As the ambassador marched toward his office, Sandesjo said to his retreating back, “Should I postpone your morning meetings?” For once, Jetanien neither interrupted nor answered her. He went into his private office and closed the door, which emitted a soft double-beep to indicate that he had locked it.

She and Sovik looked at each other. He raised one eyebrow. She shrugged. He departed, and she made the long, lonely walk back to her private quarters.

The repetitive grind of long days, which by now had blurred together, left Sandesjo enervated. Filing a report with Turag would no doubt be a tedious matter, and it was one that she would prefer to put off until morning. Unfortunately, she knew that he would be livid if she waited that long to brief him.

She locked her door, then unlocked her slim briefcase and opened it on her dining table. I hate the waiting, she fumed, as the device established its encrypted subspace link. It takes too long. Sooner or later, someone will notice.

“bImoHqu’,” came the challenge-phrase.

In a glum monotone she answered, “jIwuQ.”

Turag’s harshly shadowed face replaced the Klingon trefoil emblem. He grinned. “Another late night, Lurqal?”

“Don’t call me by my true name, you yIntagh,” she said. “I don’t like being reminded.”

“Spare me your tale of woe. Report.”

“Jetanien told Sesrene that the Federation knows the Tholians destroyed the Bombay. Both sides seem ready for war.”

“Then why aren’t they at war?”

“Clearly, Jetanien and his peers have a larger objective—one that war does not serve.”

“If the Federation is unprepared to make war to hold its ground in the Gonmog Sector, we might find it easier to stake a claim here than we thought.”

“Perhaps.” She transmitted to Turag an image she had clandestinely recorded during the meeting between Jetanien and Sesrene. “In any event, Sesrene and the other Tholians appear to have recovered.”

“Any word yet on what caused their seizures?”

She shook her head. “None.”

“Jay’va,” Turag muttered. “If we could find the source, we could use it against them. It would be a great help when it comes time to conquer them.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Sandesjo said.

From the other end of the conversation, Sandesjo heard the beeping of a comm signal. “Lugok demands an update,” Turag said. “I must go. Qapla’.”

“Qapla’,” she said, then shut down the channel as quickly as possible. She had just locked her briefcase when the door to her quarters opened without warning.

Standing in Sandesjo’s doorway, shadowed by back-lighting from the corridor, was Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn.

“Good evening, Miss Sandesjo.”

She nodded politely, but her throat tightened. “Commander.”

T’Prynn walked in uninvited. The door closed behind her. Standing in front of Sandesjo, she drummed her fingertips once on the closed lid of the briefcase. “Working late?”

“Just finished,” she said.

“Good.” Moving with exaggerated slowness as if to prolong the moment, T’Prynn circled the table, trailing her right index finger along its edge. Her fingernail left a subtle gouge in the table’s varnish. “Then I am free to take my time.”

Sandesjo was convinced that T’Prynn’s dark brown eyes were staring clean through her pseudo-identity. The lithe Vulcan woman, who was slightly taller than Sandesjo to begin with, took advantage of the fact that the younger woman was seated and loomed over her. “Some things are best done by degrees,” T’Prynn said. “Do you concur?”

Sandesjo stared back with equal intensity. “Absolutely.”

T’Prynn’s hand shot forward and grasped a fistful of Sandesjo’s auburn hair. Sandesjo grabbed T’Prynn’s arm and dug her fingernails into the skin. Twisting Sandesjo’s hair as she pulled, T’Prynn yanked her, shrieking, from her chair and slammed her, back-first, against the wall.

The Vulcan woman’s kiss was rough and hungry. Sandesjo reveled in it until their lips parted. They both breathed heavily and eyed each other through chaotic locks of ferally tousled hair. Sandesjo gasped for breath through a delighted smile. “You’re early, my love.”

Saying nothing, T’Prynn gave Sandesjo’s hair another hard, aphrodisiacal twist and kissed her again. Blissfully surrendered into her lover’s embrace, Sandesjo savored the irony that not only had she forsaken Klingon tradition for the touch of other women, but that of all the women she might have loved she had lost her heart to a Vulcan.

Breaking free of the devouring kiss, T’Prynn tugged on Sandesjo’s sleeve and, moving with the languid grace of a slow-dancing flame, led her toward the bedroom.

The inevitable, eternal reproach of her ancestors haunted Sandesjo’s thoughts: They will never let me enter Sto-Vo-Kor. Sinking onto the bed beside T’Prynn, however, she decided that the dishonor of her next life would be a small price to pay for such a love in this one.

Hours later, Pennington returned home to his cluttered, search-tossed apartment and glowering wife. After drowning his sorrows in the pub nearest his apartment, a bout of the spins and an episode of public vomiting had left him with no choice but to call it a night.

Eyeing his miserable state, Lora sneered and said, “I see you’re taking the phrase ‘filthy, stinking drunk’ literally.”

He wanted to act aloof, but tears rolled freely from his eyes as he slurred out, “ ’Sbeen a miserable damn day.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. “You have some sob story that explains why I haven’t seen or heard from you for twelve hours?”

“Liars!” He stumbled against the coffee table and kicked it over, impervious to pain for the moment. “I wanted truth with a capital ‘T’ and got crap.” As he staggered slowly to his liquor cabinet, his vision softened but his righteous anger didn’t. “Set me up, the bastards. Data card, Medina, all of it, just a sham.” He yanked open the cabinet door and fumbled to grab the whiskey.

Lora tried to steal the bottle from his hands. He refused to let go. “Put that down,” she said. “You’re drunk.”

“Am I?” With a violent tug, he pulled the bottle free of her hands. “Have you got physical evidence? A second witness?”

“What in God’s name are you going on about, Tim?”

The cork of the whiskey bottle came free with a delightful, hollow-sounding foop. He swigged a hefty mouthful and didn’t bother to sleeve the excess from his chin afterward. “I lost my damn job! They fired me…. Jesus, don’t you read the news?”

“This is about your Bombay story?”

“That’s what I always liked about you, Lora—you’re quick.”

She threw up her arms and stormed away from him, seeking the safety of a little distance. “Well, excuse me if I find you a little hard to follow when you come home a drunken mess.”

“They buried the whole thing,” he said, falling backward onto the couch. He grunted heavily on impact. “FNS denied the story.” He put the bottle to his lips and upended it, dumping a solid double down his throat. Seconds later, he felt sick. “And those bastards at the Federation Council…said they can’t go to war ’cause all the evidence is fake. Fake! Are they kidding?” He fumbled the bottle and spilled half its contents into his lap. He rubbed his face vigorously. It was numb to his touch. “Is this right? The goddamned Tholians killed her, but Starfleet does nothing! Is that fair? Am I supposed to call this justice?”

Lora folded her arms. “Who did they kill?”

“What do you mean, who…? They killed the whole damn crew, two hundred people, the team on the planet—”

“You said they killed her.”

Paralysis set in instantly. He grappled with his whiskey-fogged short-term memory, trying to replay his own words of a few seconds earlier. The warmth of the booze departed his face, which he felt turning cold and gray with dread. A shiver of guilty horror trembled his entire body.