His hostess—the acting head of Imperial Intelligence, one of the more senior members of the Klingon High Council, and a noted ally of Chancellor Sturka and his chief advisor, Councillor Gorkon—tracked his perambulations with a dispassionate stare. “The Tholians provoked us,” she said. “You know that better than anyone. Or have you lost your taste for battle, Lugok?”

“Meh,” Lugok growled. “I don’t care if Sturka wants to blunder into war with the Tholians. Recalling me and my delegation from the Federation starbase was a mistake.”

Indizar cast a bemused grimace at him. “It hardly seems to have impeded your dialogue with the Chelon. You seem to have exchanged more words with him since leaving the station than you ever did while serving aboard it. If anything, distance has made you more productive.”

Lugok’s bark of laughter was laced with derision. “I’d hardly call encrypted back-channel communiqués through third parties productive. Real communication requires presence—the chance to look one’s foe in the eye. My efforts are little more than a stopgap, a way to salvage what little progress we’d actually made.”

The councillor lifted a polished stone carafe of bloodwine and refilled her onyx goblet as well as Lugok’s. He lifted his goblet and downed a generous mouthful of the tart alcoholic beverage. Indizar watched him with a pointed stare. “Tell me, Lugok, are you under the delusion that I invited you here so that you could regale me with your litany of complaints?” She picked up her goblet and took a sip. “It’s not as if diplomacy was my paramount reason for sending you to Vanguard.”

He looked out the window and across the First City toward the Great Hall, took a deep breath, and swallowed a few expletives. All his hard-won status as a member of the Diplomatic Corps meant nothing to Indizar. To her, I am just another field agent for Imperial Intelligence—and not a particularly valuable one. He turned back to face her cool and level stare. “I presume this is about Lurqal.”

Indizar leaned back in her chair. “In the brief time since your official delegation left Vanguard, the quality and quantity of usable intelligence she’s provided have declined sharply. The last truly original piece of information she gave us was the tip about the Jinoteur system, but that was nearly two months ago. Since then her reports of ship movements have lagged behind intelligence we’ve obtained for ourselves. Tell me, why does an agent trained to operate self-sufficiently for years at a time suddenly become complacent when mere cutouts such as yourself and that ha’DIbah Turag are removed from the equation?” The tenor of her query gave Lugok the distinct impression that he was being held to blame.

“There could be many reasons, Councillor,” he answered. “With decreased diplomatic activity aboard the station, her direct partici—”

“According to Turag,” Indizar said, “Lurqal spends a great deal of time with the station’s Vulcan intelligence officer. Have you considered the possibility that Lurqal might have been compromised?”

Lugok spat out his mouthful of bloodwine in contempt. “I read Turag’s report. It’s pure fantasy. He’s never even seen Lurqal and the Vulcan together.”

Nodding, the slender politician said, “I noticed that omission, but his circumstantial evidence is intriguing, to say the least…. Putting aside his imagination, how do you account for Lurqal’s increasingly poor performance?”

With great reluctance, Lugok admitted, “I can’t.”

“Then we have a serious problem,” Indizar said as she rose from her chair and circled the desk toward Lugok. “After the Palgrenax disaster, we can’t afford any more mistakes in the Gonmog Sector.” As she leaned close to Lugok, the musk of her perfume aroused his animal appetites. “I’m trusting you to correct Lurqal’s performance. The outrider Sagittarius just returned to Vanguard, recalled from a great distance. I suspect it’s being sent to Jinoteur. Make it clear to Lurqal that I want to know when it’s going to ship out. I don’t intend to let the Federation succeed where we have failed.” The councillor backed off and returned to her seat behind her desk. “Dismissed, Lugok.”

The ambassador nodded his farewell, took two steps backward from Indizar’s desk, then turned on his heel and exited her office. As he walked to a turbolift, Indizar’s offhand comment about the Palgrenax disaster continued to bother him. Her mention of that ill-fated planet had reminded Lugok of the risks that came with trying to seize control of the Gonmog Sector. Whatever had drawn the Empire’s interest to that world, it had been guarded by something extremely powerful and deadly—a force that had wiped out a Klingon occupation army with ease before annihilating the planet itself. Though Lugok was not yet privy to all the details of what the Empire’s scientific advance teams had discovered on Palgrenax, he was certain that it was connected to the Federation’s unusually aggressive expansion into the region. Whatever they found, they don’t want us to have it, he concluded. That’s reason enough to find it, at any cost.

After a few minutes of walking to and riding in turbolifts, he returned to the lobby of the huge government administrative complex. Turag was waiting for him. The burly young warrior served publicly as Lugok’s bodyguard, but like himself Turag was a covert operative of Imperial Intelligence. As Lugok marched past him on his way to the front entrance of the building, the younger Klingon fell into step beside him. Together they shoved their way through a throng of QuchHa’, descendants of a Klingon offshoot race whose ancestors had been mutated by an unusual genetic affliction more than a generation earlier. Frailer and smooth-headed like the humans, the QuchHa’ were the Empire’s war fodder, its most expendable class. Privileged scions such as Lugok abused them with impunity.

Turag smirked. “Did she say anything interesting?”

“Does she ever?” Lugok replied. He hated walking next to Turag, because the warrior’s powerful physique only reminded Lugok of his own slowly expanding girth.

Keeping his voice down to avoid drawing attention, Turag asked, “So…what does she want from us now?”

“Lurqal’s slipping,” Lugok said, passing through the security checkpoint on his way outside. Large archways scanned him and Turag as they passed through them. Lugok nodded to the phalanx of guards lined up along one side of the checkpoint. None of them returned the gesture.

Outside, the heat and humidity were as thick and comforting as the womb. Streets were packed from corner to corner with bustling bodies, and a frantic buzz of hover-vehicle traffic filled the sky overhead. From several avenues away, Lugok caught the aroma of fresh gagh and rokeg blood pie. Time for supper, he decided, and quickened his stride. Turag stayed with him.

“Did Indizar read my report?” the bodyguard asked.

After a grunt of acknowledgment, Lugok said, “She puts more stock in it than I do, but she’s far from convinced.”

“What is our next plan of attack?”

Lugok turned right, toward the tantalizing smell of well-spiced gagh. “Indizar thinks Starfleet is sending its scout ship Sagittarius to Jinoteur, and she wants to know when. Relay that request to Lurqal. And make her understand that we won’t tolerate any more mistakes.”

A top the roof of the Great Hall, protected by an invisible force field over the seat of the Klingon government, Councillor Indizar stood next to Councillor Gorkon and watched Chancellor Sturka stare into the setting sun.

“How much does Lugok know?” asked Sturka.

Indizar glanced at Gorkon, then replied, “Less than he thinks he does, but perhaps still more than he should.”

Sturka issued a low growl of understanding. “Has Captain Kutal been debriefed about this morning’s Jinoteur debacle?”

“Thoroughly,” Gorkon replied. “His battle group met with overwhelming force when they entered the system. It’s actually quite remarkable that the Zin’za escaped with only sixty-five-percent casualties.” Gorkon tactfully omitted any mention of the fact that, while Kutal’s ship had barely escaped the system, its three heavy-cruiser escorts had not been so fortunate. Also absent from his remarks was the fact that this was the second failed expedition to the Jinoteur system since its peculiar properties had first been reported by their spy on Vanguard.