Blasts shattered the bases of the four towering supports. Xiong stared up in mute horror as the closest one fell toward him, in what seemed like surreal slow motion. Panic froze him in place. Paralyzed, he watched the gargantuan, curving rib of black stone rush down at him.

Someone’s arms wrapped around his chest. His feet dragged through the dust as he was pulled backward, each bump and jostle sending sharp stabs of pain into his knee. The falling support crashed to the ground and broke into millions of pieces. The impact displaced a wall of air, knocking Xiong and his rescuer away in a flurry of stone fragments. Its crashdown was followed by three others, all of which boomed like thunder. Dark plumes of roiling dust and smoke mushroomed up, completely obscuring all visibility for several seconds.

When the smoke cleared, Xiong turned to see who had just saved his life. Lying behind him, his own radiation suit torn in several places by hunks of shrapnel, was Captain Kirk. Barely visible behind him, sprawled in the dust and still-smoldering debris, were Spock, D’Amato, and Patterson. Waved over by Kirk, Patterson limped to Xiong and saw his mangled knee. Without saying a word, Patterson tore off a section of his own damaged suit and began tying a tourniquet above Xiong’s knee.

“Spock,” Kirk said, sounding winded, “report.”

The first officer reached for his tricorder, only to discover it was no longer on his belt. D’Amato nudged Spock’s shoulder and handed him his own tricorder. Spock activated it and made a quick scan. “Proximity fuses. Traces of enriched sultritium…high concentrations of triceron and thracium.” He deactivated the tricorder. “Demolitions, Captain. Tholian-made.”

Using the control pad on the wrist of his radiation suit, the captain opened the surface-to-ship channel. “Kirk to Enterprise.”

“Scott here, Captain.”

“Five to beam up.”

Scott clearly knew something had gone wrong. “Five, sir?”

“We’ll need a recovery team for Ensign Danes’s body.”

Dismayed, Scott replied, “Aye, sir. I’ll see to it. Stand by for transport.”

Patterson finished tying the tourniquet on Xiong’s leg. Xiong nodded his thanks to the security guard.

Waiting in shocked silence for beam-out, Xiong listened to a gust of wind shriek around the landing party. The lower half of his right leg was growing numb. Looking around at his comrades, guilt swelled inside him. I brought them down here. He glanced at the glowing-hot pile of smashed rock where the artifact used to be, and thought of the boyish young security guard who had just died there. He died because of me. For my mission. For a handful of secrets I never wanted.

He felt the immobilizing embrace of the transporter beam. As the dematerialization sequence energized with a musical ringing of white noise, Xiong imagined Captain Kirk writing a letter to Ensign Danes’s family, telling them that he didn’t know what their son had died for.

Not good enough, Xiong decided. Not even close.

Kirk sat on the edge of the biobed and pulled on a fresh shirt his yeoman had brought from his quarters. Spock, D’Amato, and Patterson were with him in sickbay, each of them confined by Dr. Piper to their own biobed. The monitors over their heads reported their pulse rates with softly throbbing bum-bump biofeedback tones.

A blond nurse had tended their minor injuries while Dr. Piper performed an emergency surgical repair of Xiong’s knee. At first the doctor had opined that he might need to amputate Xiong’s leg above the knee and replace it with a biosynthetic. Kirk hoped, for Xiong’s sake, that Piper was wrong.

A brief, three-note whistle preceded an intraship hail. “Bridge to Captain Kirk,” Scott said over the sickbay speaker.

Rising from the biobed, Kirk walked to the wall panel and opened a two-way channel. “Kirk here.”

“Recovery team is back aboard, sir. Mission accomplished.”

Kirk appreciated the chief engineer’s discretion in leaving certain details unsaid. “Thank you, Mr. Scott. What’s the status of our salvage operation?”

“We’ll have everything aboard in about six hours, sir.”

“Any sign of the Bombay’s log buoy?”

“Aye,” Scott said. “We’ve got a lock on it. It’s next on our list.”

“Good work,” Kirk said. “Notify Mr. Spock as soon as it’s aboard.”

“Will do, sir.”

“Kirk out.” He thumbed off the comm switch, then heard a door slide open behind him. He turned to see Xiong hobble out of the recovery room. The lieutenant’s sweat-pants looked amusingly lopsided, with the right leg sliced off above the knee to reveal the servo-enhanced brace that supported his nearly mummified knee. “Mr. Xiong. Still in one piece, I see.”

“Thanks to you, Captain.” One halting step at a time, Xiong moved to the biobed on which a fresh blue uniform shirt and his gear—which amounted to a communicator and a tricorder—were neatly arranged and awaiting his return.

Dr. Piper emerged from the recovery room carrying a small plastic container with a prescription label. He handed it to Xiong. “Take one of these at night before you go to sleep. It’ll reduce the pain and swelling and speed up the healing.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Xiong placed the prescription bottle on top of the shirt, then folded the garment in half over it. He stared down at his things for a moment, his fists clenching on the edges of his shirt.

Kirk recognized the younger man’s look of self-blame, that haunted expression of anger turned inward. He had seen it on his own face eight years ago, after his moment of fearful hesitation on Tycho IV led to the deaths of nearly two hundred of his Farragut shipmates, including his commanding officer, Captain Garrovick.

“Captain,” Xiong said, “I just want to say…”

Kirk took advantage of Xiong’s pause. “Is this an apology, Lieutenant?”

“Kind of, sir, yes.”

“Keep it. You have nothing to be sorry for.” Seeing that Xiong was gearing up to protest, Kirk continued, “What happened down there wasn’t your responsibility, it was mine. I ordered the landing party, I led the mission. You made a convincing case for inspecting the site, but I made the decision to go. My command, my crewman, my responsibility. Clear?”

Xiong didn’t look as if he believed it—not that Kirk had really expected him to—but he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

“All right, then. Go back to your quarters and get some rest. We’ll be back at Vanguard in a few days.”

Xiong lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “There’s something else I need to tell you, Captain.” Looking up with hardening resolve, he added, “Something important.”

The intensity of Xiong’s demeanor commanded Kirk’s full attention. In the same hushed tone, he said, “About what, Lieutenant?”

“I want to tell you why Starfleet is out here,” Xiong whispered. “And why one of your men died today…. You saved my life, Captain. The least I owe you is the truth.”

16

Anzarosh, Kessik IV’s shabby spaceport town, was one of the most depressing places Cervantes Quinn had ever visited.

Hands tucked inside the warm pockets of his greatcoat, he leaned against the forward landing strut of the Rocinante. The slow-burning cigar clenched between his teeth was half-gone. It sizzled as he took another puff. Lethargic coils of grayish smoke snaked away and lingered in the dank predawn air. Overhead, the landing pit yawned open to a dismal patch of gray sky. A faint mist of chilly rain drizzled down.

Just as Quinn had expected, Ganz’s client had arranged for him to put down in the most remote, decrepit docking pit possible. Its amenities consisted of tangled fuel lines, a burgled maintenance locker, and rust. The whitewashed concrete floor was spiderwebbed from edge to edge with deep cracks. It was the kind of place to leave a body if you wanted to be sure it wouldn’t be found anytime soon.