Star Trek: Vanguard: What Judgments Come

by Dayton Ward

  Fisher nodded. “That’ll teach him.” The line continued to move forward, and as he drew abreast of the first station along the buffet, he reached to where a stack of hexagonal plates sat waiting for customers. Retrieving two plates, he held one face up and offered it to Reyes. “Kind of reminds me of chow time at the Academy.”

  There was something about the way he made the statement, coupled with the way he held the plate for an extra heartbeat as Reyes took it, that set off an alarm bell in his head. He scrambled to search long-buried memories of his days at Starfleet Academy, trying to connect anything to what Fisher had just said. Then, as he watched his friend take his place at the end of the serving line that ran the length of the buffet and past each of the stations on this side of the restaurant, something about the doctor’s movements triggered a response.

  Fisher was holding his plate level, parallel to the floor, with his elbows tucked in tight at his sides, just as Academy cadets once had been required to do when navigating the dining facility during their meals. It had seemed silly at the time, he recalled, particularly given the emphasis with which his instructors had enforced the rule along with a host of others that, on their face, made no sense whatsoever. As it turned out, the rigid, formal movement through the cafeteria line, complete with facing movements and the proper positioning of arms and feet, had been one of numerous ways in which Academy instructors reinforced the various components of marching in formation during close-order drill. In hindsight, Reyes considered the practice as overkill, and indeed such policies and practices had been relaxed over the years, but for old-school Starfleet types like him and Fisher, it was just one more outdated practice from a bygone era.

  So why the hell is he doing it now?

  Instinct told Reyes to follow his friend’s movements, though he opted to do so while attempting to appear relaxed as he made his way through the buffet procession. After several moments spent perusing the various selections, both men made their choices. Fisher stood silent, an amused expression gracing his weathered features as he waited for Reyes to pay for both meals using his own credit chip.

  “No, really. I got it,” Reyes said, his voice dripping sarcasm as he handed his chip to the cashier.

  Finding an empty table along one wall of the restaurant’s dining area, the next few moments were spent in silence as they ate their meals. Reyes had not even put the first spoonful of Kohlanese stew in his mouth when a server, a lithe, striking Andorian woman whose outfit consisted of less material than the napkin in Reyes’s lap, approached their table and asked if they wanted anything to drink. As she left, Fisher turned to watch her as she disappeared into the depths of the crowded restaurant.

  “You think she gets cold, walking around dressed like that?” he asked.

  Reyes shrugged. “I think she’ll kick your ass if you don’t stop looking at her like that.” Taking another bite of his stew, he asked around a rather large chunk of spiced meat, “So, you want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “Can’t I come and visit an old friend once in a while?” Fisher asked, offering a wan smile as he picked at his salad. “Besides, after that inoculation I gave you, I wanted to make sure you weren’t suffering any adverse side effects.” His expression betrayed nothing, as though the doctor had been carrying out covert conversations in public his entire life. At least Fisher’s first visit had served a purpose: providing Reyes with the subcutaneous transceiver that allowed him to communicate with T’Prynn.

  “Well, I’m still having trouble sleeping,” Reyes said. He paused to glance around, checking to see if anyone might be eavesdropping on their conversation, “but I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it. Just too much racket around here, is all.”

  Nodding, Fisher offered another wry grin. “Well, maybe what you need is a change of venue. You’re overdue for a vacation, aren’t you?”

  “For a couple of years now,” Reyes replied. “Got any suggestions?”

  The doctor shrugged as he turned his attention from his salad to a bowl of soup he had selected. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  Taking a few more bites of his stew, Reyes cast a casual glance about the bar. No one seemed close enough to be eavesdropping, but he kept his voice low as he asked, “What happened with Hetzlein and Gianetti?”

  It was obvious from Fisher’s expression that the doctor was uncomfortable discussing this topic, particularly given his present surroundings. Without looking up from his plate, he replied, “Their bodies weren’t recovered, but one of T’Prynn’s informants reported that Ganz had his people make them disappear, if you know what I mean. Starfleet’s not acknowledging their actions, and their families have been told they died in an accident during training. Nogura can’t press Ganz about it, and there’s no way Ganz is going to cop to murdering two Starfleet officers.”

  Reyes forced himself not to react to the news. It was not an unexpected development, given the clandestine nature of the extraction attempt. Why Ganz had not taken advantage of the situation by capturing the two covert operatives and using them as leverage against Admiral Nogura, he did not know. All that was certain was that the two officers’ deaths were now added to the list of acts for which Reyes hoped the Orion merchant prince would be held accountable one day.

  Movement in his peripheral vision made Reyes turn to see an Orion male—one of the two security guards who had been shadowing Fisher outside the restaurant—heading toward the table. Reyes felt his muscles tense in anticipation, not liking what he was seeing. The guard brushed past a server and two patrons on his way in their direction, and when he came to a stop at their table, he stood in silence, glaring at them. After several seconds, during which Fisher continued to work on his soup, Reyes decided he would be the one to break the ice.

  “We’re not ready for the dessert menu just yet, sport. Come back in about fifteen minutes.” The remark was enough to make the Orion turn his smoldering gaze upon Reyes, though the guard said nothing to him. Instead, another moment passed in odd silence before he turned his attention to Fisher.

  “Come with me. I’ve been ordered to escort you to the main entrance.”

  “I’m not finished with my lunch,” the doctor replied.

  As if to emphasize his point, the Orion leaned across the table toward Fisher. “Yes, you are. Come with me, now.”

  “What’s this about?” Reyes snapped, scowling and deciding that he did not care how the guard chose to interpret his question or tone.

  The guard turned to glower once more at Reyes. “I’ve been ordered to escort this human off the ship. I don’t know the reason, and I don’t care.” To Fisher, he said, “Let’s go.”

  Shrugging, the doctor wiped his mouth with a napkin before pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. “Food was cold, anyway.” He sighed, offering Reyes another small, knowing smile. “See you around, Diego,” he said, before looking back to the guard and nodding toward the restaurant’s exit. “After you.”

  Reyes was certain he heard the Orion growl in irritation as he gestured for Fisher to move along. He watched the unlikely pair work their way through the crowded restaurant, with the guard retrieving what Reyes knew to be a communications device from his belt and holding it up to his mouth. No doubt he was alerting whoever was on duty for the Omari-Ekon’s security detail that he had his charge in custody and was escorting him to the exit, where Reyes guessed Fisher would be shown without ceremony to the docking ring leading back to Vanguard.

  See you around, Zeke.

  Looking down at his meal, Reyes decided that Fisher’s dismissal and the prospect of eating yet another meal in solitude had removed what remained of his appetite. He was contemplating an attempt to annoy Ganz and his cronies by winning at the gaming tables when his thoughts were interrupted by the voice of T’Prynn echoing in his head.

  “Mister Reyes.”

  “I thought you were going to call me Diego?” Reyes asked, masking his mouth with his water glass, from which he then sip
ped.

  The Vulcan seemed to ignore that. “I have just been informed that Doctor Fisher has left the Omari-Ekon. As you have likely surmised, his visit was a pretense.”

  “No kidding,” Reyes mumbled. “I’m assuming Pennington’s part of the plan, too?”

  T’Prynn said, “That’s correct, but he’s there only to serve as a distraction. His last visit attracted some scrutiny, but I do not believe they know anything about the messages he helped you to pass to us. However, he volunteered to take his evening meal aboard the Omari-Ekon simply as an exercise in diverting the attention of any security guards who might be watching Doctor Fisher.”

  Reyes wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Okay, but if Zeke was supposed to tell me something, he either didn’t get a chance to say it, or I’m too stupid to have understood it.”

  T’Prynn replied, “Doctor Fisher’s task was to leave you something. Please check the underside of your plate.”

  Trying to affect as casual a demeanor as possible while not making it appear too obvious that he was looking about to see if he was being observed, Reyes took the better part of a minute to inspect the underside of each of the plate’s eight edges with his fingers. On the left side of the plate, close to the edge nearest his side of the table, his fingertips brushed over something thin and smooth. It required only the smallest amount of force to move the object, and it fell from the plate into his palm. He left his hand in place for an extra moment as he forced himself to take another bite of his stew. Around the meat in his mouth, he mumbled, “What is it?”

  “A transceiver, fitted with an additional translator module,” T’Prynn replied. “You will use it during your next attempt to access the Omari-Ekon’s navigational logs.”

  Reyes suspected as much. The device was small enough that he could conceal it in his hand, and he covered the movement by reaching up with that same hand to rub his nose. “I was wondering if you’d forgotten about me.” It might have been his imagination, but he swore he heard T’Prynn sigh before answering.

  “Hardly. It took some time to program the module to be able to access all known spoken and written Orion languages, including those which have fallen out of common use. You should encounter no further linguistic difficulty when you make your next attempt.”

  “Excellent,” Reyes said, reaching up to scratch his chin. “When do we go for it?”

  “If you have no objections,” T’Prynn replied, “I was thinking we might try later this evening.”

  That suited Reyes just fine. He was tiring of this entire affair, and there was a part of him that wanted it to be over, one way or the other.

  Of course, he mused as he considered the transceiver still secreted in his palm as he strolled out of the restaurant, I definitely prefer one way over the other.

  22

  Ming Xiong heard the footsteps crossing the open deck of the Lovell’s cargo bay, only then realizing that he had missed the sound of the room’s access hatch opening. Had he been dozing? Jerking himself upright in his seat, he reached up to wipe his face while turning his seat in the direction of his visitor, uncertain as to whether he should expect a dressing down or merciless ribbing for his apparent nap.

  “What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing here at oh-whatever hundred hours time it is?” asked Lieutenant Kurt Davis, Mahmud al-Khaled’s second in command for the Lovell’s Corps of Engineers team. Tall and thin, with long arms that seemed much too small for the sleeves of his uniform tunic, when Davis smiled his mouth seemed capable of devouring the rest of his face, and Xiong was certain the man possessed the whitest teeth he had ever seen.

  “I could ask you the same question,” Xiong said, rising from his chair and making his way toward the food slot set into the nearby bulkhead.

  Davis shrugged. “Just making the rounds. It’s my shift. Commander al-Khaled and I usually work opposite each other, and I like the night shift. It’s quieter—most of the time, anyway. Besides, it gives me time and space to sort through a tough project without all of the interruptions that come with working on prime shift. There’s also never a line in the mess hall, either.” He glanced toward the isolation chamber. “If I’d known you were down here, I’d have dropped by sooner.”

  Rubbing his chin, which he now realized had grown fuzzy with very fine beard stubble, Xiong reached for one of the data cards lying on a nearby shelf and inserted it into the food slot’s reader. He entered a sequence on the row of buttons below the reader, and the slot’s door opened to reveal a cup of hot coffee. As he retrieved the steaming beverage, he held it up to Davis, who shook his head at the silent offer.

  “So,” the engineer said, “what’s the matter? Can’t sleep?”

  Xiong nodded. “Something like that.” After a sleepless turn in the bunk he had been provided in what laughingly passed as guest quarters aboard the Lovell, he had opted to return to the cargo bay and review the data that had been collected during their previous attempts to scan the Mirdonyae Artifact. Still ensconced within the isolation chamber, the artifact appeared dormant save for the constant muted violet hue emanating from within its crystalline heart.

  “I’ve reviewed some of the data,” Davis said as Xiong returned to his seat and sipped his coffee. “No new progress, I see.”

  Xiong shook his head. “Nothing. We’ve repeated some of the more intensive scan cycles a few times, but there’s been no response of any kind, or any other indication that the Shedai wants anything to do with us.”

  “I’m guessing you’ve run diagnostics on the chamber itself,” Davis said.

  “Until my fingers were numb,” Xiong replied before taking another sip of his coffee. “Everything checks out; we’re just not getting a response.” Shaking his head, he reached up to brush hair from his eyes. “I’m considering resetting all of the scan procedures and starting over, just to see if I’m missing something stupid.”

  Davis frowned. “I don’t think that’s it. For one thing, Anderson and O’Halloran might like to clown around, but they also don’t miss much. If there was something wrong with the equipment, or if a scanner frequency was off by the smallest degree, one of those two would’ve found it. I swear their DNA was crossed with a bloodhound’s at some point.”

  Rather than instill confidence that he was on the right track, the engineer’s words only served to heighten Xiong’s concern that he had done something wrong. It had to be something so obvious or innocuous that it was easy to miss. To reverse a popular idiom, it felt to him as though he was missing the lone tree that lurked in plain sight at the forefront of the forest commanding his attention.

  Xiong sighed. “This sounds foolish to say out loud, but part of my frustration is that every advance we’ve made to this point has been almost by accident. We hypothesize and test and record data and draw conclusions from the results, and then we start the process all over again. It’s very slow, even when there’s progress. The only time there seems to be a significant development is when we happen across a Shedai artifact, or somehow back into getting some of their technology to work.” He shook his head. “We’re supposed to be smarter than this, especially considering how long we’ve been buying this stuff.”

  “Maybe we should take that as a hint then,” Davis said. “After all, it seems that whenever we try to kick-start Shedai technology, it turns around and bites us on the ass.”

  When Xiong turned to regard the engineer, he saw from the expression on the other man’s face that he was not at all serious with his suggestion, and it made him realize how negative he was sounding. “Okay, point taken. Besides, I really have no intention of waiting around for the next happy accident.” Eyeing the isolation chamber, he frowned. “I just feel like we’re poking a stick into a cage sometimes. I know I don’t like being poked. I like to be asked. Nicely.”

  “So if I ask you nicely,” Davis said, “you’ll bring me breakfast?”

  That made Xiong laugh, which in turn helped to dispel at least some of his somber mood. “I think no
t,” he said, leaning back in his chair and lifting his feet to rest on the edge of the console as he let his gaze wander across the set of status monitors at his station. The patterns of energy readings fed to the screens by the isolation chamber’s internal sensor network were almost hypnotic, and as his mind began to wander, he considered how the sensor probes might be received within the body of the artifact. He knew from previous scans that it was a complex latticework imbued with energy, even though the source of that power remained a mystery. As for the Shedai entity held within the artifact, of course it was present in a noncorporeal state, but beyond that? How did the Shedai’s energy—its life force, he allowed—exist within its crystalline prison? He doubted this bizarre incarceration was comfortable for the entity, but what else might be in play here? Could the sensor scans to which Xiong and his companions were subjecting the artifact be having some kind of detrimental effect on the Shedai? Was it possible that the life-form was in pain?

  “I know that look,” he heard Davis say. “I see it on faces all over this ship. What are you thinking?”

  Removing his feet from the console, Xiong pushed himself closer to the workstation and began entering a string of commands. “We’re telling the artifact what we want,” he said, more to himself than the engineer.

  “Excuse me?” Davis asked.

  Xiong did not look away from his console as he replied, “We’re scanning the hell out of that thing. We’re bombarding it with the most intensive data-gathering sensor probes we can throw at it. We’re practically screaming at the Shedai trapped inside, telling it what we want to know about it.” Pausing, he turned and offered a wry grin to his companion. “We’re not asking it.”

  His eyes widening in surprise, Davis then nodded in appreciation. “Okay, that’s a bit out of left field, but everybody on this ship owns property out there. I see where you’re going. By subjecting the artifact to the intensive sensor sweeps and rudimentary linguacode hailing messages, we’re essentially trying to force the Shedai to talk to us.”