Now Ne’al started to shift uncomfortably in its seat. Z4 had sat in regular humanoid chairs before, and he could understand the urge. I don’t know how softs function in those things….
“The thing is—” Ne’al started, then hesitated.
Z4 simply stared at it.
Letting out a breath, Ne’al then said, “See, that one will also be down. For, uh, for the same reason.”
“Regular maintenance cycle?” Z4 asked incredulously.
Ne’al nodded a third time.
Right at the moment, Z4 was grateful that his fourteenth-floor office didn’t have a window, because he felt a great urge to jump out of it. “Ne’al, do you know why we have two transporter bays?”
“My guess is so we can avoid this kind of problem.”
Dryly, Z4 said, “That would be an accurate guess.”
“And in theory, that works fine,” Ne’al said, folding its hands together, “but there’s only one problem.”
“That being?”
“We didn’t avoid this kind of problem.”
The urge switched to wanting to throw the Damiani out the window. “Ne’al—”
“See, the two bays are on separate maintenance cycles, maintained by two different staffs,” Ne’al said quickly. “All the technical support on fifteen and in the basements is completely separate from the first through fourteenth floors—they need extra security.”
Much as Z4 hated to admit it, that made sense. And there were no transporters in the basement because the ground around the Palais was transporter proof—it was impossible to beam in or out of the area benath the Palais for necessary security reasons. “That’s fine, but I still don’t see—”
“Ninety percent of the time, the maintenance schedules of the two staffs don’t overlap. Ninety-five, even.”
“So what happened?” Z4 asked in a low voice.
Ne’al shrugged. “We fell into the wrong five percent.”
“Right. So you want me to go to President Bacco and explain to her that she has to waste an hour of her life on a shuttle because we fell into the wrong five percent.”
“It’ll have the definite ring of truth to it,” Ne’al said with a smile.
Z4 glared at Ne’al, and its smile fell. “Do you know where we are, Ne’al?”
“Your office.”
“More generally.”
“Paris.”
“Exactly. City of Light, famed in song and story, seat of the Federation Council, and location with the second-heaviest amount of shuttle traffic anywhere in the entire sector. Do you know what gets the heaviest?”
Ne’al shook its head.
“San Francisco.”
Now Ne’al nodded again. Z4 suspected that it was intimidated into silence by Z4’s demeanor, which was fine, as it meant his demeanor was having precisely the desired effect.
“Shuttle trips for the president are security nightmares. Do you know what Starfleet Security’s code word is for when the president takes a shuttle trip?”
Ne’al shook its head again.
“ ‘Golden Gate.’ Know why?”
A third head-shake.
“It refers to when the Breen invaded Earth and, among other things, destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a tidy way of summing up what a security nightmare it is when the president flies out in the open, a nightmare which is compounded by being in the two highest-traffic zones in the sector.” Z4 stood up and walked around his desk so he could loom over the still-seated Ne’al—something he couldn’t do once the much-taller Ne’al got up, so he wanted to take advantage. “Now, I want you to change the itinerary so that President Bacco leaves for the noon event at 2050. She will be taking one of the transporters. I don’t care if you have to drag Montgomery Scott over from the S.C.E. office in San Francisco, I don’t care if you have to animate the statue of Zefram Cochrane in Montana, but make sure one of those damn transporters is working at 2050, clear?”
“Zefram Cochrane invented warp drive.”
Z4 was thrown off-kilter by Ne’al actually speaking, then again by what it said. “What?”
“The transporter didn’t exist when Cochrane created warp drive. In fact, I don’t think it existed until after he retired to Alpha Centauri. If we animated his statue, I don’t think he’d know what to—”
“Just get it done, Ne’al.” Z4 touched the control on his desk that opened the door.
Ne’al took the hint and ran out of the office.
As Z4 sat back down at his desk, his assistant, a fellow Nasat named Q2 Brown, commed him. “You’ve got a call from the Tzenkethi embassy.”
That got Z4’s attention. “Is it Emra?”
“Yes.”
Emra had served as Tzenkethi ambassador to the Federation for years. Once, he’d tried to open up trade relations with Nasat, but the talks had fallen through when the Tzenkethi had refused to agree to terms that had been in any way favorable to the Federation as a whole. The Tzenkethi only traded with outsiders if they had to, and the situation had been sufficiently desperate that they’d made the overtures to Nasat in the first place, but nothing had come of it.
Still, Emra had always been an unusually reasonable person for a Tzenkethi politician—which was probably why he’d gotten the job, but also probably why he wasn’t able to be effective at it—and they had stayed in periodic touch, both while Z4 was a forest quadrant governor on Nasat and now that he was in the Palais.
Activating his comm, he said, “Mr. Ambassador, how are you?” There was no visual image—Tzenkethi never used visual communication.
“I am fine, Mr. Blue my old friend, but I am afraid that I will need to speak with your president as soon as possible.”
“Why not just request to speak before the council? They’ll be in session tomorrow, and—”
“No, no, no, my friend, it cannot be the entire council. I have too many enemies on the first floor of the Palais—but President Bacco may see reason.”
Z4’s antennae curled up again. “Emra, what’s this about?”
“I cannot say over an open channel, Z4. Suffice it to say that it is urgent and it involves the Tzelnira . Can you do this for me?”
Z4 hesitated. “Let me talk to Esperanza Piñiero and get back to you.”
“Do so quickly, please.”
“I’ll be in touch.” Z4 cut the communication, then asked Q2 to get the first free moment Esperanza had.
When she was done going over the amendments to the allocation bill for Betazed, Esperanza Piñiero checked her schedule and saw that she was supposed to meet with Jas Abrik. This ought to be fun.
She commed her assistant, Zachary Manzanillo, who’d been with her ever since she left Starfleet and started working for Nan Bacco on Cestus III. “Is he here?”
“Not yet. Should I page him?”
Letting out a sigh, she said, “Yes, please.”
During his years in Starfleet, Jas Abrik had cultivated a reputation for punctuality. That reputation had gone out the window pretty much the microsecond that he started working as President Bacco’s security advisor.
Of course, he always showed up on time for his briefings on fifteen. He had enough respect for the office to do that. But anywhere else in the Palais, he took his sweet time getting there—unless he was the one calling the meeting, in which case anyone who had the temerity to be late got an earful.
Zachary came back on. “I’ve got Admiral Abrik in his office.”
“What the hell is he doing in his office?”
“I could ask him.”
“Very funny,” Esperanza muttered. “Put him through.”
Jas Abrik’s face appeared on her viewer. “What do you want, Esperanza?”
“You to be in my office for the meeting we scheduled yesterday. You were going to brief me on the Reman refugee situation.”
“I’ll have a briefing for the president in an hour.”
“In an hour, the president’s going to be on a shuttle bound for Luna.”
&nbs
p; “I think this is a little too important to handle through intermediaries. I can brief her on the—”
Clenching her hands into fists that were so tight that she feared she’d draw blood, Esperanza said, “It doesn’t matter what you think, Jas. You know how this works. It all comes through me. Just like when I was first officer on the Gorkon—you didn’t get in to see Admiral Nechayev until I cleared it. And you don’t get to go to fifteen when you’re not scheduled to unless you do it through me.”
Jas glared at her for several seconds. “When you sold me on this job, you said it was so I could help make policy. That means I get the president’s ear.”
Esperanza rolled her eyes. “Oh please, Jas—you do have the president’s ear. You talk to her every morning. Outside of that, you talk to me whenever you need to, and when I think it’s appropriate, then you get to see her. I should think you of all people would appreciate the concept of chain of command.” She opened her fists and put them down on her desk. “Now, then—what is the latest on the Reman situation?”
“The ship isn’t moving any faster—in fact, the latest report from the outpost is that it’s slowed down a bit. Meanwhile, Starfleet is sending the Intrepid to do border patrol for the next two months, and they’ll be at 22 when the ship’s in range—but that’s not the problem, which is why I’m not indulging your power games right now.”
In a tight voice, Esperanza said, “Be very careful how you speak to me, Admiral Abrik. What the chief of staff giveth, the chief of staff taketh away, and it wouldn’t take me more than six and a half seconds to convince the president to fire you.”
Jas glared at her. “You know what’ll happen if you do that.”
Esperanza simply glared back, not giving a millimeter. Jas had taken the job in return for not revealing the truth behind Zife’s resignation.
“Anyhow, it doesn’t much matter, because we may have a bigger problem. Outpost 13 is picking up weapons fire in the T’Met system.”
Based on the way Jas started that sentence, Esperanza had a feeling that this wasn’t just the exchange of weapons fire between Romulans that had become common in the months since the senate’s fall. “Klingons?”
“And Romulans.”
“Are we sure?”
“No, which is why I need another hour.”
Esperanza hesitated. “Would you recommend canceling the Luna trip?” Normally she’d phrase this more directly—along the lines of, Should she cancel the Luna trip?—but she felt the need to put the retired admiral in his place.
“When is she back?”
“Tonight.”
“Then no, assuming you can get me a secured channel to the shuttle.”
“That’s the only kind of channel any of the shuttles have.” The president had three shuttles—the al-Rashid, the T’Maran, and the sh’Rothress, named after three twenty-second-century Federation presidents. “Keep me posted, Jas. I need to be in the loop on this, especially if the press gets ahold of it. I’ll need to know what to tell Jorel.”
“Don’t tell him anything. The press doesn’t need to know about this.”
“And don’t tell me how to do my job,” she snapped. “It’s not a question of what they need to know, it’s a question of what they do know and might hit him with in the briefing room.”
“Fine. I need to get back to work now, if that’s all right with you.”
Sighing, Esperanza cut off the comm without a word. Arrogant, self-righteous jackass!
“Esperanza,” Zachary said a moment later, “Z4 just called—he needs to see you as soon as you’re available.”
“Well, my meeting just ended prematurely. Send him over.”
Chapter Five
ESPERANZA WALKED UP TO Sivak’s desk, located just outside the president’s office. Two members of Starfleet security stood by the door, with two more at the other door, and two more at the turbolift entrance.
“Is she free?”
Sivak didn’t even look up from his workstation. “President Bacco is reading over several important papers before her trip to Luna.”
Esperanza smiled sweetly, which nicely hid her instinct to haul off and belt the supercilious Vulcan. For years, Esperanza had been begging Nan Bacco to fire him, but she insisted that he was the only one who kept her life organized. Esperanza could think of several people off the top of her head who could have done as good a job or better—starting with Zachary—but the president insisted.
“That doesn’t actually answer my question, Sivak.”
Now he did look up. “One could, I suppose, argue that, as president of the United Federation of Planets, surrounded as she is by half a dozen armed guards, she is never truly free, is she?”
I can’t believe I’m debating philosophy with a Vulcan when I just want to see the president. Then Esperanza thought about all the times she’d had to deal with Sivak and realized that she in truth had no trouble believing it.
Sivak opened the intercom. “Madam President, Ms. Piñiero wishes to meet with you.”
“Good. Send her in.”
Esperanza blinked. I don’t like the sound of that. She’d known Nan Bacco since birth, and she recognized that tone in her old friend’s voice: The president of the Federation was angry about something.
Sure enough, just as Esperanza walked past the two guards into the president’s office, the occupant of that office was screaming while holding up a padd. “Esperanza, what the hell is this?”
“It looks like a padd, ma’am.”
“It’s what’s on the padd that I’m asking about.”
Moving toward the desk, Esperanza said, “Well, ma’am, since I left my psychic powers in my other pants—”
“Nobody likes a wiseass, Esperanza.”
Smiling, Esperanza said, “Given how well-liked you are, ma’am, I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Fair point. Anyhow, this is the schedule for tomorrow’s council session.”
Esperanza moved to sit in the guest chair closest to the desk. “What about it?”
“One of the things we’re voting on is renewing the trade agreement with Aligar.”
Shrugging, Esperanza said, “Yeah, we’ve been trading with them for kellinite. We had to, during the war—the way we were losing, replacing, and rebuilding ships, we had to—”
President Bacco sat down and let the padd clatter onto the salish desk. “That’s nice, but the war’s over. You know how they mine the kellinite?”
Esperanza shook her head. “I assume with the usual equipment, they—”
“Slaves, Esperanza. They use slaves.”
That caught the chief of staff off guard. “I-I didn’t know.”
“Well, I did know—you know how I knew? Those jackasses tried to peddle their kellinite to us on Cestus right after I became governor. I was all set to do it, too—we needed to upgrade our planetary defenses—but we did a little research and found out that they oppressed ninety percent of their society. That’s not a typo—ninety percent. Nine out of every ten people on Aligar is owned by one-tenth of the population. What the hell is the Federation doing getting involved with these people?”
Esperanza let out a breath through her teeth. This wasn’t going to be easy to explain. “It was war, ma’am, we—”
The president rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the love of everything, Esperanza, do not drag out the ‘It was war, you civilians can’t possibly understand’ Starfleet crap. I know there was a war on. I was there when it happened, and on top of that, I had a bunch of Gorns decide to blow my capital city into tiny pieces, so kindly don’t lecture me about the sacrifices you need to make during wartime.”
Esperanza closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean—”
“Yeah, you did, and you know you did—and I don’t mind the perspective, it’s the attitude I have a problem with. Like you know better than anyone ’cause you were in Starfleet. I think you and I are both pretty cognizant of the fact that there are plenty of screwups we can
lay at Starfleet’s doorstep.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Esperanza saw no reason to argue—besides, there were bigger fish to fry. “If we can—”
But the president hadn’t let this out of her teeth yet. “I understand why we had to deal with the Aligar during the war—desperate times, desperate measures, strange bed-fellows, and whatever other damn wartime cliché you want to throw at me—but the war’s been over for four years. Is there any compellingly good reason why we should be setting aside our principles now? Or has it just become second nature?”
“No, ma’am,” Esperanza said after a brief pause, “and I think you should make that argument tomorrow. But, ma’am, there’s something else—something more important. Actually, several somethings.”
The president sighed. “I don’t suppose this can wait until after I get back from the moon.”
“No, ma’am.”
President Bacco leaned back in her chair. “No, of course not, because if it could, you wouldn’t have come in here. What is it?”
“Well, first of all, Jas will be giving you a briefing in about half an hour—probably while you’re on the shuttle. They’ve picked up weapons fire in Romulan space, and they think it’s a dustup with some Klingons.”
President Bacco put her head in her hands. “Hell and damnation. Do we know anything for sure yet?”
“No, ma’am—that’s what Jas is supposed to tell us in half an hour.”
“Does it have to do with those refugees we think are heading for Outpost 22?”
“No, ma’am—it’s in a completely different sector.”
“Small favors.” The president leaned forward. “Have someone get in touch with Ambassador Rozhenko on Qo’noS, and have someone else get me a location on Ambassador K’mtok, in case we need to get him here in a hurry. And keep T’Latrek, Mazibuko, and Molmaan around.”
Esperanza understood the need to talk to both Rozhenko and K’mtok—the Federation ambassador to the Klingons and the Klingon ambassador to the Federation, respectively—as well as Councillors T’Latrek and Mazibuko, who represented Vulcan and Earth and were the chair and second chair of the external affairs council. The third councillor the president listed, though, didn’t seem to fit. “Why Molmaan?”
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