Returning to the nightclub Redoubt was like diving into an ocean of heaving bodies, light roiling into shadow, and thudding bass. After the last few days, Aryn had less appetite for this feast for the senses than he’d had on their first visit, and kept himself in the middle of the cluster of the Rooks and Q’ira, grip tight on his case holding the Kairos Regulator. With Blackbird not due at Kalviris Prime for several hours, they’d weighed up their next step once the Dust landed before Tiran pressed that they stick together.

That only extended as far as getting inside the building. ‘Wait here!’ Cassidy called as the six of them reached the bar beside the dance floor. ‘I’ll go up and explain to Torrad-Var what’s happened. See if he can set us up a place to lie low for a few hours.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ said Tiran. ‘Like you said – he likes me.’ She turned to Aryn and extended a hand. ‘I’ll take the package. This isn’t a secure place.’

Aryn hesitated, eyes sweeping around the pulsing crowd. For every bouncer or guard keeping security was some mercenary or bruiser blowing off steam in the dance club. While an open firefight would likely be suppressed, this was the kind of establishment where a little trouble was to be expected.

Rosewood leaned in. ‘Last thing we need is to trip at this hurdle.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Aryn, and handed the case over to Tiran. He turned to Q’ira, the already cacophonous noise of the nightclub somehow more smothering. Perhaps, if he opened his mouth to speak, something might happen. It did not.

She gave him a small smile, the like of which he wanted to believe he’d not seen her throw around while manipulating everyone on Ilior. ‘Keep on educating, Professor. I’ll see you around.’

‘I doubt it,’ Aryn blurted. ‘There’s no reason for us to come back here.’

‘There isn’t. It’s just what you say,’ Q’ira agreed. She stepped in and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek, and then she was gone, joining Cassidy and Tiran as they headed for the stairway to Torrad-Var’s office.

‘Oooh,’ cooed Nallera, cupping a hand around her mouth as the three remaining Rooks turned to the bar. ‘Aryn’s found a hot Orion.’

‘We’ll never see her again,’ Rosewood said, sharp and dismissive as he leaned against the bar. ‘She’d say anything to keep herself amused.’

Aryn looked at him, taking in the tension in his jaw, the complete absence of the aura of sarcasm that had been wrapped around John Rosewood since he’d met him. But it was not merely concern for his colleague’s state of mind that stopped him from disagreeing. ‘He’s right,’ Aryn sighed. ‘I don’t think she’s the pretty fool she pretended to be. I do think she liked toying with people. Like you say, John. I’m an easy mark.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Rosewood, gesturing towards the bartender for a drink. ‘We all are. Can’t see a lie when it’s staring us in the face. Not if we don’t want to see it.’

‘You did good, Q’ira. You always do.’ Torrad-Var gave a level nod as he looked across at her, Cassidy, and Tiran. The low hum of music from the main nightclub thrummed through the floor, a steady pulse beneath the private office. Through the open wall overlooking the dance floor, shielded by the invisible forcefield, the shimmering nightclub lights kaleidoscoped through this sanctum, casting shadows and colour across the wall.

Q’ira smiled, leaning back in the seat beside him she’d taken the moment they arrived. ‘It’s good to be back.’ She nodded towards the Rooks. ‘You were right to help them. They did well. The job’s done.’

Cassidy leaned forward at that, jaw tight. ‘Can’t pretend I knew Aestri was a Changeling,’ he admitted. ‘Looks like she had everyone fooled.’ There were horrific implications for this development. One advantage he could see, however, was the doubt this could sow among members of the Orion Syndicate. If Torrad-Var wanted to protect the organisation, it would need purging. That suited Cassidy just fine.

‘She was always a wildcard,’ Torrad-Var sighed. ‘But this is something else. Didn’t see that coming.’

‘This one won’t be a problem. We killed it on Ilior. But there’s no telling what it did. What its plans were. How many of them there are.’

Torrad-Var’s eyes hardened. ‘I bet you’re offering to help clean house.’

It was a worthwhile reminder the Orion was neither foolish nor naïve. Cassidy gave a humourless smile. ‘Last thing you need is to throw your lot in with us more,’ he accepted. ‘But you know we can do business.’

‘You’re right,’ said Torrad-Var. ‘That is the last thing I need.’ He turned to Tiran, then looked at the case beside her. ‘Hear you spent a pretty penny on that. That’s a hell of a tarnishing of your fancy Starfleet morals. Stars know what Nank’s going to do with that sort of additional funding. I hear he likes to placate Breen slavers.’

‘And I heard he’ll throw his weight behind his favourite Klingon House to destabilise the Empire any day now,’ drawled Tiran before Cassidy could summon a retort. ‘Or even to cherry-pick his favourite for the next Pirate Queen. Amazing, the reputation that little rat has.’

Torrad-Var laughed as his effort to get under Starfleet skin was deflected, and looked up to one of the three security guards by the door. ‘Go find T’Mell. Tell him to get my friends here an office upstairs while they wait for pickup. Somewhere quiet and secure.’

He looked back at Tiran as the one guard left and stood, dusting off his hands. ‘You never did play your boss’s bullshit games, Tiran. I was wondering if you’d gone off me when you didn’t come along last time.’

The Rooks stood, too, and Cassidy was shaking his head wryly as he looked at Tiran. Her expression was oddly humourless. He stopped short.

‘I had my reasons,’ said Tiran.

When her hand flashed out, he reacted on instinct, squaring up like she’d identified a threat – and the closest possible enemy was Torrad-Var. But when he rounded on the burly Orion, he found he hadn’t moved.

Then the nightmare began again.

For a moment, he thought Tiran had drawn a knife, even though they’d been patted down and stripped of weapons before coming in. It was still more logical than the reality; her hand hadn’t drawn a knife, but had become one. In an instant, her arm shimmered into a long blade that slashed across Torrad-Var’s throat, spraying blood across the chairs and floor.

‘What the hell –’

As he reeled, Tiran turned. Except it wasn’t Tiran any more, the body warping and shifting as Aestri’s had, transforming into rippling crimson liquid. The two security guards shouted and lunged forward, but in an instant she was reaching out, a solid, sharp spear erupting from her and at them.

‘Torrad!’ Q’ira was shrieking, leaping to the fallen body of the Orion. That was enough to rattle the chains of horrified confusion that had settled around Cassidy, and he leapt forward. Not at the Changeling-that-had-been-Tiran, but the case beside it holding the Kairos Regulator.

Taking a split-second to kill the guards slowed its reaction a micron. A shimmering, crimson limb lashed out, crashing into both him and the case. He was knocked down beside the corpses of the slain security guards while the case skidded away, across the floor and towards the bar on the far side of the office, out of his reach.

The Changeling – another Changeling – rounded on him just as there was a hammering at the door, more of Torrad-Var’s armed guards rushing in response to the shouts. And in an instant, the towering monster was gone. Cassidy thought he caught a glimpse of something small, sleek, liquid-like darting towards the ventilation shaft, but then four more of Torrad-Var’s men were in the office, stood over the corpses of their colleagues and leader.

Cassidy had met T’Mell before, the half-Vulcan who’d served as Torrad-Var’s right-hand man for years and now looked frozen in place at the sight of butchery before them.

‘You…’

Q’ira was bent over Torrad-Var’s corpse, and her head lifted, panicked and horrified. ‘T’Mell – no, no, it wasn’t Starfleet -’

None of it would perfectly add up. One of them was missing. They’d come in without weapons. But Q’ira was knelt over Torrad-Var’s corpse, a broken, blood-soaked bottle beside her. Cassidy, picking himself up, was likewise stained with the blood of the guards the Changeling had slain. It didn’t need to add up perfectly for T’Mell to draw his disruptor.

‘I hope,’ T’Mell snarled, loathing in his voice as he stared down Q’ira, ‘what they paid you was worth it.’

Cassidy had hoped he could avoid a fight. Experience, however, was why he’d picked up both disruptors from the two slain guards. Experience was why he acted first, spraying blasts at the door in a wild enough spray to make T’Mell and the others dive to one side.

‘No!’ shrieked Q’ira.

‘Move!’ Cassidy yelled instead, diving towards her and shooting at a panel on the wall that could offer them their only chance of getting out of the office alive.

It wasn’t a good chance.

‘Women, you know?’ Nallera sighed, slinging back a shot. ‘You don’t need ‘em, Mac.’

‘She’s right,’ groaned Rosewood. ‘Nothing but trouble.’

Aryn ground his teeth, turning away from the drinks and bar and towards the main dance floor. ‘Like you said.’ His voice was low, flat, irritated after the last ten minutes of inconsolable whining from his colleagues. ‘I’m never going to see her again.’

Then Q’ira and Cassidy came flying through the open front of Torrad-Var’s office, soaring through the air to crash into the none-too-soft landing of the dance floor. And a second later, hell broke loose as the guards arrived.

As one, the three Rooks rushed forwards, shoving people out of the way to join their team leader. That served double-duty of getting them out of the immediate line of sight of Torrad-Var’s security, who’d rounded on them within seconds, but now the air was full of screaming and confusion enough to cloud any line of sight.

Cassidy was on his feet already, hauling up Q’ira beside him. Aryn had never seen him so pale, and didn’t think it was a trick of the nightclub lighting. ‘We gotta go!’ he roared. ‘Now!’

Nallera looked around wildly. ‘Where’s Tiran?’

‘Where’s the Regulator?’ demanded Aryn.

‘Go!’ yelled Cassidy, and turned to let off several shots with his disruptor pistols through the crowd and towards the oncoming guards of Torrad-Var.

Aryn had been right in his assessment of the dangers of Redoubt, because while the guards were serious and armed, they were not the only ones. The customers at this nightclub were not the sort to take this kind of threat to their security lightly – but it was also impossible, with rushing guards and blazing disruptor fire and a small knot of five determined targets, to know exactly where the threat was coming from. Cassidy must have known that, his shooting more indiscriminate than Aryn had grown to expect.

Moments ago, the dance floor had been a swell of emotions, heaving bodies, passion and release. Now it was a surging riot of panic and blood.

It was the perfect cover for escape. Almost. There was more shooting as they ran. More bodies, Torrad-Var’s people and bystanders in their way, in the guards’ way. Redoubt was huge, which meant more chaos. It also meant multiple exits, and Aryn could only mindlessly follow in the confounded flight, his phaser in hand, shooting anyone who so much as looked at them like a threat.

When they burst out back into the streets of Kalviris, it was not through the main entrance. It also didn’t stop them from running, Cassidy’s feet pounding on the walkway and leading them down one street, then across for one turn, then another, and another. They were down a narrow alleyway three blocks from Redoubt before he let them stop.

When he let go of Q’ira, she fell to her knees beside him, shaking and sobbing as Cassidy slumped against the wall, head in his hands. Nallera hunkered by the shadow of the mouth of the alleyway, checking behind them.

It was Rosewood who spoke first, breathlessly rounding on Cassidy. ‘That little weasel Torrad-Var backstabbed us -’

‘No,’ sobbed Q’ira. ‘No, he didn’t, it wasn’t him…’

‘Then what the hell happened?’ Rosewood thundered, eyes still on Cassidy. ‘Where’s Tiran? Where’s the Regulator? What did you do?’ Panic and confusion had him taking a step forward, firing questions like they were in an interrogation room.

Cassidy burst forward, grabbing Rosewood by the jacket. ‘Tiran was a fucking Changeling, too!’ he snarled. ‘Torrad-Var’s dead! The Regulator’s still in there! What did I do? Stop us all from getting fucking killed!’

Of course, thought Aryn as Cassidy shoved Rosewood away, all of the Rooks falling into a horrified silence broken by the sobbing of Q’ira, the distant shouting from the Redoubt, and the hum of the sleepless city of Kalviris. He could feel a fine mist beginning to drizzle down from the starless, night-clad sky. Of course it’s started raining.