CAPTAIN LEONARD THORPE thought that this was quite peculiar. He stood just outside one of the small shuttlebays at the rear of the Athena, and watched as a small shuttle came in for a landing. Nobody else was around-those were the orders-as the shuttle came to rest on the deck. Thorpe walked into the room as two officers, in Starfleet uniforms but otherwise completely unknown to the captain, emerged from the shuttle. One carried a data padd, and the second carried a blood sampling unit.
      "Captain Thorpe," the second man said. He simply nodded. "If you may." Thorpe knew what that meant. He was to stand there, while the man with the sampler picked a spot to take the blood sample from. He choose the inside of the left calf, just above the ankle. He worked the device, drawing a small amount of blood from his veins. Despite shaking it and peering at it by holding it against the light, the man could not get it to turn into the golden gelatinous goo that marked the protoplasm of a Founder. In addition, the man also conducted a test of the blood to confirm that the genetic profile in fact did match that of the captain. After several minutes, the second man turned to the first, and said simply, "Confirmed in all details."
      The first man spoke up, saying, "Captain. This padd contains the new orders for you and your ship. You are not to read this until the Athena is at high warp, in any direction you choose. You will have to decrypt it first. After you do, commit the contents to memory-there is not all that much, actually-and then remove the memory chip from this device and destroy it. Do you understand, captain?"
      "Yes," asked the man. Ever since he had been told to rendezvous with this shuttle in the middle of nowhere, he wondered what was going on. "But why all the secrecy?"
      "When you know the full extent of the orders, you will understand. Good day, captain." With those words, the two men got back into the shuttle, and immediately lifted it off the deck and guided it through the barrier field.
      Thorpe headed for the turbolift, clutching the padd securely. He had no doubt that the orders within involved the Dominion and the war, and his part in that. Once inside, he called out, "Bridge." Then he tapped his commbadge, saying, "Thorpe to bridge."
      "Bridge here, captain," came the response, spoken by first officer Nadine Johnson.
      "Commander, has the shuttle cleared the ship yet?"
      "Yes."
      "Very well, take the Athena to high warp."
      After a moment's hesitation, Johnson asked, "What course, sir?"
      "Indulge yourself, Nadine. Thorpe out."
      Almost immediately, Thorpe could hear the ship make the transition to warp speed, and then he could feel as well as hear the subtle humming as the warp engines accelerated the vessel to ever greater multiples of the speed of light. And all the while, he had to wonder what was going on. He knew that the situation was not good. The Cardassians had formed an alliance with the Dominion, and as a result, many Dominion ships and personnel were coming through the wormhole, with the people at station Deep Space Nine seemingly unable to stop them-at least until they came up with the idea that they should mine the wormhole, and with cloaked, self-replicating mines, no less. And he felt worried that the Athena was equipped with a cloaking device. Now, the Dominion was getting ready to burst outwards. To isolate the Federation, the Dominion was offering non-aggression treaties with certain other races. The Romulans had signed on-which in Thorpe's mind ended the Treaty of Algeron-and now apparently, so had the Bajorans. That meant, also in Thorpe's mind, that Deep Space Nine was vulnerable and was expected to fall. Somehow, Thorpe just knew that he was going to play a part in all of this; it was just that he did not know what part.
      The turbolift finally opened onto the bridge, and Thorpe walked out. He looked at the viewscreen, seeing the stars racing by. Johnson and the others looked at him in a peculiar way, but it was the first officer who finally said, "Sir, what is going on."
      Indicating the padd in his hands, Thorpe answered, "I hope we will soon know. This secrecy is getting to the point of paranoia. I'll be in my ready room."
      Thorpe headed to the ready room, securing the door behind him. In one of the pedestals of his desk was a small storage area, which was locked. He opened that, and removed a small device, which was little more than a metal box with a hole at one end and an infrared emitter at the other. He inserted his right forefinger into the hole and switched the device on. It read the fingerprints and genetic structure of the fingertip, and also confirmed the existence of a tiny microchip, a biologically-based chip less than a micrometre in diameter, that had been inplanted in the tip of the bone of that hand. Once his identity had been confirmed, the device downloaded the decryption key from that microchip, and when Thorpe placed the infrared port over the similar port on the padd, the key was downloaded into the padd. That turned the gibberish on the screen into the orders, which were rather short and simple.
      Again tapping at the commbadge, Thorpe said, "Helm, set course for the Aldebaren 3389 system, maximum warp." And that was the full extent of the orders that he had been given.