Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven Read Online Free

possible locations for a meeting in the First City, his contact should choose this one. Normally, as a scion of a Great House, Duras would never come within a hundred qelIqam s of such an establishment; if he desired companionship, it would be his for the asking, in the privacy of his own home. Only offworlders and those without honor frequented these places.
    As he noted the way in which everyone he passed made a point of avoiding eye contact with him or one another, however, he realized there was a certain perverse logic to this plan. The single most important element of the social contract in a brothel was discretion, making it the one place where people actively avoided remembering, or being remembered by, those aroundthem. It was the most anonymous place in the capital, making it a far more discreet meeting place than his office within the Great Hall, or his estate, which was always under surveillance by operatives employed by his rivals.
    He reached the end of the hallway and stopped in front of the drawn curtain on his right. Assured by a furtive glance back the way he’d come that he hadn’t been followed, he knocked lightly on the door frame and whispered, “The hunter stands ready.”
    From within the alcove, a hand jerked the curtain aside. Valina, a striking young Romulan woman of unusual height and beauty, was clad in a sheer negligee that left precious little to Duras’s imagination. She flashed a salacious smile. “The prey awaits.” With her free hand she pulled Duras to her and met him in a ferocious kiss. Despite her lean physique, her strength never failed to impress him, and though her species resembled the stoic Vulcans, their hearts burned with passions worthy of Klingons. Pulling free of the kiss, she bit Duras’s lip, a playful nip just hard enough to break the skin and draw blood.
    Duras pushed her aside. “Business first.” He turned and pulled the curtain shut behind him. As he stepped farther inside the small room, she stood with her back to the wall, twirling a lock of her long, wavy black hair around one finger and following him with her customary come-hither leer. He wondered if her brazenly sexual demeanor was all an act for his benefit. The first time he met her, she had seemed arch and aloof, just as one would expect of an attaché of the Romulan ambassador to the Klingon Empire. Or had that icy façade been the act, the mask she wore to conceal a lustful inner life? The only way to know for certain would be to untangle Valina’s intricate web of lies, a task that Duras suspected could take most men years, and an abundance of time was a luxury he did not have. “You know what I need.”
    Her leer transformed into a steely glare. “And you know what I want, Duras.”
    “I have it.” He reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and took out a data card. On it was a smattering of raw intelligence gathered by the Klingon Defense Forces about the beings knownas the Shedai, and the technology their extinct civilization had left strewn throughout the Gonmog Sector. Valina reached for the card, then frowned as Duras pulled it away, teasing her. “This is top-secret information, Valina. I need something of equal value in return.”
    She narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin, and in the span of a breath she reverted to being the cold-eyed predator he had met months earlier, when the High Council had welcomed the Romulan ambassador and his retinue to Qo’noS. “What do you want?”
    “I need to ensure my House’s rise within the Empire.”
    Hostility shone in her dark eyes, betraying her waning patience. “Be specific.”
    He stepped past her to the bed and ran his finger along the hard, smooth slab, which was surprisingly clean, considering its surroundings. “If an accident were to befall Chancellor Sturka, it could pave the way for my family’s advancement inside the High Council.”
    Valina crossed her arms. “An accident? Or an assassination?”
    “Let’s not quibble over