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Exitar was a Class M planet on the edge of what had been unexplored space until a few years earlier. When the Federation did explore it, they encountered the Tholians. Conditions on Exitar were pretty close to Earth-normal and it had a diverse population drawn from all parts of the Federation. The planet's original inhabitants had gone extinct barely a century before Federation exploration vessels had found it, killed by a plague of some sort, so colonising it was essentially a case of vacant possession with towns and cities ready for colonists to move into. Why the Tholians hadn't claimed Exitar was a mystery, but then in many ways so were the Tholians themselves.

Despite its new and diverse populace, the planet's people had quickly developed their own distinct identity as proud Exitarians, and their diversity had led to very fertile cross-cultural influence in the arts and crafts. These had become increasingly sought after by collectors and were now their main export. Not that any of this particularly interested me as Admiral Cartwright, Dr McCoy and I beamed down to the planet. We materialized on an area of red grass just outside the walls of the capital city, the clear ground providing a safer arrival point than a crowded square would have.

"Well, I think I'd better take my leave of you gentleman and locate Nurse Chapel," said McCoy. "If I know Christine she's probably already put out she had to beam down without me."

"Before you go, doctor," said Cartwright, "override Mississippi accept."

At these words Dr McCoy snapped to attention and stared straight ahead, his eyes vacant."

"Override Mississippi accepted," he replied, his voice flat. "What are my orders?"

"When you return to the Enterpise you are to destroy all the tissue samples you took during your recent encounter with that other universe nicknamed the 'zombieverse' and to make it look like an accident. No material from that universe can be allowed to survive. You will of course not remember this conversation. Confirm."

"Orders confirmed and accepted."

"Good. Override Mississippi release."

McCoy shook himself, grinned, and said:

"So I guess I'll see you back on the ship."

He went on ahead, soon passing through the city gate, while we ambled up to it at a more leisurely pace.

"What was *that*?" I asked, both stunned and intrigued by what I'd just witnessed.

"Just a little something we managed to plant in the good doctor's mind during an earlier secret mission to this universe. I'm afraid I'm not authorized to share the specifics with you."

He didn't need to. As Jim Kirk I had been on that mission along with Science Minister Sybok and the android Kara Summers. She stole the brain of the Federation's Spock in order to lure the Enterprise to Sigma Draconis VI. After the elaborate charade we'd arranged had played out and our primary objective had been achieved, Minister Sybok revealed a secondary one:

"It wasn't just surgical skills that were downloaded into McCoy's brain. No, we left a little something extra behind that should prove very useful if we ever have need of it."

So *this* was what Sybok had meant. Interesting, and potentially very useful. Now I'd been shown how to make use of that 'something extra' I filed the details away for possible future use. But I still had a question for Admiral Cartwright.

"Why destroy the tissue samples?"

"New orders from back home. They agreed with your reasons for destroying the material from the zombieverse that you did, but disagreed with your assessment that the tissue samples McCoy took could be ignored. We don't want the Federation to have any material from a parallel universe. If they do the possibility exists of them discovering every universe has a distinct, underlying quantum signature, a signature which constitutes an address and is encoded in every atom of matter from that universe. The risk of them uncovering this and eventually being able to cross to our universe at will was judged to be too great."

We had now passed through the main gate and were making our way into the back streets of the capital city. I wasn't entirely comfortable in the equatorial heat and neither was Cartwright, sweat glistening on his dark skin.

"Is it safe to speak about why you needed to visit Exitar yet, Larry?" I asked.

"I think so, yes. We haven't been followed and it doesn't appear from my tricorder readings that Enterprise is tracking us."

"Then what's going on? Our operational instructions were to steer clear of each other."

"Couldn't be helped," he said. "I had to get to this planet without arousing suspicion, and unfortunately the only way to do that was to hitch a ride on the Enterprise since she was already headed to Exitar on a routine mission. I have the authority to order any ship of the fleet here, of course, but I would have to explain myself if I did so and I needed my visit to be low-key, to look like nothing more than a casual vacation trip."

"So where are we going?"

"To a secret meeting with Klingons."

"Klingons? If you want them dead I'd be happy to kill them for you."

"Commendable enthusiasm for someone in the military let alone a supposed xenoarchaeologist, Miss Lester, but no. I need them to remain alive."

A pity. When I was captain of the ISS Enterprise I slaughtered many thousands of aliens in service of the Empire, but I always enjoyed killing Klingons most of all.

We were weaving through a crowded marketplace, so it was not entirely surprising that someone bumped into me at one point.

"Sorry," she said.

"No problem," I said.

Standard humanoid in size and shape but with pale blue skin and silver hair, she had golden eyes the same shape as those of cats, with irises to match. Her long, tough, claw-like nails looked capable of ripping a man to shreds. I recognised her as an Aragonian, an attractive people.

Her amused smile at my obvious appreciation of her made me blush. God, I needed to get laid!

Eventually we stopped at a nondescript house on a tiny sidestreet. Larry rapped out an elaborate code on the door, which then opened slightly. Someone within looked us up and down suspiciously.

"Codewords," snarled a voice.

It was rough, but clearly female.

"To be or not to be," said Larry.

"I will need your companion's weapon," said the woman.

"Give her your phaser, Jenna."

Reluctantly, I unclipped it from my belt and passed it through to her. The door was then opened wide, revealing the woman to be a Klingon. She was dressed in a military uniform. Standing inside the unfurnished room awaiting us was a man similarly attired, but of higher rank.

"Commander Chang," said Larry, offering his hand, it's good to finally meet you."

Unusually for a Klingon, Chang was shaven-headed. His left eye was covered by an eyepatch that looked as if it had been attached to his skull with rivets. Chang shook Admiral Cartwright's hand.

"You, too, Admiral," he said. Then he then turned to me.

"And who is this?"

"Lieutenant Commander Lawson, my associate. She believes as I do."

"Enchanted," said Chang, taking my hand and touching it to his lips, a dated and distinctly non-Klingon gesture he had obviously picked up from reading old Earth literature.

Behind us the other Klingon snorted. Klingon women considered human females to be ugly, I knew, an opinion not shared by all of their men.

"And that is Lieutenant Kragh," said Chang, giving a small smile.

"I'm here and personally unarmed as you requested," said Larry. "A show of good faith in light of the risk you took in travelling here and decloaking just long enough to beam down to the surface."

"I could not agree to your proposal without first meeting you," said Chang, studying him thoughtfully. "Ours are both virile, martial races, and nothing saps such virility more than peace, wouldn't you agree, Admiral?"

"I would. Peace turns wolves into sheep, sheep which will then be devoured in turn by bigger wolves. We can only survive in this universe by staying true to our essential natures, by staying wolves."

"Exactly so. Conflict is our natural state, one wherein we test ourselves against others. 'Put in their hands thy bruising irons of wrath, that they may crush down with heavy fall the usurping helmets of our adversaries'," said Chang.

"Richard the third," said Larry, "to which I'll add, 'lay on, Macduff, and damn'd be him that first cries, 'hold, enough!'"

"You know your Shakespeare, sir," said Chang, smiling appreciatively, "though you haven't truly experienced the bard until you've experienced him in the original Klingon."

"We appear to be of one mind in the matter that led us to meet," said Larry.

"We do, don't we?"

"Then it's agreed?"

"It is. This face-to-face meeting was to get the measure of each other, and you can't truly get the measure of someone until you've looked into his eyes. Now that I have, I know you to be someone I can do business with. If and when our two peoples seem to be making that terrible mistake, we shall work together to stop them."

"And our business is concluded?"

"Just so. Some might consider it foolish to come such a long way for such a short meeting, but I don't. I've learned what I needed to know."

"Then you'll be beaming out as soon as we've left?"

"We will. Goodbye, Admiral. Parting is such sweet sorrow."

Lieutenant Kragh returned my phaser and we stepped back out into the street, where we began retracing the steps that had brought us there. I had questions.

"Why bother making a secret alliance with Commander Chang?" I asked. "What does the Empire get out of this?"

"It's all about the big picture. Should peace between the Federation and the Klingons ever come to pass the two together would form a much more formidable foe than the Federation alone. The same is true for the Federation and other races they're currently in conflict with. We need to keep them apart."

"Divide and conquer."

"Exactly. There are always those of every race opposed to peace for their own reasons. To the Empire, people like Chang are useful idiots, and it's part of my mission here to cultivate them so that between us we can nip any peace efforts in the bud."

"He's not entirely wrong about warriors and peoples proving and *im*proving themselves by warring against each other, though."

"No, he's not, but while wars drive weapons development the blood and treasure expended fighting them can wreck an empire. I've been reading a lot of history since I got here, and the case of the British in the twentieth century is instructive in this regard. They started that century as the mightiest empire the world had ever seen, as they were in our world, but what were they at its end? Fighting two world wars brought their empire to its knees. The first world war exacted a cost in blood. A generation later, when it came time to fight the second, Britain's armed forces were seriously undermanned because the men her generals should have had to call on - perhaps an additional million or more - had never been born. Those who would have fathered them had been killed in that earlier conflict. Less British blood was spilled in the second world war, but it exacted a heavy cost in treasure. In order to be able to carry on fighting it, the British had to borrow heavily from the Americans. So much so that at the end of the war they were essentially bankrupt. The war lasted only six years but it took sixty to pay off that war debt. In America the myth arose that wars are good for an economy. They are when you're selling arms to others and your homeland doesn't get bombed, otherwise this is only true when they're wars of plunder."

"The history over here makes no sense to me," I said. "In our universe, Britain inherited the mantle of Rome following the success of Boudicca's revolt and the larger revolution it inspired, becoming in many ways more Roman than the Romans themselves. When Britain's American colonies fought for independence, as they did here, that rebellion was brutally put down. America remained part of the Empire, so that war debt situation never arose. Tribute was given with no repayment expected."

"And yet in many other ways our histories are the same," said the Admiral. "Khan still rose to power in the east so the Eugenics wars were fought here, too. Their Earth was just as devastated by World War Three, and in both it was Zephram Cochrane who made first contact with the Vulcans."

"Right, but whereas their Cochrane had been raised under emasculating democracy, ours had grown to manhood in an Empire. He understood that might is the only right and seized their ship."