“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reyes lied, “and you won’t get away with this.”

All three Klingons roared with laughter. Kutal bent down and slapped one callused hand on the back of Reyes’s neck. “We already have. It’s been weeks since your transport was blown to bits. As far as Starfleet’s concerned, you’re dead.”

Reyes shook free of Kutal’s hand. He glanced at the coffinlike metal cylinder in which he’d awoken and realized it was a hibernation pod. Turning his irate stare back at Kutal, he said, “So, do I have youto thank for my life?”

“Hardly.” Kutal spat on the deck between Reyes’s hands. “Had it been up to me, you would have died on the Nowlan.” The Klingon captain snapped orders at his men, who lifted Reyes from the deck and stood him upright against a bulkhead. Then Kutal said to Reyes, “We’re told you Earthers enjoy something called showers. You smell like you could use one.”

Kutal nodded to his men.

One of them lifted a hose attached to the bulkhead opposite Reyes. The other turned a valve and pressed a button.

Freezing-cold water sprayed from the hose, dousing Reyes. It hit him like a blast of ice-needles, stinging his skin. He lifted his hands to guard his face and turned sideways. The frigid stream slammed against his rib cage and thighs. When he turned away from it, the hideously cold torrent scoured his back raw.

It stopped. Through the desperate rasps of his own breathing, he heard runoff water dripping through the metal deck grates to the gutter below. Chilled to his core, he shook and swayed like a weak tree in a storm.

More orders from Kutal; Reyes was given a towel. He dried himself. Kutal’s men gave Reyes some clean clothes: underwear, a dark gray coverall, and shoes. He donned the drab utilitarian garb while his captors watched.

They escorted him out of the compartment at gunpoint. Moving through the tight corridors of the dimly lit vessel, they passed crewmen who eyed Reyes with contempt but said nothing. Reyes felt like a piece of prized livestock: valued up to a point but basically ignored.

They descended a series of ladders and arrived at the brig. Kutal ushered him into a cell and activated the force field as soon as Reyes stepped over its threshold. Reyes turned to face Kutal, whose parting words gave Reyes his first inkling of what was going on. “Be grateful,” the captain said. “Someone high up wants you alive and unhurt.”

The three Klingons departed, leaving Reyes alone in his cell. He eyed its gray-green walls, solid deck plates, and uncushioned slab of a bunk. The lavatory was just a simple seat platform that extended from the wall when called for and retracted into the bulkhead when not in use.

Cozy,he mused with weary sarcasm.

From his point of view, the attack on the Nowlanhad lasted only a few minutes. Before the attack, he had been in a cell on the Nowlan’s lower deck. Now, after being conscious for less than fifteen minutes, he was back in a cell.

He was about to decide he’d broken even when he remembered the last thing he’d been doing before the Nowlanwas ambushed. He’d been reading the interstellar bestseller Sunrise on Zeta Minor,and he’d just gotten to the good part.

Lying on the bunk and folding his hands behind his head, he let out a disgruntled sigh.

Crap. Now I’ll never find out how that story ends.

5

February 19, 2267

The nocturnal sounds of Vulcan’s desert hills had Tim Pennington on edge. From the ever-closer shrieks of a felinoid predator known as a Le-matyato the echoing cries of carrion birds that T’Prynn said were called lankagar,the darkness resounded with animal hungers.

“There is no need for concern,” T’Prynn said, her voice almost a whisper. “That is the mating cry of the Le-matya. If it were hunting us, we would not hear it until it attacked.”

“Hardly comforting,” Pennington said.

T’Prynn detoured off the trail to an unusual-looking rock formation. “Follow me,” she said.

Pennington accompanied her into the ring of tall stone slabs, which had become weathered and broken over the course of millennia. Standing in their midst, Pennington realized the slabs were menhirs, hewn by ancient Vulcan hands and arranged in a circle at the foot of the L-langon Mountains.

For a moment, he wondered if T’Prynn was indulging in some moment of mystical reverence, perhaps following some tradition of venerating elders, or meditating on the words of Surak. He watched as she reached out to a boulder, pinched its surface, and pulled away a blanket that bore a desert-camouflage pattern.

What had seemed to be a rock a moment ago now was two beige backpacks filled with gear. “Take one of these,” T’Prynn said. She picked up a pack and helped him put it on. Turning away from him, she said, “Now please assist me.” He hoisted the other pack onto her shoulders.

“These should have everything we need to reach the other side of the mountain range,” she said, “as long as we ration our food and water.” She folded the camouflage blanket and stuffed it into one of the outer pockets of Pennington’s pack. “We will need this later.” Then she walked out of the circle of stones and back to the trail.

“Hang on,” he said. His raised voice rebounded off the rocks with alarming clarity. “We’ve been walking for hours. Aren’t we making camp soon?”

She turned back. “We have been walking for precisely fifty-six minutes since our rendezvous at the water-collection tower. And we must continue walking for another seven hours and twenty-nine minutes. At that time, we will have exactly thirty minutes to set up camp before daybreak.”

Without waiting for him to reply, she resumed walking. Not wanting to be left by himself in the middle of the desert outside ShiKahr, Pennington hurried after her. “You could’ve bloody warned me before I came out here that I’d be walking all night.”

“If I had, would you have come?”

“At least tell me whywe have to walk all night.”

“Because the lower temperatures and absence of direct solar radiation will enable us to use less food and water than we would and walk for longer consecutive periods than we could in daylight.”

As usual, there was no questioning her logic.

They trudged ahead into the mountain pass. Pennington stayed close behind the Vulcan woman.

During their first hour of hiking, he noticed she was limping slightly. As the wind-carved spires of rock seemed to grow taller on either side of them, the trail became deathly quiet. In that silence, Pennington heard T’Prynn fighting for breath.

As they clambered over small mounds of loose rocks that tumbled away beneath their feet and filled the air with faint, semimusical collisions, it became apparent to Pennington that T’Prynn still had not fully recovered from her long coma and arduous psychic trauma. In all likelihood this journey was as physically difficult for her as it was for him.

Leading him off the rocky slope, T’Prynn veered wide around one of the few patches of smooth ground he had seen since leaving ShiKahr. She pointed at the path’s sandy stretch. “Avoid that. There is a sinkhole beneath it.”

“Noted,” Pennington said. He resolved to step where she stepped and not question why until they were out of the desert.

Hours passed as they followed the narrow, winding road through majestic towers of rock. Lightning forked between faroff peaks and was followed by a crash of thunder.

Eventually, Pennington lost track of time and was aware only of the gnawing emptiness in his stomach, the parched feeling in his mouth, and the dull aches in his feet and lower back. Despite a few brief respites during which they sipped water and devoured small pieces of dried fruit from their packs, the lean young journalist felt as if he were growing heavier with each step.