Pulled by my hair over burning coals.
Sten’s katra-voice tormented her thoughts: You have betrayed her, just as you betrayed me.
A twinge of discomfort tugged at the corner of T’Prynn’s eyelid. She suppressed it as she spoke. “Just over one hour ago the Klingon battle cruiser Zin’za left the Jinoteur system. By now it has likely confirmed to the Klingon High Council and to Imperial Intelligence that there was no Starfleet ambush there.”
Sandesjo’s brow constricted with suspicion. “It was called off?” She studied T’Prynn’s face. Understanding added bitterness to her gaze and her voice. “It never existed.”
“No, it did not,” T’Prynn said. “It was a lie intended to delay their entry into the system so that a rescue effort would have time to reach the Sagittarius. That effort has succeeded.”
Shock dominated Sandesjo’s expression for a moment. Then it was replaced by indignation. “You’ve blown my cover.”
“Correct,” T’Prynn said. “When your handlers realize that you passed them completely fraudulent intelligence, they will conclude that you have been compromised.”
The double agent buried her face in her hands. “They’ll kill me for this,” she muttered.
“You will be protected,” T’Prynn said. “You’ll go on extended leave and move to secure quarters elsewhere in the station until a transport arrives six days from now.” Sand hurled into my eyes. Sten’s nose shattering beneath the heel of my palm. “It will bring you to a world inside Federation space. After you have been debriefed by Starfleet Intelligence, you will be given a new identity, and a new face, before entering permanent protective custody on one of the core Federation planets.”
Sandesjo dragged her fingers through her hair, pulling taut the skin of her temples and lifting her eyebrows. It transformed her blank expression into one of shock. “And what about you?”
“I will organize your protection from now until you board the transport,” T’Prynn said. “After that, agents of—”
“No,” Sandesjo said. “I misspoke. What about us?”
His hand clamps shut around my throat. I claw at his eyes.
“I will not be going with you,” T’Prynn said.
Shaking and blushing with anger, Sandesjo clenched her jaw and closed her fists white-knuckle tight. “You used me,” she said, her voice hoarse and unsteady. “I risked everything for you.” She sprang to her feet, her face bright with fury. “My cover, my honor, my life. And you used me.”
“I did what duty required,” T’Prynn said.
Sandesjo’s slap stung the left side of T’Prynn’s face, and Sten’s backhand burned against the right. Paralyzed by the dual assault, one from without and the other from within, T’Prynn stood and suffered the rain of blows. One sharp strike after another buffeted her face, snapping her head from side to side and coating her teeth with a coppery-tasting sheen of green blood. She had lost count of how many real and imagined hits she had suffered when her reflexes returned and she grabbed Sandesjo’s hands, halting her attack.
The wet crack of Sten’s breaking cervical vertebra ends the challenge—and begins our lifelong duel.
Grappling with Sandesjo was difficult. Though she looked human, her Klingon musculature gave her considerable strength and made her a durable, formidable opponent for T’Prynn. Fueled by rage, she twisted and lurched in the Vulcan’s grip, growling like a wild animal struggling to free itself from a trap. Then she lurched toward T’Prynn instead of away from her, and they staggered clumsily, entwined in a desperate, anguished kiss.
Sandesjo’s lips pulled away from T’Prynn’s like a spent wave retreating from a beach. T’Prynn’s measured breaths were overpowered by Sandesjo’s gasps of lust and desperation. “Don’t do this,” Sandesjo implored. “Don’t make me leave you.”
“There is no other way,” T’Prynn said.
The pulling and twisting resumed, and Sandesjo abandoned words for inarticulate roars and screams. A skillful shift of her balance enabled Sandesjo to slip free of T’Prynn’s grasp. She stumbled away, grabbed a wireless lamp from an end table, and hurled it at T’Prynn, who easily sidestepped it. The lamp struck the wall with a soft crunch and a thud. It fell to the floor, its light extinguished.
All at once Sandesjo abandoned the fight. Her knees folded beneath her, and she slumped down onto them. Fury collapsed into defeat. With sagging shoulders and a tired sigh, she seemed to resign herself to T’Prynn’s endgame.
“A security detail will be here in five minutes,” T’Prynn said. “They will escort you to your temporary quarters. There will be no need to pack. All your needs will be provided for.”
Sandesjo glared at T’Prynn. “Not all of them.”
T’Prynn turned away and walked toward the door. She stopped as Sandesjo called out, “You want to know what’s ironic?” T’Prynn looked back. Sandesjo let out a mirthless chuckle and regarded the Vulcan woman with a bitter grin. “Right now I want to cry like a human—but Klingons don’t have tear ducts. Vulcans do have them—but I guess you think I’m not worth crying over.”
The barrage of katra attacks came swiftly, faster than they ever had before, and with enough ferocity to make T’Prynn wince. She replayed the memory of Sten’s neck breaking over and over until she regained control of her conscious mind. Then she coaxed her mien back into a properly Vulcan cipher.
“Do not presume to know what I think, Anna,” she said, and fled her lover’s abode, hounded by Sten’s vengeful katra.
Walking alone through the terrestrial enclosure and then the corridors of the station’s upper levels, T’Prynn could not imagine where she might find refuge. Seeking medical assistance would only increase the likelihood of her val’reth secret undoing her career. Meditation offered no solace. The piano at Manón’s, once a redoubt of tranquility, had proved vulnerable. Her lover’s arms no longer offered any shelter.
She had run out of ways to run from herself. There was nothing left to do but admit that Sten’s taunts had contained at least a kernel of truth: she had betrayed Anna. Though she had buried her shame deep in the tombs of her mind, she harbored no doubt that Sten would unearth it and use it to bludgeon her psyche for decades to come.
T’Prynn returned to her arid quarters, undressed, and made a perfunctory attempt at sleep, fully expecting to find Sten’s malevolent shade waiting in her dreamscape—standing atop an open grave, spade in hand…and gloating.
Part Three
Instruments
of Darkness
29
Six days of reclusive brooding had not assuaged Reyes’s grief. Reading through detailed after-action reports from the captains of the Lovell and the Endeavour had forced him to relive the Gamma Tauri IV tragedy several times over, and each new reading deepened his sense of how indelibly bloodied his hands had become. Eleven thousand colonists, thousands of Klingon scientists, and every living thing on the planet’s surface all were dead and reduced to radioactive glass and vapor.
And what did we learn? He asked himself that question over and over, knowing that the answer was “almost nothing.” The mission to Gamma Tauri IV had gleaned no significant insights into the artifacts, the meta-genome, or the Shedai. Having ended in bloodshed and fire, it was a tragedy for which Reyes knew himself to be directly responsible.
The only good news of the week had been the rescue of the Sagittarius from the surface of Jinoteur IV, and even that was not really a success but just another disaster narrowly averted. In a few hours the ravaged scout ship would return to Vanguard, accompanied by the civilian tramp freighter Rocinante. A heroes’ welcome had been planned, and Reyes clung to the hope that the Sagittarius crew’s debriefing would prove more informative than the abortive mission on Gamma Tauri IV. At the very least, he was looking forward to hearing their theories about how the entire Jinoteur star system had vanished from space-time.