan sighed and leant back in his chair. 'Lieutenant Commander King, when you've been a starship captain for as long as I have...' Carmen was just staring at him, and he sighed. '...you read a lot of books, all right?'

'That re-opened my case for me. Whether or not the Troudite police had actually shot him while trying to escape, they surely would have used their own weapons to do it. Otherwise, why compound a easily-justified lie with an impossible-to-get-away-with one? Someone else had killed Bolade, of course - the big question was who? Suicide? No way. This geezer didn't want to die, which is usually a pre-requisite for committing suicide. Not that he could have shot himself like that anyway, even if he had got his gun past Deputy Commissioner Lao. No, I have examined this situation again, and found it wanting.'

Ratbat swooshed into her quarters and took position in front of her terminal. 'Computer, get me the report on the death of Krojan operative Bolade Kaczmarek.'

'Do you mind! I might have been naked in here or something!'

The squawk had come from the counsellor lying on her sofa. Leila was halfway through a stack of Toilet Heroes comics, many of which had acquired chocolate stains.

'I've seen you naked anyway. Besides, this is my quarters, you get naked at your own peril.'

'Er.'

'Aren't you supposed to be on-shift, anyway?'

'I told Daria it was time for my six-hour coffee-break. She can handle it.'

('It was bad enough when both my parents were sent to gaol,' said the crewmember. 'But I heard that on the same day that my son contacted me and told me he was dying, and that he didn't want to see me anymore. I went home to tell my husband, only to find a note saying he'd left me for my sister. God, and then I realised how bad those twinges in my head were getting...'

'I have to say,' said Daria, 'this really isn't very interesting.')

'And why isn't that file on my computer?' asked Ratbat. 'Computer?'

'There is no such file.'

'Bolade Kaczmarek's death certificate? I've been looking at it for days!'

'Affirmative. However, the file requested was the death of Krojan operative Bolade Kaczmarek. The only person by that name on record was not an active operative.'

'He wasn't?'

'Affirmative. The Bolade Kaczmarek on record was a military administrative officer.'

That would explain a lot. Ratbat hadn't really looked at the parts of Bolade's record concerned with the man's actual duties, only things like where he had gone and who he might have met there.

'Huh,' said Leila. 'A secretary.'

'Haa!' Ratbat said. 'And to think Chenche kept on and on about what a wuss he wasn't. Too love-numbed to see the difference between a hardened marine and a guy who stamped reports all day.'[7]

'Actually,' said Leila. 'From a lot of the stuff you showed me, he didn't seem like the sort of guy who'd prefer being behind a desk to being behind enemy lines.'

'Big talker? No, ye're right there. Computer, display the service record. In full, this time.'

As screen after screen of office assignments and restricted duties flashed across her face, Ratbat snapped her fingers and grinned. '"If only others would give him a chance. He cannot help the circumstances of his birth,"' she quoted.

'Huh?'

'It's from Chenche's diary. She's not talking about her family hating him because he's Krojan. She's talking about the other Krojans. The military didn't give him a chance, because he had Tsung's Syndrome!'

'No, not with you, sorry.'

'It's a condition people are born with. Pretty rare, although it seems both Nicabar and Bolade have it. Well, had it. Bolade wouldn't have been much use to them as a fighter, given his body was seizing up, bit by bit. So, light duties, admin work...well, see where romantic talk in your diary gets you, Chenche? No-one understands what you're on about.'

Leila looked at the service record. 'And is this the proper one? All this is real?'

'It's all unclassified now, that'd be the real thing. Well, I guess that at least rules out killing Chenche because he's a spy.'

'Maybe he didn't even kill her.'

'So who did? Mind you, he did say it had been an accident...'

'Mind you, they did say the other thing had been an accident. When he was escaping. Or not escaping. Or whatever he was doing.'

Ratbat turned and looked at her. 'When, in fact, he was killed by a Krojan weapon.'

'I know,' said Leila.

Ratbat scowled. 'How did you know that?'

Leila threw up her hands in exasperation. 'So a girl tries to look smart now and again! Is there something wrong with that?'[8]

'OK, try to stay with me. Krojans use Krojan weapons. Bolade was killed by a Krojan weapon, therefore he was killed by another Krojan. It's not a frame-up. You don't frame someone then keep it quiet, because then there's no point.' She thought about it. 'Let's say that Bolade really was thinking about defecting.'

'Then killing his girlfriend was pretty stupid, I would've thought.'

'Yeah, but set that one aside for the moment. Maybe she left the seat up or something. Now, Bolade might have known a few things about his mother country that the little people in Troud really wouldn't mind getting their hands on. He might have struck a deal. He spills what he knows in exchange for...whatever. Amnesty. A nice house. Tea with the king. I dunno.'

'Was there anything about that in the old records you were reading? I don't think there was. And it would have been declassified by now, surely.'

'If he did it. Maybe he didn't. But the point is, we know that because we live in 2379 and everyone's being friends and letting each other read their stuff. But imagine it's 2344. This guy's worked in administration. Glenda only knows what he's had a chance to read on his way to the photocopier. You don't even want to risk him giving anything away to the other side. So...rub him out.'

'Everything was starting to look cloudy again. So much for "trying to escape". I'd already done what I had to - found Chenche's killer, but I wanted to finish the story. Who murdered the murderer? I asked the computer to pick out a likely undercover Krojan to do the job. After all, the ambassador couldn't just wander out of the embassy and do it himself. Had to be someone a bit secret. The computer needed the last batch of stuff I'd brought from Kroy, so I set that to upload and went to check on how Nicabar was doing.'

'She's doing fine,' Nicole said. 'She's just sleeping it off now.'

Ratbat walked to the edge of the sterile field and looked at Nicabar. 'And how did it all go? Is she all safely fixed and resequenced and things?'

'Couldn't have done better myself,' announced Graham, dusting off his hands.

'You did do it,' Nicole reminded him.

'Yes. Well, I couldn't do any better than me. That wouldn't make any sense. If you want, we can treat her dad as well.'

'Huh? What's wrong with her dad? He doesn't have Tsung's Syndrome.'

'Oh. Her mother, then.'

'Her mum's fine, too. They were both up there at the reception. Besides, Nicabar would've told me if one of her parents had it.'

Graham and Nicole exchanged glances. 'Um, Ratti,' Graham said. 'Tsung's Syndrome is hereditary. She didn't get this from the toilet seat. She could only have it if one of her parents had it. It's as simple as that.'

Ratbat looked from the two medicos to the woman on the biobed. 'Well, there's something hereditary. Her entire family's as confusing as buggery.'

Graham sighed. 'Now, how many times, Ratti. Buggery's not that confusing. All you-- Hey! Why do people always leave when I start this lecture?'

'All right. No-one on Gramarna said anything, because they don't know that Tsung's is hereditary. But that doesn't change the fact that it is. Neither Minister Lao nor his wife had it, that much was obvious. Trust me, you'd be able to tell, no trouble. Nicabar needed a stick to get around when she was only thirty-four, and she had the best treatment haddocks could buy. Adopted? Maybe.

'Thing is, Tsung's Syndrome ain't that common. And there's already one person in this little story with it. But that's unrelated, surely?

'Speaking of whom, I returned to my quarters to find that the computer had spat back the name of the killer. Uh, the other killer, that is. Killer squared.'

Leila had left, cursing Ratbat's computer that wouldn't let her play games while it was occupied. Ratbat shuffled into her chair, pausing to brush several Milky Way wrappers off her workspace.

'Got what I asked for, computer?' Ratbat asked.

'Affirmative.'

The new screen came up, and Ratbat froze. It wasn't that she didn't believe in coincidences. She believed in them the same way someone believes in submarines. Not doubting that they exist, but unaccustomed to seeing too many on the doorstep.

The identity file of Lao Ximenes stared back at her.

'Wow,' Ratbat said simply.

It made sense, of course. Back in those days, the wife of a senior police officer would have been beyond question, beyond reproach. Why she was working for the other side, Ratbat didn't know. Ancestry, maybe. Sympathy. Money. Didn't make much of a difference. She'd have been nestled into the perfect spot, and no doubt also an ideal position to relieve upcoming traitor Bolade of duty. Cruk, but this would put the cat amongst the pigeons. A big cat. A big robot cat with guns on its head.

Ratbat looked over at her picture. There she was stern and dark-eyed, obviously pictured nearer then than now. There really was a resemblance between her and her daughter. At least the eyes on this picture didn't follow her every movement.

Her eyes.

Something was...

Something about her eyes. Struck by a thought, Ratbat called up a picture from the reception and compared.

Why did she have brown eyes in the past and blue eyes in the present?

And that resemblance to her daughter...had Ximenes had some work done? Because comparing the different eras, Ratbat really found that Chenche really looked more like her mother than her mother did.

Minutes passed.

Cogs turned in Ratbat's mind.

Minutes turned into hours.

Ratbat's claws slid to the console as she formed new ideas to test.

More time passed, then froze still as Ratbat finally uncovered the truth she'd been seeking.

'Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.'

Thirty-five years ago

Lao Atalaya sat at his desk. If he smoked, he would have been smoking. If he drank, he would have been drinking. As it was, he did neither. So he just sat.

Not that anyone would have begrudged the man an indulgence or two.

To put it bluntly, he had not had a good week. Losing poor Chenche had been terrible enough. More than terrible enough. Then the discovery that she had likely been murdered by the man she'd said she wanted to marry. That hadn't sat right with Lao - not the murder, obviously, but neither the marriage. The man was Krojan, and Kroy was very much on the outside at the minute. Lao had tried to transcend that, to convince himself to look beyond Kaczmarek's profession. It seemed he needn't have troubled himself. It had been almost more than he could do not to tear Kaczmarek apart himself. But the law was the law.

That, Lao could have almost handled. It at least made a sort of sense. But now, not only was his daughter dead, so was his son-in-law-to-be. As was his wife, who had slipped into the Custody Centre to kill Kaczmarek. Not the revenge of an infuriated parent, either. The calculated tactic of a secret assassin. A secret assassin now late, she herself killed by a guard.

His family dead, his wife a traitor, and his own incompetence at preventing it or detecting it at all.

Such despondence might have left a man like this described as suicidal. It was an apt description, if an poor choice of word. Lao certainly had no plans to end his own life - his own death would surely only add to his lot.

Besides, that would cast the family further into shame.

His extended family, of course - not that he was in close contact with them, but nonetheless his shame would be their shame. For all this treachery and death wouldn't look good. Not one bit.

This was not an enlightened time, certainly nothing like the Troud of three decades later. Appearances Were Everything. One's social standing was often built on one's being beyond reproach, and this was not a society in which one could continue regardless of the opinions of others. Deputy Commissioner Lao Atalaya was in all the best ways a very proper sort of man - or so he would be until the reality of recent events got out.

Get out they would, too, with nothing to show otherwise. Lao felt no small sense of guilt at worrying how this might affect his standing or even that of his kin, but it was still there. And this matter was an ongoing problem. However terrible previous events might have been, they were over. Chenche, Ximenes and Bolade Kaczmarek weren't going to become any more or less dead for his dwelling on it. Besides, he needed a matter at hand to focus, to concentrate on. And it had been just this sense of the practical that had got him as far as he had come.

He was broken from his thoughts by a sound. He was the only one in the house, so there should have been no other source of sounds. He heard it again, coming from the entry hall. A thief? Not a very wise thief, having chosen to break into the home of a policeman. Perhaps they expected Lao to be out stopping crime. That seemed to make an unwanted kind of sense, so he pushed it out of his mind. He slid his blaster out of his desk drawer and headed to the source of the sound.

Once in the entry hall, he could more clearly hear the rain outside. He briefly wondered if all he'd heard was the weather, but the rattling of the front door dismissed that. Someone was definitely trying to open it. He aimed his gun at the door. A click showed that his prowler had succeeded.

He had barely the chance to shout 'freeze' before he saw the new entrant. Bedraggled, no small amount of minor injuries, and appearing very much the victim of the elements. Lao froze, his mouth still open.

'F-father?' said Lao Chenche, then passed out into the hall.

Over the next few days, as Chenche recovered from her injuries and her fever, the younger Lao pieced together the story for the older. Obviously, she wasn't dead, so Bolade Kaczmarek hadn't killed her. He hadn't tried to, either. In fact, his entire story about an accident was true. Not being a doctor of any kind, Bolade must have thought that Chenche was beyond help - or at least beyond his help. Any aid he'd sought upon his own return to civilisation hadn't been forthcoming as he'd been arrested. (This confirmed a suspicion that had been building in Atalaya's mind - that possibly Kaczmarek may not have been guilty.) In the meanwhile, Chenche's state had not been as bad as it appeared, and she had eventually gained enough strength to stagger back home herself.

Chenche was devastated to hear of what had gone on in her absence. However, she still had one new bombshell to drop before her father. She had considered not telling him in light of the other many problems, but it was become obvious soon enough.

Chenche was pregnant.

Atalaya barely knew what to make of that. Shock. He was immediately of a mind to throttle the man who had violated his daughter, but he was dead anyway. He wondered what an illegitimate child would do to the family's reputation, and the answer was not much that hadn't already been done. Chenche thought to cry out herself, to apologise, to say she should have known...but such things were past now, and moot as the child continued to grow inside her.

In a way, it might have been a strange comfort to attribute what happened next to a sense of unfeeling determination on Atalaya's part. Or it might equally have provided a curious sense of ease to believe that it had come purely from selfless filial loyalty in Chenche. The truth is that both were equally to credit, or to blame, for the scheme that was played out, and the story that went with it.

Chenche was dead, as far as anyone knew. A tragedy, of course, but 'acceptable' to the world. And as yet, no-one knew any different, or any more to the story. Communication wasn't yet what it would be, and not everything would be recorded the way it might have been later.

The story of the Lao family - as far as anyone knew, of course - was as follows. Both Deputy Commissioner Lao and his wife had been consumed by grief after the tragic loss of their daughter. Lao Ximenes, in fact, had taken the news quite badly, and had secluded herself for some time afterwards. When she felt well enough to be seen in polite society once more, there would be at least some joy as she announced the birth of their new child. After all, it would hardly be unnatural for a married couple to have another child after sadly losing their only daughter. All that time away, of course, might have taken some toll on Ximenes...so it would be understood that she might be somewhat out of sorts, or not quite as she had been.

The reality would be very different, the social acceptability a deception. Effectively, Chenche was to take the place of her mother. Obviously she and Atalaya would not truly live as husband and wife, nothing like that. This would purely be for the public eye. There was already a strong resemblance between Ximenes and Chenche - as might be expected between mother and daughter. Most cosmetic differences could be addressed easily. No-one would ever suppose that one was posing as the other. At one time or another, someone might notice a slight difference in the lines of Ximenes' face, or pause at the colour of her eyes...but not for long. Because this was a proper society, and people in a proper society Didn't Ask Questions.

As for the child, it might be nice to think that the elder Laos meant to tell her the truth. To think that the intention truly was there, but the right occasion never arose. Whether that was true, though, she was never told. She wouldn't find out for over thirty years, not until an alien woman with olive skin and webbed fingers told her the truth about her sister.

'I didn't like having to do this. I did have to, too. Nicabar said she wanted the truth. I considered lying, but that wouldn't be right, no. I thought about leaving it at what she knew, but that's just as bad. I had to tell her. She had asked for the truth, and that's what I would give her. She deserved to know her own story.

'Not that saying all these things made me want to tell her any more. But I did.'

Nicabar's body went numb. She fumbled her grip on the handrails, and slipped straight from the treadmill. Ratbat leapt up to shut it off, and helped Nicabar back to an upright position.

'Are you all right?' asked Ratbat.

'Yes. I'm fi...' she trailed off. 'No. My God, what am I talking about? Of course I'm not all right.' Her breathing was getting shallow. Nothing to do with surgery or rehab, either. 'Can...' She composed herself, tried to straighten up. 'Can you help me get to that chair?'

Ratbat nodded, and guided the other woman to a nearby chair. She needed less help than she thought. But then, she already had one good leg, all she was doing was getting used to having two.

Why was she worried about her legs? The story Ratbat had just told her! It was...it wasn't good. There was that. She breathed deeply. She didn't want to look at Ratbat. She knew she should blame her, but she didn't want to look anyway. Last time she'd looked at her, she'd told her that awful story.

She eventually managed to say, 'Are you sure?'

'I...yes. I checked it all. You don't have a dead sister. Or any sister. It's really your grandmother who no-one talks about.'

Her grandmother. The woman who was...the woman who was who her mother was pretending to be. Not pretending to be her mother. She really was that. But...oh...

Her father. No, her father was her grandfather. Just her grandfather. Nothing creepy. Not that kind of creepy, anyway, there at least was that. But her grandfather had been who raised her... her father was...her father was dead. She was half-Krojan.

Her hands were shaking so much more than her legs now.

That meant she had more family, relatives she'd never knew or met, over in Kroy. Her father's family. Her father who she never knew or met, because her...her grandmother had killed him after her fath-- her grandfather had arrested him. She didn't have a father. Her father wasn't her father, and her father was dead. There was a reason her parents had never been like other parents. No, her parents were even less like other parents. Because one was her sister and the other one was dead. Sorry, not a sister. Didn't have one of those. And she...and she...

Nicabar cried.

Nicabar never cried. When she was nine, her dog died. She was sullen for weeks. When she was thirteen, the grade bully had made her a project for a whole lunchtime. She got angry. When she was twenty-one, her boyfriend of four years dumped her without explanation. She got very depressed, she sulked, she punched walls with fury. But she never, never cried.

When she was thirty-four, she was told that she'd lived a lie. That she'd always been living a lie and helping other people live theirs.

Nicabar cried.

10-Foreplay was where Ratbat found her some time later. Her rehabilitation had progressed in leaps and bounds - so to speak - in the interim. She'd tried to storm out upset after her conversation with Ratbat, but it hadn't been quite so effective as the first officer had had to hold her up part of the way. Ratbat saw no stick anywhere by her table, so she'd obviously got there under her own steam, by some mark or another. It had been a couple of days since the surgery, so that much progress was good to see.

Judging by the way she was staring at the glass in front of her, her emotional state might not have been so good. Ratbat sat down.

'Ratbat,' Nicabar said after a moment. She sighed deeply. 'I'm sorry I yelled at you before.'

'You didn't.'

'No. No, I didn't. But I meant to. I just... What you told me, I didn't believe it. No, not like that, I know we checked it all, and it's all true. I did believe it, though. And that's not what a girl wants to hear.'

'I don't think many boys'd like it either.'

Nicabar looked at her. 'Do you do that on purpose or is that honestly how you think?'

'I don't know. Look...I'm sorry. Maybe--'

'Don't even open that box. You did tell me. It's not as if I don't want to know...I just don't want it to be true.'

There was a painful silence. Eventually Ratbat said, 'We're going to be leaving orbit soon.'

'I know. That bumpy-faced lady behind the bar told me. I stayed up here so Dr Graham could check me over one more time. Which he seemed to be thrilled about until I reminded him I meant professionally.'

'Have you decided what you're going to do?'

'No. That's the other reason I'm still here. These people did raise me. They are my family, one way or another. What will it help now, telling them that I know?'

'Times have changed. I know, I've only been on Gramarna for a while, but...I'm pretty immersed. Things are definitely different now to before the war.'

'So, maybe I do tell them. At least it would all be done, then. I don't know. I just don't know.'

Ratbat changed the tack slightly. 'How are you, though?'

'I'll be fine,' said Nicabar after a pause. 'I'm...I'm not now, but I'll be fine. Somehow, I'll decide what I've got to decide...and then I'll try to go on.'

'Nicabar?'

The voice came not from Ratbat but from the other side of 10-Foreplay. Minister Lao and...Chenche? Ximenes? Who knew what she even thought of herself as these days? Whatever her identity, she had come in with Lao Atalaya.

'Nicabar?' The woman spoke again. 'We haven't seen you for days. We heard you were up here. Are you all right?'

'The Compromise will be leaving soon,' said Atalaya. 'It's good that you've made a new friend, but you should come back home.'

Nicabar looked to Ratbat, then back to her...relatives. 'I'm coming,' she said, then shakily got to her feet.

She took Ratbat in a hug. 'Goodbye, Ratbat.'

'Och, goodbye, Nicabar.' Ratbat hugged her in return. 'I hope...'

'Thank you,' she said, then turned away and started towards the door.

Genuine delight crossed the face of the other Lao woman. 'Nicabar, are you...? Where's your crutch?'

Even Atalaya managed a smile of sorts. 'What happened, Nicabar? That's incredible.'

It took a while, but Nicabar reached them. 'Oh. Oh, well, there's been a lot happening. Commander Sigma - and her friends - have been very helpful to me these past few weeks.' She took a few steps towards the door. 'Maybe I do need to have a talk with you.'

'Then I watched her leave. She waved again before she got out of the bar, but didn't let on what she was going to do. Our ship had another mission, so I couldn't stay around to find out. She's got my number, though. She can always get in touch to tell me how she's getting on.

'I don't know if she will.'

TED RAIMI

CHARLOTTE COLEMAN

Lieutenant Commander Carmen King

SUZANNE MADDOCK

Lieutenant Suzy Styles

MICHELLE FORBES

Dr Graham Henstock

MEATLOAF

Counsellor Leila Fetter

KATHY NAJIMY

Lao Nicabar

PIA MIRANDA

Lao Atalaya

BRIAN DENNEHY

Lao Chenche/Lao Ximenes

ROXANN DAWSON

Lieutenant Jared Wilkins

SEANN WILLIAM SCOTT

Nurse Nicole Wylie

JULIA SAWALHA

Lieutenant Daria Morgendorffer

JANEANE GAROFALO

Adunbi Szafran

MARJEAN HOLDEN

Bolade Kaczmarek

PAUL BOWN

Receptionist

MARK WAHLBERG

USS Compromise computer voice

MAJEL BARRET-RODDENBERRY