However, T’Prynn was surprised and somewhat concerned that Quinn had defied her instructions to avoid contact with Tim Pennington, particularly after the role the trader unwittingly had played in her harsh yet necessary ruination of the man’s credibility as a journalist. Quinn, for reasons as yet unknown, had befriended the disgraced reporter, with the pair spending a great deal of time in pursuit of their mutual interests. So far as T’Prynn could discern, those hobbies involved little more than their repeated attempts to deplete the inventories of Stars Landing’s various tavern owners in methodical fashion.

Whereas she originally was confident that Quinn never would reveal his own complicity in Pennington’s professional downfall, now she found herself doubting that certainty. Quinn would be required to manufacture some sort of falsehood in order to explain the necessity of retrieving the sensor drone. Failing that, and assuming their friendship had strengthened as much as T’Prynn believed it had, the higher the possibility that Quinn might actually find the moral fortitude within himself to confess his sins. If that were to occur, T’Prynn would find herself faced with carrying out another unpleasant yet quite necessary act in the name of preserving the secrecy surrounding Vanguard’s presence in the Taurus Reach.

Until then, Quinn is useful,she reminded herself, and the journalist may yet prove to be, as well.

Assuming the unlikely duo managed to accomplish the comparatively simple feat of capturing the sensor drone, T’Prynn had estimated the odds to be severely against the mismatched duo escaping detection and successfully retrieving the information she sought before the drone could transmit it to a waiting vessel.

As for that sensor data, what would it contain? Of that, T’Prynn had no idea. Indeed, nothing at all was known about the area of space the drone was scheduled to scan in six days’ time. Named by the Starfleet stellar cartographers tasked with cataloguing the plethora of stars and planets revealed by the Federation’s own array of unmanned long-range sensor probes deployed into the Taurus Reach nearly two years earlier, Jinoteur had at first appeared to contain nothing of even passing interest. With all that Vanguard was currently tasked to oversee in respect to the legitimate colonies, remote Starfleet outposts, and trading vessels scattered throughout the region, the apparently nondescript system might well have gone unexplored for the foreseeable future.

That notion was revised even before Starbase 47 itself had become fully operational, when it was discovered that a series of rampant, unexplained malfunctions aboard the station were not due to onboard systems errors as might be expected aboard a starship or starbase that had been rushed through construction and into active service. Instead, the anomalies had been caused by interference from what specialists from Starfleet’s Corps of Engineers had described as a “carrier wave” emanating from somewhere within the Jinoteur system, all but imperceptible except by sensors specially modified to detect it.

Computer analysis eventually had determined that the wave was in effect a previously unknown variety of communications signal. Further, translation software also had offered the theory that the signal might in fact be transmitting a warning. Station and corps engineers had devised a means of answering the signal, after which the carrier wave abruptly had ceased its transmissions. Yet, even after several months of continued analysis, the reason for the strange signal—as well as the identity of those responsible for sending it or any intended recipients—remained a mystery.

Was there a connection to a larger riddle, the one that Vanguard and its crew had been assembled to solve? Might the originators of the carrier wave somehow be connected to the same ancient beings who appeared to have created the equally intriguing meta-genome that Starfleet researchers were seeking even now?

There was only one way to find out—though doing so carried with it a need for care and stealth so as to prevent attracting the unwanted attention of either the Klingon Empire or the Tholian Assembly. Both powers were making their own forays into the Taurus Reach in response to Federation expansion into the region, though by all accounts the Klingons appeared to have been taken in by the extensive disinformation campaign currently in play. Dozens of colonies and remote outposts, all of them genuine efforts on the part of Federation citizens, were springing up throughout this area of space. Only a handful of people knew that some of those colonies were in fact providing cover for research operations tasked with studying artifacts of ancient alien technology and construction, chiefly to determine whether there was any connection to those responsible for the meta-genome.

It had taken significant effort on her part to infiltrate Klingon communications networks in order to determine the routes and timetables related to the array of unmanned sensor drones the empire was dispatching into the Taurus Reach. Determining the schedule and travel path of the probe assigned to the Jinoteur system had been difficult, but it was a simple matter when compared with the larger challenge of actually devising a means of intercepting it in a manner that allowed Starfleet to collect the drone’s information while at the same time denying it to the Klingons. Only fortunate happenstance had allowed her to commandeer Cervantes Quinn’s furtive journey to Yerad III in order to meet her needs, saving her from having to employ someone from her expansive network of operatives and informants.

Submit.

The voice sliced through her thoughts with the force of a keenly sharpened blade, ringing in her ears and her mind.

Without her conscious control, T’Prynn’s right hand formed a fist and slammed down onto the surface of her desk. The sound of wood cracking echoed across the confines of her quarters, and she looked down to see that she had punched a hole through the desktop and fractured the surrounding wood. Momentary physical pain registered as she noted the sting of several splinters piercing her flesh, and she welcomed the fleeting respite from the mental anguish currently plaguing her. For a moment, her attention was riveted by the six green splotches of blood welling up from where the splinters had penetrated her skin.

You are weak. The words goaded her, though this time she could not be sure if the voice was Sten’s or her own. Eventually, you will have to surrender to me. It is inevitable.

Ignoring the patent threat, T’Prynn slowly and methodically removed each of the splinters from her hand before moving to the small bureau set against the wall near her quarters’ compact, utilitarian lavatory. From the top drawer, she retrieved a small hand towel and a protoplaser. She wiped her hand clean before waving the small medical device over it. The tiny wounds—as well as any bruising they might later generate—were healed in seconds.

If only I could erase you as easily,she thought as she returned the protoplaser to her bureau. She thrust the taunt into the deepest recesses of her mind, where she knew the enduring consciousness of her onetime betrothed still lurked, waiting for the moment when she was at her most vulnerable so it could seize control and finally achieve what it had demanded for so long.

Submit,the voice said again.

“Never,” she said aloud, tossing the bloodied hand towel into the matter-reclamation slot near her lavatory door, before turning on her heel and marching out of her quarters.

9

Squinting into a desk-mounted viewer, Lieutenant Ming Xiong ignored the gritty sting of his tired eyes as they played across yet another chromatographic analysis of samples taken from around the Erilon encampment site where he had lived and studied these past weeks. His mind fogged a moment as he scanned over the colored bands of data. Were these soil samples? Rock samples? Ice samples? Yes, ice samples, he remembered, ones from cores drilled a few meters from the base of the massive black structure—the artifact,as the survey team now called it—that rose from the surface of the cold, hardened soil almost half a kilometer from the encampment.