“You’re certain?” Tolas asked.

The meeting with Niran Syral had been unexpected, but the deal Gideon and Mitchell had made with him could prove pivotal. They’d arranged to meet Tolas at the bar, and the three men ended up crammed into the small office in the basement.

“Yes,” Gideon told him. “If we get him off Pergamon and set him and his husband up with a new life, then he’ll give us Forrester’s location.”

“And we get the trilithium back,” Mitchell added.

Tolas shook his head in disbelief. “If I’d known that’s all it would take to get the information we want, I could have made that deal myself and wouldn’t have had to drag you both here.”

“What? And let us miss out on all this fun?” Mitchell joked.

On some level, that would have been preferable. Gideon’s promise never to return to Pergamon would still be intact, and his life wouldn’t be at risk. But he would never have reconnected with Nicco, and he wouldn’t have missed that for anything.

“Good work.” Tolas was frugal with praise. Those two words were the extent of it.

Three loud thuds against the back door in quick succession brought their conversation to a halt.

“Are you expecting someone else?” Tolas asked.

Gideon looked at Mitchell, who shook his head. “No.”

Gideon stepped out of the office and climbed the steps to the bar’s back door. He unlocked the door with a metallic thunk. It slid back to reveal Niran Syral standing there looking out of breath.

“I need your help,” Syral announced before quickly brushing past Gideon.

Both Tolas and Mitchell looked as shocked at Syral’s arrival as Gideon felt. 

“Who are you?” Syral asked, eyeing Tolas warily.

Gideon squeezed into the now overcrowded office and perched himself on the edge of the desk. Tolas remained standing while Syral and Mitchell sat uncomfortably close together on the small couch. 

“This is a colleague of ours. You can trust him,” Gideon assured him. “Now, you said you need our help?”

Syral’s skin was ashen, and he was only starting to recover his breath. “Your container emitted another subspace ping. Oreth knows you’re looking for him, and that I’ve betrayed him.”

The urge to say ‘I told you so’ to Tolas was strong, but Gideon managed to resist the urge. There would be plenty of opportunities for him to rub Tolas’ face in it. This wasn’t the time.

“How can we help?” Mitchell asked.

Syral took an unsteady breath. “Oreth has threatened to murder my husband. I need Starfleet’s help to find him and keep him safe.”

“Find him?” Tolas asked. “You don’t know where he is?”

“I know which planet he is on,” Syral replied. “But for his own security, we agreed he shouldn’t divulge his exact whereabouts to me, and he moves regularly. I don’t have any way of contacting him either, for that reason.”

They couldn’t just let Oreth murder an innocent man. The three Starfleet officers looked at one another silently. Gideon could see the scepticism in Tolas’ eyes. Hell, he was still sceptical of Syral, despite having already made a deal with him.

Tolas finally nodded his ascent. “If you provide us with Forrester’s location and the trilithium, then I’ll request Starfleet send a team to secure your husband.”

“No,” Syral said as he jumped to his feet. “I’ll tell you where your Captain Forrester is now, and I’ll return the trilithium once he’s safe.”

Shaking his head, Tolas replied, “Absolutely not. We don’t move until we have Forrester’s location and the trilithium.”

“Please,” Syral pleaded. “Ian is innocent. He has nothing to do with any of this. 

Tolas looked to Gideon. “What do you think?”

Gideon considered himself a good judge of character. His years as a security officer and occasionally an intelligence operative had helped him develop a good sense for when a person was lying. It wasn’t foolproof, but he’d come to rely on it. He believed Syral was telling the truth.

“Okay,” Gideon agreed. “We’ll request that Starfleet secure your husband. Now, tell us where Forrester is.”

Time was of the essence for Commodore Elizabeth Wyatt. With the Vaadwaur invasion repelled and the Blackout lifted, they’d been able to communicate with the undercover team on Pergamon V searching for intelligence on the whereabouts of Captain Thomas Forrester. And just in time.

Squadron Operations was located in Bastion Station’s administrative tower. Wyatt arrived to find the squadron’s senior commanders already gathered around the situation table. Most of them were attending the meeting virtually using the holo-communicator. Only the Challenger’s commanding officer, Captain Tarven Rix, was here in person.

“Let’s get to it,” Wyatt began. “We have a location for Captain Forrester.”

She gave them a moment to let that sink in. Captain Rix of the Challenger looked particularly affected by that news. He’d been Forrester’s XO and had been forced to step up and take command when Forrester disappeared.

“Where’s he being held?” Captain Rosetti of the Cygnus asked.

“On the third moon of Korthex II,” Wyatt replied. 

Tapping a command into the situation table, Wyatt activated the table’s holographic display. A star chart appeared to hover above its shiny black surface.

“The Korthex system is located here,” She pointed at a highlighted dot on the map, “In Romulan Republic space.”

“Challenger’s ready to go rescue the captain,” Rix told her confidently.

Wyatt understood his desire for the Challenger to be the ship to rescue Forrester, but that wasn’t the most practical option.

“The Endurance is closer,” Wyatt pointed out. “Captain Dalton, you’re to proceed to the Korthex system with all due haste. Oreth knows you’re coming. Be ready.”

The hologram of Theo Dalton nodded. “Aye, ma’am.”

Wyatt turned her attention to the Midway’s captain. “Captain Taro, I understand you’re in the Deneb Sector?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Taro replied crisply. “We’re preparing to depart Galadkail Minor.”

“I have new orders for you,” Wyatt told him. “You’re to proceed to Izar, where you are to locate an individual named Ian Morrison and secure him aboard the Midway.”

Taro frowned. “Is this person a criminal?”

“No, Wyatt replied. “We believe he’s in imminent danger due to his relationship with an associate of Tarnek Oreth’s. I’m sending you everything we have.”

“We’ll get underway immediately.”

Wyatt looked around the assembled officers. “I want regular reports. Dismissed.”

The holograms dissolved, leaving only Wyatt and Rix standing around the table. He hunched over the table and stared at the pulsating dot on the star chart. Wyatt walked slowly around the table and placed a gentle hand on Rix’s shoulder.

“You okay?”

Captain Rix stood to his full height. “We’ve never been this close to finding him. I just hope we can bring him home alive and well.”

“Captain Taro will do her best,” Wyatt assured him.

Rix nodded slowly. “I need to tell my crew…tell Matthias.”

“Let me know if you need anything.”

He gave her a grateful smile that was tinged with sadness. “Thanks.”

Thick flakes of snow fell from the dark grey clouds outside as Pergamon’s deep winter continued unabated. The temperature hadn’t gotten above one degree Celsius in weeks, and Gideon was ready for a couple of weeks in the Whixby sun just to thaw out. The roaring fire was the next best thing.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Nicco muttered.

Gideon smiled as he played with Nicco’s hair. He found the weight of Nicco pressing him into the couch comforting. Nicco’s head rested on Gideon’s chest and rose and fell with every one of Gideon’s breaths.

“Me too,” Gideon agreed. “But it looks like we’ll be leaving in a few days.”

A loud breath escaped Nicco. “It feels like I just got you back, and now I’m gonna lose you again.”

It was as if the past sixteen years hadn’t happened. He’d never stopped loving Nicco. That love had been the ghost that had haunted all the dates he’d ever been on since leaving Pergamon. Nicco was the reason he’d never managed to get past the first few dates.

“You could come with me,” Gideon suggested quietly. “We could be together, like we always planned.”

Nicco played absentmindedly with the sleeve of Gideon’s t-shirt. “You know I can’t. My father’ll never let me leave.”

“You could always-”

“What?” Nicco asked sharply. “Fake my death? Like you did?”

“I wish there’d been some other way,” Gideon told him. “I wanted to let you know I was still alive. I tried. I wrote you letters every week for the first few years. Came so close to sending them. But I knew if your dad found even one of them, he’d send someone after me.”

“I’m sorry,” Nicco reached for Gideon’s free hand and laced their fingers together. “I shouldn’t keep beating you up for that. You did what you had to.”

Lifting Nicco’s hand to his face, Gideon kissed the back of it. “It’s okay. I’d be pretty pissed too if it were the other way round.”

“I really do wish I could come with you,” Nicco looked into Gideon’s eyes. “But that’s not my destiny. In a few months, I’ll be married and he’ll be waiting for me to give him a grandson to ‘carry on the Bianchi legacy’.”

The thought of Nicco living in a loveless marriage filled Gideon with sadness. He wanted to argue with Nicco, to plead with him to leave Pergamon. But he knew what was behind Nicco’s stubborn refusal to leave. It would mean never seeing his mother again, and Nicco was close to his mother. Being cut off from her like that would devastate him.

“Let’s not think about the future now,” Gideon said. “Let’s just enjoy the present.”

Gideon kissed Nicco again, like it was the last time.