The long, laborious climb down the lift shaft and the following search had taken a great deal out of Rennan Konya. He considered himself in great shape with his regular security training. But the emergency ladder’s rungs had been set too far apart for a non-Resaurian, and the frequent tremors shaking the station forced him to keep a death grip on each rail.

By the time he began exploring the lower levels of the station, his thighs already felt tight and his shoulders ached severely. He spent a great deal of effort working his way around the many watchstations set out by the Resaurians and avoiding their patrols. Alerted to their presence by his ability to tap into the motor reflex of other beings, he was always able to find a hiding place inside empty rooms or in the overhead pipes that ran along many corridor ceilings. But the constant effort to keep his own screens down and feel every twitch and strain in those moving near him, around him, in decks beneath him—it demanded a toll as well.

So when he finally sensed the familiar ache of a human’s lower back pain, he tracked in on it slowly but with a measure of relief.

Down a spiral staircase and through a large steam heat distribution venue, he approached with care, waiting to discover the guards set on Commander Gomez. He’d seen her on the way to the refresher station, but held back in the shadows while keeping an eye out. He spotted no furtive demeanor in Gomez’s movement; she certainly did not look like an escaped prisoner. He had to assume she was under some kind of surveillance. He still hadn’t spotted it by the time she decided to return, running as if there would be Resaurians chasing her, armed to the fangs. Chancing his own discovery, he clapped a hand over Gomez’s mouth as he pulled her into the room, wanting to take her from the corridor quickly and quietly in case anyone was close. His Betazoid training sparked a warning as Gomez drove her elbow back violently, relying on conditioning long since ingrained as a natural reaction. He barely had time to shift his weight before she buried her elbow into his midriff. Air rushed out in a desperate exhale.

“Commander,” he wheezed. He caught her next blow as she came around with a right hook, wrapping his arm around hers, trapping it. “Commander, it’s me.”

She jumped back, startled at his appearance. “Rennan? What the hell are you doing down here?”

“Keep it down,” he whispered, glancing into the corridor. “Where are they?”

“Who?”

“The Resaurians chasing you.”

Her black hair looked disheveled and dirty, streaked with an oily grime and slicked back from her elfin face. There was a smudge on her left ear that he wanted to wipe clean, so unbefitting an officer but quite appropriate for the engineer in her. Decorum did not stop him. The puzzled frown and the following exasperation did.

“Oh, for…Rennan, I don’t have time for you right now. Come on.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the corridor, heedless of their discovery. He felt her urgency in the tense set of her shoulders but no sense of panic. The flight-or-fight response was definitely missing from her posture and also in the way she put herself in front of the plasma welder brought to bear on him as the door opened to a new engineering space and a Resaurian guard snapped to feral attention.

“Easy,” she said with unnatural calm. “He’s with me.”

Rennan hated having to carry a phaser. Weapons were too often relied upon by security, when diplomacy and fast thinking should have sufficed. But the danger he read in the reptilian faces, and the tightening grips on weapons and tools, made him suddenly glad for his sidearm. He moved on the balls of his feet, hands always in view but ready for quick and decisive action. A panel operator coiled away from him. Her abdomen muscles spasmed, and he jumped away from her, thinking that she had tensed herself for an attack. Instead, she wrapped arms protectively around herself and slithered back several meters.

The Resaurian who waited for them did so with ill-concealed impatience. He shifted from foot to foot, his thick tail lashing out behind him. “Should this make me nervous?” he asked with a wheezing hiss. “You did not leave here with a friend.”

“Blue,” Gomez exclaimed. Rennan looked around, saw no sign of that color. It was the first thought, though, that Gomez decided to challenge this Resaurian with. “Es’a. The small Resaurian you had watching me earlier had smaller scales, and blue! Where are they?”

This was Es’a? The nest-breaker? Rennan felt the alien’s sickness, the fire raging within his body, burning up his strength. This did not feel like the strong leader S’eth had made him out to be. Leaders paled over the years, of course. But the Resaurian did not move as if he possessed a mature body taken over by the ravages of age. His muscles, his joints, they felt more like a stunted youth.

And his flesh crawled with a desperate flush.

“What is it you mean?” Es’a asked.

“You know what I mean. If you’re willing to go to such lengths for them, S’eth will be as well. It’s going to bring disaster. We’ve got to get this sorted out, and I mean now.”

“It will not change anything,” he said, glancing at the nearby Resaurian who hovered protectively at the edge of the conversation.

Rennan was still behind, but catching up fast. First and foremost, he now knew that Gomez had not been kept as a prisoner. No matter how she had been taken from the team, she had remained voluntarily. Given her appearance, there were obviously engineering concerns she felt important enough to mitigate other concerns. Es’a’s reaction told Rennan that there might be one other thing going on that the Resaurian might consider even more critical. The security agent followed the alien’s gaze to the nearby panel operator. His abdomen hitched and jumped with sympathetic spasms.

And he knew.

“You’re pregnant,” he announced.

Gomez was right. This changed everything.