The Klingon stepped past Zett and positioned himself next to one long side of the artifact. His large, callused hands caressed the ruts and peaks of the object’s primitively carved stone lid. Zett followed him and stood on the opposite side of the ancient burial case. Qahl asked, “Where did you get it?”
“Are you prepared to pay an extra five million?”
Qahl scowled at Zett and grunted as he resumed his tactile examination of the casket. “I want to look inside.”
“Go ahead,” Zett said, moving back to give him some room.
Struggling to get a solid grip on the lid, Qahl glared at Zett. “You could lend a hand.”
Gesturing with a fluid, top-to-bottom sweep of his hand at his custom-tailored charcoal suit and perfectly polished black shoes, Zett flashed a smile of glistening black teeth. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not dressed for manual labor.”
Qahl grumbled under his gagh-fouled breath, which Zett could smell from meters away as the Klingon huffed and struggled to lift the sarcophagus lid by himself. With tremendous effort he raised one side of it several centimeters and tilted his head to peek under it, into a mesmerizing flicker of violet light. His eyes widened, and his jaw went slack.
Zett counted to ten, decided Qahl had seen enough to make an informed decision, and pressed his palm against the stone lid, forcing it shut with a resounding boom. “Satisfied?”
The Klingon nodded, palmed a sheen of musky perspiration from his brow, and stepped back. He reached into a fold of his black-and-gold uniform jacket and produced a credit chip, which he handed to Zett. The trim, shaved-headed Nalori accepted it with a polite half-nod and carried it to an interface on the bulkhead to verify that it was genuine, wasn’t booby-trapped, and contained the correct amount of remuneration. Stroking his twisted, pale-violet beard braid, he watched Qahl in the corner of his vision while he waited.
To his surprise, there was more money on the chip than had been agreed upon. He turned and narrowed his flat-black, pupil-free eyes at Qahl, who, apparently having anticipated Zett’s wary response, grinned broadly. “A bonus,” the Klingon said. “To show our gratitude for your successful and no doubt highly dangerous assassination of our turncoat agent on Vanguard.”
In Zett’s opinion, his assassination of Lurqal—a.k.a. Anna Sandesjo—had been some of the sloppiest work he had ever done. He preferred to kill his victims in private and make their bodies disappear without a trace. A murder suspected but never proved was the height of his art; a public act of arson with broad collateral damage was an amateurish atrocity. Unfortunately, because of the short notice he had been given by the Klingons and the extraordinary security measures that had been taken by Starfleet Intelligence, the brute-force bombing of the Malacca had been the only viable tactic available to him.
He ejected the chip from the wall panel, tucked it into his pants pocket, turned to Qahl, and said simply, “Thank you.” Then he took a remote control from his jacket pocket and entered the disarming code for the transport scramblers. “You’re all set.”
Qahl plucked a communicator from his belt and flipped it open. A few guttural Klingon commands later, he and the stone sarcophagus dissolved in an incandescent flurry of golden particles accompanied by the siren song of a transporter beam.
Zett returned to the cockpit and sat down. He had no idea what had been inside the sarcophagus, or why the Klingons had been willing to pay such an outrageous price to acquire it. All he knew was that he was glad to have it off his ship.
All in a day’s work, he told himself as he fired up the engines of the Icarion, set course for Vanguard, and made the jump to warp speed.
The knife that T’Prynn pulled from her chest wasn’t real, nor was the dark green slick of warm blood that trickled along the wavy line of the blade’s temper. A chill wind swept across the desolate nightscape of sand and broken stone, a cold promise of torments yet to come. None of those was real, either.
Neither were the starless sky, the endless night, the great trackless wasteland spread out beneath the void. Not the pain of her shattered bones, not her flayed skin, not the burning welts across her back, not the split in her lip stung by her saliva, not the coppery swell of blood in the back of her throat.
The only things real in this frozen purgatory were T’Prynn’s grief, rage, and despair. Isolated inside her psyche, bereft of her psionic defenses and patient meditations, she clung to her guilt, her anger, and her bitter sorrow; they were all she had left. Her wailing cries and guttural screams were as much inventions of her imagination as the banshee howls of the wind, but her anguish was genuine. It was real, so she clung to it.
Time slipped away from her. The land and all that stood upon it—every lonely menhir, every dead and twisted tree—were lit from within by a surreal, dull gray twilight. Her pale skin was the ashen hue of a corpse, and her blood ran black from wounds that refused to heal.
Anna’s ghost drifted in silent strides across the desert, her accusing stare paralyzing T’Prynn. Then she vanished in a blossom of flames, like a scrap of parchment consumed in a bonfire.
Why did I let her go? How could I?
Sprawled on the frigid sands, T’Prynn scuttled in a tight circle, like a scavenger searching the seabed in an ocean of regrets. In every direction she watched shades of her former self replay shameful moments from the life she had led.
Weak men she had coerced into peril. A good man she had deceived and ruined. Countless tiny acts of blackmail, fraud, and extortion. Principles betrayed in the name of “the greater good” and an illusory, unattainable commodity called “national security.” Real lives had been lost and real people had come to harm because of her efforts to promote and defend an abstract concept. It had been an illogical, wasteful endeavor.
What am I? What have I become?
His foot slammed into the back of her head.
The impact threw her facedown into the sand, and when she looked up it was because Sten was dragging her by her hair. Jagged rocks bit into her lower back as he pulled her over the ground toward a long, rectangular pit of glowing coals. Around them stood all the ceremonial trappings of the kal-if-fee, from the lirpa and the ahn-woon to the braziers of coals and many other barbaric remnants of a past that would not die.
Scorching fires charred the backs of her bare thighs as she twisted but failed to break free of Sten’s grip. On the other side of the coal pit, he hurled her to the ground. As he kicked at her, she tried to catch his foot, but he was too quick. His foot slammed into her midriff, winding her and cracking her ribs. She doubled over and clutched at her gut. Then his foot struck her under the chin and snapped her head back, flinging a long trail of green spittle from her mouth.
Crawling like an animal, she dug into the ground with her fingertips for purchase. Slithering, unable to rise, she clawed her way toward the weapons, which were arranged together several meters distant. Sten strolled nonchalantly ahead of her and picked up the ahn-woon. He tested the flexibility of the rawhide strap and turned to face T’Prynn, who continued to drag herself toward the weapons, determined to arm herself.
The ahn-woon cracked loudly in T’Prynn’s ears as it snapped with agonizing precision across her left cheek, drawing blood. She fell onto her elbows as her left hand pressed against the fresh wound. Warm green blood coated her palm, leaked between her fingers, and ran down her forearm.
Sten circled her, putting the strap to her as he went. It tore ragged gaps in her uniform and her flesh. Each strike fell with greater force than the last, wounded her more deeply. She was almost relieved when most of the ahn-woon’s length coiled around her neck like a noose. Tensing her throat to spare her trachea from being crushed, she pried desperately at the strap’s coils, which felt like iron bands around her throat. Sten gave it a firm tug and spun T’Prynn around to face him. He dragged her toward him, until she was close enough to smell the sweat on his skin and see the spark of Pon farr madness in his eyes. Controlling the ahn-woon with both hands, he twisted it slightly and tightened its hold on her throat.