Karumé stared at the door to the conference room. Jetanien worried that she might not be ready for the intimidating task of serving as the go-between to the shrewd, aggressive Klingons. “Be careful how you phrase things,” he said. “I want to get a sense of what they know about the Bombay’s destruction. Do not be put off if they speak rudely to you or make an issue of your sex. Try to draw them out.”

She glared at Jetanien while handing her coffee cup to an assistant. “Perhaps you’d like to speak to them yourself, Ambassador?”

“No,” he said. “I cannot attend every parley. That is why I have a staff—so that I may delegate. Now, because Lugok saw fit to stab Mr. Meyer, it falls to you to speak for the Federation.”

“As you wish,” Karumé said. “Give me a moment.”

“Whenever you are ready, Ms. Karumé.”

She closed her eyes and stood absolutely still, deep in a thought-purging meditation. Because he himself was in no hurry to face Lugok, Jetanien waited in patient silence.

Normally this meeting would have been postponed until a more reasonable hour of the morning, but Jetanien wanted Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise to have as much reliable intelligence as possible before they shipped out several hours from now. In any event, he had lately come to realize that the Klingons’ schedule was somewhat offset from those of most station residents, which likely made the timing of this hastily convened meeting less of an inconvenience for them than it was for Jetanien and his staff.

“I’m ready now,” Karumé said. Three steps toward the door, she halted and looked back at Jetanien, who had followed her. “I thought you said you can’t attend every parley.”

“I cannot,” Jetanien said. “But I plan to attend this one.”

Her brow furrowed. “Am I running this meeting, or are you?”

“You are.”

“Fine. In that room, don’t interrupt me, don’t contradict me, and don’t undermine my authority as the Federation’s interlocutor. If I’m to have credibility with the Klingons, I must have real authority, not just the appearance of it.”

“Very sensible,” Jetanien said. “Please proceed.”

“Follow me,” she said, and continued toward the door.

She barged through it. By the time he had stepped into the room, Karumé was halfway to the conference table.

Lugok, his thick paunch stretching his black-and-gray uniform and metallic sash, rose quickly from his chair. A broad grin lit up his swarthy face. “Ambassador, your concubine is most rude! She doesn’t even wait for—” He was silenced by Karumé’s backhanded strike to his face, which caught him utterly by surprise and knocked him backward onto the table. Karumé had her hand locked around his throat before he could right himself.

“I’m Federation Envoy Karumé,” she said, her voice imperious. “You speak to me. I’m allowing Ambassador Jetanien to observe this meeting, as a courtesy.”

Jetanien was about to interject that, as his subordinate, Karumé was in no position to grant or deny him permissions of any kind; then he remembered the promise he had made before walking through the door. He stopped himself before approaching the table, and instead lingered by the wall near the door, watching and listening from a respectful distance.

Recovered from his initial surprise, Lugok reached up, placed his hand over Karumé’s, and pried it off his neck.

“You have fire…for a human,” Lugok said, peeling her fingers loose one at a time. Gripping her wrist, he lifted her right arm over her head. “But your hands are weak.”

Undaunted, she smirked at him. “Maybe. But they’re quick.” A glint of light flashing off metal caught Jetanien’s eye, and he realized that in her left hand Karumé held Lugok’s d’k tahg. She had pressed it, cutting edge first, against the man’s crotch. Keeping her eyes on Lugok’s face as he looked down at his predicament, she added, “Look familiar?”

Jetanien chastised himself for not even having thought to ask Karumé, before the meeting, whether she was armed.

The other two Klingons in the room—an attaché named Kulor and a bodyguard named Turag—made no move to defend or assist Lugok. Observing the knife poised beneath their boss’s genitals, they chuckled cruelly.

No doubt sensing the delicacy of his situation, Lugok resumed eye contact with Karumé, released her hand, and smiled. “An honor to make your acquaintance…Envoy Karumé.”

Karumé withdrew the blade from the Klingon ambassador’s groin, flipped it in her palm, and offered it to him grip-first. “The honor is mine, Ambassador Lugok, son of Breg.” He accepted the dagger from her and sheathed it in his boot. She gestured toward the mirror-perfect black table, and the two diplomats sat in adjacent chairs, which they turned to face each other.

Lugok slouched. “Why have you asked for this meeting?”

“Our starship Bombay was destroyed yesterday,” she said.

“Yes,” Lugok said with a grin. “We heard.”

“Did you destroy it?”

He laughed. “No, but we applaud those who did.”

“Do you know who destroyed our vessel?”

Lugok’s amusement turned quickly to boredom. “No.”

“Thank you, Ambassador,” Karumé said. She stood. “I look forward to our next meeting.”

Rising to face her eye-to-eye, Lugok, despite his bulky physique, projected an aura of menace. “As do I,” he said. “Thank you for returning my blade.” He marched past her, toward the door on the opposite side of the room from where she and Jetanien had entered. He left in long, fast strides, and his attaché and bodyguard followed close behind him.

The door swished shut a moment later, leaving Karumé and Jetanien alone in the conference room. She turned toward him. “The Klingons didn’t destroy the Bombay.”

Jetanien was skeptical. “And your basis for this conclusion would be what, exactly, Ms. Karumé?”

“Lugok said so.”

“I see,” Jetanien said. “Permit me to extend my most humble thanks to you, then, for permitting me to audit this exchange. How else would I have learned that our most aggressive and implacable enemy in known space is also our most credible source of foreign intelligence? Most edifying, Ms. Karumé.”

“Klingons take pride in their warmongering,” Karumé said. “If they defeated one of our ships in open combat, they’d be crowing about it from one end of the galaxy to the other.”

“Unless they plan to destroy Vanguard’s starship support in preparation for an assault on the station,” Jetanien said. “In that case, better to neutralize our vessels clandestinely, so as to avoid sparking a reprisal before they can capture Vanguard.”

Karumé shook her head. “Klingons are cunning, but they’re not subtle. When they want to attack, they’ll do it in force—and in the open. What happened to the Bombay wasn’t their style.”

“Perhaps.” Moving back toward the door he and Karumé had entered through, he said, “I trust you don’t plan to conduct all your parleys at knifepoint?”

“Of course not,” she said, following him out. “Lugok won’t fall for that twice. I’ll have to change tactics next time.”

“A phaser, I presume?”

“Cleavage, actually. Emasculation and titillation are oddly connected in the male Klingon psyche.”

Where a human might have sighed, Jetanien groaned. “Please don’t have an affair with him.”

“Wow,” she said. “You really don’t understand Klingon politics, do you?”

Sandesjo sat in the commissary and picked at her breakfast of scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and toast with jam. Everything about it revulsed her. Its aroma, its color, the fact that cooking had leached all the flavor from it—no one, she was convinced, could ruin a meal like humans. Even their coffee was weak. For the sake of keeping up appearances, however, she made the effort to eat and pretend to enjoy herself. Later, before her work-day overwhelmed her, she would slip away to the lavatory and sneak a couple of tuQloS pills to help her body take some sustenance from the human food she was forced to consume.