AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT SLANTED through the broad, tinted windows of the Assembly Forum. The sunbeams angled down from behind the uppermost tier of seats, just beneath the ceiling dome, and painted the vast room with warm, reddish-orange hues. Commander Deanna Troi wondered whether the late-day Tezwan sun was also the reason the room seemed to be growing warmer, or if her empathic talent was merely responding to the rising emotional temperature in the spacious meeting hall.

The reciprocal hatred that filled the Assembly Forum was so powerful, so undiluted by reason, that Troi perceived it as an almost physical presence. It was like a pair of tidal waves breaking against one another, over and over. However, the animosity wasn’t rooted between the Tezwans and the Federation-Klingon diplomatic team that had come to negotiate with them, but rather between two obviously bitter rival factions within the Assembly itself. For Troi, it was like being in the midst of the fractured Council on Delta Sigma IV all over again.

As the ministers bickered in hushed tones behind her, Troi struggled to keep her attention focused on the tall, tiered dais that towered above her. Prime Minister Kinchawn—garbed in flowing purple robes and holding a metal-banded wooden staff topped with a jeweled head-piece—stood atop its uppermost level, a dozen meters above them. On the level below him stood his deputy, Bilok. Both men’s tiers had exclusive entrances and gilded railings. On the three tiers below Bilok sat other senior members of the Assembly. Tezwan armed guards were stationed around the periphery of the room, on the top and bottom levels.

As “honored guests,” Troi, Picard, and Klingon Captain Logaar had been seated at a long table situated between the tiers of the General Assembly and the dais of the Assembly Leadership. Behind them stood four Starfleet security officers, all of whom were even more tense than usual because Tezwan law had required them to forgo carrying weapons in the Forum.

Troi sat to the right of Picard. On Picard’s left was Logaar, who stood and slammed his fist on the polished black stone tabletop. “Lies! Tezwa has no claim to QiV’ol!” The irate Klingon scooped up a sheaf of papers and clenched his fist around them. “This survey report is a fraud!” He threw the crumpled wad on the floor. “You sent no probe there!”

“Typical Klingon arrogance,” Kinchawn said. “You ignore evidence, you ignore the law, then dare to stand in our sacred hall and call us liars.” The chatter of arguing voices in the Assembly began to grow louder. “Are you the best your chancellor can send? An ill-tempered barbarian?”

“Are you the best your people can do?” Logaar thundered. “A lying simpleton?”

“Gentlemen!” Picard said, his voice hoarse from more than an hour of shouting down the escalating arguments between Logaar and the prime minister. “Personal insults help no one…. Prime Minister, the Klingon colony on QiV’ol has been thriving for well over four decades. It’s officially recognized by the United Federation of Planets, the Romulan Star Empire, and the Tholian Assembly as a legitimate holding. Despite your allegations of sovereignty over QiV’ol, the fact is you never sent any of your people there. And your claim of having sent an automated probe cannot be verified.”

A voice rang out from a high tier behind Troi and Picard. “Because the Klingons destroyed it!” Angry shouts of assent were met by equally clamorous rebuttals. Troi could sense Picard’s patience waning. The captain seemed about to dispute the shouted assertion, but he paused as Deputy Prime Minister Bilok stepped forward and leaned over the railing of his tier.

“Captain Picard is right,” Bilok said. His voice filled the room. Its echoing rumble dulled the susurrus of the Assembly’s debate. “The law is not on our side. QiV’ol is not ours to take.”

“Silence, Bilok!” Kinchawn said. “Spare us your treasonous—”

Bilok confronted Kinchawn. “Has truth become treason?” He looked back at the Assembly and pointed upward. “A fleet hovers over our world, poised to strike. Why?” The elder statesman pointed at the now-fuming Kinchawn. “Because he led us to the edge of war!” Bilok turned back to face Kinchawn. “A true leader puts the good of his people ahead of his own ego, Kinchawn. A prime minister worthy of the title knows when to negotiate.”

The Forum erupted with furious voices. Troi’s temples throbbed with pain as the climate of rage around her swelled. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on Logaar, Picard, and Kinchawn. High above, the prime minister and his deputy traded vehement insults. Next to her, Logaar and Picard looked around, both equally concerned by the erupting verbal conflict that surrounded them.

The chaotic shouting diminished as Kinchawn repeatedly slammed the base of his staff against his platform.

“Silence! Order!” He repeated himself until the room fell quiet. “Let us put the matter to an open vote.” Kinchawn raised his staff and pressed a trigger on its side. A holographic display consisting of two huge, matching symbols—one red, the other blue—appeared in midair between the dais of the Assembly Leadership and the tiers of the General Assembly. “All those in favor of making a formal state apology to the Klingon Empire, vote yes. All opposed, vote no.”

A series of changing symbols that Troi surmised was a countdown appeared above the two identical symbols. About a minute later the timer stopped. The two symbols beneath it changed and were no longer identical.

Kinchawn rapped his staff against the dais. “The motion is rejected. There will be no state apology.”

Logaar stood up quickly, knocking over his chair. “This insult will be avenged, Kinchawn!” Picard stood and tried to interpose himself between the Klingon and the prime minister.

“Prime Minister, please,” Picard said. “Don’t force this confrontation. The Federation is prepared—”

“To bribe us,” Kinchawn said with a sneer. “With goods and services it wouldn’t provide when we were peaceful. What do you call that annoying law of yours? Ah, yes. The Prime Directive. The policy of noninterference. When we needed and wanted your technology, you refused to share it. But put a gun to your head and you offer us everything we ask and more. If you’ll do this before blood is shed, what will you offer when we make you sue for peace?”

“Prime Minister!” Bilok said. “Be reasonable! We can’t stand against both the Federation and the Klingon Empire!”

“You’d rather I surrender, Bilok?” Kinchawn gestured toward Picard, Logaar, and Troi. “Put myself at their mercy?” Kinchawn stiffened his posture imperiously. “Not today…. Not ever.”

“You must issue the state apology,” Bilok said. “It’s the only way to avert disaster—and you know it.”

“What I know, Bilok, is that I don’t take orders from you.”

Troi, sensing an imminent disaster, gripped Picard’s arm. Her voice was a frightened whisper. “Captain,” she said, “we have to get—” Another sharp crack of Kinchawn’s staff cut her off.

“Seize them!” Kinchawn said. Armed Tezwan guards moved in from all directions, their long, slender limbs propelling them in large, swift strides. The four Starfleet security officers immediately closed ranks and assumed defensive postures around Picard, Troi, and Logaar.

“Stand down!” Picard ordered. “Don’t resist.” The captain reached up to tap his combadge, but stopped as a Tezwan guard with gleaming black plumage aimed a compact-looking rifle at him. The Starfleet security team reluctantly allowed the Tezwan guards to restrain their hands with magnetic manacles.

“After all your decades in the Assembly,” Kinchawn said to Bilok, “how ironic that it now falls to me to show you what it means to lead.” Kinchawn leveled his staff at Troi and the others. “Take them to the detention—”

“You can’t declare war without a vote of the Assembly!” Bilok interrupted. “This is illegal! I demand—”

“Silence! Don’t test me, Bilok! I control the majority vote, and if I say we’re at war, we’re at war!”

Troi felt Logaar’s surging fury as a Tezwan guard reached to snap a pair of magnetic manacles onto the Klingon’s wrists. Just before the manacles closed, Logaar turned and struck the guard in the chest with his palm. The guard’s sternum and ribs broke with a sickening crack, and the tall, long-limbed Tezwan was hurled several meters through the air. The planet’s slightly lighter-than-Earth gravity clearly had made the Tezwans’ bones less resilient than those of other humanoids, and afforded the Klingon a distinct advantage in hand-to-hand combat.

Which, Troi understood full well, was why three other Tezwan guards, who had been standing out of melee range, opened fire on Logaar and vaporized him. Not a single mote of dust remained to sully the floor of the Assembly Forum as his glowing silhouette faded and vanished. The Tezwan guard-in-charge gestured with his rifle at the Starfleet personnel. “Toss your combadges to me.”

Troi and the security personnel all waited until Picard removed his combadge, then did likewise. Troi triple-tapped the back of her combadge to deactivate it—and, more important, to activate the hidden backup subspace transceiver concealed in the heel of her shoe. The precaution that she had called “paranoid” when Riker insisted upon it an hour ago now seemed prescient. She lobbed the metallic arrowhead-shaped combadge to the guard. As he collected them, the six officers were manacled and grouped together. Above them, Kinchawn chortled with satisfaction.

“Take them to the detention center,” he said. Troi winced as a guard’s rifle poked her between her shoulder blades, prompting her forward. She walked toward the exit.

As she neared the door, Kinchawn’s voice echoed from atop the Assembly Forum. “Ministers of the Assembly,” he declared, “prepare to behold the beginning of a new chapter in our history, as I demonstrate the true power now at our command.” Troi glanced sideways at Picard, whose stoic expression concealed the seething anger evoked by the prime minister’s next words: “Watch with me now, as we destroy the enemy fleet in orbit above our world.”