It was a startling image. “My God,” Pennington whispered.

“I gave that order to contain a threat,” Reyes said. “To stop a massive attack by an enemy you’ve now seen with your own eyes.” He turned once more to the view outside the window. “More than thirteen thousand people died on Gamma Tauri IV,” he said. As he continued, his sorrow slowly transmuted to quiet anger. “But that’s nothing compared to how many would die if that enemy ever reaches a fully populated planet. We woke this nightmare, and now it’s loose, God knows where, running amok. And nobody knows about it, Tim. Nobody knows because we keep hiding the truth, hoping we can steal another handful of ancient secrets from these creatures before all hell breaks loose.” His anger abated, leaving only his somber tone of grief. “The crew of the Bombay died for this secret, along with a dozen men and women from the Endeavour and the Lovell. Now it’s claimed thirteen thousand souls on Gamma Tauri IV, including a woman who used to be my wife.” He sighed heavily. “How many have to die? How many lives are we supposed to sacrifice on the altar of security? When does this madness stop?”

Pennington’s throat tightened with anxiety. Outside of Starfleet, he was likely the only person who knew that Reyes had ordered the destruction of Gamma Tauri IV. It was as big a piece of breaking news as his experiences on Jinoteur. “Sir,” he said, concealing his apprehension with a neutral monotone, “what do you want me to do with this information?”

“Publish it.” Reyes turned away from the window and walked to the front door. “Write the truth, exactly as you saw it.”

“The truth about Gamma Tauri IV might make you look bad,” Pennington said, halting Reyes in the open doorway. “Very bad.”

Looking back, Reyes replied, “All the more reason.”

“But if you let my story go out uncensored,” Pennington said, “won’t you be court-martialed?”

For a moment he thought he saw Reyes almost grin. “Probably,” the commodore said. “It’s your call, Tim. Do what you think’s right.” Reyes walked away, and the door shut with a loud clack, leaving Pennington alone with its echo.

He stood staring at the closed door, recovering from the shock of the unexpected…and then, all thoughts of Quinn, a drink at Tom Walker’s place, and a grateful cute redhead left his mind as he scooped up his data device and resumed writing.

I can finish this story in a few hours, he told himself. Let’s just hope Reyes doesn’t change his mind before it’s filed.

The gauges above T’Prynn’s biobed had all but flatlined. Fisher frowned as he watched and waited during the prolonged lacunae between minuscule pulses of the Vulcan’s autonomic systems.

M’Benga stood on the other side of the bed, leaning into the pool of bright bluish light focused on T’Prynn. He made notes on her chart, which was cradled in his bent left arm. Noticing Fisher’s dismay, he said, “Don’t be alarmed by her vital signs. It’s perfectly natural.”

“Nothing natural about it,” Fisher said, the edges in his voice rougher than usual. “She’s one late breath from dead.”

They were alone with T’Prynn in one of Vanguard Hospital’s isolation wards. Soft synthetic tones beeped and whirred in the background. Ten times per minute, a deep thump emanated from the cardiopulmonary monitor, signaling another feeble beat of T’Prynn’s heart. Her breaths were long but shallow.

Not content to let a machine guide his entire diagnosis, Fisher reached down to grasp T’Prynn’s wrist and feel for himself the strength of her pulse. He pushed aside the edge of the thermal blanket that covered her from the neck down. As he grasped her radiantly warm wrist, he nodded at the blanket and asked M’Benga, “Is this thing really necessary?”

“It helps promote the healing process,” M’Benga said. “In a Vulcan healing trance, a patient concentrates his or her strength, blood, and antibodies on the injury. Simulating the heat and aridity of Vulcan facilitates this effort.”

A weak tremor of life passed through T’Prynn’s wrist, under Fisher’s fingertip. “Whatever did this to her,” he said, “I don’t think blood or antibodies are gonna fix it.” He looked at her face, which was neither placid nor troubled—merely blank. “And you can call this a healing trance if it makes you feel better, but when I was in medical school we called this a coma.”

M’Benga finished marking the chart and set it back into a slot at the foot of T’Prynn’s bed. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “If this is a healing trance, it’s the deepest one I’ve ever seen. But even if I’m wrong, and it is a coma, I see no harm in making her comfortable.”

Fisher withdrew his hand from T’Prynn’s wrist. “Agreed,” he said. He gently tucked the thermal blanket back into place at the bed’s edge. Drawing a breath as a prelude to a sigh, he inhaled the bracing odors of surgical sanitizer and the harsh disinfectant used to mop the hospital’s floors. Exhaling, he felt fatigue spread through him. It had been a manic day tending the wounded and dying from the attack on the Malacca, and this was the final stop on his evening rounds. He plucked T’Prynn’s chart from the slot at the foot of the bed and skimmed it quickly. “I see we finally got her real medical history,” he said.

“Yes,” M’Benga said. “It makes for fascinating reading. Those deep-tissue injuries and skeletal fractures I detected during her physical were sustained during a premarital ritual combat called Koon-ut-kal-

if-fee. Usually, the challenge is made by someone who wants to marry a person betrothed to another, so they can fight their rival for the mate. When T’Prynn asked her fiancé Sten to terminate their marriage compact, he refused and challenged her to the duel. Apparently, his aim was either to force her to change her mind or to deny her the right to claim another mate in the future…. So she killed him.”

“Charming,” Fisher said, almost dreading to see what other dark secrets of Vulcan culture were hidden in its details. “Is that why she’s been hiding these records?”

M’Benga conveyed his doubt with a tilt of his head. “I don’t think so. The Koon-ut-kal-if-fee is a legally protected Vulcan ritual. Unless she assaulted or killed a fellow member of Starfleet, or an unwilling participant, her actions would be entirely lawful under Vulcan jurisprudence.”

“Murdering people over sex and marriage,” Fisher mumbled. “Logical, my ass.” He glanced peremptorily at M’Benga. “And don’t go lecturing me about why I shouldn’t be appalled by this Koon-ut-whatever business.” Flipping through the rest of T’Prynn’s medical file, he noted the pattern of her anxiety attacks, which had become more severe and more frequent over the course of several decades. “If it wasn’t the legal fallout that worried her,” he speculated, “I’ll bet it was these seizures. A history of mental illness would shred her security rating. She’s probably been afraid of being relieved of duty.”

Nodding, M’Benga said, “With good reason. Now that her records have been declassified and Starfleet Intelligence has our report, they’ve revoked her security clearance. If she ever wakes up, she’ll be lucky to avoid a court-martial.”

Fisher dropped the data slate with T’Prynn’s chart back into the slot on the bed and heaved a dejected sigh. “If she ever wakes up, she’ll be lucky, period.”

31

Three minutes past 0800, Reyes settled into the chair behind his desk and checked the data feeds from the Federation. Sipping from his day’s first mug of coffee, he scanned the headlines. He didn’t have to look far to find what he sought.

It was the top item on every news feed, and it carried the byline of Tim Pennington: “Starfleet Officer Orders Destruction of Gamma Tauri IV.” Running beside it on more than half of the major news services was Pennington’s story about his excursion to Jinoteur IV, the mysterious life-forms of that now-vanished star system, their attack on the Sagittarius, and their link to the Gamma Tauri IV disaster.