The amazing Susannah just gets it: Law, hîr nín, ú dollen i Rîw. Anírach, nui lû, gwannad uin gwaith lín?Cathy, Marsha, Betsy, Eden, and the toytrucks gang supplied the cheering section. The team at Oak Hills School that supported the girls has earned special thank yous—Wendy, Chris, Heidi, Ashley, Tammy, and Cynthia. My resident genius, Dr. Fraser Smith, brought the tech hooks that made me look good. Without Patti Heyes, Katie Fritz, Sara Wilcox, and my friends in PTF—D’Alaire, Julie, Monica, Janet, and Marianne—I never would have made writing Star Trekfiction a priority.

To the “father” of this project, Marco Palmieri: for your brilliant instincts, incredible talent, unfailing patience, and daring to take a chance on this new kid, I owe you my deepest gratitude. Thank you for giving me the chance to build foundations for my castles in the air.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch where through

Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades

Forever and forever when I move….

…And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

—ALFRED, LORDTENNYSON,

“ULYSSES”

1

“qablIj Hi’ang!” Ngara snarled the traditional challenge at the approaching Son of T’Mokh. She crafted a dance of fast precise spins to the tempo of her anger. Sweat dripped off the glistening ridges of her forehead, beading on her eyelashes. “I will toast my father’s honor over your corpse, you snivelingp’takh !”

A master of the spear, Lughor did not fear her. Blow for blow, he would match her dazzling display of warrior-craft.“qabwIj vIso’be!” he growled, revealing himself as one well schooled in the ways of battle. In one deft motion, he rent in twain her sleeve from shoulder to wrist. She roared in anger.

Weapons clashed. Lughor pushed against her. Ngara deflected each blow. Grunting, she gained ground on him. She raised her spear over her shoulder, heaving the point into Lughor’s thigh. In pain, he staggered backward. Calling upon Kahless, he found the strength with which he could combat her fiery fury.

The struggle began in earnest: thrust, parry, spin away. Weapons locked as the combatants matched rippling muscle against rippling muscle.

Her pulse, pounding through her ears, deafened her to Lughor’s mocking provocations. She cried, “On this night, I will stand in hot black pools of your blood, spilled when I slit your throat!” Ngara flew through the air, her spear before her, aiming for his throat.

Lughor’s eyes narrowed. In a feline crouch, he leaped up to intercept herchonnaQ with his own. Ngara’s weapon snapped in two. Roping his arm around her waist, Lughor wrested her to the ground. In one swift movement, he stripped her of the knife strapped to her thigh.

A battle cry rang from her throat. Ngara broke free of Lughor’s grip. Flipping him onto his back, she straddled his waist, curling her sharp fingernails into his skin. Lughor bucked, but Ngara bored him down, pressing his shoulders to the ground. The sticky sweat-slick cohesion of their bare limbs fused their bodies together as they wrestled on the forest floor. Pungent air, heady and thick with their mingling musks fed their desire.

The smell of Lughor’s blood on her hands suffused Ngara’s senses; she longed to flick her tongue in his wound, greedily lapping the droplets from his skin. Hunger for her burned in his dark eyes. Pinning her arms above her head, Lughor slid hisd’k tahg beneath the lacings of her leather corset, blade against breast. “I will have you!” he growled. And with a swift up-thrust—

“Nog, what the hell are you reading?”

The padd Nog had been holding with white-knuckled intensity almost flew out his hand when he heard the voice in his ear. With a clatter, he slammed the padd facedown on the mess hall table and rested his arm on it protectively. All things considered, Defiant’s embarrassed chief engineer felt like he’d come precariously close to leaping out of his own skin.

Nog looked up to see Ezri Dax’s upside-down face smiling mischievously at him as she leaned over the top of his head. “At ease, Lieutenant,” she said. “I can only assume that wasn’t the engineering status report I asked for.”

Eyes still fixed on Dax, Nog felt around the top of the table with his free hand, past his bowl of tube grubs and his Eelwasser, and found the padd in question. “Umm, no. That would be this one,” he said, handing the padd to Dax. Blessed Exchequer, please spare me this humiliation…

“Thanks,” Dax said, straightening up to examine the contents of the report. “I’ve got Bowers running a diagnostic from the tactical side. With any luck, we can identify where those false readings are coming from when we line this data up with his.”

“I’m sure we will,” Nog agreed. She’s not gonna embarrass me! Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you…

“That must have been some fascinating reading on that other padd,” Dax said at length. “You don’t often encounter references to leather corsets in Starfleet’s engineering manuals.”

Ears flushing, Nog winced. The jig, as Vic might say, is up.

“Oh! Burning Hearts of Qo’noS!”exclaimed Engineer Bryanne Permenter, pointing at Nog from across the mess hall. Bringing her tray with her, she plopped down in the chair beside her boss. “Have you gotten to the part where Ngara has the bat’lethduel with the minions of the House of Rutark?”

Nog looked up at Dax. She folded her arms and raised a teasing eyebrow as she waited for Nog’s answer.

“Yes, all right! I’m reading Burning Hearts of Qo’noS!There, I said it! Are you happy?” Turning to Permenter, he said excitedly, “That was great! I never thought she’d make it past the bewitched targs guarding the moat, did you?”

Dax rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Is this what all engineers do between duty shifts?”

“Hey, not fair, Lieutenant,” Permenter said. “I got it from T’rb in sciences. So they started it. And if the text was in the library computer and not copy-protected, none of us would need to pass the same padd around from one person to the next.” Turning to Nog, she said, “Didn’t Richter have it before T’rb?”

“No, Richter asked me to pass it to her when I was done,” Nog said. “Ensign Senkowski gave it to T’rb.”

Retrieving his chef’s salad from the replicator, Jason Senkowski announced loudly, “Don’t you dare bring me into this. I wouldn’t waste time on that poorly written excuse for a novel. Imagine it, Lieutenant,” he said, addressing Dax, “a Klingon bodice ripper.I tell you, it’s the end of literature as we know it.”

Permenter snorted. “This from the man who practically begged me to read Vulcan Love Slave.”

Nog looked at Senkowski, surprised. “Really? Which version?”

“The classic original, of course,” Senkowski said. “By Krem.”

“That’s never been proven,” Nog pointed out.