TAURIK WAITED until the enemy officer was within reach, on the other side of the open doorway. Silently spinning on his heel, the Vulcan engineer pivoted around the doorjamb, reached in, and locked his thumb and first two fingers onto the man’s shoulder, just below the neck.

He felt the reflexive twitch as the Tezwan officer’s shoulder tensed and his nape feathers ruffled. To Taurik, the lanky humanoid seemed surprisingly lightweight as he pulled him off his feet and out of the room—all without making a sound to alert the two junior officers working at command consoles on the other sides of the room, their backs to the doorway.

On the opposite side of the doorway, lurking with him in the shadowy corridor, was Ensign McEwan. The delicate-featured human woman had proved quite adept at stealth tactics. Taurik gestured to her that they would wait in the corridor for the two junior officers to come looking for their supervisor.

The wait was brief. From inside the operations center, they heard the female officer ask, “Where’s the commander?” A few moments later, the male Tezwan called out, “Commander Tregel?”

In contrast to Taurik, who remained relaxed and limber, McEwan seemed to tense as the two Tezwans’ footsteps drew closer. Perhaps I should offer to instruct her in V’Shan, he thought. He surmised the ancient Vulcan art of self-defense—as demanding as it was graceful, and which many non-Vulcans mistook for a form of dance—would teach her patience and bestow greater fluidity to her technique.

Signaling her that he would strike first, he allowed himself to become one with the shadows. Dark and silent, his mind quiet and free of distracting thoughts, his breathing and pulse slowed almost to a standstill.

The male Tezwan stepped into the corridor, his female comrade only a long stride behind him. They turned in opposite directions, and the female officer stepped toward Taurik.

Before Taurik could attack, the male Tezwan spotted McEwan and shouted an alarm as he reached for his weapon. The female officer spun away from the Vulcan engineer, who lunged, grasped her trapezius, and dropped her to the floor.

McEwan, reacting with surprising speed and grace, ducked into a crouch and sweep-kicked the male Tezwan’s legs out from under him. His weapon discharged as he fell, sending a deafening blast of painfully bright blue plasma into the ceiling. McEwan finished knocking the officer unconscious with a swift snap-kick under his chin.

Taurik sprinted into the operations center and immediately began locking down the facility. He was certain that many of the base’s personnel had heard the officer’s weapon being fired, and that one or more security personnel would come to investigate. McEwan followed him in a few seconds later, accompanied by the engineers, who moved to other consoles and reconfigured them as they began laying the groundwork for their sabotage of its reactor systems.

“The base personnel have been contained,” Taurik said, turning to his teammates. “I have prepared an un-obstructed path to your targets on sublevel five. You have twenty minutes.”

Rao and Mobe acknowledged the order, finished their preparations, and headed for the door. Mobe checked the base floor-plan schematic on his tricorder, while Rao walked briskly ahead of the cautious Bolian, obviously confident that he knew where he was going.

McEwan watched them depart. “Sir, should I go with them?”

“Negative, Ensign. I require your assistance here.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Copy as many of the Tezwans’ internal logs as possible to your tricorder.”

McEwan patched her tricorder into the Tezwan firebase computer system. “Sir, almost all these files are encrypted.”

“I am aware of that, Ensign.”

“Beginning download,” she said. “What are we looking for?”

“We are not seeking anything in particular,” Taurik said. “We are gathering data for later analysis.”

“But it’s all encrypted.”

“There is no such thing as an unbreakable code, Ensign.” Reconfiguring the fire-control system to respond only to his commands, he noted how many Starfleet-standard protocols were in use at this facility. “If our foes’ proclivity for using our technology without modification is any indicator, I suspect we will have little difficulty decrypting these files.”

“I hope you’re right, sir,” McEwan said, brushing a stray lock of her red hair from her eyes.

Unlike many Vulcans, Taurik was not one to sing the praises of logic at every opportunity, but he made a point of skewering illogical outlooks as a matter of principle. “Hope has nothing to do with it, Ensign.”