Nathaniel’s body hung limply in the flashing light, and his eyes drooped. Blood flowed from the wound in his chest, and his breath had faded. Hasara and Captain Samara Ki slipped out from the long corridor where they had taken refuge after waiting an excruciating time for the sounds of the invading forces to fade. Ki walked up the stairs to the altar while Hasara inspected the body. He ran his scanning device, “He’s not dead.”

Ki had knelt to examine the outline of what had been installed previously, “She would have set timers to take this facility off the board. We don’t have much time. She has the device, and she has…her.” Her eyes searched the room, and she stalked over to a console in the corner, “I estimate three to five minutes.”

Hasara examined the body. Whatever Borg implements had become a part of him were working to keep him alive, but barely. Nathaniel would die. The drooped eyes flickered momentarily, and his mouth struggled to speak, “She is…Osho Gac’s daughter.” A cruel smile crossed his lips, “She…thinks she has her controlled…but it is not the way of things.”

Samara walked back down the stairs, listening to the sputtering words, “Was this her plan all along?” Her mind was spinning at the possibilities. None of them were good.

His body shuddered as the light of life began to dim, “Only recently. Her daughter made the discovery a year ago and kept it hidden.” He coughed, and oily blood spat from his turgid lips. A dark chuckle reverberated from his blighted body, “Nothing stays hidden forever.” The smile returned to his lips, “I die knowing they both will suffer in the end. Cruel begets cruel…” his last words were followed by a frenzy of convulsions and a fading hiss from his lips. Silence returned to the room.

Ki stared at Nathanial’s body as it sagged, “We need to leave. Now.”

The shuttle cleared the base and soared into orbit as the explosions rocked the moon-based facility, tearing it apart. Ki sat in the ops chair while Hasara piloted them away from the moon, his eyes watching the limited sensors, “She’s long gone…but her warp trails won’t be hard to follow.” He felt sick. Osho Gac had the device. They needed to stop her or, at a minimum, snatch and grab the device back. He turned to his partner, “There are two options. I take my team, and we get it back by any means necessary.” The Cardassian continued, “Option two – you bring the full weight of the Montana Squadron down on Osho. You upset the Orion Syndicate even more, and The Gun makes the Federation’s life out here more of a living hell than before.”

The blackness of space stared back at Samara as she gazed into the stars outside the window. “You doing it would be the bidding of The Gun. It keeps you relevant and avoids being made a key Starfleet ally. How will you keep the device away from him—assuming you can get it from Osho Gac in the first place?” She saw various paths and choices before them, all covered in grey sticky mud – ugly on ugly.

He tapped at the console absentmindedly, the constructed plan coming together, “We don’t have to keep the device from him. We just have to show him the truth of what it does.” He tapped in coordinates, and the shuttle shuddered into warp, “What if we bring him to Osho Gac – in some kind of bidding war?” The Cardassian picked up a spare PADD as he typed out his idea, “The Syndicate loves money and making more of it – it helps fund their operations. If we can apply the right pressure…we might be able to get her trapped into putting the thing up for bid.”

Her eyes uncharacteristically widened, “You want to set up an auction for the highest bidder for a Borg assimilation chamber that is unstable and liable to give us Borg problems where we didn’t have them before?”

Hasara admitted, “When you put it that way, it might sound a little…,”

She narrowed her eyes, “Crazy? Out of control? Ludicrous? Like a death trap?”

Hasara chuckled, “You didn’t mention that it takes us from a bad position to a worse position.”

“It was more or less implied.” The two fell into silence as the shuttle raced forward. Samara calculated other moves in her head. The time it would take to put something together with her resources wasn’t feasible. There wasn’t enough time. A long sigh escaped her lips. “I don’t have a better option. I don’t say this often, so treasure it in your little Cardassian heart while it lasts. What do you need for this to work?”

“I will take great pleasure in that you will not like most of it.”

“That is more or less implied.”