by David Mack
His best chance of finding something newsworthy soon enough to make his deadline was to talk to the people no one normally paid any attention to. He scanned the crowd of Starfleet personnel, paying special attention to their shirt cuffs. He was looking for the ones with no braid at all.
He was looking for enlisted personnel.
Decorum prohibited Ambassador Jetanien from complaining.
While Lieutenant Xiong sat beside Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn in front of Commodore Reyes’s empty desk, Jetanien stood behind them and loomed over the debriefing session. He did it not out of a sense of authority or entitlement, but because he simply could not use the human-friendly chairs, which, even if enlarged for his greater size, were generally unsuited to his less-flexible torso. Forcing himself into a seated position usually resulted in a contortion of his body that was uncomfortable for him and unintentionally amusing for others.
He never complained about the absence of his preferred furniture for waking repose—a forward-sloping seat pad with a counterpoised kneeling pad—because he didn’t want to be perceived as the sort of person who always accentuated the negative. In his opinion it was far less inflammatory to simply hold his peace and say that he preferred to stand.
Xiong was in the middle of explaining in exhaustive detail how soil samples had confirmed an age of nearly one hundred thousand years for the recently excavated find on Ravanar IV when Reyes interrupted, “That’s all well and good, Lieutenant, but do we know anything useful about it?”
The young anthropology-and-archaeology expert glared for a moment, then collected himself. “That depends, I guess, on your definition of ‘useful,’ sir.”
Reyes extended his arms outward as if to embrace the possibilities in his imagination. “What does it do? Who created it? Does it have anything to do with the Taurus Key?”
“It’s a bit early to say for sure,” Xiong said. “We’d only just started our tests when you summoned me back here.”
Reyes winced like a man developing a headache. “Mr. Xiong, please don’t tell me I just sent you on a forty-light-year field trip so you could come back here and tell me your results were inconclusive.”
“I wouldn’t call them ‘inconclusive,’ sir.”
“What would you call them, then?”
Xiong shrugged. “Preliminary.”
“I see,” Reyes said. He rapped his knuckles on the desktop. “Let’s recap, shall we? What’s it made of? ‘Unknown.’ Is it indigenous? ‘Unknown.’ Does it pose a risk to our research team or this starbase? ‘Unknown.’ Did I leave anything out?”
Properly chastised, the young lieutenant took a deep breath, then said, “No, sir. That about covers it.”
“There was one other development of note,” T’Prynn said, making her first comment of the meeting. “After your departure, the research team succeeded in restoring power to one of its isolated components. They were still compiling data when their security was breached, forcing them to suspend operations.”
“They activated it?” Xiong was half out of his seat. “When? How? What did it do?”
T’Prynn fixed Xiong with her icy Vulcan stare, which all but bade the high-strung young scientist to be calm. “Only one component was activated, Lieutenant. No effect was immediately apparent.” She looked back at Reyes and added, “The more pressing concern is the security breach.”
Reyes nodded. “And how much intel do we have on that?”
“Very little,” she said. “Sabotage was our initial theory, but witness accounts suggest it was more likely a botched robbery.”
Jetanien interjected, “Are we certain it wasn’t espionage?”
“Spies observe, Mr. Ambassador,” T’Prynn said. “They rarely reveal themselves without good cause. Nothing about this intruder’s actions leads me to think he was a professional. In fact, I consider the opposite to be true.”
The commodore tapped an index finger against his temple. “Suspects?”
“Nothing actionable,” she said. “I will keep you apprised of any new information.”
“See that you do.” Reyes looked up at Jetanien. “Anything to add, Mr. Ambassador?”
“Only that we need to remain mindful of—”
He was interrupted by a sharp buzz from the commodore’s desktop intercom.
Reyes thumbed open the channel. “What?”
The electronically filtered voice of his administrative aide replied, “Yeoman Greenfield, sir. Captain Kirk of the Enterprise is here and wishes to speak with you.”
“Give me a moment to wrap this up, then send him in.”
“Aye, sir,” Greenfield said, and the intercom clicked off.
Reyes stood up, an action that everyone present had already learned was the commodore’s way of signaling that a meeting was over. “My apologies, Mr. Ambassador.” To Xiong and T’Prynn he added, “Dismissed.”
It’s just as well he cut me off, Jetanien decided as he led T’Prynn and Xiong out of the office and down the stairs into the station’s busy operations center. I was ad-libbing, anyway.
Kirk’s brief trip from the Enterprise to the operations center of Starbase 47 had only reinforced his perception of the station’s enormity. The high-ceilinged corridor outside the gangway ramp had been impressive by itself. Glimpses of the terrestrial enclosure that occupied the upper half of the station’s primary hull, above the spacedock, had brought a smile to Kirk’s face. The sense of being in the midst of a buzzing hive of carefully coordinated activity was both overwhelming and exhilarating. Of course, none of those things had been the first detail to catch the captain’s eye; that honor belonged to the miniskirts. Someone at Starfleet Command likes me, he had mused, unable to suppress his appreciative, smirking leer.
He stepped out of the turbolift into the operations center. Its standard duty-shift complement was more than twice as large as his average bridge crew. In the center of it all, standing on a raised platform, watching over the grand circus of quickly changing details, starship traffic, and internal business, was a man not much older than himself. The officer in charge was a pleasant-looking man with a thatch of dark hair; he managed his business with quiet courtesy. Kirk walked past another pair of miniskirted female officers, dodged between two adjacent banks of computers and sensor displays, and approached the platform all but unnoticed. He knocked on the railing post. “Excuse me?”
The officer above him did a small double take, then nodded and smiled. “Hello.”
“I’m Captain James T. Kirk, Starship Enterprise.”
“Executive officer Jon Cooper,” the man on the platform said. “What can I do for you, Captain?”
“I’m looking for Commodore Reyes.”
Cooper pointed to a pair of double doors on the opposite side of the room from the turbolift. “His office is over there, sir.”
“Thank you.” Kirk turned and stepped toward the office.
Cooper called after him. “He’s in a meeting, sir.”
Kirk turned slowly back toward Cooper. “A meeting.”
“Yes, sir. You can check his schedule with his yeoman.”
“His yeoman.”
Before Kirk could point out that he had no idea which one of the junior officers in this room was the commodore’s yeoman, Cooper waved over a chipper young woman with bright, doe-like eyes and an enormous data slate cradled in one arm.
“Toby,” Cooper said, “this is Captain James Kirk, of the Enterprise. Could you check on the status of the commodore’s meeting for him?”
“Of course, sir,” she said. She moved to a nearby console, entered her security code, and opened an internal comm channel. Several seconds later, a distinctly annoyed growl of a voice replied over the speaker, “What?”
“Yeoman Greenfield, sir. Captain Kirk of the Enterprise is here and wishes to speak with you.”
“Give me a moment to wrap this up, then send him in.”
“Aye, sir,” Greenfield said, then clicked off the intercom. She turned to face Kirk. “He
—”
“I heard him, Yeoman.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door to Reyes’s office opened. An imposing Chelon in expensive clothing was the first to exit, followed by a young Asian man…and one of the most strikingly beautiful Vulcan women Jim Kirk had ever seen. The tips of her pointed ears barely poked out from beneath her long, straight black hair. She met his stare and returned it, without blinking, as she moved gracefully past him, her stride so fluid that she seemed almost to glide. Her statuesque physique and dark intensity captivated Kirk. She could probably snap me like a twig, he realized. He was turned half around, still watching her while she watched him back, when Greenfield spoke and broke the spell.
“The commodore will see you now, Captain.”
Snapping back into the moment, he reminded himself why he had come here. He nodded to Greenfield, said “Thank you,” and walked quickly into Reyes’s office. The chirps and chatter of the operations center fell away as the door closed behind him.
Kirk had half-expected to find a lavish office, appointed with extravagances and defined by a huge window on the stars. Instead, he found himself in a moderately sized and extremely Spartan workspace that had no windows—most likely because the operations center was shielded by several layers of reinforced duranium armor plating. The commodore’s desk was made of the same blue-gray duranium composite as the walls. There were exactly three chairs (two without armrests in front of the desk, and the commodore’s more ergonomic seat behind it), and the room’s lone couch looked decidedly unwelcoming.
Much like Commodore Reyes himself.
“Captain,” he said, his brow lined with the deep creases of a man who worried for a living. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Kirk said.
“Do tell.” Reyes motioned for Kirk to sit.
The captain settled onto one of the chairs. It was even less comfortable than it looked. He fought the urge to fidget. “When we shipped out last year, I never would have expected to return to a starbase this far from home. It’s a welcome surprise…but still a surprise.”
Reyes shrugged. “If you’d rather skip your repairs, we can just pretend you were never here.”
Kirk waved away the suggestion. “No, no—we’re overdue. It’s a good thing we found you when we did.” Belatedly, he realized that Reyes’s remark had shifted him off his interrogative track. “But that got me to thinking about the old adage: When something seems too good to be true—”
“There was also one about gift horses,” Reyes said. “And an old story about a frozen bird that fell in a warm cow pie. But much as I’d love to sit here and trade proverbs with you, Captain, I really don’t have the time.”
“Permission to speak candidly, sir?”
“Why not? It’s bound to happen eventually.”
“It seems fairly obvious to me that this station was fast-tracked into service.”
“What gave it away? The twenty-four hundred active-duty personnel, or the fact that the spacedock doors open?”
Reining in his simmering temper, Kirk reminded himself that sarcasm was a privilege that belonged only to the highest-ranking officer in any room. “Perhaps a more pertinent question, Commodore, would be, Why was Vanguard fast-tracked?”
Heaving a weary sigh, Reyes leaned forward onto his desk. “The same reason any Starfleet project gets the wind at its back. Because someone on the council decided it was important.” He picked up a remote from his desk, pointed it at a round-cornered viewscreen on the wall, and clicked the power button. The monitor flickered to life, showing a local astropolitical map. “The red chevron indicates our position. Tell me, Captain—what details on this map jump out at you?”
Either it was a trick question, Kirk knew, or he was being goaded into helping the commodore make his argument. “The borders of the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly.”
“So far, so good.” Reyes clicked more details into focus. “I presume the green lines and arrows are familiar to you?”
Setting his poker face to “archly bemused,” Kirk eyed the map again and said, “Colony ship flight plans.”
Click. “And the blue lines and arrows?”
“Trade routes and shipping lanes.” Kirk’s fist began to clench near his belt. I should have brought my phaser.
“And what does all that suggest to you, Captain?”
Have to give him credit, Kirk told himself. Refuse to give him the obvious answer, and I come off as either an idiot or an insubordinate jerk. Parrot the answer he wants, and I indict my entire line of inquiry as pointless…. He’s good.
“A colonization effort,” Kirk said, swallowing his pride.
“Precisely,” Reyes said. “More than twenty colonies and half a dozen mining operations have come to the Taurus Reach in the last sixteen months—half of them since this station opened. Our job? Protect them as best we can with what few resources we’re given. In other words, standard operating procedure.”
“I can’t imagine the Klingons or the Tholians have been happy about our move into this region. And I’m sure a starbase on their shared doorstep pleases them even less.”
“True,” Reyes said. “I’d be lying if I said we didn’t ruffle a lot of feathers by building this station. But the alternative would have been much worse.”
This time, Kirk really didn’t follow. “What alternative?”
“Letting the Klingons expand their reach until they hit the Tholian border. We’d be front row to a war that could last decades; whichever side won, we’d be fenced in, stuck navigating hostile territory in order to explore the galactic rim…. We need to keep our options open, for now and for the future.”
“With all respect, Commodore, space is three-dimensional, and it’s big. Even if the Klingons make a push for the Tholian border, we’d hardly be ‘landlocked’—we’d still have options.”
“You’re talking about taking the long way around,” Reyes said. “Away from the galactic plane.” He lifted the remote and turned off the screen. “No thank you, Captain. I read the report on your mission to the energy barrier. I’ll pass.”
Kirk shook his head. “If you think colonizing this region will stop the Klingons from trying to conquer it, you don’t know the Klingons.”
Reyes’s voice became quiet and intense. “The hell I don’t. I was commanding a starship while you were still at the Academy.” Regaining his composure, he continued, “You’re right about one thing, though. The Klingons will try to take the Taurus Reach. My job is to make sure they don’t succeed.”
“What about the Tholians? If this turns into a battle on two fronts—”
“It won’t,” Reyes said. “The Tholians have never shown any interest in this region. They expanded from Tholia in every direction except this one. As long as we steer clear of their border, I don’t expect any trouble from them.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“We’ll be sitting on a powder keg.”
Kirk frowned. “On that, we agree.”
Reyes leaned slowly back in his chair, eyeing Kirk with darkening suspicion. “You think I’m just some paper-pusher, don’t you, Kirk?”
“No, sir, of course—”
“Yes, you do,” Reyes said, cutting Kirk off. “You think I sit here, safe on a starbase, playing games with people’s lives.” No longer young or foolish enough to be goaded into embarrassing himself, Kirk stayed quiet. The commodore leaned aggressively forward as he continued, “I take my command just as seriously as you take yours, Kirk. I deal in life and death, war and peace, and everything in between, every day. Bottom line: I make it my business to know my business. So, when you walk into my office and presume to give me the third degree with questions I answered to the admiralty months ago, I get the impression you think I’m just some rubber stamp with heavy braid on his cuff.”
Choosing his words and his tone with care, Kirk said, “If I offended you, Commodore, please accept my apology. No slight w
as intended, I assure you.”
Reyes gave a small nod of acknowledgment. “Enough said.” Turning his chair, he rested one arm on his desktop and glanced sidelong at Kirk. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“Yes, sir,” Kirk said, and smirked wryly. “Keep the matches away from the powder keg.”
7
Lieutenant Commander Kevin Judge had his hands full. With one word from Captain Gannon, the Bombay’s shore leave had been canceled, and repairs that he and his engineering teams had expected to have four days to finish now were being shoehorned into twelve frantic hours.
The gangly chief engineer stalked through main engineering like a hunting tiger, seeking out whatever was going wrong. He found it, in the form of a well-meaning young ensign who was disassembling the controls for the impulse reactor’s primary heat exchanger. “Anderson,” Judge said loudly, then coughed. His voice was hoarse from nonstop barking of orders. The rasp of his overtaxed larynx, when added to his already clipped Liverpool accent, made him sound like he had a horrendous cold. He recovered his breath and continued, “Are you mad? Didn’t I say to leave the impulse systems until after we leave spacedock?” The ensign rolled her eyes and looked glumly at her half-dismantled pile of hardware. “Put it back together,” Judge said.
He dragged himself over to the master engineering console. Planting one hand on its edge, he awkwardly propped himself up while he studied the tall board’s blinking status displays. All bollixed up, as usual, he grumped, shaking his head. He reached across and thumbed the intercom to the phaser control room. “Castellano, why aren’t the phasers back online yet?”
“The plasma relays are still overheating, sir. We had to remove them for recalibration.”
Panic and desperation infused the chief engineer’s every word. “Castellano, we ship out in less than three hours.” He pulled his hand down over his hollow-cheeked face, then roughly scratched his crown of shock-cut hair. “Lock down the phaser capacitors at seventy percent of maximum and fix the plasma relays later.”
