It seemed he would have to call Karumé after all.

48

Still damp from her shower, Anna Sandesjo stepped from her bathroom and wrapped a robe around her cooling body. Crossing her quarters to her desk while using the towel she still carried to complete the task of drying her hair, she paused, smiling to herself as she realized that T’Prynn’s scent still lingered among the other aromas permeating the room. It, the disheveled bedsheets, and the various articles of her discarded clothing scattered with abandon about the room all conspired, along with her own still fresh memory, to reconstruct the scene of vigorous passion that had unfolded here.

T’Prynn’s appearance at her door had been unexpected though not unwelcome, and Sandesjo could see that she was distracted, even upset—by Vulcan standards, anyway. At first she had been worried by T’Prynn’s unexpected visit, but it had quickly become apparent that her lover had come for a single purpose. Surprised to find herself in the unfamiliar role of caretaker, Sandesjo had asked what was troubling the Vulcan, but her questions had gone unanswered. Then the need for words had passed, replaced by other, more urgent desires, after which T’Prynn had left as abruptly as she had arrived, offering as an excuse a need to return to her duties.

Just as well,Sandesjo mused, considering that I have duties of my own.

Opening her briefcase to extract the hidden subspace transceiver, she proceeded quickly through the steps to activate it and send its clandestine hailing message. Engaging in yet another unscheduled communication carried a risk, particularly now, during the time observed aboard the station as “late night.” Though most civilian businesses—with the exception of the various taverns scattered across Stars Landing—were closed until morning, Starfleet operations continued around the clock. Her transceiver was programmed to camouflage its signal amid the plethora of communications coming and going from Starbase 47, of course, but there was always the chance that a bored ensign working the late shift might through fortunate happenstance stumble across her clandestine frequency while searching for something more interesting with which to pass the time.

A tone sounded from the unit’s interface panel, signifying that the transceiver had completed the connection process. Sandesjo released a sigh of resignation, knowing that the elation she had enjoyed during the past few hours was about to evaporate in the face of the reality that was her duty.

“ What?”Turag asked as his face came into focus on the transceiver’s display monitor. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and his long hair seemed to fan out in all directions at once. “ Why have you disturbed me? What could possibly be so important at this time of night?”

Sandesjo could tell by his heavy eyelids and slurred words that while Turag might indeed have been sleeping, he had received assistance from a generous helping of bloodwine or whatever swill her contact chose to imbibe. Opening her mouth to offer her report, she was interrupted by Turag discharging a profound belch that echoed across her quarters. She flinched as something, spittle or perhaps a fragment of whatever he had eaten for dinner, launched from his mouth and landed on the visual pickup of his own transceiver. It clung there, partially obscuring her view of the drunk, disgusting Klingon.

An improvement, actually,she decided.

Holding his head in his hands, Turag regarded her through bleary eyes. “ The Jinoteur system?”he asked after listening to Sandesjo relay to him her most recent intelligence acquisition. “ We’ve not sent any ships to chart that region, so far as I’m aware.”

Sandesjo forced herself to maintain her composed expression. “As I already said, only unmanned probes have been dispatched to that region. A Klingon probe was intercepted after charting the Jinoteur system and its information stolen by Starfleet spies.” It was not entirely true, of course, but she knew that should the High Council forward any formal accusation to the Federation, such a charge would bear only a passing resemblance to the facts she provided.

Her job here and now was to ensure that did not happen.

“ An outrage!”Turag bellowed, after which he squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples, the alcohol coursing through his veins obviously wreaking havoc with his head. “ Those dishonorable cretins will pay for their insolence. This is an affront to the entire Klingon Empire. I will see to it…”

“You can do no such thing,” Sandesjo snapped, cutting him off. “Only a limited number of people know of this, and all of them currently reside on this station. If the High Council attempts to contest this, it will become apparent to anyone with a functioning brain stem that a spy must be at work here.”

Turag growled in frustration, more from his inebriation and being roused from sleep, Sandesjo gathered, than from any real frustration with what she had said. Leaning closer to the monitor so that whatever still remained stuck to the visual pickup now appeared as a massive blemish on his nose, Turag asked, “ Then what exactly do you expect me to do, Lurqal?”

Fool!Would she have to explain everything down to the most minuscule detail? How much of this conversation would he even remember in the morning? Would she have to repeat the entire exchange tomorrow?

“Obviously,” Sandesjo said, grappling to maintain her composure, “Starfleet feels this system is of some value, or they would not have gone to the trouble not only to secure the information from our sensor drone, but also to ensure we did not obtain it.” Reaching to the transceiver’s keypad, she tapped a command string. “Fortunately, I have a copy of that data. I will dispatch it to our contact off-station.” In his present state, there was no way she could trust Turag not to misplace or delete the potentially valuable sensor information, assuming he even could refrain from sending it to Starbase 47’s general-purpose broadcast network so that it could be read by every computer terminal on the station.

Turag’s drunkenness seemed to disappear, perhaps as a consequence of him realizing that Sandesjo was in fact removing him from the decision-making loop. To his credit, the idiot appeared also to comprehend that there was precious little he could do about it at the moment.

His eyes narrowing, he asked, “ How did you come by this? Surely this isn’t something Ambassador Jetanien leaves lying about in a desk drawer or an unguarded computer file.”His lopsided smile grew into a broad, toothy grin. “ Did you perchance bed that whelp of a human who seems so taken with you? No doubt he carries no small amount of useful information, and it would be child’s play for you to pry it out of him.”

“It would,” Sandesjo replied, “just as if I were to employ any number of other tactics. How I came to possess the data is not your concern. What matters now is what we do with what we have learned.”

Considering the precariousness of her current position, the less Turag—or anyone else, for that matter—knew of her methods, contacts, and other resources at her disposal, the better. For all intents and purposes, she now was on her own and in need of every advantage she could marshal—including maintaining her web of secrecy even from those she supposedly could trust.

In truth, she was apprehensive about the usefulness of the sensor data without more knowledge of the Jinoteur system. Given its remote location near the far border of the Gonmog Sector, why did Starfleet consider it a location of interest? The information contained within the sensor logs was intriguing, certainly. While she was no scientist, even Sandesjo could understand how planets with moons acting in such a manner as attributed to those scanned by the unmanned drone would garner interest.