AS KINCHAWN’S DECLARATION of war was belatedly approved by a narrow vote split precisely along partisan lines, Bilok could barely contain his anger. He had always known Kinchawn was a rabid nationalist, but until this moment he hadn’t realized how radical and dangerous the man truly was. How many Klingon lives had Kinchawn just snuffed out on those ships? Five thousand? More? How many hundreds of thousands of civilians had just perished in the Klingon counterstrike? Contemplating the scope of the atrocity he’d just witnessed made Bilok ill.

“You imbecile,” he said to Kinchawn. Bilok tried to keep his voice down, tried to mask his rage, but even a whisper would have been audible in the stunned silence of the Assembly Forum. “You’ve no idea what you’ve just done.”

The prime minister dismissed him with a haughty wave of his slender hand. “Spare me your alarmist pessimism,” he said. “I’ve guaranteed our independence with this victory.”

“Victory?” Bilok said, his bitterness unconcealed. “The Klingons annihilated our defense forces!” He pointed to several blinking points on the holographic tactical display hovering over the Assembly. “Our bases, our starports—gone! It’ll take us weeks to count all our dead.” He lifted his arms in frustration. “This is your definition of victory?”

“All irrelevant,” Kinchawn said. “Our fleet is intact, its crews are safe, our capital is undamaged—and our new network of defensive artillery has made us unassailable from space.”

“Wrong,” Bilok said. “They’ll make an invasion costly, but they didn’t stop the Enterprise from buzzing our capital. And they certainly won’t stop the Klingons from landing an army.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Kinchawn said. “Even if they send twenty ships, we can pulverize them within minutes. Their troops would never reach the surface.”

Bilok couldn’t suppress an angry chortle. “What makes you think they’ll send only twenty ships?” he said. He turned to face the Assembly. “They will commit as many ships, sacrifice as many troops as are necessary, to crush us for this.”

Several members of Kinchawn’s elininae-dominated Lacaam Coalition jeered Bilok. “Coward,” one recently elected minister shouted. “Leave the wars to us, grayfeather,” another slightly more experienced Lacaam’i heckled. Bilok knew better than to expect verbal support from his own trinae-controlled Gatni Party, which for several years now had been harshly cowed by the almost irrational aggression of the Lacaam’i plurality.

He glowered back up at Kinchawn, who gloated over his faction’s unrepentant, if narrowly held, dominance of the Assembly. “If you don’t think the Klingons will retaliate,” Bilok said, “then you don’t understand them at all.”

“I think we understand the Klingons better than you do,” Kinchawn said, sweeping his arm toward the bloc of Lacaam’i ministers on his left. “We know they respect strength.”

“Wrong again,” Bilok said, his voice dark with anger. “You’ve confused your values with theirs. They don’t respect strength, they respect honor. And I guarantee you they’ll consider your sneak attack on their fleet to be both dishonorable and cowardly.”

“You should choose your words with care, Bilok,” Kinchawn said, his tone laced with menace. “You wouldn’t want to invite charges of treason during a time of war.” Kinchawn rapped the bottom of his staff on his dais. The sharp noise hurt Bilok’s ears. “Minister Xelas, keep the artillery on full alert. Order all starship personnel to report for duty, and deploy the fleet to repel any Klingon or Federation counterstrike.” Kinchawn struck his staff twice more in quick succession. “This session of the Assembly is now closed. All ministers are to remain in the capital until further notice. Aleem no’cha.” Ending the session with the quasi-religious benediction was a Lacaam’i affectation that had rankled Bilok since its first utterance.

The Lacaam’i ministers returned the traditional response of Aleem neel’ko and shuffled out of the chamber. Kinchawn turned and stepped toward his private portal, which slid open without a sound and closed behind him after he stepped through.

Bilok remained motionless on the second dais, staring down into the Assembly Forum. A trio of Gatni-aligned senior ministers looked up and met his gaze. With a curt tilt of his head, he summoned them to reconvene in his office.

Several minutes later, Bilok waited on his private balcony and watched the sun set. The horizon was aglow with the fires of far-off devastation wrought by the Klingons. He heard the three Gatni ministers enter his office behind him. He turned and greeted them. “Thank you for coming,” he said. It was an empty pleasantry; Bilok was the head of the Gatni Party, so they had little choice but to comply with his invitation.

“Of course, Deputy Prime Minister,” said Elazol, the most senior of the three, and Bilok’s oldest friend in the Assembly. Before Kinchawn had assumed power seven years ago, Elazol had been the minister of intelligence. Now, at Kinchawn’s behest, he supervised the largely ineffectual Ministry of Agriculture.

Accompanying him were Neelo and Dasana, the ministers of trade and education, respectively. Like Elazol, they had been removed from more prestigious posts during Kinchawn’s wholly unprecedented reorganization of the government, during which he had placed members of his Lacaam Coalition into all the most influential military, economic, and diplomatic offices. Neelo had been coerced into resigning her office as minister of the army, and Dasana had been ousted without explanation or apology after she had served as Tezwa’s foreign minister for more than eight years. To say that the three veteran politicians remained bitter over the blatantly political usurpation of their offices would have been a gross understatement.

“Please join me on the balcony,” Bilok said. Neelo and Dasana followed Elazol onto the open-air terrace that overlooked much of the capital city. The skyline was abuzz with hovercraft traffic. “Close the door,” Bilok said. Dasana slid the transparent portal shut. Bilok rested his weight on the sturdy metal railing. “We need a plan of action right now,” he said.

“We don’t have enough votes to push him out,” Dasana said.

“What about a coup?” Bilok said to Neelo. “Do you have any pull left with the officer corps?”

“Not really,” Neelo said. “He demoted or cashiered almost every trinae officer.”

Bilok looked at Elazol. “Covert options?”

“Pointless,” Elazol said. “The Lacaam’i would just elect another of their own, probably Ilokar. He’d have us at war with the rest of the quadrant within an hour of his inauguration.”

Bilok let out a heavy sigh. He had hoped that this crisis might be handled internally, that there might be some means of averting a war without compromising Tezwa’s sovereignty. But as the inevitably brutal Klingon reprisal drew closer, he knew his only hope for saving his people was to enlist the Federation’s aid in deposing Kinchawn—even if it meant surrendering Tezwa indefinitely to foreign control.

He dreaded asking Koll Azernal for help. The irascible Zakdorn was certain to excoriate him for misjudging Kinchawn’s resolve. Had the Enterprise not escaped the prime minister’s ambush, Bilok wouldn’t dare ask the Federation for anything. If the Starfleet ship had been destroyed, he and many of his allies in the Assembly would, in all likelihood, be engaged in a desperate search for clandestine transport off-world. Of course, if Azernal refused his request for help, flight was an option he was still willing to consider.

The three ministers awaited his decision. “I’m going to explore one last option,” he said finally. “If it’s to succeed, all of our trinae allies need to stand ready for my order.”

“To do what?” Dasana asked in a nervous voice that implied she already knew the answer.

Bilok’s browfeathers furrowed as he suggested the unspeakable: “To take back the Assembly by force.”