The screen stayed dark. “Admiral Tsebili is unavailable at this time,” the computerized voice told him.
Damn. Bili hadn’t even bothered to tell the computer how long he’d be gone, and without a living aide there to talk to”
He turned in the direction of the anteroom. Confound it, what was that Vulcan’s name again? Sal something. Saloon. Saleen. “Ensign,” he called.
“Yes, Admiral.” The young Vulcan appeared in the doorway. Sareel. That was it. Sareely glad to meet you.
“Sareel, do you know where Admiral Tsebili has gone?”
“Yes, sir. Perhaps I should route the admiral’s calls through my terminal, since there is no aide”
“That would be a jim-dandy idea, Ensign.”
The Vulcan blinked at him. “I take it ‘jim-dandy’ is a synonym for ‘suitable’?”
“Something like that.” Would he ever survive this man’s literal-mindedness? Sareel obviously thought he had already answered Quince’s question. Why couldn’t they require all Vulcans to take a course in figurative speech? “Where has the admiral gotten to?”
“To a meeting, Admiral. However, he left no word as to when he can be expected to return.”
“I see. Thank you, Sareel, that will be all.”
Sareel nodded and retreated back into his office.
Quince stared at the dark terminal screen. Curioser than hell, this business with Stein.
He got busy after a while, too busy to have time to call Bili, too busy to remember. The delegation from Znebe, a new admission to the Federation, showed up, ready for their tour of Starfleet Headquarters. They were pleasant enough, although as a race they shared certain physical characteristics with Hortas, and he had difficulty figuring out which end he was supposed to be looking at when he talked to them. The tour took the morning and the early part of the afternoon.
After that, he got tied up working on a proposal to turn Star Base Twenty into an agricultural warehouse and granary. Twenty had originally been a sentry outpost; now that that area of the galaxy was colonized by Federation members and the border moved parsecs out, it was time to adapt. Since several planets in the area were subject to periodic famine, why not change Twenty to an agricultural outpost?
He worked longer than he realized on it. When he looked up to rest his eyes, he noticed the time in the upper right corner of the screen. He blinked in amazement: it was already after 1900. The evening shift had started. His new aide must have slipped out a couple of hours ago; Bili was no doubt gone, too. Damn.
“Close file,” he yawned, and the data on the screen in front of him faded. A message took its place:
REMINDER TO ALL PERSONNEL: CENTRAL TRANSPORTERS WILL BE CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE TOMORROW BEGINNING 0100 HOURS. PLEASE SEEK ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORT HOME.
He rubbed his face and repeated the message silently to himself so he wouldn’t forget to drive the skimmer in tomorrow morning. The message faded, and was replaced by another one.
QUINCE: YOU’RE BRINGING THE SKIMMER TOMORROW, AREN’T YOU? CAN I HITCH A RIDE HOME TOMORROW P.M.? TSEBLI
Still no mention of the file, Quince noted with disappointment. He was going to have to remind Bili of it tomorrow—though Bili was not the type to forget things. Especially something as memorable as finding out whether a colleague is involved in illegal research And then there was the strange business of Stein. He wasn’t sure at all how to approach the admiral about that.
Why would you lie, Bili? What do you have to gain by having Stein out of my office?
Nothing, probably. It had to be some kind of mistake, something one or the other of them had said that Bili’d misinterpreted. It would all be set right tomorrow.
He rose from his chair and stretched. Time to go home, though there seemed to be little point in it these days. The apartment was oppressively silent lately. God knows he’d complained about the ruckus when the kids were there. Now, he’d give anything for a little noise. He reached absently for the holo, wanting to stroke Nika’s silken hair, but his fingers passed through her.
Miss you, kid. He knew that in four months, he’d have Nika and her brother back again, for half a year, but it didn’t help the loneliness any now. The contract he and Ke had stipulated that Nika and Paul would always be together, even if their parents weren’t.
If it weren’t for the fact that the kids were coming to stay, he’d get himself busted down to captain and back out in space so fast He stopped the guilty thought. Nika and Paul were worth any price to him, even that.
He sat down in his chair again. He couldn’t face going home just yet. Now that things were quiet in this department, he could do a little snooping about Mendez.
Something had been simmering in the back of his head all day, some piece of information Jim had sent along about Tanis.
He glanced in the direction of the aide’s office. It was completely quiet. No telling when the Vulcan had gone home, but rather odd that he hadn’t bothered to tell Quince he was leaving.
“Computer,” he said. “Access to star maps, one square parsec, center reference Star Base Thirteen.”
The neatly labeled charts showed up on his screen and he stared at them uncomprehendingly for a moment before speaking again. “Highlight location of Tanis base in relation to Star Base Thirteen.”
The two bases glowed at him in bright, blinking white. Tanis was less than one hour’s journey from Star Base Thirteen at warp speed.
This was getting interesting. Mendez could go to Thirteen under the pretext of demonstrating the new system to Tsebili, then slip away to Tanis without anyone being the wiser. Quince smiled grimly to himself. So Mendez could recover the incriminating microbe, or destroy evidence.…
And there was something else. He called up Adams’ bio, scrolling through pages of useless information about the man’s schooldays (brilliant kid), his career as a genetic microbiologist, the emerging pattern of minor offenses, fraud, financial irresponsibility. History of ill health and debt. Quince waded through Adams’ life until he sat staring at his medical history. He’d almost died in a Romulan attack on a passenger ship that’d strayed too far into the Neutral Zone. Quince vaguely remembered the incident himself, though it had happened almost twenty years ago. There’d been a huge outcry, he remembered, and the Romulans finally agreed to amend the original treaty, adding the clause about not attacking if it could be undeniably shown to be an accidental intrusion on the part of the ship. What was the name of that ship? He scrolled down a few lines. Brass Ring, that’s right. The Brass Ring Incident had brought the Federation and the Romulan Empire to the brink of another war.
And it was setting off another alarm in Quince’s subconscious. There was a connection with Mendez somehow. He directed the computer to close Adams’ file and show him Mendez’s.
He remembered before he even found the information. Mendez’s wife had been one of the casualties aboard the Brass Ring. Quince went through the file, swearing softly as each page lingered a second longer than usual after his command. What was making the machine so damn slow tonight? Were they maintenancing the computers, too? He found that the admiral’s son, Yoshi Takhumara, had also been a passenger, but had survived. Yoshi, the man Adams was suspected of killing.
He felt a ripple of excitement at the discovery. Mendez, Yoshi, Adams. There was a connection between the three, a connection based on more than blood kinship or accusations.
All three had good cause to hate the Romulans.
And out of the blue, Quince thought: Bili fired his aide last week for No, it was too ridiculous. He shook the thought away, but it left him feeling clammy.
He wanted to look up Lara Krovozhadny’s file, too, but his terminal was molasses-slow. He decided to try the terminal in Stein’s office—that’s Sareel’s office, he corrected himself, but not for long—to see if the slowdown was system-wide or affected only his screen. Intrigued, excited, Quince pushed himself away from his desk and moved with light, quick steps into the outer office.
&n
bsp; Sareel apparently did not expect him. The Vulcan was still seated at the desk, and as Quince stepped up behind him, he snapped off his own terminal and turned quickly to face the admiral.
But Quince had already seen enough to recognize Mendez’s file. The slowdown on his own terminal had occurred because it was first being routed through Sareel’s machine.
“How long have you been monitoring my terminal?” Quince snapped.
Sareel said absolutely nothing.
“You work for Mendez, don’t you?”
The Vulcan remained silent, which Quince took as an affirmative. He can’t say no, Quince thought; being Vulcan, he doesn’t want to tell an outright lie. “You’re fired,” Quince told him.
Sareel studied him with dark, impassive eyes. If he felt shamed at being caught spying, he did not show it. What lies must Mendez have told him to convince a Vulcan to spy on a superior officer? “You cannot fire me, Admiral. You do not have the authority.”
“Get out,” Quince nearly shouted. “That’s an order, Ensign!”
Sareel apparently considered him capable of ordering him to leave the office, for he walked past without further comment. Quince sank, shaking, into Rhonda Stein’s chair.
In a clear flash of insight, he understood why Bili had lied about Stein’s transfer.
He went home with Old Yeller tucked under his arm. Lately, he’d taken to carrying the critter around with him. At least there would be someone to talk to at home—or rather, at the apartment. He couldn’t really call it home anymore. It was too neat, except for the gathering dust, no children’s toys strewn all over the carpet, nothing out of place. He transported into the living room, in front of the window overlooking the bay. The fog was rolling in, pea soup from the looks of it, but through the mist he could see the black, choppy water beneath a darkening purple sky.
He was still stunned from the encounter with Sareel, but he was certain of one thing: he wanted to contact Jimmy Kirk. Not direct contact, since he doubted it was safe. But a message, at least some sort of way to warn him of Quince’s growing suspicions without letting Mendez know. He walked into his study, sat Yeller down on the desk, and began to speak to the terminal screen before he stopped himself.
That was particularly stupid of him. If they could monitor his terminal at HQ, why wouldn’t they monitor it here? “Help me, Yeller,” he said absently. “Tell me what to do.”
The little animal wriggled at the sound of his voice. “I love you too, Quince.” A damn shame Yeller spoke with Quince’s own voice. He would have liked to hear a different voice saying that right about now.
And then it struck him. Could he program Old Yeller with a new message and send him to Jimmy? It might work.
His hope faded. It would take several days for Yeller to catch up to a starship, especially one as far out as the Enterprise. No, he had to warn Jim a lot sooner than that.
He needed a public comm. He walked as if guided by some higher consciousness out of his office, through the living room with its huge window. The fog was blinking with skimmer lights and the lights of sailing vessels on the dark water.
“Open,” he told the front door. It opened at the sound of his voice, closed, and locked itself after him.
He walked directly into the street. Their apartment” his apartment—was a separate building on the bay, not a cubicle in a hive. He refused to live like an insect. The air was fresh, but damp with fog. It drizzled softly on his face.
It was cool enough to go back for a jacket, but the chill helped him think. The nearest pubcomm wasn’t far, down a rolling hill in Old Town San Francisco, on the treacherous original preserved sidewalks. The comm was at the bottom of the hill, where the fog had gathered so thick that Quince would not have found it if he hadn’t known exactly where it stood.
He stood for several minutes before speaking into the comm to select the form and content of his message; and as he stood, a grin spread over his features.
Well, hell, he’d been looking for some excitement to alleviate the boredom, hadn’t he? And this was just the ticket. Yet as he leaned closer to speak into the waiting computer, he hesitated.
Was he letting himself be paranoid over nothing? Would he feel like a fool tomorrow when Bili explained it to him? And then how would he explain this message to Kirk? God knows, he hadn’t been on an even keel since Ke and the kids had left. Could all of this be a product of his wishful imagination?
Well, what’s the worst they can do to you, old boy? Court-martial you? Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
The Vulcan had been monitoring his terminal. Someone was watching him, whether Bili was involved or not. Imagination had nothing to do with what was going on.
“Subspace radio,” he told the computer, and let it take his retinal scan before he gave it the call letters of the Enterprise. A written telegram, no voice, no video. But he had to phrase it so Kirk would know who sent it.
JIMMY: WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S FIRE. GETTING TOO HOT TO BREATHE ROUND HERE
He didn’t sign it. The computer would give the message’s origin as a public comm in San Francisco, and that was incriminating enough. Besides, how many people got away with calling Kirk Jimmy?
Just so Mendez and Bili couldn’t trace it. If he was right, he didn’t want them going after Kirk, too.
He walked for a while in the fog, not wanting to go back to the apartment. He knew it was going to be a bad night. If he went back to the apartment, he would drink, and he wanted to stay sober tonight, to try to figure the damn thing out. Could it be a string of coincidences?
But who had sent the Vulcan to spy on him? Why hadn’t Bili looked at that damn Tanis file? Something like that would have piqued the interest of a whistle blower like Bili. No, too many damn coincidences, one right after another. The Vulcan. Bili’s lies to him, to Stein. Bili and Mendez, headed for Star Base Thirteen. The Brass Ring.
It was all true. He’d gone to Bili unsuspecting but how could he trust anyone at HQ? Who could he go to for protection?
An involuntary shiver passed through him. Someone walking on my grave
By the time he got back to the apartment, the fog had begun to lift, and he was drenched in a cold sweat. He had an unshakable premonition that he was about to die yet at the same time, he felt oddly exhilarated. And he had a plan.
Even assuming his home terminal was monitored, maybe he could get away with it. He’d access the Fleet computer, ask it to list those with clearance to the Tanis file.
Anyone without clearance obviously knew nothing about it. If he could find a high-ranking admiral without clearance, that would just about clinch his case. It would prove that rank did not necessarily clear you to know about Tanis—only complicity did.
He’d call that high-ranking admiral and go to him with the information. Now, in the middle of the night, before Mendez would have a chance to react. He’d beam over to the admiral’s before they’d even have a chance to realize what he was doing.
But first, another matter to take care of. If his instincts were right and something did happen to him, Jimmy would feel awfully bad about it. And if he didn’t die, no one would ever know, anyway. He took the required few minutes to reprogram Yeller. He’d willed him to Jimmy anyway, so his lawyer already had the instructions.
When he was finished, he went to the terminal in his study and stood in front of it for an instant, catching his breath. He’d have to do this quickly, to give them as little time as possible to react. He grinned suddenly. If he was wrong, he’d get into more than a little bit of hot water, waking an admiral up in the middle of the night with outrageous accusations of conspiracy within the Fleet.
They could just bust him down to captain for being such a jackass, then.
“Computer. Names of those with access to Tanis files.”
Not very many names at all. Mendez, of course, and a few other admirals. Some of the names he recognized, some he did not. Tsebili’s was among them.
Admiral Noguchi’s was
not. He called Noguchi’s house, tried not to smile nervously at the admiral’s petulant, sleep-drugged expression.
“Waverleigh? This had better be good.”
“It is, sir,” Waverleigh said seriously. “I need to talk to you, Admiral, about a conspiracy within the Fleet.”
Noguchi blinked at him for a moment, and then he said: “Come on over. Wait a minute—the transporter’s not working. You know how to get here by skimmer?”
“Yes, sir. It’s on the program.” The transporter. Damnation! He’d forgotten about the maintenance. That put an extra element of danger into this. All the better then, he told himself dryly. You’ve been waiting for some excitement to come along, haven’t you? Well, now you’ve got it.
Let them come after him. He’d outrun them any day.
He took the elevator to the roof and slipped into the skimmer. She was fast and sporting, not by any stretch of the imagination a family machine. Ke had so disapproved. He put the controls on manual, and took her up into the night sky.
Try and catch me, you sons of bitches!
He laughed out loud. For the first time in two years, he felt alive.
Good God, was he finally doing something that made a difference?
He rose out over the bay. The fog was clearing away rapidly now; if he wanted, he could have put the radar on manual, too, but decided to let the computer take care of it. If someone was tailing him, he wanted to know from the very first second.
But the skies around him were clear. He asked the program for the location of Noguchi’s house; it was on the other side of the bay, barely a minute away.
As he drew closer, he felt his exhilaration fade into an odd sense of disappointment. They weren’t even going to try to chase him. It was all going to be too easy.
He slowed his acceleration in preparation for landing. Already he could see the outline of the landing lights blinking on the roof of Noguchi’s complex. The smile on his face began to fade. He was safe. “So much for excitement,” he said. The sound of his own voice surprised him.
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