Translation: I have a headache. She vowed that someone in the Empire would pay dearly for these inanities.

“Report,” said Turag, the Imperial Intelligence officer embedded with the Klingon delegation aboard Vanguard.

“You’re getting a new envoy,” Sandesjo said.

“The petaQ’pu Dietrich is dead, then?”

“No. Lugok’s blade missed the human’s femoral artery.”

Over the open channel, she heard Turag spit in disgust. “Sloppy. I would not have missed.”

“And you would have been neutralized.” She transferred a data packet to Turag on the subchannel. “I am sending you Envoy Akeylah Karumé’s dossier. Lugok will need to see it before Karumé calls on him.”

“Understood. What is wrong with the Tholian delegation?”

“Unknown,” Sandesjo said. “I will continue to investigate.”

“As will we. Qapla’, Lurqal.”

Years of undercover work had left Sandesjo unaccustomed to the sound of her true Klingon name. She masked her unease with a quick farewell. “Qapla’, Turag.”

The channel clicked off. Sandesjo closed her briefcase, confident that, despite the perfect silence of its moving parts, it had reverted already to its disguised form. She tucked it beneath her desk, next to her feet. It was time to get to work.

The slender, leggy young woman reined in a bitter chuckle until it was reduced to a disgruntled huff. It’s always time to get to work when you’re a spy.

6

Tim Pennington collapsed back on his side of the bed. Blissfully spent and aglow with perspiration, he lolled his head to the right and admired Oriana D’Amato’s profile. Her wild spill of dark hair, fetchingly tinted with synthetic magenta highlights, obscured her pillow. Both of them heaved heavy breaths. Their chests rose and fell in unison. She turned her head and cast a satiated grin in his direction.

“Welcome back,” he said, and they shared a fleeting moment of conspiratorial laughter. Not a word had passed between them in the two hours since she had stepped out of the gangway surrounded by fellow Bombay personnel and saw him through the crowd, waiting for her. They had both known with a glance to come directly here, to his Stars Landing apartment, without delay. This was their fourth such liaison in three months—nowhere near frequent enough for Pennington, who had been utterly smitten with her since they met. Easygoing, optimistic, lighthearted…everything that made her his opposite had deepened his attraction. Even the contrast of her bright Roman accent and his own Edinburgh brogue—slightly softened after four years in London and six in Paris—excited him.

His fingers traced a gentle line over the alabaster curve of her shoulder and down her arm. “When do you ship out again?”

“Soon,” she said, then sighed. “Too soon.”

He glanced past her, at the golden yellow miniskirt uniform draped over the chair at his desk. Because Oriana had voiced her lack of enthusiasm for the new women’s uniform style when it was first issued, he had suppressed his desire to tell her how amazing she looked wearing it. An hour ago he had considered begging her to leave on the revealing one-piece uniform—or, at the very least, its accompanying knee-high boots—but she had shed them all so quickly once the door closed that he hadn’t had the chance. His disappointment was short-lived. Far be it from me to tell a woman not to disrobe, he had decided.

Pennington finger-combed a tumbled shock of his short, light-brown hair from his sweaty forehead. “Do you want to have dinner? I could pop over to the café.”

Oriana rolled over in his direction, onto her stomach, revealing the perfect slope of her bare back from beneath the silken bedsheets. Planting her elbows on the mattress and her chin in her cupped hands, she teased him with a coquettish batting of her eyelids. “What will you bring me?”

“Name it, my sweet.”

She squinted her eyes in mock concentration, as if she were struggling to think of something he would be hard-pressed to find on such a well-provisioned starbase as Vanguard. “Chocolate-covered Kaferian apples?”

“That can be arranged.”

Undaunted, she continued. “Deltan champagne.”

“Technically, if it doesn’t come from the Champagne region of France on Earth—”

“I don’t want to have a semantic argument about it,” she said. “I just want you to bring me bubbly stuff.”

He gave her an obedient nod. “So noted.”

With a huge grin, she said, “Brie.”

“Now you’re just being difficult,” he said. “I know for a fact you don’t even like Brie. You said it was too bland.”

“Good memory,” she said. Feigning hurt feelings, she added, “Does that mean you won’t bring me some if I ask?”

He smiled wanly. “With or without a pastry shell?”

“A man who knows his cheese,” she said approvingly. “How did I get so lucky?”

“I thought I was the lucky one.” He sat up and clicked on the bedside lamp so he could look for his pants. As he reached down to pick up his trousers, the station’s public-address system squawked from an overhead speaker that was expertly camouflaged in the ceiling.

“Attention all personnel,” a female voice said. “The Starship Enterprise is cleared for main spacedock bay three.” Oriana was out of bed and reaching for her uniform while the word Enterprise was still echoing in the corridor outside. The announcement continued, “Support personnel, all shifts, report for priority operations. All previous work assignments are rescinded pending further notice. Command out.”

After hurriedly pulling on his pants, Pennington turned to see Oriana shimmy into her sheer lower undergarment. “What’s going on? What’s the hurry?”

“It’s the Enterprise,” Oriana said, flustered. “Dammit.” She reached for her one-piece uniform and pulled it on over her head. Her hair, which he had found so attractive when it was splayed across his pillows moments ago, now looked like a frightful mass of tangles, in comparison to the neat beehive currently recommended for female Starfleet officers. She spun and critically eyed her reflection in the mirror over his dresser. “God, I’m a mess.”

Pennington plucked his shirt from the desktop where it had been flung in a gesture of wild abandon. He slipped into it with fluid motions that hinted at his many years of training as a long-distance swimmer. “I’m still not getting why—”

“It’s Robert’s ship,” she snapped. “He’ll be in port any minute.”

The name was a dim memory, known but almost deliberately forgotten. Pennington had pushed it from his thoughts weeks ago, for the sake of convenience. Now it returned with a vengeance: Her husband. One leaden moment later, he muttered a heartfelt “Bloody hell.”

Her hands were working more quickly than Pennington could follow, curling and twisting and shaping her hair into something that wouldn’t betray her most recent recreational activities. “I just can’t believe this,” she grumbled. “What the hell is the Enterprise even doing out here?”

“That’s a good question.” Pennington started putting on his shoes. “Might be a story in it.”

“Lucky you.” Oriana turned sideways and peeked at herself out of the corner of her eye, studying her uniform and her hair. “Close enough.” She started gathering the loose items of the personal bath kit she had brought with her.

“Leave them,” Pennington said. “You can come back for them later.”

“Actually, I can’t,” she said. “At least, I probably won’t be able to. The Enterprise has been on patrol a long time, so she’ll probably be in port for a while.”

Pennington understood her point. As long as the Enterprise was here, she would have to keep her distance from him and stay close to her husband. “Right,” he said. “I see. No problem.”

He tried to conceal the wave of bitter disappointment that welled up inside him, but filtering his emotions had never been his strong suit. Oriana stroked his cheek with her palm. His dejection was mirrored in her sorrowful expression. “This is probably all for the best,” she said. “Robert was going to come home sooner or later, and your wife will be here in a couple of weeks…. It’s not like we thought this would last forever.”