The glow of magenta and cyan neon lights fell across Ethan’s face as he pushed back his Stetson. The faded outline of the “Club 80” logo greeted him and Trinity as the exterior doors slid closed behind them. Etched into the deck plating decades ago, it had been nearly worn away by countless feet, its grooves stained black with grime.

Theran, the bar’s current owner, certainly wasn’t going to replace it. The cheap Bolian wouldn’t even pay to replace the replicator at the back of the bar. It was older than his stepmom and gave everything it produced that unmistakable replicator flavor. It usually looked like the real thing, but never quite tasted like it.

The air was heavy with stale beer and soured cocktails spilled over decades. Modern music, with its screaming vocals, jarring chords, and pounding drums, blared from the speakers as the bite of Tychon tobacco hung in the air like a foul-smelling cloud.

The place was packed, as it often was on a Friday night. He had spent far too much time in bars just like this one, cultivating contacts within the criminal underworld. His hand brushed the butt of his phaser before reaching up to rub the stubble growing along his jaw.

His gaze settled on a Rigelian freighter captain sitting at one of those impossibly small round tables every bar seemed to have, the kind that looked like a stiff breeze could topple them. He nursed a drink while a Trill woman in business attire hung from his arm. Ethan wasn’t sure who the mark was in this case. He smirked. If he had to guess, it was the Rigelian. He’d dealt with far too many Trill executives from the mining consortiums over the years. They could be every bit as ruthless as the Orion Syndicate.

“Liv said to meet her here?” Trinity asked, shouting over the noise.

Ethan leaned in close. “Yeah.”

“This place is disgusting.”

“It’s Starbase 80. What did you expect? A surgical suite?”

Trinity laughed, shaking her head. “No. You’re right, Cowboy.” She scanned the room, then indicated across the bar with a nod of her chin.

Following her gaze, Ethan spotted a booth along the far wall near the restrooms. An ancient beer sign cast a yellow-and-blue glow over its occupant, highlighting her like some holy relic in the Vatican. She sat alone in a booth wearing an oversized dark hoodie, her hood pulled low over red hair, and large sunglasses shaped like bug eyes.

Ethan chuckled to himself. Or one of those caves from an Indiana Jones holonovel he used to run aboard the Denver as a teen.  With a shrug and a shake of his head, he threaded his fingers with Trinity, and they started across the room.

The floor in front of the bar was open, creating a place for people to mingle and dance. The booths and tables were set on a raised platform covered in threadbare, stained-black carpet. The dance floor led to an empty stage where shadows fell over a drum kit and a row of black microphone stands.

Drunken patrons swayed with Orion women in slinky black dresses, drinks held high while they pressed closer to their partners. Not everyone preferred the girls. A pair of freighter captains and a man Ethan would have pegged as a pirate, judging by the collection of Alpha Quadrant insignias pinned to his jacket, laughed with the house’s male dancers.

Ethan and Trinity stepped up onto the platform and wove through the tables. Most sat empty. At several occupied tables, conversations abruptly died as they passed, their occupants tracking the pair over the rims of their drinks with narrowed eyes, exchanging uneasy glances with their fellows. Those of the male persuasion let their gaze linger on Trinity a little longer than was normally considered socially acceptable.

At the table by the restrooms, Ethan and Trinity slid into the booth on either side of the occupant without invitation or introduction. She jumped and looked up from her half-drunk piña colada, a frilly paper umbrella hanging from the rim of the glass. Two more identical glasses sat pushed aside, their sweet white dregs lining the bottom.

She scanned their faces behind those ridiculous-looking sunglasses and relaxed. With a sigh, she took a long pull through the bright pink straw before removing the glasses.

“Those any good, Liv?” Ethan teased. “They must be. You drank enough.”

She shook her head. “Not really, but I couldn’t just sit here. You’re late.”

Ethan leaned back in the booth. The ancient vinyl groaned beneath his weight as he placed his cowboy hat crown-down on the table. “Yeah, well. A little birdie told us about a tachyon net meant to ensnare the ship. Took some time to sneak around it and not let our friends detect us.”

“That was some great intel,” Trinity added. “You saved us.”

A waitress appeared as if summoned from the aether, a palm-sized PADD in her blue-skinned hand. The ridge running down the center of her head deepened in the shadows cast by the dim lighting. Those ice-blue eyes darted between them, which to her must have looked like the setup to a bar joke.

A cowboy, a spy, and a fugitive walk into a bar…

“What can I get for you two?”

Ethan and Trinity both shook their heads. He flashed her his best disarming smile. “I’m good, but thank you. We won’t be long.”

She shrugged. “Another piña colada, dear?”

Livvy glanced down at the glass, tapping a fingernail against the bowl as she considered it. Then she shook her head. “I think this is enough.”

The waitress glanced down at her PADD, entered a few commands, and set it on the table. “No rush. Whenever you’re ready. Hope to see you again.”

With that, she disappeared into the bar to wait on other tables.

Ethan watched her go, wondering what it was like to have a job like hers. The stakes were low, and when you clocked out and washed the tobacco smoke from your hair, work didn’t follow you home.

Intelligence work wasn’t like that. At least while in the field and working undercover. The role didn’t stop at the end of the day. It consumed every waking moment and followed him into his dreams. It had to. One slip could mean mission failure… or death.

Even in ranching, you never truly leave work. A midnight breech birth could have you elbow-deep inside a cow, moving a slippery calf into position. Or a freak spring blizzard could have you out on horseback all day hauling hay or getting mamas and newborn calves to shelter.

Even when everything was going as planned, the ranch came home with you. Beef prices. Hay prices. Corn prices. How were you going to pay your hands this month if the former didn’t go up or the latter didn’t go down?

“Where’s Mom?” Livvy asked as she took a sip of her cocktail.

Ethan blinked, pulled from his own thoughts. Shrugging, he scanned the bar before answering. Nothing that directly concerned him at the moment. He was pretty sure he had just witnessed a drug deal between a Ferengi and a Nausicaan.

“Working on modifying the deflector for the crossing.”

“Sounds like Mom. But Starfleet is hunting us. I guess there’s not a lot of time for socializing.”

“Not you,” Trinity corrected. “You’re not wanted. Do you think Aoife would rat you out after telling you her plan?”

“No…” Livvy lifted her shoulder, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

Trinity leaned over and picked up Livvy’s sunglasses, amusement dancing across her face. She turned them over in her fingers and even slid them on for a second before pulling them off and holding them up like an accusation. “What is this?”

Livvy’s eyes widened. “A disguise?”

“You look ridiculous,” Ethan teased.

She snatched the glasses from Trinity’s hand and stuffed them into her hoodie. “What was I supposed to do? Just walk in here without a disguise?”

“It would have been better than this,” Ethan muttered.

“You don’t hide your identity by drawing attention to yourself,” Trinity said.

“You give them something to focus on that isn’t identifiable,” Ethan added.

“Such as?” Livvy demanded, crossing her arms and scowling at them. “Didn’t mine do the same thing?”

“Yes, but in the wrong way,” Trinity said. “That draws the attention of the wrong sorts of people. In your case, the authorities.”

“And this bar for a meeting place?” Ethan asked, gesturing around them.

Livvy shook her head, clenched her fists, and huffed. “What the hell is wrong with this place? It’s out of sight of station personnel.”

“This is a non-criminal’s idea of a criminal meeting place,” Ethan teased, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and giving her a playful shake. “You and Trinity smell like Feds. Ow!”

Ethan jumped as a boot heel dug into his foot, accompanied by a scowl from his wife. He drew his feet beneath him and, with his uninjured right foot, massaged the instep of his left.

“And what does a ‘Fed’ smell like?” Trinity asked coldly.

Ethan held up both hands in surrender as a chill of warning crawled up the back of his neck, setting the hairs on end.

“Just that you two… You two aren’t field operatives.”

Trinity exchanged a glance with Livvy, and she nodded.

“Yeah, I see your point. You get to play action hero while I stay back as the analyst.”

Ethan shot her a sideways grin, pointed at her with a finger gun, and winked. “I couldn’t do it without you.”

“You’re damned right.”

“Still, the replimat would have—”

He let the sentence trail off, his hand falling to the phaser at his belt. An internal curse died on his lips as his eyes locked onto the entrance. Three Starfleet officers stood in the doorway. One wore command red. The other two wore operations gold. They glanced around the bar and exchanged silent words.

One of the officers in gold, a man with slicked-back black hair, bushy eyebrows, and olive skin, pointed across the bar, and the others nodded. As they crossed the dance floor, they paid little attention to anything around them, joking and laughing with each other.

“Don’t stare, and act natural,” Ethan hissed. He reached for one of Livvy’s empty glasses, claiming it as his own. He leaned over it and laughed at nothing in particular, grinning widely.

Tracking them with his peripheral vision, he watched the officers cross the dance floor. They selected a table near the stage, pulled out the filthy, marred wooden chairs, and sat. The same waitress approached them, took their orders, and disappeared into the crowd.

Ethan let out a breath.

“We need to get out of here before they spot us,” Livvy muttered, her eyes wide.

“No,” Ethan said. “Stay put. Act like they’re just any other patrons.”

“Right now, they aren’t looking for us. If we get up and leave the minute they walk in the door, they’ll notice us.” Trinity added. “Let ‘em get settled and then we can walk out.”

“Why am I the field operative?” Ethan teased.

Trinity flashed him a smile, stole Livvy’s piña colada, and took a sip. “Because, Cowboy, I’m the one taking care of the kids and the ranch.”

Ethan shifted uncomfortably. “You have David running the ranch and Mrs. Ackers helping with the kids.”

“That’s the only thing keeping the nightshade out of your coffee.”

Ethan swallowed.

“These really aren’t very good,” Trinity said with a frown. She shoved the cocktail back in Livvy’s direction and folded her hands on the table. Ethan caught her eyes, darting to the Starfleet officers before returning to neutral.

“Yeah,” Livvy replied flatly. “But when in Rome, you know.”

“I do,” Trinity said with a nod.

Livvy stared down at the drink and stirred it absently with her straw. After a moment, her eyes lifted to Ethan, then shifted to Trinity.

“Did you two have something to do with me ending up on the Sentinel?”

Ethan laughed and shifted in his seat before ruffling her hair. “Of course. I didn’t expect Aoife to hand you the entire plan. I expected—”

“We expected partial and incomplete intel filtered through Aimee,” Trinity interrupted. “Every bit of data from the ships pursuing us could be helpful.”

“And Aoife replacing Órlaith?”

“Yeah…” Ethan drew out the word in a low rumble. “That was my idea. Contacted Trin’s mom for help with that.”

“Aimee and I suspected it was you two.”

Trinity shrugged. “Órlaith was getting replaced no matter what. She’s been on thin ice since the Crazy Horse incident, and getting pulled into her home reality was all the excuse the admiralty needed. It was better if we kept it in the Denver family.”

“Nepotism at its finest,” Livvy muttered, taking a final sip through her straw with a loud slurp.

Trinity spread her hands, shaking her head.

“Oh, Pete’s commanding the Denver now,” Ethan added. “We didn’t get a chance to meet him on Montana Station, but we saw the old girl.”

“Well, Nebulas are the modern equivalent of a Miranda-class,” Livvy said, pushing her empty glass away. “The Denver will probably be around for another fifty years.”

A buzz came from Ethan’s duster, and all eyes snapped to him. He automatically scanned his surroundings for anyone within earshot before reaching inside and digging through the folds of fabric.

Removing the strange Klingon communicator, he stared dumbly at the foreign-looking device until his thumb found the activation button. “Talon here.”

“Commander, sensors are detecting the Sentinel and the Valhalla approaching the system,” the Che’Ta’s communications officer reported.

“Understood. Stand by, Che’Ta.”

Ethan sighed. The jig was up.

They had avoided the detection net and made it to Starbase 80 without incident. It had only been a matter of time before Aoife realized they had slipped past her net and moved to intercept them near the rift. He had just hoped there would be more time. His mom and Kora’q were still trying to modify the ancient bird-of-prey’s deflector to attune the rift to the proper quantum signature of Órlaith’s home reality.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath as he slid out of the booth and stood. “Time to go, ladies.”

Ethan reached into his front jeans’ pocket and pulled out a handful of latinum. After digging through several strips in search of some slips, he sighed and tossed a strip onto the table. It landed with a metallic clatter, catching the bar’s lights with a glint of gold.

He frowned and shook his head, his eyes lingering on the payment. He was overpaying for Livvy’s drinks many times over, but there was no time to wait for change. Not that it mattered. He had plenty of latinum. Living in the Federation, he probably had more than he could spend in a lifetime.

Livvy gathered up her duffel and adjusted it on her shoulder as she pulled the hood farther over her head. Digging around in the hoodie pocket, she pulled out her bug-eye glasses.

“Where’s the beam-out site?”

“Here.”

“Here?” Livvy’s eyes widened. “You’ll set off every alarm on the station. The Starfleet—”

Her gaze shifted to the three officers who had entered earlier. They were locked in deep conversation, beers in hand, their uniform jackets hanging open.

“The time for hiding is over,” Trinity assured her. “Now we make like a deer from the lion.”

Livvy swallowed. “Deer?”

Ethan chuckled. “I know this is the first time you’ve been on the run. I’d like to say you get used to it, but you don’t.”

“Not sure I want to get used to it.”

“Let’s hope you don’t,” Ethan said. He grabbed his hat from the table and settled it onto his head, the wide brim casting his face in shadow. Pressing the call button on the communicator, he spoke, “Lo’mek, jol yIchu’!”