Juanita was watching the planet grow in size on the display over the table when the door to the rec room slid open. The ship was descending through the atmosphere, like a plane coming in for a landing, and she could see ponds, rivers, and dense green forests now. The sky had a greenish tint rather than a blue one, but the fluffy white clouds they sailed through seemed like the ones back home. She’d eaten her meal while watching their descent, and it was with reluctance that she tore her gaze from it to check on their visitor.

Captain Sagitta walked in by himself, and Juanita straightened.

“Captain.” She waved and strode toward him. “I’m so glad you’re here. I need to talk to you about—” she glanced at all the women looking in their direction, “—things.”

Yes, she wanted to discuss Orion and the incident with the captain, but she didn’t want to do it in front of everyone. She hadn’t even told Angela and Tala about the kiss yet.

Sagitta looked at her, his expression grave. “I understand, and I will return to speak with you, but at this moment, the needs of the ship must be my priority. I came because I need the assistance of your doctor.” He nodded toward Tala sitting on the bench, her empty plate beside her. She hadn’t had any qualms about eating the meal. Angela on the other hand, had only poked at hers.

Juanita could understand since she’d not found it that palatable herself. The meat hadn’t been awful—it had reminded her of mutton—but salt had been the only seasoning. These people needed a chef badly.

“Me?” Tala stared at the captain.

“We’re going to question a prisoner using a truth drug that sometimes invokes seizures,” Sagitta said. “It’s unlikely he’ll die, but I would like to have a doctor on hand in case there are complications. We… lost our own doctor on a mission last month, and Headquarters hasn’t assigned us someone new yet.” His face was usually cool and hard to read, but he winced as he spoke of the loss of their doctor. Maybe it had been someone close to him.

“I’m not familiar with your technology, Captain,” Tala said, “and without equipment and drugs I know, I’m skeptical about what I could do in an emergency.”

From Tala’s grimace, Juanita expected her objections had more to do with the idea of witnessing an interrogation than with not having the ability to help. Juanita had seen her sew up a dog that’d had a run-in with a pack of javelinas when a storm had swept in and kept the emergency vet from coming out. She seemed handy in any medical situation, even if her specialty had been hearts.

“Nonetheless, I would appreciate it if you would join us.” Sagitta walked over to the bench and offered his open hand, palm up.

Tala hesitated, but placed her hand on his. He pulled her to her feet, released her, and nodded toward the door.

“Can I come?” Juanita asked.

Even though she’d been enjoying watching their descent, she was dying to see the ship, and if she went along, she might get a private chance to explain things to the captain.

Sagitta started to shake his head, and Juanita blurted, “I’m her assistant at the shelter.”

She hoped the translation of shelter turned out to be as vague as she intended. And she also hoped that Tala wouldn’t gainsay her. Juanita had helped with that poor dog. She’d shaved the fur and cleaned the wound. Maybe the epileptic prisoner would need something shaved.

Sagitta looked to Tala.

“It’s true,” Tala said.

“Very well.”

Angela looked like she didn’t want to be left alone with the “lightly seared” steak lurking on the plate at her side, but she didn’t try to claim to be an assistant. Probably because she was sane and didn’t want to see an interrogation.

Hoping she hadn’t volunteered herself for too unpleasant of a situation, Juanita walked into the corridor with Tala and the captain. She debated ways to bring up the kiss. He took them to a ladder and led the way down, not giving her a chance for conversation.

“No turbolifts?" Juanita asked, following him down two levels.

“What?” Tala asked, her running shoes squeaking on the rungs.

“Never mind.”

Juanita hurried to walk beside Sagitta on the level they came out on. It was identical to the one they had left, with white walls and the occasional oddly angled nooks in the bulkheads. They were large enough for a couple of men to stand in, and she realized they’d probably been built for defending the ship if enemies forced their way on. There were also big heavy doors at intervals in the ceiling that looked like they would be impossible to lift if they were dropped down.

“Captain,” Juanita said, hurrying to speak since they were turning down a dead-end corridor. “What you saw earlier. With me and Orion. That wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t stop him. I didn’t try to. I could have. He would have let me.”

Not slowing his stride, Sagitta frowned at her, and warmth flooded her cheeks. She felt like a teenager trying to speak to a forbidding principal.

“He acted inappropriately,” Sagitta said sternly, exactly like a forbidding principal. “You were kidnapped from your planet. That makes you victims, whether you’re now guests or not.”

“Don’t I get to choose whether I feel like a victim or not?” Juanita asked, but he’d stopped walking and turned toward a cell, one of several along the dead-end corridor.

This reminded her much more of Star Trek than the ladder well had. Blue lights glowed on the wall, apparently the source of a forcefield that stretched across the cell entrance. Sagitta removed a weapon from his belt, a compact handheld device looking the most like a gun of anything she’d seen thus far.

“Back up,” Sagitta told the four men inside.

“Make us,” one snarled. He had a single eye and a mouthful of silver and bronze teeth.

The one beside him grinned, and Juanita’s heart sank. It was the guard who’d tormented her.

“You’re not going in there by yourself, are you, Captain?” came a drawl from one of two Star Guardians turning down the corridor.

One was Treyjon, and Juanita didn’t recognize the other. Had they been close enough behind that they’d heard her conversation with the captain?

Sagitta grunted in response, then hit a flat panel on the wall, and the forcefield buzzed and disappeared. All four slavers sprang toward him at once. Tala and Juanita jumped back, but Sagitta didn’t move other than to fire three times in rapid succession. The air crackled with energy, and three men hit the deck. The metal-toothed one almost made it to the captain, his hands outstretched as if to strangle him.

But Sagitta dodged the attack, then lunged in to slam his palm into the center of the slaver’s chest. He hit him so hard that the man flew backward. Sagitta leaped after him, knocking his legs out from under him with a sweep, then striking again, another blow to the solar plexus. The one-eyed man crumpled to the deck, making weird gasping noises as he tried to suck in air.

Sagitta pulled something off the back of his belt, flicked it, and handcuffs that seemed half energy beam and half metal unfolded. He yanked the man’s wrists in front of him and snapped the cuffs on. The prisoner coughed, still struggling to get his stunned lungs to work.

Sagitta pulled something out of a pouch on his belt, a little pink ampule and a drug injector similar to the one the slavers had used on Juanita. She’d been calling it a hypospray courtesy of Star Trek, and it seemed as good a term as any. He jammed the ampule into one end, loaded it, and jabbed the pointy end against the thug’s neck.

“This is Captain Cutty,” Sagitta told Tala. “If he’s going to have a seizure, it’ll start in the next thirty seconds or so.”

“I’m not sure what you expect me to do, Captain,” Tala said. “Except hold his head and maybe put a pillow under it.” She looked around. “Does anyone have a pillow?”

Juanita had a difficult time imagining these hardcore, no-dessert-eating people having something as sybaritic as pillows.

“I brought you Doc Svetloka’s bag,” Treyjon said, and handed Tala a boxy kit.

She peered inside it and pulled out a compact gray device.

“I think that’s the tricorder,” Juanita said.

“You’re not that helpful of an assistant.”

“What do you want me to do?”

The prisoner convulsed on the deck, and his arms and legs started twitching. Sagitta sighed.

Tala put the device back in the kit and thrust it at her. “Find me a pillow.”

“Uh, it would have to be a collapsible one.” Juanita peered into the kit and only saw more electronic devices, and what might have been laser scalpels or tools for cauterizing.

Tala stepped into the cell and over one of the unconscious men on the deck, circled the captain, and knelt beside the prisoner’s head. She opened her mouth to speak, but Sagitta turned the man on his side, and she closed it again. Maybe that had been the order she’d intended to give.

The prisoner made choking noises, and Tala swiped a finger into his mouth. Saliva spilled out, and blood. Had he bitten his tongue?

Juanita looked away, more uncomfortable watching the seizure than she’d expected to be. She definitely couldn’t watch someone being interrogated if violence would be involved.

She spotted Orion walking down the corridor. He paused when their eyes met, and uncertainty flashed there.

Juanita waved for him to join her. He glanced into the cell and, instead, stopped on the other side of Treyjon from her. He gave her a solemn nod, but didn’t come closer.

“The ship is landing in a few minutes,” he said, the words for all of them rather than for Juanita alone.

Was he distancing himself from her? After the captain’s reaction, she couldn’t blame him, but the idea stung.

“They’ll be wanting the captain on the bridge soon,” Orion added, though he didn’t directly address Sagitta.

“I’m sure Zakota can avoid putting the ship in a lake without the captain’s help,” Treyjon said.

“Are you? That’s the helmsman who sits at the controls and whittles things out of wood, isn’t it?”

“Yup. He try to sell you one of his bears? He says they’re lucky.”

“That’s the tendary dragons you’re thinking of,” the man whose name Juanita didn’t know said, “and he promised they would attract women to me.”

“You didn’t buy one, did you?”

“Well, he’s supposed to be a shaman on his world.” The man produced a wooden figurine painted blue. It looked more like a lizard than a dragon, at least by Juanita’s definition.

“Have women been flocking to you since you bought it?” Treyjon asked.

“Nah. Well, this one here isn’t fleeing from me.” The man pointed at Juanita and arched his eyebrows.

“That’s because you’ve got her cornered in a dead-end corridor,” Treyjon said.

“That’s the trick of it. You can’t just let women roam free, or they’ll never come to you.”

It sounded like it was meant to be a joke, and certainly not an accusation, but Orion’s face grew bleak, and he glanced over at Juanita.

Damn it, why were these men all convinced she couldn’t freely choose to kiss someone right now?

“You spat at Orion, and there was something in your spit,” came the captain’s voice from the cell. “What was it?”

The slaver’s seizure had ended, and he was smiling and drooling on himself while Tala held his head. Sagitta crouched in front of him, his stunner in his hand but not pointed at anything. He commanded the man’s attention.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, pretty Star Guardian captain?” the slaver drawled.

“Tell me.”

A spasm crossed the man’s face, as he seemed to wrestle with himself, and then he smiled again. “A special bug we bought from a lady that deals in biological weapons. I had a notion some Star Guardians might show up, that the word about Gaia wouldn’t stay secret for long. And I was real certain that ass over there was undercover for you people. You want to put a spy on my ship, don’t use your brother, Captain. Idiot.” He giggled. “Captain Idiot. That’s got a nice sound to it. Ee-dee-ought.”

Orion clenched his jaw, glaring down at the man. “Speaking of that idiot, I think he’s lying. He didn’t know anything until he got here.”

“He’s under the influence of the truth drug,” Sagitta said without looking back.

Treyjon thumped Orion on the arm. “Don’t worry about it, man. The slavers are all in cells now, and they’re not getting out. Maybe on the way home, we’ll make them drink some of that water they fancied up.”

“What’s your plan?” Sagitta asked the slaver. “Tainting our water after you’re already in the brig doesn’t do anything to free you or get you back to your ship.”

“Don’t be so sure.” The man smiled slyly. “Captain Idiot.”

“Do you have backup coming? Someone planning to find you and pick you up? Or do you think you have a chance of escaping and taking over my ship? I promise you that will not happen.”

“I…” The slaver’s one eye widened, and his body stiffened.

“How many seizures does this drug cause?” Tala growled, glaring at the captain.

Sagitta shook his head. “Just one. And not always that.”

The slaver’s back arched, and his hands clenched. He gasped, the light glinting off those gold and silver teeth, and he looked like he was fighting to keep his eye from rolling back in his head.

“Any ideas, Doctor?” Sagitta asked.

“About what’s happening to him? He could be having a rare reaction to your drug—this doesn’t look like anaphylaxis, though. What else has he been given?”

“Nothing. At least not by me.”

Sagitta grabbed the man by the front of the shirt. The man’s eye fixed on him for a moment.

“You got anyone on your crew who stands to gain from your death, Captain?” Sagitta demanded, and Orion stirred, as if he might say something. But Sagitta went on without glancing at him. “Or who doesn’t want you talking? Who’s your first officer?”

This time, the slaver glanced to the side, toward a man still unconscious from the stunner, and then his eye widened. In surprise? Or horrified enlightenment?

Orion nodded to himself.

The slaver stiffened further before collapsing, going limp on the deck.

“Is there any epinephrine in that bag?” Tala demanded, touching her fingers to his throat.

“I have no idea.” Juanita stared into the kit, not knowing what any of the things were, nor could she read the labels on the ampules for the hypospray. She stepped inside and offered it to Tala.

“His pulse is erratic as hell.” Tala rooted through the kit, dumping things out. “I don’t know what any of this shit is, either. Do you people have a defibrillator?”

Juanita skittered back, not wanting to be in the way.

“Yes, in sickbay.” Sagitta lifted his wristwatch, but Tala spoke again before he could order someone to bring it.

“His pulse stopped. We need to start CPR. Juanita, do you know—”

“Don’t bother,” Sagitta said, his eyes on the man who was apparently the first officer instead of the dying one.

“What do you mean don’t bother? Didn’t you bring me here to keep your prisoner alive?”

“I suspect he was poisoned by one of his own men.”

“Shouldn’t I get to decide that?” Tala moved to the man’s side, as if she intended to start CPR no matter what the captain said.

“Hammer, how thoroughly were these men searched?”

“Just a pat-down for weapons, sir.” He winced, perhaps anticipating Sagitta’s frown. “There were a lot of them,” he added.

“Check the first officer there, and see if he’s got anything else on him.”

“Yes, sir.”

At Tala’s beckoning, Juanita started toward the slaver captain’s head, though she was terrified she wouldn’t remember how to do the breaths correctly. Orion and Treyjon looked like they wanted to help but didn’t know how. There wasn’t much room for more people in the cell.

Sagitta’s wrist device dinged.

“Sir, we’ve landed,” someone spoke over it. “Hierax wants to know if he can get started. The sensors detect a lot of life signs outside, some of them very large, but there don’t seem to be any other humans around.”

“Yes, get a team together to watch the engineers’ backs. We may not have much time. I’ll come by to talk to Hierax before he goes out. Keep someone on the sensors, watching to see if any other ships appear in the system.” Sagitta rose to his feet. “Hammer?”

“You were right, sir.” The Star Guardian pulled a torn foil packet out of the unconscious man’s underwear. “It’s dacdactyl. Slow acting, so no telling when he gave it to his captain. Maybe in a drink back on their ship.”

“So before the slavers even entered our trap?” Sagitta’s brow furrowed. “Maybe he believed it was inevitable they’d be captured. Or maybe he wanted an excuse to get rid of his captain, and this had nothing to do with stopping the captain from being questioned. Hammer, drag him out of here. I want him available for questioning as soon as the stun wears off.”

“Captain,” Tala said from the slaver’s side. She had rolled him onto his back to start chest compressions. “Help me get this man to sickbay, so we can try to resuscitate him. You must have equipment there for—

But Sagitta grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. “Thank you for your assistance, Doctor, but there’s no antidote for dacdactyl. I’m afraid I must go. Treyjon will see you back to the rec room.” Sagitta nodded to her and walked out of the cell.

“What assistance? I didn’t get to do anything.” She looked like she wanted to kick the medical kit across the corridor. Or maybe she wanted to kick the captain across the corridor.

But Sagitta was already gone, leaving Tala with her fists clenched, standing in front of a dead man.

“Ladies,” the one called Hammer said, stepping out of the cell with the first officer slung over his shoulder. “Go with Treyjon. Whatever’s going on, you’ll be safest there.”

“This is turning out to be one odd day,” Treyjon said, eyeing the dead slaver.

“No kidding,” Juanita muttered.

Tala was still glaring ice bolts in the direction Sagitta had gone.