WHILE THE CITY OF PARIS slept beneath a placid dome of stars, President Zife paced anxiously, wearing a path into the off-white carpet of his elegant but minimalist office. He was dressed casually, in loose gray robes and soft, comfortable black shoes. He had always loved the panoramic view from here. Since his first day as president, this room’s grandeur had made him feel important, made him finally believe that he was the elected leader of one of the most important political entities in the galaxy.

Now it felt like a gilded prison, lined with the artifacts of his imminent disgrace. Here, the desk at which he’d reviewed his chief of staff’s ingenious plan to lay a trap for the Dominion. There, the pen with which he’d signed the classified executive order that set the plan in motion. Surrounding him on all sides, one of many worlds whose trust he had betrayed and whose wrath he felt lurking in a future that was all too swiftly taking shape on Tezwa.

The door chime sounded. “Mr. President,” his secretary Yina said, “Mr. Azernal is here.”

“Send him in,” Zife said.

The door opened, quiet as a whisper, then closed behind Azernal. The crimson-garbed man plodded in with heavy steps, his shoulders hunched beneath an invisible burden. “I came as soon as I could, Mr. President,” he said. Zife turned his back on him, finding the paunchy Zakdorn’s pale reflection on the window far easier to tolerate than the man himself.

“How long until the Klingons reach Tezwa?” Zife said. He’d lost all sense of time since Chancellor Martok had delivered his declaration of war. Alone with his guilty conscience, it felt as if hours had slipped from his grasp, as if his every motion, his every thought were mired in hardening amber.

“Just over two hours, sir,” Azernal said.

Zife could hardly believe it. Less than two hours had passed since Martok had roused him with an unbroken string of vulgar invectives. Barely an hour since he had shifted the burden of this unfolding quagmire onto the proverbial broad shoulders of the Enterprise and her crew. If the passage of the past two hours was a reliable indicator, then this would be the longest, darkest night of Zife’s presidency.

“What’s the Enterprise’s status?” Zife said.

“Picard’s last report says that strike teams have been deployed to the planet surface,” Azernal said. “Their orders are to destroy the artillery system using commando tactics.”

Zife nodded, silently impressed by the bravado of Picard and his crew. Ordered to conquer a planet with little more than their fists, they’d jumped headfirst into the fray. “What’s his plan for stopping the Klingon fleet?”

“Unknown,” Azernal said. “His report said steps had been taken, but no details were provided.”

“Best guess?”

Azernal pondered that for a few seconds. “Considering the unusually close bond between him and his former shipmate Worf, I’d suspect the captain has enlisted the ambassador’s aid in some manner.”

Zife wondered if Picard was negotiating directly with Martok. His brow wrinkled at the implausibility of such a notion, but he couldn’t rule it out. “You think Picard is working a diplomatic angle?”

Azernal hesitated again, and averted his eyes from Zife as he spoke. “I think it would be in your best interest if I didn’t speculate, Mr. President.”

Zife didn’t like the sound of that, but he knew that he’d dislike the sound of a blunter explanation even more, so he let the subject drop. He turned away from the placid nightscape of Paris and sat at his desk. “Computer,” he said. “Alterian chowder.” The replicator built into the desktop emitted a pleasing purr as it fabricated a spoon, and a white bowl filled with green soup. Zife preferred homemade chowder prepared with fresh sabba root and extra hilok leaf, but the tamer, replicated variety would suffice in a pinch. As soon as he lifted the first spicy spoonful to his lips, he found that he wasn’t hungry, after all. He dumped the spoonful back into the bowl and let the spoon slip from his fingers. It plunked into the soup. Zife pushed the bowl away.

“We should redeploy the fleet,” he said in a grim monotone.

“With all due respect, Mr. President,” Azernal said, “I think that might be a bit premature.”

“Premature?” Zife stared at the Zakdorn as though he were trying to burn a hole through the man. “How many hours before the Klingons discover the truth? How many days until they declare war? How long should we wait? Until their fleet lays waste to Trill? Or Deneva? Or Earth?”

“Moving our fleet now would betray our foreknowledge of the crisis,” Azernal said. “My wargames account for the great majority of variables, but no advance scenario can predict all the random events that might occur. It’s possible that the Klingon attack will destroy the evidence of our role in arming the Tezwans.”

“Possible,” Zife said. “But not likely.”

“No,” Azernal said. “It’s not likely at all. But if the worst comes to pass, a delay of one day will be of little long-term strategic importance. However, if circumstances unfold in our favor, a hasty act motivated by fear could reverse the gains that fortune yields to us…. Patience, Mr. President.”

Zife found it difficult to concentrate. Visions of disaster mingled in his thoughts with imagined accusations and his own feeble excuses. He labored to draw breath against the horrible weight pressing in on his chest. His voice was pitched with remorse. “We had so many chances, Koll,” he said. “We could have stopped Kinchawn’s military buildup by fast-tracking Tezwa into the Federation….”

Azernal sounded uncomfortable. “Mr. President, I really think we—”

“We could have intervened to stop them from buying ships from the Danteri,” Zife continued. “Or I could have met with Martok, explained the matter as one leader to another, and brokered a solution.”

“Mr. President,” Azernal said sharply. “Please calm down, sir. This isn’t—”

“We must learn from our mistakes, Koll,” Zife said.

“Sir, regret is a luxury we can’t afford.” The heavyset chief of staff rested his meaty hands against the far edge of Zife’s polished black desk and leaned forward. “What’s done is done, and steps have been taken to make things right.”

“Make things right?” Zife almost laughed at the willful self-deception Azernal was asking him to commit. “We lied to our allies and led them into an ambush. We armed a madman and did nothing to contain his ambition until it was too late. And what is our answer now? How do we redress our sins?”

Lifting a padd from his desk, Zife sprang to his feet. He waved the small handheld device at Azernal. “Doublespeak! Commando tactics! Espionage! Why not call them what they really are, Koll? Why not admit we’ve sanctioned theft, lies, and murder?” He flung the padd at Azernal. The Zakdorn dodged the projectile, which clattered across the floor as Zife continued to rant. “Why not confess that we’ve made our officers into criminals to save ourselves?”

Azernal’s voice was laced with cool anger. “We aren’t saving ourselves, Mr. President. We’re saving the Federation. We’re preventing a power struggle that would engulf the quadrant and squander half a trillion lives.” His voice grew louder and harsher. “So—with all due respect, sir—spare me your guilt, your moralizing, and your holier-than-thou rage. The people didn’t elect you to be their conscience, they elected you to be their leader. To make the hard choices, to give the orders, and, when necessary, to take the blame!”

The verbal barrage overwhelmed Zife. The Bolian stood there, stunned by the ferocity of Azernal’s tirade. He waited several awkward moments for Azernal to recant, but the irate Zakdorn, though he seemed to have regained his composure, offered no apology. Zife’s knees wobbled. He planted his left hand on the arm of his chair to steady himself, then sat down.

“You’re right,” Zife said. “All the regret in the galaxy won’t undo what I’ve done…. We can only go forward now.”

“Yes, sir,” Azernal said. “It’s the only way.”

“We should prepare for the inevitable, then,” Zife said. “If Picard fails, what options do we have left?”

“We can avert a war with the Klingons,” Azernal said, “or we can win a war with the Klingons.”

“I’d prefer to avert the war,” Zife said.

“As would I,” Azernal said. “We’d have to convince the Klingons that someone other than us put the guns on Tezwa…. A common enemy who would want to see our alliance shattered.”

“Such as the Tholians,” Zife said.

“Exactly,” Azernal said.

“How do we point the finger at the Tholians when all the evidence points to us?”

“Simple,” Azernal said. “We plant new evidence.”

Zife’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t serious.”

Azernal looked insulted. “Why not?” the Zakdorn said. He paced in front of Zife’s desk and mumbled to himself, shaping his plan in a stream-of-consciousness ramble, as he had done countless times during the Dominion War. “We frame the Tholians, then rattle some sabers with the Klingons. The Tholians deny everything, of course, which only makes them look more guilty.”

A look of inspired mischief flitted across his face as he continued. “Then, just as the Klingons gear up for revenge, we cast doubt on our own frame-up job! We say we think someone else might be trying to goad us into a war with the Tholians, to lower our defenses in other sectors.”

He nodded rapidly, his brow creased with intense thought. “We plant a few more clues to make it look like the Romulans framed the Tholians, tell the Klingons the Federation Council won’t go to war without hard evidence of who did what, then we bury the whole thing in diplomatic investigations,” he said. “Six months from now, we’re back to status quo.” He chuckled. “Simple, really. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

Zife knew he was being maneuvered into another of Azernal’s convoluted schemes, and that the solution couldn’t possibly be so simple as he’d made it sound. But if another lie on his conscience was the price of sparing billions of lives from the horrors of war, it was a burden he was willing to bear.