by Dayton Ward
Several locks of Frankie’s salt-and-pepper up-do had fallen into her line of sight. She brushed them off her forehead before speaking in what seemed to be a calmer tone. “I can help you with an advance if you need passage out of there.”
“Pardon me?”
“Well, it sounds like you’re traveling pretty light right now, and you are fresh out of sources. If there ever is a time to follow the story somewhere else, this sure seems like a good one.”
The idea momentarily struck me dumb. She raised a point that I had not until then even considered. Leave Vanguard? Hell, I had just started to finally piece together Starfleet’s interest in the Taurus Reach, let alone whatever Starfleet knew—or might hope to learn—from the remains of the Shedai civilization. Just abandoning my work here did not feel right at all.
“Thanks, Frankie, but I don’t think I’m ready to pull up stakes just yet,” I said. “Besides, follow what story somewhere else? If I’m going to stay on top of Starfleet activities in the Taurus Reach, where else would I do that from?”
“Maybe the story of the Taurus Reach is over,” she said. “As my uncle used to say, ‘A fish always starts to stink at the head.’ “
“A fish always . . . what? What does that mean? I don’t even know what the hell that means.”
“You rooted out Reyes, and he hadn’t been there that long. He probably didn’t have time to corrupt things too far down in his command chain,” she said. “You seem to be able to win the confidence of Starfleet officers . . . before they get themselves arrested, anyway. Go someplace new and start over. There’s plenty more Starfleet operations that could stand some scrutiny, and plenty of officers like Reyes.”
“But there’s not.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“What?”
“Um, there’s not many officers like Reyes,” I said. “That’s another reason worth staying.”
“So,” Frankie said, leaning a little closer to the pickup on her end of the conversation. “Maybe you’re a little too close to the story then?”
Once again, she had given me pause. I did not feel any real friendship with Reyes, but something evidently had happened to change his perception of our relationship in such a way that he could allow me to work with no interference from him. He all but encouraged me to file my stories with the Federation News Service as if he decided to dare Starfleet Command to further suppress the nature of Vanguard’s mission. And what was more, I trusted him—not simply his authority or his judgment, but him as a person—and that was something I had not done since, well, since T’Prynn.
“I don’t think I’m too close, Frankie.”
“Then figure yourself out and get back to work,” she said. “I don’t want to see your face from a public booth next time. Get yourself a viewer for home. I don’t want to hear any more about your sources cooling off. I’m sure you have warmed them up before. And I don’t want to get any more stories that read like something you write ahead in case you wake up from a two-day drunk with a deadline on your back.”
“Understood,” I said as the viewscreen went dark. Sliding off the kiosk stool, I walked among the Stars Landing shoppers as I weighed my options. Getting a home communications viewer would be simple enough. Getting a decent story sent Frankie’s way would take some leg work, but I knew it could be done once I tapped a few leads. Warming up some Starfleet sources, well, that seemed the most daunting part of my task. But I had a good idea of where to start.
3
“Oh. Um, hi.”
I admittedly was hoping to get a little more than a bemused expression and a few syllables from Vanessa Theriault once she had triggered open the sliding door of her temporary quarters on board the station. She stood before me barefooted, her petite frame draped in loose-fitting house clothes and her red hair disheveled enough that it appeared I had just awakened her. As she took a sip from the ceramic mug she cradled in two hands, she created an awkward silence that I wanted to fill quickly.
“Hi, Vee,” I offered, hoping I did not sound overly familiar. We had spent some time together following my trip to Jinoteur and our subsequent hairbreadth escape as the planet disintegrated around us, but not enough for me to feel comfortable seeming too buddy-buddy. “Relaxing afternoon?”
“When you drop by without calling first, you kind of get what you get with me.”
“I never intended that as an editorial comment. Sorry about that,” I said. “I just wanted to see how your time off was going. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Vanessa looked up from her mug and smiled a little. “You didn’t. I’ve just not been around people for a while. Do you, um, want to come in?”
Despite what struck me as a halfhearted offer, I accepted and followed her into the living area of her quarters. Aside from a few scattered pieces of clothing and a rust-colored blanket wadded up at one end of a couch, the place appeared no different than when I joined her here on the first night she had occupied it. She had accepted an offer of some time away from her duties as science officer aboard the U.S.S. Sagittarius, but it was not leave time in the true sense of the term as she merely deferred her requisite debriefing and medical exams to facilities on the station rather than on her starship. Given what I knew of her activities on Jinoteur, including her conversations with an actual member of the Shedai race, she certainly had a lot to talk about with her superiors.
Vanessa turned into an area adjacent to the living room that served as a kitchen. She mentioned on that first night how much she appreciated even a brief chance to prepare her own meals rather than subsist on whatever came from the food slots on board Sagittarius, and from the appearance of a small basket of fresh vegetables on the countertop and the open shelves stocked with what appeared to be spices and condiments, she seemed to be making use of the space as she had hoped. At the moment, however, she was stopped along a wall in front of the standard-looking synthesizer. “I’m warming up my coffee. Can I bring you something?”
“Sure, please. A tomato juice would be fine, thanks.”
“Tomato juice? You’re not carrying a flask of something to pour into it, are you?”
“You’re confusing me with the other guy.”
Vanessa smiled a little again as she shuffled through a handful of colored data cards before selecting one to slip into the device’s corresponding slot. “And how is your friend, Mister Quinn?”
“Evidently well. I’ve not had the pleasure of his company of late. I’ve been a wee bit busy.”
“So I gathered,” Vanessa said rather flatly as she emerged from the kitchen carrying our drinks. She took a seat on the couch and set my glass on a low table in front of it. I took that as an invitation to sit down as well. “How are your ribs?”
“Better, thanks. The medic running the bone-knitting laser evidently knew what she was doing. Not a twinge left,” I said, running my hand flat along my torso in some need to illustrate my words. “And how are you? You look well.”
“Despite what you said at the door?”
“I did apologize.”
“You did.” She drew her legs up and under her as she nestled into her corner of the couch, facing me. “I’m sorry I’m not quite myself, Tim. I’m still sorting a lot of things out.”
“I can appreciate that you’re feeling a little detached,” I said as I reached for my juice. “So how did your interviews with Starfleet go?”
She stared again into the mug she cradled in her lap. “You must know that’s something I cannot discuss with you.”
“Oh, of course. I wasn’t meaning to pry.” I took two swallows of the thick, salty liquid and set the glass back on the table, all under her silent gaze. “I wasn’t.”
“I believe you, in a way.”
“In a way,” I repeated. “But in a way that’s not too trusting.”
“Tim, we shared a lot on Jinoteur,” she said, looking into my eyes. “You saved my life. I won’t ever forget that. But I know that I may never be able to talk to
you like you might want me to.”
“I’m not sure where this is coming from, Vanessa. I just wanted to see how you were.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because we went through a lot together. Because I like you and want to know more about you. Because we’ve already shared so much.”
“Because you need more information about what happened to us?”
“I don’t know how that would help me sort it all out, maybe ever.”
“I guess I didn’t mean specifically for you.”
I smiled a bit as I got a better idea of her meaning. “Ah, you mean for work.”
“You did write in great detail about what we did the first chance you could.”
“What I did, not we. I held up my end of an agreement with Commodore Reyes and wrote only what I witnessed myself and what I was told on the record.”
“And look where it got him.”
I paused, trying to gauge the defensiveness I felt sure would creep into my voice. “Anything you shared with me has stayed between us.”
“It didn’t feel like that when I read your story.”
“Be fair and read it again.”
“I got enough out of it the first time.” Vanessa set her coffee cup on the table, not having once sipped from it, and ran one hand through her red hair. “I’m sorry, Tim. I do like you. And if the circumstances were different, I might like you a lot.”
“That’s, um, comforting,” I said, “as I sit and wait for the ‘but’ you’re about to say.”
The smile I had hoped to elicit did not surface on her soft face. “I might like you enough to wish that I could share everything with you. But I can’t. And I don’t want to walk around kicking myself in the ass every time I start to.”
“Or every time you slip and do it, anyway,” I said, getting a silent nod in response. “Because I’m too damn charming to resist? That’s it, isn’t it?”
Vanessa let a chuckle loose through her nose. “Something like that. And please go to hell for making me laugh.”
“I get it,” I said as I rose from her couch. “It’s not as if you’re the first woman to shoo me away like this.”
“And go to hell for saying that, too.”
I caught her gaze and I smiled—and most of it was even sincere. “I didn’t say it had stopped stinging to hear.”
“I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m still sorting this out. And I need to do it on my own, at least for a while.”
“It’s fine, really. The last thing I want to be to you is a nuisance.” I crossed to the door. “Should you have something you want to share on the record, then, you’ll think of me?”
“Of course.”
“Or anyone you might know?”
“You’re pushing, Tim.”
“Right.” I moved close enough to the door that it slid open. “So it’s friends, but I reserve the right to check on you now and again.”
“And I reserve the right to change my mind.”
“A function of biology, as I have learned.”
“Go to—”
And as the door slid shut, I muttered to the empty corridor, “Oh, I’m well on my way.”
4
“How do I know that thing isn’t recording?”
I talked around a bite of my battered fish with the hope that any frustration carried in my voice might be interpreted only as speech garbled by poor table manners. “You watched me turn it off,” I said, scooping my recorder from the tabletop inside Tom Walker’s and turning its video display toward my companion. “See? Off.”
“I hope you understand, Mister Pennington,” said the slightly built, balding man, “but I could lose everything by talking to you. Without permits to fly through this part of space, I’d never work as a trader again.”
“And you believe that whatever you have to tell me this evening could put all of that at risk?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that’s why you’re choosing not even to tell me your name?”
“You can call me Donnie, if you want. But that’s not my real name.”
“Well, ‘Donnie,’ at least you aren’t so paranoid as to walk in here with a bag over your head,” I said, which elicited a smile from my companion. “If you were truly paranoid, you would never have agreed to meet me in an establishment you know I frequent, thus one at which I would certainly have relationships with the owners or managers—relationships I most certainly could leverage to obtain image files from the security cameras surrounding us and cross-match those images against interstellar commerce permit application records to determine your identity in a matter of seconds.”
What color I had seen in the man’s cheeks had drained away along with his smile. “Uh . . . heh. But you’re not . . . heh, heh . . . serious,” he said. “Are you?”
“Of course I’m not serious,” I said, smiling and reaching over to clap him on the shoulder. “The confidential relationship between a reporter and his source is implicit, right?”
“Uh . . .”
“Inviolable? Sacrosanct?”
All he returned was a gap-mouthed stare with a look in his eyes that hovered between panic and bewilderment. I was starting to get the feeling that the gentleman before me might be lucky to verbally command the navigation computer on his ship, let alone manage a conversation above a basic reading level. It started to feel a little mean to toy with him like that, but not mean enough for me to want to stop.
“Donnie, a reporter would not turn a source over to the authorities. If I started doing that, I would run out of people who would want to talk to me. And then how would I get my work done?”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“So, tell me why you’ve met me here,” I said, looking over the fish before me until I chose not to take another bite.
“Here’s my idea,” he said, scooting a little closer to me at the table. “I think Starfleet is not enforcing its rules against smuggling around here. I hear all the time about how shipments of one thing or another are getting through. So, I want to help you prove it.”
“I’m listening.”
“I figure that I can go around and just put the word out there that I’m open to moving a few things that need to be moved quietly. A few cases of Romulan ale headed one way, a few cases of Klingon disruptor rifles headed another way. I can take care of that part of it.”
“Hmm. Okay, but I’m not sure where I come in.”
“Well, I will keep records of all my activities in the sector, especially—here it comes—movements of Starfleet ships in the areas of my travels. Once I get caught, I can show all of the instances when Starfleet was present at the time of my transactions but chose not to enforce trade regulations, and then we’d have them down cold with proof positive of their being in on the situation. Or maybe then I’d get bribed by Starfleet to keep it to myself and just operate like I have been. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“Oh, that would be something, all right,” I said. “So, what you’re proposing is a sting operation against Starfleet.”
“Yeah! That’s a good name for it. A sting.”
“Now, you realize that a sting involves proposing a criminal act and trying to get someone, in this case, someone from Starfleet, to agree to break a law and not necessarily to seemingly ignore one.”
“Oh.”
“And it doesn’t involve actually committing the crime, in this case, smuggling whatever it is you intend to smuggle.”
“Oh.”
“And whatever end you’re attempting to justify, that would not exonerate you from the means you took to achieve it.”
“Um . . .”
“Of course, ‘exonerate,’ “ I said under my breath. “You still can go to prison for smuggling anything you smuggled while waiting to get caught.”
“Oh!” Donnie bolted upright and practically launched himself from his seat. “I need to take a second look at this plan.”
“You might at that.”
“Just pretend that I nev
er came by, Mister Pennington,” he said before pointing to my recorder on the table. “That thing didn’t record any of this, right?”
“Still off.” I smiled until he turned his back on me, when I could not keep myself from rolling my eyes. As Donnie left, I noticed the same brown-haired server I had seen earlier start to make her way to my table. “Nice story tip. Thanks a lot,” I said, prompting only a grin big enough to narrow her eyes.
“You can thank me in advance for the next few then, too,” she said, reaching into a front pocket of the short, black apron she wore to produce several data cards. “I guess word is getting around on how to find you.”
“I guess,” I echoed, taking the cards. “Remind me of your name, then.”
“I don’t remember you asking for it in the first place.”
“Right. Then allow me some grace for my lack of manners while I ask as I should have done earlier in the day.”
“In the day or in the week? I’ve seen you in here several times.”
“Now you’re simply embarrassing me.”
“My name’s Meryl,” she said, smiling again as she glanced down at the small basket of half-eaten fillets in front of me. “How was your fish?”
“Honestly? It was a little off. Did you fry it or get it from the synthesizer just like that?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Point taken. Next time, I’ll just bring you my own card. That way I can get some decent chippy sauce with it, too.”
Meryl silently took the basket from my table, and I reached into my bag on the seat next to me to pluck out a section of a newsprint edition I had replicated of that day’s FNS feeds. I unfolded the paper as noisily as I could, purposefully shaking out creases and holding it open wide enough for it to appear to create a black-and-white wedge in front of my face. At every opportunity, I liked reading the news as conspicuously as I could aboard Vanguard, if nothing else than to make a visual statement to whoever might be around that reporting and news are important to me—and should be important to everybody. And no, not simply because I had a job gathering it.