“No.”
“Learn something from that, would you please?” He handed Zhres the briefing padd, then went to the turbolift.
Esperanza Piñiero was waiting for him in her office. She was studying something on her workstation intently. When he came in, she looked up and said, “Jorel, before I forget, next briefing, I need you to announce that we’ve come to an agreement with the Strata to act as intermediaries with the Trinni/ek. And if anyone asks about a summit again, don’t deny it.”
“I didn’t deny it. I never comment on rumors, Esperanza, you know that.”
Nodding, she said, “Yeah, I know, but the president’s been trying to get the Klingons to agree to this ever since that Klorgat mess. Giving it a little bit of a higher profile might help things along a bit.”
Jorel fixed her with an incredulous look. “You really think the Klingons are gonna give a damn about more attention in the Federation press?”
“I’m not talking about the Klingons, I’m talking about our people. Some of the Diplomatic Corps are dragging their feet—I’d like to stomp on those feet a little.”
“I love your imagery sometimes.”
“Thanks.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
Esperanza smiled. “I could tell—mainly because you were awake. Zhres said you needed to talk to me about something?”
Jorel nodded and took a seat in Esperanza’s guest chair. “Ozla Graniv came to see me this morning.”
“She’s back?”
“No, Esperanza, it was a convincing hologram. Yes, she’s back, and she has a story that she will run unless we give her a good reason not to.”
“What possible reason would we have not to run it?”
Esperanza’s face never changed expression the entire time that Jorel was telling her what Ozla had told him. He hoped, he wished, he fervently prayed to the Prophets that she would laugh at him, that she would tell him the whole idea was ridiculous, that she would reassure him that there was nothing to worry about, that Ozla’s source was just out-and-out wrong.
She did none of those things.
Instead, she let Jorel tell the entire story. Then she leaned back in her chair.
“Hell.”
“Esperanza, you can’t tell me—”
“That she can’t run the story? I wish I could. Dammit, this will—” She slammed a hand on the desk. “Dammit!”
“Esperanza—”
“I was hoping—I was so so so much hoping—that it wouldn’t come to this. That that Zakdorn bastard actually covered his tracks well enough that this wouldn’t come up.” She laughed bitterly. “And that the Syndicate thing was a cover story. Guess not. God, I can’t believe they actually used the Syndicate to funnel those weapons. I mean, how stupid—”
Jorel’s stomach twisted in his gut. Bile started to rise, leaving a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. “Esperanza, you can’t tell me that she’s right?”
“I have to, Jorel. She is. Zife and Azernal and Quafina armed Tezwa behind the backs of the Federation Council and the Klingon Empire. When Kinchawn went nuts, Zife sent the Enterprise in to escort the Klingon fleet and didn’t tell them about the cannons. And when Starfleet found out where the cannons came from, they forced the three of them to resign.”
“They—” Jorel stood up. He tugged on his earring, the pain shooting through his lobe a reminder that he wasn’t dreaming. “How could they do that?”
“I don’t pretend to know what the previous—”
Jorel waved his hand back and forth. “No, not the president and Koll and that twerpy little Antedean, I’m talking about Starfleet. I’m talking about Ross. How could he—I mean, Starfleet’s supposed to fight for what the Federation stands for, and they do this?”
“He didn’t have a choice.”
“Oh, come off it! Don’t give me that military garbage, Esperanza, you’re not in Starfleet anymore, you don’t have to defend them.”
“What else were they supposed to do?” she asked with a calm that just infuriated Jorel more. “Give me some alternatives.”
“They didn’t have to do anything!”
“So they should let a president who was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Starfleet officers, thousands more Klingon warriors, and millions of Tezwans just go right on with what he was doing?”
That brought Jorel up short. He knew that going public with the knowledge wouldn’t have worked. The Klingons would have demanded retribution. At best, they would have had to turn Zife over to face trial in a Klingon court, which would have resulted in his execution. That was not something the Federation could have allowed to happen to one of their leaders, and it would have damaged Klingon-Federation relations at a time when the alliance had already been pretty frayed. “So Starfleet engages in a coup d’état, and they get away with it?”
“First of all, it wasn’t a coup d’état—in order for that to be the case, they’d have had to take over the government. They stopped a war, got a criminal off the fifteenth floor, and allowed the constitutional process to play out as spelled out in the Articles of the Federation. President Bacco was elected, not appointed.”
Jorel sat back down. “What am I supposed to tell Ozla?”
Esperanza sighed. “Remind her of the consequences of her going public with this.”
“She already knows that. She’s going to run it anyway. And honestly, I don’t blame her. Hell, right now, I’m tempted to encourage her to run it.”
Speaking as if Jorel hadn’t said anything, Esperanza said, “If that doesn’t work, see what you can offer her in exchange. Reporters often have information they won’t print because of its volatile nature. If she does understand the consequences like you said—maybe she’ll trade it for something else.”
“Like what?”
“Ask her.”
Jorel knew Esperanza was right. Not all reporters were idiots, though it certainly seemed that way to Jorel half the time, and Ozla in particular wasn’t. She wouldn’t send the Federation into a war with the Klingons and tarnish the office of the president so readily, especially if she could use it to get something else.
However, there was one other concern. “What if there isn’t anything she wants—or if it’s something we can’t give her?”
“Then she runs the story and we face the consequences. Freedom of the press means just that—they’re free to do what they want. We can give them incentives not to say something in particular, but it’s their choice to accept or decline them. We cannot get into the business of exerting undue influence, or we stop being the Federation and become—I don’t know, something else, but not this.” She looked Jorel right in the eye. “Not what so many people died for.”
Jorel suddenly shivered.
Frowning, Esperanza asked, “What?”
“Nothing, I was just—” He shook his head. “About twenty years ago on Bajor, I helped run an underground newsfeed. We used to piggyback on the official Cardassian channels and send out bits of news about the resistance and messages of hope and prayer and citations of specific instances of gross oppression.”
Esperanza chuckled mirthlessly. “Wasn’t the entire occupation gross oppression?”
Rolling his eyes, Jorel said, “The more extreme examples. Can I tell my story please?”
“Sure.” Esperanza made a “go-ahead” gesture.
“One time, we heard that the resistance was targeting a food storage unit, because the Cardassians were using it as a weapons depot as well. They probably figured that terrorists wouldn’t target food. We ran one of our feeds and talked about how stupid the Cardassians were for thinking the resistance was so easy to manipulate and how those weapons weren’t long for the world.” Jorel closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought about this in years, and he had no great desire to think about it now, but Ozla’s demand, as well as Esperanza’s confirmation of his worst fears, brought it slamming back to the front of his brain. “We thought we were just so damn brilliant, exposing t
he Cardassians’ feeble attempt at subterfuge. Unfortunately, all we succeeded in doing was letting the Cardassians know that the depot would be attacked by the resistance.”
Esperanza gave him a sympathetic look. “They were defeated?”
Snorting, Jorel said, “ ‘Defeated’ doesn’t begin to cover it. They were massacred. And they wouldn’t have been if we…” He trailed off.
“You should tell Ozla that story,” Esperanza said in a softer voice than Jorel had ever heard her use.
Jorel nodded twice and got up. “All right. I’ll talk to her and get back to you.”
“Good. Oh, one other thing—I just got word when I got back, judiciary found in favor of B-4.”
Smirking, Jorel said, “So the android gets the right to choose not to get taken apart. Lucky him.”
“Yup. Let me know what Ozla says.”
Jorel nodded again and left.
“You know, the colors in this room are just soooooooooooo pretty.”
“Ozla, what’s the matter with you?”
Looking over at the viewer that hung on the wall of her apartment on Earth, Ozla Graniv saw the blurry face of her editor. “Sorry, Farik, wuzzat?”
“I said, what’s the matter with you?”
“Oh.” Somehow she had managed to sit up on her couch, but the effort was proving to be too much, and she fell back down into a supine position. “I’m drunk.”
“Why are you drunk?”
“’Cause I’ve imbibed a substantial ’mount of alcohol.”
“No, I mean, why’ve you been—”
“’Cause I lied, Farik! Lied like a lyin’ stinkin’ liar. ’M a reporter, ’m not s’posed t’lie, but there I was! Lyin’ like a lyin’ liar lyin’ at Kant Jorel.”
“Ozla—”
She rolled onto her side and picked up the Saurian brandy bottle, only to discover that it was empty. Next to it, so was the Orion whiskey—a going-away present from Ihazs, amazingly enough, that had been waiting for her when the Balduks had hauled her back to her hotel—and the Terran scotch. “See, it’s this story I’ve got.”
“The one you won’t tell me about.”
“Right, ’at’s the one. See, I tol’ Kant I had a source. Which was a big ol’ lie, ’cause I ain’t got a source. I mean, I got a source, but’s a deep-background source.” She had decided on her way from Deneva to Earth that she would not tell Farik that Ihazs had threatened to kill her if she revealed his info without a corroborating source. Editors tended to get overprotective and annoying when they thought their reporters’ lives were in danger, so she decided that, as far as Farik was concerned, her source on the Zife/Tezwa story was deep background: could be used for background information, but not be quoted on the record. “So’f they don’ confirm it, I ain’t gotnee story. So I lied.”
“To somebody who’s lied to you dozens of times in the last two years alone.”
“S’not the point!”
“Ozla, why did you call me, exactly?”
To her surprise—well, not total surprise, given how drunk she was—Ozla had no idea what the answer to that question was. “Don’t ’member.”
Then her house computer spoke. “Incoming message from the Palais de la Concorde.”
“Oh, goody, Kant’s gettin’ back t’me.”
For the first time since she lay back down, Ozla looked at Farik’s face on the screen. It was heavily lined and etched with concern. Or maybe it was just the way his spots looked in this light. “Be careful, Ozla, all right?”
And then his face faded.
Ozla struggled to make her legs work, but she only succeeded in falling off the couch. At least that accomplished her goal, which was to move from the couch to the floor. She had been hoping to do it with her legs underneath her, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Computer, hold call fr’m Palais.”
“Acknowledged.”
Using a footrest to brace herself, Ozla somehow managed to clamber to her feet. She felt like she was wobbling, but at least she was upright. Then she had to convince her legs to not just support her weight—at which they were only barely succeeding—but also to walk.
Taking slow, easy steps, using whatever furniture she could to brace herself where possible, Ozla slowly made her way to the bathroom, which was where she kept her anti-intoxicants. She got them six years ago and had no idea if they were still any good or not, as she hadn’t drunk this much—well, ever.
She had to touch the medicine chest control three times before it finally deigned to slide aside, and then she had to squint to make out the labels on the bottles inside. Finally she found the right one.
After pulling on the top for several seconds, she remembered that the bottle had a touch-sensitive control on the bottom that allowed ingress. She touched it four times before it finally opened. Then she swallowed three pills.
Seconds later, she was as sober as she had been when Ihazs had confronted her in that basement. And about as apprehensive.
Walking steadily, but nervously, back out to the living room, she said, “Computer, activate viewer.”
Zhres’s face appeared on the screen. “Ozla, Jorel would like to see you as soon as possible.”
Here it comes, she thought. The moment of truth. Or the moment of lying. “Tell him I’ll be right there.”
What Ozla didn’t know was what answer she wanted more: that Ihazs was right, or that he was wrong. Because the thing that scared her the most, the thing that had driven her to drain her supply of Saurian brandy, Orion whiskey, and Terran scotch was the knowledge that this story would absolutely make her career. It would make the Orion exposé look like a university term paper.
And that scared the living hell out of her.
William Ross had first visited the presidential office as a child. His parents had taken him on the tour of the Palais, and this office had been the last stop. He hadn’t gotten to meet President Thelian, of course, although he’d met several councillors during the tour. The seven-year-old Billy Ross had thought the room absolutely huge.
He’d been back many times in his Starfleet career, particularly under Presidents Jaresh-Inyo, Zife, and now Bacco. Each time he’d come in, the room had seemed smaller, never more so than when he’d stood and watched Min Zife give a resignation speech that had been hastily written, not by anyone on Zife’s speechwriting staff but rather by a Vulcan woman named L’Haan. It had been right after that that L’Haan and her associates had taken Zife, Koll Azernal, and Nelino Quafina to their “retirement.”
Ross had been surprised at being summoned to the fifteenth floor alone. Generally his visits with the president were in the company of other Starfleet officers, not to mention various members of the government—the chief of staff, various cabinet members, the security advisor, and so on. He was even more surprised when Bacco entered the office by herself, unaccompanied even by her right hand, Esperanza Piñiero.
“Can you imagine that I’m getting more trouble from the Diplomatic Corps than the Klingon High Council about this damn summit? Now they’re concerned that we’ll be insulting the Romulan Empire.”
Allowing himself a small smile, Ross said, “It’s been my experience, ma’am, that one should never underestimate the capacity of the Diplomatic Corps to give you more trouble.”
At that, the president laughed. “Good point.” She moved around to her desk and sat down.
“What can I do for you, Madam President?”
Bacco stared at him for a second. “Bill, it’s been a bad day for me. The Pioneers lost three out of four to the Stars, which means they aren’t Northern Division champions for the first time in four years. The Diplomatic Corps is giving me lots of reasons to order them all beheaded with guillotines on the ground floor of the building, just like the good old days six hundred years ago. And now I’ve had this dropped in my lap.”
“What would ‘this’ be about, ma’am?” Ross asked, though the very fact that the president was calling him by his first name lent credence to several sus
picions.
“The last person to have this office.”
That confirmed the worst of those suspicions. “What about President Zife, ma’am?”
At once, all pretense of a friendly demeanor was gone, and Bacco angrily snapped, “Cut the crap, Admiral! You and I both know what happened. We both know that Zife armed Tezwa with those pulse cannons and didn’t tell anyone—least of all the dozen or so ships that got torn to pieces by those cannons. And we both know that you served him, Azernal, and Quafina with an ultimatum.”
Ross knew all this, of course, but he didn’t know that Bacco did. “How long—?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Bacco said with a dismissive wave.
“Actually, ma’am, due respect—it does matter.” Ross hesitated. Nan Bacco was a good woman, and he didn’t want to make it sound as if he was accusing her of something, but he had to know the answer to this. “Did you know when I offered to consult for your campaign?”
“No. I found out later—the morning of the first debate, in fact. By then, the campaign was at full bore, and—” She shook her head. “I don’t know, I didn’t really think about it. We had eight billion other things on our minds at that point, and I was a lot more concerned with what Zife did than what you did. But what you did…” She got up and let out a long breath. “For the last year, I’ve been wondering what to do with you, Bill. I mean, you showed my predecessor the door, and there’s a part of me that’s been wondering, What happens if I do something to piss him off?”
“That’s unlikely, ma’am. There were a lot of reasons why I chose to show such public support for your campaign, and one of the biggest was the fact that I had faith in your inability to put me in the position President Zife did.”
Bacco, who had been staring out the window at the sunset over Paris, now whirled around at Ross. “God, do you know what you sounded like just then?”
“Ma’am?”
“It’s not enough that you removed Min Zife from power, but then you took it upon yourself to use whatever influence you could to put the person you preferred in his place.”
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