Harbinger

“A pleasure,” Pe

“You’re not quite uptight enough to be Starfleet,” Qui

“Right on the first count,” Pe

Qui

Pe

“Oh, hell—did I just talk out loud again? I gotta stop doing that.” The room’s hard edges were begi

“Look, I don’t know who you think I am—” Pe

“What’s your game, then? You ain’t buying me drinks for my personality. Sharp-looking guy like you must be able to rent better friends than me.”

“I won’t lie to you,” Pe

Qui

“No no no,” Pe

Numerous possibilities immediately suggested themselves to Qui

“Comings and goings,” Pe

Suddenly, the smell that was coming off Pe

“Not much,” Pe

“Truth can be expensive.”

“Look, I’m only a journalist for FNS, but maybe we can—”

“A reporter?” Qui

Pe

Qui

Weaving like tall grass in a shifting wind, Qui

Lurching out the door, Qui

Pe

He looked up from his reflection in the chair’s swiveling mirror and said to Dr. Thelex, the chief of dentistry, “Still hurts. What can you give me for this?”

“Advice,” the gruff Andorian said, his pale eyes peeking over his narrow, octagonal-frame glasses. “Stay out of bar fights.”

“Anything stronger?”

Dr. Thelex rotated the mirror aside. “You’re a pathetic weakling who should stay out of bar fights.”

Great, a dentist with a sense of humor. Pe

“All part of the service.”

Back to it, then. Pe

He slipped out the door into the corridor and hurried toward the turbolift. Just after he pressed the call button, a hand slapped down on his shoulder. More than a flinch, he recoiled with frightened surprise.

Behind him, Xiong quickly pulled back his hand and raised both arms to show he meant no harm. Pe

“It’s okay, Ming. I got decked an hour ago, and I’m a little jumpy.”

Xiong lowered his hands. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, mate, I’m fine. Doc Thelex patched me up, right as rain.” The turbolift door opened, revealing an empty car. Pe

Light flashed sideways through narrow vertical panels as the car shot along horizontally toward a free vertical shaft.

“Came looking for you,” Xiong said. “Confidentially.”

“Always.” Three months earlier, after Pe

“I read your piece about the deaths on the Enterprise,” Xiong said. “I thought you might want to know I’ve been given orders to ship out with her crew.”