by David Mack
I could have simply let him go. Starfleet Intelligence did not have specific need of him. Had I not enticed him, he might have been spared this loss.
He shook his head, and she knew he was responding to her thoughts. “Don’t think like that,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. I wanted this life.”
“I can help you,” she said.
Her suggestion made him angry. “I don’t need your help.”
“You need to let her go, Cervantes. You need to make your peace with this loss.”
The machine and the cave vanished in a storm of fire rolling up the mountainside while the once-frozen lake boiled far below, swallowing five Klingon warships into its bubbling froth. T’Prynn realized she was reliving Quinn’s memory of the explosion that killed Bridy Mac. At the cliff’s edge, Quinn crouched behind a cluster of jagged rocks, hiding from the flames. “Screw you! You don’t know what I’m feeling! How could you? You’re a goddamned Vulcan!”
She reached down, took him by the collar of his jacket, and yanked him to his feet.
As they snapped to a standing position, the mountainside vanished, and they stood facing each other inside an observation lounge overlooking Vanguard’s main docking bay. “Do you want to see what I know about this subject?” She grabbed his shoulders and spun him around so that he would see what she saw. Half a second later, the Starfleet cargo transport Malacca was split nearly in half by an orange fireball, and it was all T’Prynn could do not to scream.
Quinn stood transfixed, hypnotized as he watched the fiery aftermath of the bombing of the Malacca, the bodies and debris tumbling in slow motion as if in a dream, through the airless zero-gravity of the docking bay. His lips moved in tandem with T’Prynn’s as she whispered with sad remembrance, “She burns for me.”
The fire faded, the observation lounge melted away, and then Quinn stood at the edge of another of T’Prynn’s memories, a spectator to her final moments with Anna Sandesjo—the assumed name of a surgically altered Klingon spy named Lurqal, who had been both T’Prynn’s double agent and her lover. The two women faced each other inside one of Vanguard’s auxiliary cargo bays, surrounded on all sides by a mountain of cargo containers. Anna stood inside one that had been modified to act as a scan-shielded residential module in which she would be smuggled off the station . . . aboard the Malacca.
“Just close the door,” Anna said.
T’Prynn yearned to reach out to her, to apologize for everything she had done—for using her, betraying her, abandoning her—but most of all for what she hadn’t done: admit the truth.
I loved you.
She and Quinn were back in the observation lounge. Scorched wreckage and burnt bodies floated past the towering transparent steel window. T’Prynn pressed her hand against it and felt hope and love burn away inside the distant crucible of her betrayal. Tears fell from her eyes as she looked at Quinn, who stared back at her, stricken and mute in the face of her anguish.
“I know exactly what you’re feeling,” she said.
He lifted one dirty, callused hand and with the delicate touch of a surgeon brushed the tears from her cheeks. He looked almost ashamed. “I’m sorry.”
It was a small gesture, but she felt the compassion in it, the unconditional understanding. She took his hands in hers and with a mental push moved them away from their places of pain to one of peace. Vanguard faded away to a Vulcan desertscape by night. “This is a place not far from where I grew up,” she told him. “Here I learned the tenets of Vulcan mental discipline. Though I can’t teach you all that I know, I can share with you some basic techniques to strengthen your mind and control your feelings, rather than allow them to dominate you.”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“To use a human idiom, you and I both ‘battle with demons.’ Mine are shame and rage; yours appear to be addiction and grief. I cannot cure you of these afflictions, but I can give you an edge in the battle to control your own mind—if you will let me.”
He nodded, and she felt his investment of trust in her. “Let’s get to it.”
When at last the mind-meld ended, and T’Prynn removed her hand from Quinn’s stubbled face, hours had passed. Quinn looked at her with a new understanding. Where once he had seen in her a tormentor or a puppetmaster, now he saw a woman who was as much a victim of circumstance as he. But even more than sympathy, he realized what he felt toward her was gratitude.
“I hope I was able to help you,” Quinn said as he got up.
T’Prynn stood and smoothed the front of her red minidress. “You have, Mister Quinn, a great deal. Starfleet and perhaps the Federation itself are in your debt.”
He chuckled. “You don’t say. Well, if someone wants to clear my bar tabs and float me a line of credit, that’d be a right fine way to say ‘thank you.’” Noting her reproachfully arched brow, he shrugged. “Just a suggestion. Forget I mentioned it.”
He turned and walked toward the door. She spoke as it opened ahead of him.
“Before you go . . .” She waited until he turned back, then she continued. “If you wish, I can help you block out your memories of Commander McLellan. It might make things easier for you.”
“No,” he said. “I lost her once. I don’t think I could take losing her again.”
She raised her hand in the Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper, Mister Quinn.”
He smiled at her as he walked out the door.
“Right back atcha, darlin’.”
21
“Dammit, Frankie, you’ve got my word on this!” A host of disapproving stares from strangers scolded Tim Pennington for shouting—a faux pas when using one of Stars Landing’s public subspace comm kiosks in the middle of the station’s business day. He leaned closer to the screen and continued in an emphatic stage whisper, “The story’s one hundred percent legit!”
On the small, round cornered screen, Frankie Libertini looked less than convinced. Her thin lips were pursed, and she brushed a lock of her salt-and-pepper hair from her eyes with a hand whose fingernails looked as if they’d been gnawed on by a rabid badger. “Tim, let’s get a few things straight. First, I didn’t ask to be your editor, I lost a bar bet. Second, I don’t actually like you. And third, you’re not giving me a lot to go on here.”
Hand to chest, Pennington pantomimed a fatal wound to his tender feelings. “Frankie! You don’t like me? Say it ain’t so!” She was unamused, so he turned serious. “C’mon, Frankie! I gave you everything: names, dates, places. Hell, I even sent vids.”
“Yes, you did. And I was happy to see they were in focus for a change.” Her lips disappeared into a doubtful frown. “I’m not saying you haven’t done some first-rate work over the last few years, because you have. But look at this from my perspective, will you?”
He was ready to strangle her out of sheer frustration. “What am I looking at?”
“All your sources on this story are confidential. Which I could live with if the whole thing weren’t so damned controversial. I mean, if we run with this, and you’re wrong—”
“I’m not.”
“But if you are,” she continued with a silencing glare, “we could be talking about consequences a lot more extreme than just you getting booted off staff—though I can guarantee that would happen so fast it’ll make your pretty little head spin.”
An insincere smile seemed the appropriate response. “Thank you for noticing how pretty my head is. I spend hours making it like this just for you.”
“Listen to me: this is serious. When this story goes out, if it’s as solid as you claim, heads will roll. And I’m not talking in metaphors, Tim. You’re shining a light on the kinds of people who don’t think twice about solving disputes with duels to the death.” She pressed the side of her fist to her mouth and looked away, perhaps debating whether she wanted to say what was really on her mind. Then the look in her eyes turned fierce, and Pennington braced himself for what he’d known would be in the offing from the moment he submitted the story.
“The thing is,” she said, “the last time you turned in a feature like this, it was the Bombay story.”
He felt like throwing his coffee, mug and all, through the vid screen. “That’s crap! The two stories have nothing in common!”
“Yes, they do, Tim. What they have in common is you. Not to mention they’re both politically explosive exposés that affect the Federation’s diplomatic relationship with a foreign power, and they’re both predicated on the undocumented accounts of a bunch of anonymous sources whose stories can’t be fact-checked on our end. The whole thing’s a bomb waiting to go off. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t spike it right now.”
Leaning in as if they were locking horns, Pennington said, “Do it and I’ll go to INN.”
Pennington derived a perverse satisfaction from watching Libertini’s eyes narrow in contempt at the mention of the Interstellar News Network, the chief competitor of the Federation News Service. “You can’t do that,” she said. “You already gave the story to us.”
“If you spike it, the rights revert,” he shot back. “And my revised contract only gives you right of first refusal—not exclusivity. I don’t do work-for-hire anymore, Frankie.” Just to tweak her temper a degree further, he made a show of examining his own well-manicured fingernails. “So, what’s it gonna be? Run it and dominate the next two news cycles, or get aced by INN?”
She rested her head in one hand, distorting the left half of her face into a caricature of exhaustion. “I’d feel a lot better about this if you’d at least name your sources for me.”
“Sorry, I can’t,” he insisted. “I promised them all complete anonymity and confidentiality. But I sent you all my hard evidence. You can see for yourself it’s rock-solid.”
His insistence seemed to have depleted her will to argue. “All right, fine. It is too good a story to pass up. But I’m warning you, Tim—you’ve already used up your second chance. If this story goes tits up, you’re done as a reporter. You sure you want to take that chance?”
“Positive. Run it. It’s good.”
“Okay, hotshot. Look for it tomorrow at the top of the morning feed.” As she reached forward to terminate the call, she added, “I still hate you, by the way.”
“Sleep well, Frankie.”
The screen went dark, and Pennington took a sip of his coffee only to find it had gone tepid. He left the kiosk and dumped the quarter-full cup into a waste reclamation slot.
It was late afternoon, and the lanes of Stars Landing were busy with visitors of many species—some dining in small restaurants, others carousing in the pubs, a few shopping at the independently owned specialty shops. Pennington considered making his way to the edge of the ersatz village to grab a late lunch at Café Romano when he felt a sudden flutter of anxiety about the story he had just filed.
It wasn’t that he doubted his sources. His information had come directly from Ambassador Jetanien and a well-known, highly placed director at the civilian-run Federation Security Agency. He had taken advantage of connections in Vanguard’s intelligence and security divisions to verify the intelligence his sources had forwarded to him, and they had guaranteed him that everything checked out. And yet . . .
He couldn’t help but remember how easily and thoroughly T’Prynn had deceived him years earlier after the Bombay incident. She had fed him just enough truth to help him swallow her lies, and he had seen his career nearly demolished when his story—despite being essentially correct—was revealed to have been based on a series of easily discredited witnesses and details. He didn’t have reason to think she would do that to him again—quite the opposite. But that didn’t mean that someone else, maybe someone in Starfleet or the Federation government or even an agent of a foreign power, might not try to fool him again. If he had learned nothing else of lasting value during his tenure on Vanguard, it was that the truth was an infinitely malleable commodity, and that to find it in its unadulterated state required the utmost effort and vigilance.
The more he considered what he had just gotten himself into, the more his hands shook. At a key intersection, he had a change of heart and made his destination Tom Walker’s place. Minutes later he strolled in, planted himself on a stool at the bar, and nodded at the comely Irish bartender, Maggie. “Double of Glenmorangie 18, neat, and a Belhaven Ale.”
Maggie smiled and started drawing his pint. “Drinkin’ two-fisted are ya?”
“It’s all right, love—I’m a writer.”
She set his drinks in front of him, and he fought not to spill his scotch as he lifted it to his lips. Staring at it, he speculated that he had either just launched his career to the next level—or brought his entire life’s work crashing down in flames.
So be it. He downed the double shot in one toss. Here’s to luck.
In the face of slurs and hissing from his assembled peers, Duras entered the High Council chamber with his head held high, projecting proud defiance.
The chorus of disapproval was practically unanimous; only Chancellor Sturka and his lackey Gorkon abstained from the collective condemnation. Bristling at the public humiliation being heaped upon him but powerless to silence the council’s self-righteous spectacle, Duras felt his ears tingle with the heat of shame.
“Traitor!” shouted one, while others called him quisling, spy, or whore. Some spat upon him as he passed through the center of the chamber on his way to his place in the ranks of the Great Houses. Then the throng pressed inward, surrounded him, and harangued him. Cries of “Romulan stooge!” mixed with a medley of epithets in the dim and musky council chamber.
He did not need to ask why he had been cast as the Empire’s whipping boy. By the time he had risen from his bed that morning, half the galaxy had seen the latest top story from the Federation News Service: a feature article that accused Duras personally as well as his entire House with numerous specific acts of collaboration with the Romulan foreign intelligence service known as the Tal Shiar. His first instinct had been to dismiss the story as a clumsy attempt at a smear campaign—but then he’d read it.
To his chagrin, it appeared to have been impeccably researched, sourced, and documented. It was replete with names, dates and places of events, accounts of criminal activities perpetrated by Duras and his agents, and the details of promises made by and transactions between both Duras and his Romulan contacts. It had laid bare his House’s plan to ally itself with the Romulan Star Empire as a means of seizing political and economic power at home, even if it meant turning the Klingon Empire into a de facto puppet state of the Romulans.
Worst of all, it had revealed his affair with Valina. After surviving the wrath of his wife, confronting the High Council had come to seem like a trifling matter to Duras.
He let them shout their curses and heap derision upon his name until his temper boiled over and he could bear no more. “Silence! Who are you to judge me? Mine is one of the oldest Houses in the Empire! Why would you take the word of novpu’ over mine?”
Councillor Kesh yelled back, “You deny its claims?”
“Of course I deny them, you fool!”
“If we investigate this ourselves,” said Councillor Kulok, “what will we find?”
Duras waved away the accusation. “Nothing!”
Councillor Molok howled, “Because you’ve buried the evidence?”
“Because there’s no evidence to find!” Duras’s protestations were met by another long, deafening babel of discord. Spittle flew with the invective, all of it directed at him. Pivoting and snarling like a trapped animal, his bloodlust grew hotter and more bitter until he roared, “Damn you all! Since when does this council believe the lies of its enemy’s propaganda machine? Not one soul inside the Empire has ever accused me of such heinous crimes. To think I would debase myself and dishonor my House by betraying the Empire is absurd!” He drew his d’k tahg and waved it menacingly at his detractors. “If any of you have proof, present it. If any of you have the courage to accuse me, step forward and draw your blade.”
&
nbsp; Gorkon’s stentorian voice reverberated from the far end of the chamber. “Enough of this. All of you step back. Duras, sheath your blade.” The councillors withdrew from Duras with great reluctance. Some glowered at him with contempt while others stared resentfully at Gorkon. When Duras returned his blade to its sheath, Gorkon continued. “Councillor Duras is correct: the slander of a Federation civilian carries no weight under Klingon Imperial Law. The contents of that article are to be considered suspect, and may not be introduced as evidence here.”
Duras accepted Gorkon’s support with a small nod. “Well said.”
“However,” Gorkon added, drawing out the word for dramatic effect, “the surprising level of detail in that article does raise a number of difficult questions, Councillor Duras—some of which might be possible to answer with a formal inquiry by Imperial Intelligence.”
The mere suggestion had Duras squeezing the grip of his blade and shooting a murderous look at Gorkon. You arrogant toDSaH! Swallowing his curses for another time, Duras bellowed to the other councillors, “This is a smear campaign! My House is being framed! Can’t you see that?” None of his peers would look him in the eye. Some merely averted their gaze; others turned away from him entirely. He turned in one direction, then another, searching for support but finding none. Even his old friend Kesh had turned against him. Desperate for an ally, he turned to Sturka. “Chancellor! Tell me you haven’t been taken in by these outrageous lies!”
“I’ve heard a great many outrageous lies in recent days, Duras.” Sturka’s guttural croak of a voice was thick with disdain. “Most of them, I think, from you.” He got up from his throne and gathered his long cloak of silvery fur lined with black silk. “Gorkon is correct: This is a matter best remanded to Imperial Intelligence for investigation.” He turned his back on Duras and walked away, heading toward his private portal.
Standing beside the throne, looking down at Duras with smug self-assurance, was Gorkon. “Take heart, Duras. If you’re guilty of no wrong, you have nothing to fear.”