Precipice

A long silence fell between them. Two moons continued their slow transit of the sky. The wind whispered over the dunes.

Pe

“Why did you set me up with that fake story about the Bombay? Did you know it’d ruin me as a journalist?”

She bowed her head. “I was aware of the potential negative consequences,” she said. “At the time I believed such harm was necessary. Because you had a reputation for competence and fairness, being able to discredit a story written by you would discourage other, lesser reporters from pursuing the matter.”

“And you think that made it right? Wasn’t there some other way you could have persuaded the Council not to go to war?”

She inhaled deeply and looked toward the horizon. “Yes.” After glancing in his direction, she added, “I took the easy way out by using you to expedite my task. The Federation Council needed to cast doubt on what was an otherwise incontrovertible fact: that the Tholians ambushed and destroyed a Starfleet vessel without provocation or just cause. It might have been possible to devise other explanations, but they all would have required more time than we had, and they would have entailed a greater number of variables subject to falsification, thereby increasing the risk that our deception would be exposed.”

Holding the reins on his anger, Pe

“I am not telling you this to excuse what I have done,” T’Pry

Halfway up the side of a sand mountain, she stopped, and Pe

She looked away as she continued her confession. “For decades I was imbalanced by Sten’s katra. My logic was impaired, and too many times I let fear or anger guide my actions. When others tried to help me, I obstructed their efforts. That is why I tampered with my Starfleet medical records, to hide my mental illness.”

T’Pry

“So what does all that have to do with us walking through a desert in the middle of the night?”

She resumed climbing the slope with Pe

Pondering his own shameful history, Pe

43

Qui

The midday sun felt to Qui

A few meters beyond the main entrance, Qui

He slowed as he neared the top of the flight and peeked out the next doorway, which opened onto a narrow balcony level overlooking the main chamber of the temple.

Moving in a low crouch, he inched up to the low wall that ringed the balcony level and peeked over it.

Most of the temple’s floor and decorative elements had been smashed apart and carted away to reveal the eerily smooth and reflective obsidian surfaces of the Shedai Conduit over which the temple had been built. Only a dozen thick sandstone columns had been left untouched. Looking up, Qui

Perfect targets,he thought with a diabolical smile.

He scuttled to the nearest column. After casting wary glances around the balcony, he opened his bag and removed the first of several compact demolition charges designed for shattering load-bearing supports. He tucked it in the corner where the column met the balcony’s low wall.

One down, eleven to go,he mused as he doubled over and jogged to the next column. Though he might never set off these charges, in his experience it never hurt to have options when seeking an exit strategy.

In about ten minutes he had mined nine of the columns and was on the opposite side of the balcony. Below him, workers had been delivering equipment the Klingon scientists had been setting up. On their way out, the De

As Qui

Qui

A pair of Klingon soldiers dragged in what looked like an adolescent female De

A blood-chilling groan reverberated through the obsidian structure and shook a rain of dust from the ceiling high overhead. A black wall to the left of the scientists began to pulse with deep violet light, revealing symbols in a script that Qui

Then he stared in horror as tendrils that looked like living smoke rose from the gleaming black floor around the pedestal and snaked toward the girl on the slab. Her hands were manacled together through a gap in the slab’s base, leaving her unable to even turn away from her fate. All she could do was shut her eyes and scream.