Searching his mind for anything that he could do to overcome his opponent, Vaughn struggled back to his feet. He anticipated another attack by the Romulan, but he saw that she had not yet moved toward him again. Instead, she bent down, slipped her fingers inside one boot, and pulled out a shape perhaps twenty centimeters long. Vaughn recognized it immediately as a knife.

The woman held the weapon before her, as though displaying it for Vaughn. Then she reached up and removed its sheath. The blade, half the length of the entire knife, glistened a deep, reflective black. In that moment, Vaughn knew with certainty that, before this battle ended, the Romulan’s dagger would slice into his body.

Forming a desperate plan and wanting to regain the initiative, Vaughn ran toward the woman. As he came at her, he saw her brace herself, bending her knees and pulling the dagger back, clearly readying to thrust it forward. But Vaughn dived downward, pitching himself at her shins. He knew that she would not have enough time to reverse the haft of the knife in her hand in order to bring it down into his back, but she lowered it enough that he felt it pierce the top of his shoulder as he struck her legs.

The Romulan flew forward, her legs taken out from under her, and she toppled to the deck as Vaughn passed beneath her. He’d hoped that she would let go of the knife, but her hand stayed wrapped tightly around it, and the blade carved through Vaughn’s shoulder and emerged from his back. Pain shot through him, but he ignored it; he could do nothing else.

He rolled onto his back, intending to hurry to his feet and continue his attack. But already the Romulan had risen, and as Vaughn began to stand, she pounced on him. He landed on his back again, and she came down on top of him, her legs straddling his midsection, her knees pinning his forearms. She reached down past his face and pulled off the artificial tip of his ear, then repeated the process on the other side. An expression of repulsion decorated her features as she examined the bits of mock flesh. After a few seconds, she cast them aside.

The movement caused a globule of the Romulan’s blood to drip from her face onto Vaughn’s uniform. She looked down to where it had fallen, and then glared at him with raw hatred. She dropped her empty hand onto his wounded shoulder and pressed down. Pain seared that side of his body, and for the second time, he feared that he would pass out. Whorls of white light spun across his vision, and he opened his mouth and screamed. Above him, the woman’s eyes gleamed with the enjoyment of her cruelty.

“Do it!”Vaughn yelled at her. “Kill me!”

With sudden speed, the Romulan raised the knife above her head. Vaughn moved with equal swiftness, recognizing his opportunity. He yanked one arm free from beneath her knee, then flung his hand upward. As she brought the knife down, it punctured his palm, the blade passing out the other side. He could not ignore the agony, but he refused to give in to it; the stakes were too high. Instead, he wrenched his arm sideways and down, knowing the damage the ebon blade would do to his hand, and not caring.

The knife came free of the Romulan’s grasp, and Vaughn tugged his other arm from beneath her knee. As she scrambled to reclaim her weapon, he grabbed its handle with his uninjured hand. The woman reacted, but not quickly enough: Vaughn pulled the blade out of his palm and then drove it forward, into her rib cage. She threw her head back and howled in obvious distress, reaching automatically to where her own weapon had injured her. But Vaughn wasn’t done; he slid the knife back out, and then sent it slicing back into her body, up on the right side, where her black heart still beat within her. She tried to take hold of Vaughn’s hand, but her strength had gone now. He pushed at her upper body, and she fell backward and to the side with a dull thud, one of her legs coming to rest draped across his knees.

All at once, Vaughn felt numb. The pains in his hand and shoulder had not abated, but had somehow transformed; they had mutated into dull and pulsing sensations, horribly unpleasant, but survivable. He identified it not as anything that he had managed to do, but as simple instinct, the natural reaction of his body and mind to protect themselves.

He lifted his mangled hand up to look at it. Blood flowed freely from the wound, actually hiding the worst of it, but he could move only his thumb and none of his fingers. He knew that he would have to tend to his injury—injuri es,he amended, thinking of his shoulder—or he would die from blood loss. Unable to help himself in any other way at the moment, he forced himself up into a sitting position, then placed his damaged hand beneath his opposite arm. He squeezed as gently as he could, but forcefully enough to stem the flow of blood. It hurt him no more than what he had already been through.

Extracting himself from beneath the Romulan woman’s leg, Vaughn leaned over and reached awkwardly to her wrist with his healthy hand. He felt for a pulse and found none. Good,Vaughn thought, and then felt immediately uncomfortable for his satisfaction at the death of another. He had always believed in the sanctity of life— alllife. If he could have incapacitated the woman somehow, he would have, but…

I killed her,he thought, the foreign notion terribly troubling to him. Worse, though, was his certainty that, given another opportunity, he would have taken the same actions. He did not regret what he had done, but he regretted having had to do it. Until now, his duties with special operations had avoided matters of life and death, at least in such a direct and personal manner. He also realized that, in other times and other places, circumstances such as these would recur, and he would again do what needed to be done. Unquestionably, he had crossed the Rubicon.

Vaughn removed his fingertips from the wrist of the dead woman. As he withdrew his uninjured hand, he saw it stained in blood, both the green of the Romulan and the red of his own. No,he thought. There will be no going back.

He fought to get to his feet, then staggered back to Liss Riehn.When he had earlier searched for weapons aboard the shuttle, he’d come across a medical kit. He would use it now to tend to his wounds and mask his pain. However he would need to deal with what had just happened, with what he had done—with what he had lost—it would have to wait.

Right now, he still had a job to do.

Harriman ascended the ladder, climbing into the limited, dimly lighted space between a turbolift and the wall of the vertical shaft. At the top of the ladder, he dismounted onto anarrow walkway, careful to make sure of his footing. He circled around the lift—which sat parked at the starboard entrance to Tomed’s bridge—and entered the horizontal shaft that ran in an arc to the port-side doors.

Taking the beacon from his belt and switching it on, he walked to the other side of the ship and began searching along the bulkhead. It did not take long for him to locate a knockout panel that allowed emergency access to and from the bridge. And this,he joked to himself, qualifies as an emergency.

Lowering himself from the walkway to the floor of the horizontal shaft, Harriman moved back to the starboard turbolift. He found the knockout panel in its shell, once more using the beacon. Then, with great care, he set his shoulder against the bottom of the panel and applied gradual pressure; he did not want the square of metal falling into the lift and either making noise or activating the automatic opening of the doors.

When he had pushed the panel inward a few centimeters, Harriman pried its top edge downward with his fingers, eventually allowing him to pull it completely free. He set it on the walkway, then reached to his belt and traded the beacon for his phaser. Selecting its stealth mode and an appropriate power level, he set the weapon to overload, with a trigger of sixty seconds. He began counting down in his head as he gently deposited the phaser inside the lift.