"Won't Budrin be suspicious?" Chekov asked, checking over his shoulder for pursuers.

Khwaja shook his head, but didn't let up on a pace that was already uncomfortably brisk for Chekov's shorter legs. "No. He knew I was leaving tomorrow morning. We'd finished our business. If I choose to go now he probably won't even notice." The pirate stopped and adopted a thoughtful pose. "We could stay the night if you really want to. That bed in my suite is *very* comfortable."

"We go now."

Khwaja laughed. "Anxious to get back to your friends? Fair enough."

It was Chekov's turn to stop. "We're going back to the Nell?"

"Where else?"

"But I thought that Mister Scott and the others would be..."

"What?"

"I thought they would be pursuing whoever stole Budrin's treasure, and the treasure of the other four Orion houses, but..."

"But?"

Realising that he wasn't going to learn anything by laying out his own ignorance for Khwaja's amused inspection, Chekov shook his head.

Khwaja led the way through Budrin's rambling palace to a gravelled area outside the main entrance, where a variety of space craft, some plainly recreational, others fighters or small transport units, sat under a baking, blue-tinged sun.

It took Chekov a moment to recognise Sulu's ship among the alien shapes and configurations. Although it was a familiar Federation design, the ensign hadn't, until now, seen a plain exterior visual. It was a neat, unassuming vessel, and bore the name 'Sei Shonagon', along with a couple of burns across the starboard nacelle.

"Who were you fighting?" Chekov demanded, as Khwaja entered the lock code.

"That's old damage. When I start a fight, it's the other guy who gets burned."

"Where did you get the code from? How could you steal this ship? Sulu said..."

The door slid compliantly open and Khwaja laughed. "I'm sorry if I misled you. I know I told you I didn't know Lieutenant Sulu, but the moment I started to investigate the possibility of borrowing this ship, and realised what her name was, I had no difficulty working out the codes."

The pirate swung ahead of Chekov into the cockpit. He reached under the pilot's chair for a first aid kit and threw Chekov a one-shot hypospray. "There. If that sobers you up, you can copilot."

"How did you work out the codes? What do you mean?" With instant sobriety came the usual headache, but the kit Khwaja had left open on the deck appeared to have contained nothing but the hypo. All its many little compartments were empty.

"Well, it hadn't occurred to me that your 'let-me-kiss-your-ass-sir' Mister Sulu was the same Mister Sulu who's so well known to Starfleet Intelligence. For some reason, I'd always imagined someone a little more... feisty. Like yourself."

"Commodore Keane," Chekov said, although not really sure what the connection was. He covered his irritation by commencing a check of the navigation controls.

"Exactly," Khwaja said unhelpfully. Then the pirate stopped the pre-launch routine and looked at Chekov in some puzzlement. "I'm surprised he'd tell you about it."

"He didn't," Chekov said.

For a moment, the two men stared at each other, then Khwaja decided to continue being the one in control. "I don't hold it against him. Tell me, is he the kind of man who pays his gambling debts?"

Chekov frowned as the conversation slipped out of his grasp again. "He doesn't gamble."

Khwaja looked quickly down at the console, as if trying to conceal a knowing smirk.

"I was not aware that he gambles," Chekov corrected himself pedantically.

"That, kitten, will be because he doesn't bet *with* you, he bets *on* you."

"Navigation, environmental controls and communication systems are ready."

"Then if you check the passengers are all strapped in..." Khwaja laughed as Chekov failed to stop himself glancing back into the main compartment. "Maybe I should have smuggled a couple of Budrin's girls aboard. But then, why bother? You make such a pretty little flight attendant yourself." Khwaja somehow managed to spare a hand from the controls to pat Chekov's knee as the Shonagon lifted.

"Where is the Nell?" Chekov asked once they had achieved orbit, "and are they expecting us?"

"We're eight hours early," Khwaja said. "But yes, in the sense you mean, we're expected. Did you really think Scotty would leave you to Budrin's tender mercies?" The pirate shook his head sorrowfully. "Shame on you."

Chekov clamped his mouth shut for as long as it took to control his temper. "So where are they?"

"This system has an asteroid belt..."

"Yes. We passed it on the way in."

"Of course. There are six or seven planetoids among the junk, two of them ore quarries. The rest looked quiet enough. The Nell's in the shadow of the largest. It's all in the navcom." Khwaja slid down in his seat and closed his eyes. "Wake me when we get there, kitten."

Chekov set the necessary course, verified that there was still no pursuit and then turned to look at the pirate, who had been snoring loudly, with his mouth wide open, for the past five minutes.

It occurred to the ensign that it would be amusing, and apt, to anaesthetise the sleeper and remove all of his large, white teeth.

"Don't even think about it," Khwaja instructed him.

***

"My head aches just thinking about it," Sulu complained. He reached to pour himself a second cup of tea, hindered by the makeshift sling on his right arm.

"Give him a hand, lad," Scott snapped impatiently at Chekov.

The ensign folded his arms. "I don't care if he dies of thirst."

Brecht, who had taken it upon himself to make tea and toast in an initial effort to defuse the towering tension between his temporary crewmates, pulled the pot towards himself. "Then I'll be mother."

"So if I have understood you correctly..."

"It's very simple, Mister Chekov. If you'll just listen, instead of trying to convince me that I've made up the whole thing..." Scott waited for yet another interruption, a warning glare already on his face. "Right. After we were caught out raiding Budrin's money box, we decided we had to think again."

"What did you have to think about? You had the ability to rescue me immediately."

"Not in a way that didn't involve risk to you, and to whoever carried out the actual rescue. We didn't know where you were being kept, we didn't even know if you were alive."

Chekov frowned. "So you abandoned me..."

"No. We decided the only way of being sure to get you back alive was to start rescuing you before you were captured. We realised we had to use the time travel device."

"But you *told* me that you had insufficient dilithium to power it from the Nell, you *told* me it would not work on the Shonagon..."

"And I wasn't lying to you, Mister. I thought we were stymied. Stuart here, who knows more about Orions than any of us, even if he does only know about the distant descendants of this lot, was pretty convinced that you were as good as dead, and *that* was the impetus we needed to think of way round the problem."

"I don't believe for a moment that..."

"We all have good reason for not wanting you dead, kitten," Khwaja put in from the galley, where he was listening and watching the toast. "We'll get to that later."

Chekov sighed resignedly. "Go on, Mister Scott."

"Thank you," Scott said with leaden irony. "Jessie Alleyn suggested..."

"I was joking. I never expected you to take me seriously for a second." Alleyn took a delivery of freshly made toast from Khwaja and helped herself to the butter.

"Jessie suggested that it was a shame we couldn't go back in time, raid another of the Orion palaces, and get our hands on some dilithium to enable us to go back in time. So we did."

Chekov shook his head, both at what Scott was saying, and the toast Khwaja was offering him. "How can you have expected such a... a..."

"Illogical?" Sulu offered helpfully.

Chekov narrowed his eyes, but otherwise ignored his erstwhile helm partner. "Such a stupid idea. What if it had not worked? If I wasn't already dead, by the time you had tried this..."

"But it did work," Scott said. "It worked a treat. I just decided where I would have hidden some dilithium crystals ready for myself to pick up later, we went and looked, and there they were."

"You are all insane," Chekov said dismissively. "So you had the dilithium and then, instead of using it to rescue me..."

"Our first priority had to be getting the dilithium," Brecht pointed out, topping up Chekov's cup as he spoke. "We couldn't risk not doing that first, in case we lost transporters, or anything else that would stop us doing it at all. And we decided, that since *we'd* obviously been the raiders who beat us to Budrin's pretties first time around, it made sense to get all the raids out of the way before we rescued you. The bigger the time gap between them, the more risk of at least one of the Orions getting wind of trouble and burying his treasure where we couldn't find it. We were worried that getting you back might involve some delay, while we negotiated or whatever. We didn't want to risk making a mistake through pressure of time or anything else, so we put Khwaja here in place, with some of Goudchaux's..."

"Goudchaux. What has happened to him?"

"Oh, it turned out that *we* weren't the raiders who beat us to Budrin's treasury." Sulu took up the narrative now. "Which came as a relief to me, because I'd just about got my head around the idea that we could go back and do anything we wanted to do, but it seemed really crazy that we'd go back and do something we *didn't* want to do..."

"And now, Goudchaux is..?" Chekov broke in.

"In what's left of sickbay, with a broken leg, trying to make the three days' supply of analgesics last as long as possible."

"But he stole the medical supplies!"

"And sold them to a double-crossing Orion s-o-b, who'd have blown him out of the sky if I hadn't happened by just in time to rescue him," Khwaja explained. "But your friends Chen and Moray are fine, kitten. Don't worry."

"I would have been delighted to hear that they are dead," Chekov said.

"Nobody is dead, Mister Chekov," Scott answered briskly. "Esme was burned. We gave her the lion's share of the painkillers, and used all the regenerator substrate from the Shonagon fixing her up. She'll be okay, but we do need to get her back to the twenty-third century just as soon as we can."

"Oh." Chekov repeated his mental review of their position. They had the treasure, they had dilithium. The Nell was working well, everyone was alive.

For some reason, he felt deeply uncomfortable.

"So... what do we do now?"

"We go home," Scott told him, with a smile as broad as it was false. "Right, everyone?"

Khwaja was shaking his head. "No, Mister Scott. I don't think so."

"Why ever not? Orion history is back on course."

"Apart from the fifth shard," Khwaja said. He glanced at Chekov and winked. "After the lengths some of us have gone to in order to see the other four pieces in the proper hands..."

"I don't know about that," Scott snapped back. He started stacking plates and saucers. "I hear whoring comes naturally to some people around here."

Alleyn and Brecht started pushing their chairs back and brushing toast crumbs off their fingers.

"He didn't mean you," Khwaja said quietly beside Chekov's ear as the tea party continued to break up.

The ensign raised his gaze from the table to challenge the pirate. "Then who did he..."

Khwaja nodded at Sulu. Chekov looked blankly between the two of them. The helmsman shrugged.

"Who do you think made sure the other three fragments were safely delivered? The tooth fairy?"

"I'll be on the bridge if anyone wants me," Sulu said, moving away towards the door.

"Not only a whore, but an uncomplicated one," Khwaja continued softly and approvingly. "Once he understands it's all for Starfleet, he'll sleep with anything. He didn't think you would, but he was wrong, wasn't he?"

"I did not..."

"What was it you said to me, kitten? 'I will do whatever you want me to do. I promise.'?"

Chekov ground his teeth. "You bastard."

Khwaja smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, kitten. I don't think you're a cheap whore. I think you're the kind of man who keeps his promises. What is it you're going to write on that wretched device? 'If you are, as you say, a man of honour...'

A crashing of porcelain hitting steel decking rang from the galley. Khwaja sighed and rose to go over to the doorway. "Not like you to be so clumsy, Scotty."

"That'll be 'Mister Scott' to you, Khwaja."

"Come in here and sit down. We need to talk. And bring that bottle of Scotch you have stowed out there."

Scott emerged with three glasses and the half empty bottle. He banged them down on the table. "Talk about what? You're outnumbered and we're going home. We'll stop off on the way at Wrigleys, or one of the non-approved Bases. 20 years early. Sell the fifth piece to a fence. What's the problem?"

"You know what the problem is."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Khwaja swore under his breath. "Pour the whisky, Ensign. No more than two fingers each."

"You can pour..."

"Pour it!" both men yelled. Chekov blinked, swore and unscrewed the cap of the bottle, pouring his own measure first, and taking a seat at the table.

"Why d'ye want him here, anyhow?" Scott was grumbling. "He's more trouble than..."

Khwaja pushed the second glass in the engineer's direction. "Drink up and listen. You know better than I do the dangers of *not* doing what you should. No one knows the mechanism, no one is sure of the theory, but we both know Starfleet would sooner kill and eat its own young than mess up the time line."

Scott turned the glass between the tips of his fingers. "And just what do you know about it?" he demanded, in the low, mild voice that Chekov knew meant trouble, at least for cack-handed ensigns.

"Chekov..." Khwaja said. He reached out and slapped the navigator across the face, making him spill most of his Scotch. "You damn well didn't tell him, didn't you?"

"Didn't... tell him... what?" Chekov stuttered.

"If I'd wanted it kept quiet, would I have told you? I think not, brains. Next time, remember you're just canon fodder, shtoopid. No one is relying on you to keep your mouth shut. Quite the opposite. Oh," Khwaja sighed. "I thought I could at least rely on you to run and blab to the nearest father figure at *some* point in this poor excuse for a Starfleet Intelligence mission."

"I was supposed to tell him you were a Starfleet Intelligence Agent?" Chekov asked tightly.

"Yes. Of course."

"But I didn't believe you. And if I did believe you, then you had ordered me not to tell anyone, so..."

"Logic, logic everywhere, and not a drop of common sense," Khwaja said wearily. "You are going to be in *so* much trouble when we get home, I'm almost sorry I won't be there to see it."

Chekov blinked back the rather liquid anger that threatened to fill his eyes. "We are not 'going home', are we?"

"What makes you say that?"

"The time travel device does not go back to our time, at least not directly, so obviously, we do not go back there either. And this ship is attacked, and probably destroyed. I have yet to send the message that Sulu and I picked up when we retrieved the capsule. The bridge was clearly badly damaged at that point."

"Scotty, is there a Type 41-B00042 shielded capsule aboard this ship?"

Scott stopped frowning into his whisky. "There must be. Unless it's aboard Sulu's ship. I hav'nae looked yet."

"It's certainly not on the Shonagon. I haven't seen one anywhere on the Nell, and I've looked everywhere I can think of. And you know what that means."

Scott shrugged. "No. Sure, that's what the treasure was stored in when we found it, but since we lost the capsule along with the treasure..."

"We can't change the timeline, Scotty."

"Well, why not? Hm? What difference does it make if we wrap the damn treasure up in brown paper and put it out there to wait for us to come along and pick it up, hm?"

"ULAPG42821DB," Khwaja intoned, meaninglessly as far as Chekov was concerned. "Or perhaps I should mention Captain John Christopher, or maybe, the guardian at..."

"Enough!" Scotty said sharply. "I take your point, Khwaja, but you're wasting your time. That capsule was an experimental model. There were only a dozen made, under the tightest security, and I know that nine of them were destroyed in trials."

"And the rest?" Khwaja persisted.

"I doubt they were sold on to the second hand market, if that's what you're thinking. They'd have been broken up, probably. Standard procedure. Experimental Starfleet technology, even if it doesn't work, is controlled so tightly..."

"So tightly, it took four of the best criminal minds on Earth to get hold of one, I bet," Khwaja said.

Scotty paled perceptibly. He took a mouthful of his whisky. "I don't know what you're talking about..."

"How much did they pay you for it, Montgomery? Or was the deal in kind? I guess that would be more use to you and your little gang, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know..."

"Don't lie to me, Scott. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You obtained one of those capsules, and sold it, for drugs probably. Drugs are easy to exchange for fake ID, fake credit chips, passage on ships that operate out of ports where no one asks too many questions.

Chekov's eyes were now getting so wide that they were beginning to sting. "I know that Mister Scott was involved in criminal activity as a juvenile, but I do not believe..."

Khwaja waved to him to be quiet. "That's what we're talking about. Criminal activity as a juvenile. Very nicely put, kitten. You'd be surprised just how much criminal activity a bunch of juveniles can get up to, when they're as resourceful as your friend here. The research unit that developed the Type 41 was based in Aberdeen, I believe. Where Montgomery Scott vanished, age fourteen, along with three friends that the local child protection agency had been keeping a rather ineffective eye on. I wonder if they ever made the connection between their faulty monitoring tags and young Montgomery's talent for fixing flitters and communicators?"

"No." Scott was shaking his head. "Not that."

"The question is, who set up the deal with you," Khwaja wondered aloud.

"I'm not..." Scott sighed at the phaser which was suddenly in Khwaja's hands. "You don't need that. I can see I'm going to have to help you."