On the monitor above and ahead of him, the docking bay doors began to creep shut as the Terra Courser engaged its impulse engines and cruised away from the station. Before the doors closed, Reyes caught a glimpse of the Sagittarius tucked under the hulking transport, like a tiny white remora hugging a shark’s belly. Then the pale gray doors met, and the image on that screen changed to the majestic nebula that dominated one angle of the starscape outside the station.
Cooper checked the reports forwarded to his station by a handful of subordinates and reported discreetly to Reyes, “The jump to warp went perfectly, sir. The Terra Courser and her shadow are away.”
The commodore nodded and stared at the dark sprawl of space and stars, not brave enough to imagine what was in store for the crew of either ship. “Vaya con Dios,” he said softly. Then he returned to his office—walking, as always, under a dark cloud of concern for those he had just placed in harm’s way.
7
“What do you mean it’s gone?” raged Turag, his ire palpable even across a long-range subspace channel. “We told you to watch its every move! How could you have missed its departure?”
Sandesjo struggled to keep her temper in check. Lambasting her Imperial Intelligence handler with vulgarities might draw attention in the Federation Embassy office, even from behind the closed door of her private office. “Starfleet normally announces arrivals and departures,” she said. “This time there was no announcement. Furthermore, Jetanien was left out of the loop. Reyes concealed the Sagittarius’s deployment from all non-essential personnel, including the station’s diplomatic staff.”
“A sorry excuse, Lurqal,” Turag said, sneering through her true name as if it were a slur. “You have eyes. Couldn’t you see the ship was no longer in the hangar?”
I’m just going to throttle him, she fumed. Quieting her thoughts, she replied, “The Sagittarius is a very small ship, Turag. After it reached port, the maintenance crew covered it with scaffolding while making repairs. Apparently, the ship navigated clear of the scaffolding, which was left in place to create the illusion that the vessel was still in spacedock.”
“An answer for everything,” Turag said. “How convenient. How could the Sagittarius have left undetected by our fleet?”
“Not all our warriors are as cunning and alert as you are, Turag,” she said with syrupy insincerity. “The Sagittarius probably left at the same time as the Terra Courser and used her for cover—much as she deceived the crew of the Heghpu’rav into thinking she was a battle cruiser.”
“Assuming your guess is right,” Turag said, “how much of a lead would they have?”
“Two days and nineteen hours,” Sandesjo said.
Turag pounded his fist on the tabletop in front of his monitor. “Jay’va! They could be halfway to Jinoteur by now!” He pointed an accusing finger at her. “Every week your reports grow shorter and less useful. Now you’ve let a major Starfleet deployment slip past you. This is the last time, Lurqal. Fail us again, and you’ll be making your excuses to Fek’lhr!”
A jab of his index finger cut the channel. The screen hidden inside Sandesjo’s briefcase went dark. With a calmness of motion that belied her distress, she shut the briefcase and slid it under her desk. Her mouth was dry and tasted sour.
For a few minutes she sat with her face hidden in her hands. Solid intelligence had become harder to obtain in the weeks since the death of Captain Zhao on Erilon, but Sandesjo’s privileged position still made available a great deal of useful information. During her first several months aboard Starbase 47 she had mined the Federation Embassy’s records repeatedly for items of interest that could be passed along to Turag and Lugok. Though that supply of internal memoranda was far from exhausted, she had become tired of sifting through it for material to pad out her reports. It had come to feel like busywork. More to the point, she had lost interest—in that task and in her mission.
She had tried to convince herself that she could serve her Klingon masters and T’Prynn at the same time without betraying either one. T’Prynn had never asked her to surrender information that would endanger Klingon lives, though the Vulcan had asked her to omit items from her reports that could place Starfleet personnel at risk. On occasion, the Vulcan had asked Sandesjo to pass along particular items of interest to the Klingons. Sometimes it was accurate intelligence of dubious strategic value; sometimes it was disinformation. Caught between Turag on one side and T’Prynn on the other, Sandesjo had tried to treat her predicament like a game, or like a high-wire act.
The time for games was over. Turag could sense that she was not delivering useful intelligence. She would need to give him exclusive information of genuine value to safeguard her deep-cover assignment, lest her own people move against her.
My own people, she thought ruefully. Do I still have the right to call them that? I’ve lain down with the enemy and fallen in love…. I’m a traitor.
Accepting that as true meant letting go of a comforting lie. She had told herself for months that her loyalties had been “divided” or her motives “conflicted.” The truth of the matter, she now knew, was that she had been turned. Whether the deciding factor had been falling in love with T’Prynn or simply remaining too long submerged in an assumed identity, she was uncertain. Regardless, she admitted to herself that it was a fact: her only interest in serving the Empire was to serve herself, so that she could remain in T’Prynn’s good graces—and in her bed. Likewise, she harbored no illusions of loyalty to the Federation. Its ideals and values held little interest for her.
Her true loyalty was to T’Prynn. If the only way to remain with her lover was to give Turag intel that would harm the Federation, Sandesjo had no reservations about doing so. If placating T’Prynn meant betraying crucial secrets of the Empire and sending Klingon warriors to their deaths, she resolved to act without remorse. All would be expendable in love’s name.
I will burn in Gre’thor for this, warned the faltering voice of Sandesjo’s conscience, but she paid it no heed.
Her love demanded blood, and it would not be denied.
Dr. Fisher sipped his coffee and knocked on the open door to his colleague’s office. “You asked to see me?”
Looking up from behind several orderly stacks of data slates, Dr. M’Benga’s face brightened when he recognized Fisher. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Do you have a minute? Please come in.”
M’Benga kept his office well organized and very clean. Fisher approved. He slouched into a comfortable, padded leather chair in front of M’Benga’s desk. It had been quite some time since he had been the one sitting in front of another physician. “What’s on your mind, Doctor?”
The younger man handed Fisher a data slate. “A few days ago I treated Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn in the ER,” he said. “She presented to the triage nurse with a nonspecific report of pain, then lost consciousness. I revived her with a low dosage of asinolyathin.”
Scanning the information on the slate, Fisher remarked, “You’ve got a few gaps in your patient profile, Doctor.”
“Yes, sir,” M’Benga said. “T’Prynn left AMA before I could take a history or compare her readings to baseline data.”
Fisher chuckled. “The higher the rank, the more difficult the patient.” He set down the data slate on M’Benga’s desk. “You can just request her file from Starfleet Medical, you know.”