Precipice

by David Mack

  “It was a corporate entity,” Desai said. “Cygnar-Ralon Interstellar Shipping. CRIS for short. His Tammeron account is registered to Syanok Import-Export, but I’m proceeding on the assumption that CRIS is his original Orion business entity.”

  “Probably a shell company,” Jackson said. “Typical cover for a middleman. Moving the money from one bank to another is the perfect laundering method. All we need to do now is find out where his Orion company gets its money.”

  Deflating a bit, Desai said, “That’s the brick wall, Haniff. Technically, there’s nothing illegal about Syanok’s business arrangements. As I predicted, the Orion government has refused to enforce my subpoena, and his bank has refused to release any private account information. Also, the Orion ambassador to the Federation has lodged a formal protest over our attempt to violate the privacy of one of its citizens.”

  Jackson shook his head and flashed a wide smile. “They do love overkill, don’t they? They can’t just say no; they have to make an interstellar incident out of it.” His good humor faded quickly, and he slammed a fist into his open palm. “Dammit, Rana! We’re so close to the truth on this one, I can taste it. I don’t give a damn what the Orions try to feed us. Syanok was involved in the bombing of the Malacca. Maybe he didn’t know it, or maybe he was just a cutout, but he was involved in this conspiracy. I can feel it.”

  “I believe you,” Desai said. “But I can’t issue subpoenas based on your gut feeling.”

  Jackson folded his arms, aping her stance. “What do we have on him so far?”

  “Resisting arrest and assaulting a Starfleet security officer,” Desai said. “Despite the ballistics report about his shipping container being the epicenter of the blast, we can’t charge him with the bombing attack unless we can establish the provenance of the crate and demonstrate a reasonable suspicion that he knew it contained hazardous cargo.”

  A cold and calculating look fell like a shadow over Jackson’s face. “What if we combed through all the local comm traffic during the months before and after the attack, looking for any signal that included the routing information on Syanok’s original Orion bank account? We could use that to link him to his conspirators.”

  “Or we might link him to legitimate business partners conducting legal transactions, and by so doing infringe on the privacy of all parties and violate the Federation Charter.” She shook her head. “It’s too open-ended, Haniff. Even a first-year law student would see that as a fishing expedition and quash the warrant or throw out the evidence. I won’t sanction it.”

  His jaw muscles tensed with suppressed frustration. “I didn’t come this far just to give up,” he said. “I’ll bet you dinner at Café Romano the Orions are sitting on all the evidence we need to convict Syanok and his coconspirators in the Malacca bombing, and tie the whole thing to a third party—probably the Klingons.”

  Desai knew he wasn’t kidding, but she still laughed. “There’s no way I’m taking that bet, Haniff, because I know you’re right—and I know you never lose.”

  “Very true,” he said. Leaning closer, he whispered with a rakish grin, “Let me buy you dinner, anyway.”

  The part of Desai’s heart that was still mourning Diego Reyes told her to lie and say she had other plans. Her sense of professional decorum told her to decline Jackson’s invitation. And her most insecure inner voice protested that Jackson was at least ten years her junior. All good reasons to say no.

  “Okay,” she said with a coy smile. “It’s a date. Pick me up at nineteen hundred.”

  26

  July 21, 2267

  Neera lurked in an alcove concealed by a heavy scarlet curtain and let her man-toy Ganz bask a bit longer in his charade of authority. The Orion figurehead reclined regally behind the desk of his private office aboard the Omari-Ekon and listened to a courteous supplication by a dark-haired human named Joshua Kane.

  “First, I’d like to make clear I didn’t seek out this contract,” Kane said. “The client came to me.”

  Ganz replied in his rock-steady baritone, “I understand.” With one huge green hand he pushed a bowl of roasted Argelian cashews across the polished antique wooden desk to his slender visitor. “Have a nut.”

  Kane bowed his head and scooped up a small handful of nuts from the bowl. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome. Continue.”

  The bearded human closed his fist around the cashews and used his empty hand to punctuate his words with gestures. “They offered a sizable fee for the job—ten million credits.” He held up his empty palm and dipped his chin. “I’ve arranged for them to make the deposit to your anonymous account on Orion.”

  “That’s good,” Ganz said. “I trust you’ll have no objection to my taking a standard fifteen percent commission?”

  Shaking his head, Kane replied, “No, sir. Not at all.” He sounded hopeful as he asked, “Does that mean I have your permission to accept the contract, sir?”

  “On two conditions,” Ganz said. “First, if anything goes wrong, or if you or someone working with you gets caught, this never comes back to me. My name is never mentioned. Agreed?”

  Kane nodded. “Agreed.”

  “Second,” Ganz said, “no killing. Not one body. If I find out there were fatalities, or that innocent people got hurt, I will be very upset. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly, sir. I haven’t taken a life yet, and I don’t plan to start now. You have my word: no one dies for this job.”

  Neera pulled aside the scarlet curtain just enough for Ganz to see her give the signal to dismiss his guest.

  The barrel-chested Orion man gave no indication of seeing Neera, but then he said to the human, “I’m glad we reach, Mister Kane. Good luck, and safe travels.”

  “Thank you, Mister Ganz,” Kane said. He bowed his head as he backed away from Ganz’s desk and held up his closed hand. “Thanks again for the nuts.” The door slid open behind him, and he backpedaled out to the corridor.

  After the portal hushed closed, Neera emerged from hiding and pressed a key on the wall that locked the door. She strolled toward Ganz’s desk and savored his leer as he watched the swaying roll of her supple hips. “Efficiently handled, my love,” she said.

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  She circled his desk, dragging one finger along its edge. “We may have a leak that needs to be plugged,” she said.

  Ganz stared awestruck at her, as if he had lost himself in her eyes. “What kind of leak?”

  “The Starfleet JAG office has been asking our government for access to Orion banking records,” she said, giving his rolling chair a gentle push back from the desk.

  Her hulking beau sat up straighter. “My records?”

  “No.” She eased herself onto his lap. “Cygnar-Ralon.”

  His forehead creased, and his brow furrowed. “Zett’s company.”

  “Yes,” Neera said. “It is.” She had never liked Ganz’s chief enforcer—an impeccably tailored and implacably brutal Nalori named Zett Nilric—and welcomed anything that might persuade Ganz to reconsider his seemingly unshakable faith in the man.

  “Do they know it’s his company?”

  Neera whispered in his ear, “I don’t think so.” She felt the muscles in his arms and neck stiffen.

  “That’s still not good,” Ganz said. “Why are they asking questions about Cygnar-Ralon?”

  Stroking her soft palm over Ganz’s smooth, jade-hued pate, Neera said, “They’ve linked it to a suspect in last year’s bombing of the Starfleet freighter Malacca inside Vanguard.”

  “I remember the bombing,” Ganz said. Suspicious, he continued, “But I didn’t order it, and I didn’t sanction it. So why would Starfleet have evidence linking it to Zett?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but Neera was determined to make Ganz answer it for himself. She planted delicate kisses on the side of his thickly muscled neck and said, “I’m sure you can reason it out, my love.”

  An angry sigh flared Ganz’s wide nost
rils. “Because he’s been freelancing without permission.”

  “Which suggests ambition or greed or both.” Shifting her amorous attention to the other side of Ganz’s neck, Neera added, “No matter which it is, it’s not good.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Ganz said. He pulled away from Neera. She got up from his lap and let him stand. When he was anxious, he liked to pace. He circled around his desk. “We’ve spent a great deal of time and a considerable sum of money working on a way to get back into Admiral Nogura’s good graces,” he said.

  “And it’s almost within our grasp,” Neera said as she slinked seductively into Ganz’s chair.

  He began pacing in front of his desk. “But all that time, treasure, and blood will have been spent for nothing if Zett implicates us in a terrorist attack on Nogura’s starbase.” He cast a pointed stare at Neera. “And we need that safe haven, now more than ever.”

  “I know,” she said, easing the chair forward so she could rest her elbows on the desk and fold her hands in front of her. “But before that can happen, I think we need to accept that Zett might now be more of a liability than an asset.”

  Ganz’s countenance was at once sad and grim. He nodded. “I agree.” With a plaintive look, he asked, “What should we do?”

  Devious schemes coaxed a half smile from Neera, who narrowed her eyes and told her loyal front man, “Let me handle this my way—discreetly.”

  27

  July 30, 2267

  “We’ve been cooped up in this bloody tin can for more than four months,” Pennington complained across the mess cabin table. “If I get arrested by Starfleet, will this period of captivity count as time served against my sentence?”

  T’Prynn replied without looking up from her soup, “I think clemency on such grounds would be highly unlikely.”

  Pennington’s head drooped, and he couldn’t help but turn a weary frown at the bowl of bland seaweed broth T’Prynn had prepared for that morning’s meal. The traditional Vulcan dish was the only thing she ever made for breakfast.

  He sighed. “Pass the salt, please.”

  “Plomeek soup has a delicate flavor,” she said as she handed the shaker to him. “Adding too much salt or other seasoning will mar its subtleties.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping for.” He shook enough salt to cover the entire surface of his soup. After stirring it gently into the liquid, he lifted a spoonful into his mouth and swallowed it. Then his face puckered and he winced in revulsion.

  T’Prynn’s calm was preternatural as asked, “Is there something wrong with your soup?”

  He glared at her, stung by the irony as he said, “It’s too salty.” Even though the statuesque Vulcan woman did not react, he was certain that behind her placid mask of detachment she was laughing at him.

  She ate another spoonful of her soup and said nothing.

  Pennington stood, picked up his tray, and placed it in the reclamator. After the panel slid closed, he heard the whirring and clanking of dishes and utensils being washed and organic matter being flushed away for purification and recycling.

  “I thought I might spend today counting my nose hairs,” he said to his inscrutable companion.

  She swallowed another spoonful of soup. “You should use a tricorder. Its results will be more accurate, and it will take less time to compile.”

  “Maybe,” Pennington said. “But can it braid all those tiny little hairs together?” He pointed at her and exclaimed with a manic gleam of triumph, “I think not!”

  Unfazed, she replied, “Even for a human, your behavior is most peculiar. Do you require a medical examination?”

  “No, just a change of scenery.”

  She finished her soup, got up, and carried her tray to the reclamator. “I advised you before we embarked on this mission that it would be time-consuming and monotonous. You cannot say I misled you as to its nature.”

  “I never said you did. Doesn’t make drifting in the dark any more interesting.”

  She consigned her tray and dishes to the food slot. As it hummed from behind the bulkhead, she and Pennington walked out of the mess hall to the main corridor. “Perhaps you would prefer—”

  An automated alert over the ship’s PA system cut her off. “Signal intercept in progress,” said the synthetic male voice.

  They dashed to the cockpit and scrambled into their seats. Pennington locked in the signal, boosted the gain, and verified they were recording it. T’Prynn fed the signal through the ship’s rebuilt main computer and applied her formidable array of code-breaking algorithms.

  “Signal’s five by five,” he said. “Recording confirmed.”

  “Decryption has begun,” she said. “The message was coded with a Klingon cipher.” Flipping switches on her console, she added, “Routing the original message to the forward monitor. It will replay from the beginning.”

  The forward display stuttered, and the picture rolled for a moment before it stabilized. The first image to appear was that of a male Klingon soldier in a dimly lit space. It didn’t look like a ship’s bridge, so Pennington assumed it was the man’s private cabin. He said, “Kutal to Ali Baba, respond.”

  T’Prynn quickly explained, “The Ali Baba is a private vessel that frequently docks with Ganz’s ship. It belongs to a suspected thief named Joshua Kane.”

  “Good to know,” Pennington said.

  The other side of the transmission cut in, and the image automatically split-screened on the Skylla’s display. The second man was a human with dark hair and a fair complexion. His hair was close-cropped, and his beard was neatly trimmed. “Captain,” he said to Kutal. “Right on time.”

  Kutal asked, “Have you been granted permission to accept our contract, Mister Kane?”

  “Yes,” Kane said. “Have the funds been transferred?”

  “The first half has been sent,” Kutal said. “You’ll get the rest on final delivery.”

  “Very good.”

  “Do you have any last questions for our expert?”

  “No,” Kane said. “I have all the intel I need. Have you selected a rendezvous point?”

  Kutal tapped an interface off-screen. “I am sending you the coordinates now. Meet us there exactly eighteen days after you finish the assignment.”

  “Understood. Coordinates received. Ali Baba out.”

  The signal terminated, and the screen went black.

  T’Prynn stared intently at the darkened monitor. Penning-ton verified there was no more signal to record, and he shut down the intercept system. “Well, we’ve got their rendezvous coordinates,” he said. “Of course, we have no idea what they’re talking about.” He slumped in his seat. “What a waste of time.”

  “Quite the contrary,” T’Prynn said. “This intercept has yielded a great deal of valuable information.”

  “Were we listening to the same conversation? How do you figure that was anything but a bust?”

  She cast a sly look across the cockpit. “First, we now know the Klingons are using pirates and criminals as cutouts in the Taurus Reach. Second, whatever it is that Mister Kane has been hired to obtain for the Klingons, it entails a final delivery at a location whose coordinates we now possess. And third, the Klingon captain has let slip a critical piece of top-secret intelligence.”

  Pennington shook his head. “He did? When? What intel?”

  T’Prynn tapped a key and replayed the intercepted transmission. She paused the playback just after Kutal asked, “Do you have any last questions for our expert?”

  “Computer,” T’Prynn said. “Enhance twenty-four to thirty-six, and track forty-five left. Magnify and brighten midtones.”

  Part of the frozen image was highlighted and enlarged. It was just a muddy-dark slice of the background until the image enhancers kicked in.

  Then a familiar face appeared in profile, reflected in a mirror, and Pennington understood immediately.

  T’Prynn arched one eyebrow. “Diego Reyes is alive.”

  28

  July 3
0, 2267

  Jackson felt like a fly accepting an invitation to a spider’s web as he walked to the office of Vanguard’s liaison to Starfleet Intelligence. In all the years Jackson had served as a security officer, he had never before been summoned by SI.

  He stopped outside the door of an unmarked command office on Level Ten. The corridor appeared to be empty in either direction. As he went to press the visitor’s signal, the door slid open. Cool air escaped from inside, along with the muted sounds of comm chatter and working computers.

  From inside a pleasant voice said, “Come in.”

  Holding up his head, Jackson put aside his apprehension and strolled inside. A wide partition stood between the door and the rest of the room. He stepped around it. His eyes widened as he surveyed the expansive space on the other side.

  In the center of the room, Commander ch’Nayla stood on a low circular dais that was brightly lit from directly overhead. He was surrounded by a 270-degree arc of high-tech consoles mounted atop black pedestals.

  Subdued, cool blue lighting spilled across the walls. Huge viewscreens were suspended from the ceiling in an arc that matched that of ch’Nayla’s bank of consoles. Displayed on the screens were vids of all kinds, ranging from news reports and official government briefings to surveillance footage and what looked like intercepted foreign military transmissions.

  Through the gap in the consoles, Jackson saw that ch’Nayla had his back to him. Taking a step forward, the security chief said, “You asked to see me?”

  The tall Andorian chan tapped some keys on his console, turned, and smiled at Jackson. “I did.” He picked up a data slate and stepped down from the dais.

  Jackson walked over to meet him. “Quite a setup you’ve got here,” he said, nodding at the screens.

  “I requested some upgrades to the intelligence center after I transferred to this post,” ch’Nayla said. “My predecessor’s work environment was a bit spartan for my taste.”