“This Will Get Out of Control Quickly,” Vaughn Said.

“The minute either Zarin or Worf decides that things aren’t going right, that one will call in the cavalry, and five minutes later, the other one will call in his, and this whole thing will blow up in our faces.”

“We need to call in reinforcements,” Garrett told Captain Haden. “We’ll be a sitting duck if those fleets decide to go at it.”

“Too risky,” Haden said. “I don’t disagree with you, Number One, but Monor and Qaolin already have their bowels in an uproar because I let the Hopliteout in the first place. They’re keeping a close eye on us.”

Curzon Dax shook his head. “What we need to do is put our cards on the table and call their bluff.”

“That’s a quaint metaphor,” Vaughn said. “But I doubt they’re bluffing.”

“I’m sure they think that, too—and will continue to do so, right up until they have to actually play their cards. But one reason why I think they’ve assembled these fleets in the first place”—Dax looked at Haden—“assuming they haveassembled the fleets, is because they’re far from home. Reinforcements beyond whatever they’re hiding behind cloaks or in nebulae are days away, and probably not easily diverted. I’m not sure either Zarin or Worf will be willing to start something they can’t finish.”

“I’ve read the transcripts of the meetings so far,” Vaughn said. “I haven’t seen anything to indicate that either side is going to budge. Where does that leave us?”

“I have no idea where it leaves you, Lieutenant, but it leaves me with the winning hand. I just have to play it.”

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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When I started this book, a child was born in New York City. When I finished it, seven brave men and women died in the sky over Texas. Both served as sharp reminders of the cycle of life and death that is, in many ways, the theme of the novel you are about to read.

With that in mind, this book is dedicated to the child, Benjamin Palmieri, the Space Shuttle Columbia, and the men and women who crewed it.

“Politics is the art of the possible.”

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

“What God is he writes laws of peace, and clothes him in a tempest?”

—William Blake, America: A Prophecy,1793

Historian’s Note

This story commences in 2328, thirty-five years after the presumed death of Captain James T. Kirk aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise-B in Star Trek Generations.It concludes in 2346, eighteen years before the launch of the Enterprise-D in “Encounter at Farpoint.”

Prologue

On High My

Spirit Soars

A World in the

Klingon Empire

The boy could taste the scent of the lIngta’ on the wind.

“You smell it, don’t you?” Mother whispered, a proud smile on her face as they knelt in the underbrush. All three moons were out, casting the plant life and the ground in an eerie white glow. Mother held a gIntaqspear in her left hand. The boy was unarmed—Mother was teaching him to track prey in the hope that one day he would be able to hunt on his own. It was their fifth trip into this preserve, and their second at night.

“Lead me to it,” Mother said.

Nodding once—an economy of movement was necessary to keep from being detected by the prey—the boy moved quietly through the underbrush. He could not hear Mother moving behind him; indeed, he only knew that she was there because of her scent.

When Grandfather purchased the land on this world, he had declared this area to be hunting ground, and had imported several types of game animal from all across the Empire and beyond, including a dozen lIngta’ from the Homeworld. The boy had improved his tracking skills with each trip, and he eagerly awaited the day he would be allowed to wield the gIntaqand take the beast down.