by David Mack
“Normally, yes,” T’Prynn said. “However, it appears that when I notified my superiors this morning of your assassination, I accidentally erased your biometric file from all Federation databases, both military and civilian, public and private.” She shot him a coy glance. “Officially, you do not exist, and you never have.”
Quinn was flabbergasted. He stared at the packet and stammered.
“I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
T’Prynn offered him her hand. “Say farewell . . . Mister Panza.”
He smiled and shook her hand. “Thank you.”
Then he stepped away, walking quickly toward Stars Landing.
T’Prynn sounded confused as she called after him. “You have less than an hour to reach your ship. I suggest you go directly there.”
He paused and looked back. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it.” He resumed his hurried pace toward the station’s civilian center. “There’s just one thing I have to do first.”
Tim Pennington smiled awkwardly at the two human civilians, a man and his wife, who loomed over him while he tried to chew his mouthful of food and autograph the top page of a stack of hard-copy printouts of his collected columns and features that they’d thrust in front of him. He scribbled his initials and swooshed a crude circle around them as a flourish, then swallowed his food as he handed the pages back to the husband. “There you go.”
“Thanks, Mister Pennington,” the man said. “Amazing piece you did on the Klingons!”
A nod and a wave signaled the conversation was done. “Thank you. Have a great day.”
Much to his relief, the couple seemed to take the hint and buggered off with their sheaf of papers. It wasn’t that Pennington minded terribly being accosted by strangers for his autograph; he reminded himself that he had sought out notoriety. However, it staggered his imagination to realize how many people lacked any sense of boundaries when it came to celebrities of any degree. He’d hardly believed it the first time one of his readers asked to have their photograph taken with him. “With me?” he’d asked. “You’re sure? . . . Okay, if you insist.” But this was the umpteenth time someone had approached him for an autograph while he was eating at Café Romano, his favorite restaurant in Stars Landing. He was seriously considering punching the next person who interrupted his dinner, just so that poor soul could serve as a warning to others.
Lifting a forkful of soy-and-maple-glazed salmon to resume his repast, he noted out of the corner of his eye another person sidling up to his table, and since it wasn’t his white-clad waitress, he assumed the worst. He dropped his fork and turned to face his next uninvited guest. “And what the bloody hell can I do for—” Words logjammed in his brain and left his mouth hanging half open as he saw Cervantes Quinn regarding him with a faint, sheepish smile.
“Heya, Newsboy.” Quinn leaned on the other chair at Pennington’s table. “Mind if I take a load off?” Pennington motioned for Quinn to sit, and he did.
The waitress appeared as if from thin air and shot a look at Pennington to silently inquire whether he required Quinn’s removal. “Can I get you gentlemen anything?”
“I’m fine,” Pennington said. He asked Quinn, “Can I buy you a drink?”
Quinn said to the waitress, “Coffee, with cream and sugar, please.”
“Coming right up,” As swiftly as she’d come, she departed to the kitchen.
An awkward silence stretched out a bit longer than Pennington would have liked. He drummed his fingertips on the table. “So . . . back on the wagon, eh?”
“For the moment,” Quinn said. “Reckon I’ll take each day as it comes and see if it sticks this time.” He looked up as the waitress returned with his café au lait, mumbled his thanks to her, and took a generous sip. “Damn, this joint really makes a fine cup of java.”
Sensing an ulterior motive lurking behind the small talk, Pennington eyed his cagy friend. “So what brings you out before the crack of dusk?”
The grizzled pilot slapped a hand to his chest. “You wound me, Newsboy!” They both chuckled at that, and it felt to Pennington like he and Quinn were sharing a wavelength of nostalgia. Quinn took a deep breath and another sip of his coffee. “I came because I’m in your debt.”
“Mate, if it’s about the money, forget it. I’m bloody rolling in it.”
A smile of genuine happiness lit up Quinn’s face. “Good for you, man. I mean that. You had a hard run there for a while. You’ve earned a real payday.” Another long sip of coffee, and Quinn’s mood turned somber. “But I still owe you, compañero. And I’m not talking about money. I owe you a debt of gratitude. For covering up my mistakes. Apologizing to all the people I insulted on my way down to the gutter. For all the times you made sure I got home alive and didn’t end up choking to death on my own puke.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I vaguely recall punching you at some point. Did that happen?”
Pennington still felt that night’s wound to his pride. “Yeah, mate. That happened.”
“Well, then I owe you an apology on top of everything else. All you ever did was help me, and all I did was act like an asshole. And for that I’m sorry, Tim. I really am.” He rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin and upper lip, apparently considering his next words with a heavy conscience. “I reckon if I owe you anything else, it’s a reason why.”
“No,” Pennington said. “You don’t have to explain yourself, mate. Not to me. After all we’ve been through, you don’t think I understand? I know what she meant to you. Losing her had to be the last bloody straw.” He recalled his own lost love, Oriana, who had perished aboard the Bombay years earlier. “I’ve been there, mate. I get it.”
The silence that grew between them then was one not of unease but of understanding. For the first time in a very long while, Pennington appreciated the simple pleasure of a friend’s company, and realized how much he had missed the easy camaraderie he and Quinn had shared while gallivanting around the galaxy in Quinn’s old Mancharan starhopper, the Rocinante. They had never wanted for trouble in those days, but neither had there ever been a shortage of fun.
Quinn cracked a bittersweet smile. “So, now that you’re all famous and shit, I guess you’ll be leaving, right? Headin’ home to some cushy job in Paris?”
Pennington laughed out loud, and didn’t care that he disturbed the couple at an adjacent table. “Are you daft? Leave Vanguard? And miss out on all the fun? Perish the thought.”
“Forget I mentioned it,” Quinn said. He glanced at the chrono on the wall of the café, took another long swig of his coffee, and got up.
Wondering if he’d said something wrong, Pennington asked, “Where you going, mate?”
“I got someplace I need to be.” There was an enigmatic quality to the light in Quinn’s eyes as he grinned and added, “See ya ’round, Newsboy.” He left those parting words hanging in the air as he walked away without a backward glance, and Pennington watched his friend’s back as he crossed the meadow and disappeared into a waiting turbolift car.
Only many decades later would a nostalgic Tim Pennington realize that was the last that he, or anyone else, ever saw of Cervantes Quinn.
T’Prynn stood at the Hub on the supervisors’ deck, in the middle of Vanguard’s hectic operations center. Though she did not frequent this duty area, the station’s senior officers knew her by sight because of her daily visits to Admiral Nogura’s office for intelligence briefings. Consequently, she attracted little notice on those rare occasions when she chose to monitor important station activities from this prime vantage point.
A drone of comm chatter and muted responses from Vanguard’s traffic-control team blended into the steady background of computer feedback tones, the hum of the ventilation system, and the hiss of turbolift doors opening and closing at odd intervals. Several sections of the towering viewscreens that wrapped around more than two-thirds of the circular command level’s walls displayed civilian vessels of varying sizes and types arriving and departing.
Only
one of them was of interest to T’Prynn: the Zaragoza, a colony ship of Deltan registry. It was bound for a recently catalogued Class M world that had been named Kennovere by the first civilian team to scout its surface. The planet had been reserved for colonization by a group that wanted to establish a low-tech, agrarian lifestyle with only the slightest intrusion of modern technology; they also had pointedly eschewed any formal political connection with the Federation. It had seemed to T’Prynn like an ideal place to send someone who had reason not to want to be found by Starfleet—or by anyone else, for that matter.
She watched the Zaragoza maneuver clear of traffic, taking Quinn away from Vanguard to his new life. Observing the colony ship as it jumped to warp speed, T’Prynn reminded herself that this one act of mercy would not be remotely sufficient to atone for her lifetime of wrongs.
It is likely I will never balance the scales of my own guilt and virtue, she concluded. But that does not absolve me of my responsibility to try. As she turned and descended the steps from the supervisors’ deck, she permitted herself a moment of private sentimentality. Live long and prosper, Cervantes Quinn . . . wherever your journey takes you.
It was possible, she thought as she stepped inside a turbolift, that one day Quinn might forgive her for all the pain she had brought into his life, directly or indirectly. Given enough time, Tim Pennington might forgive all her transgressions, as well. As she recollected all those persons she had harmed over the years who knew that she was to blame for their sufferings, T’Prynn could think of only one who she was certain would never absolve her of her sins.
I will forgive when I can trust myself not to repeat the errors of my past, she vowed, and not until then. She didn’t know how long it would take her to recover that faith in her own ethical compass, but as she thought of Quinn being ferried away to anonymity and freedom, she felt certain that her own life was, belatedly and at long last, heading in the right direction.
For the moment, that would suffice.
28
Clutching the last feeble straws of his patience, Nogura strode into the Vault backed by JAG officer Lieutenant Commander Holly Moyer and a phalanx of twenty armed security officers. They found Xiong and his cadre of Starfleet science experts waiting for them, standing in a tight formation with folded arms and expressions of hard resolve. As Nogura had expected, this meeting was off to a wonderfully confrontational start. He met Xiong’s hard stare. “Lieutenant.”
The lean younger man replied simply, “Admiral.”
“Let’s just cut through it, shall we?” Nogura extended his hand to Moyer, who handed him a data slate. “It’s my understanding that you and your team are refusing to obey orders to run the test series requested by Starfleet Command. Is that correct?”
Xiong appeared unrepentant. “That’s right.”
“On what grounds?”
Nervous looks were volleyed between Xiong and the other members of the Vault contingent, and then Xiong said, “We believe these orders to be unlawful and immoral, sir.”
Nogura felt as if he wanted to simply explode. “Mister Xiong, while I understand and can even sympathize with your reaction to the . . . distasteful nature of these orders, I am compelled to remind you that they are, nonetheless, orders. Your compliance is not optional.”
“And while I understand your legal obligation to uphold the chain of command,” Xiong said, “I’m compelled to remind you, Admiral, that no unlawful order is valid, and that as Starfleet officers, we are required by regulations to challenge such directives.” The other scientists’ heads bobbed in cautious concurrence.
Playing the role of devil’s advocate was one of Nogura’s most despised duties as a flag officer, but his review of the Starfleet Code of Military Justice and the relevant portions of Federation law had left him no choice in this matter. “Tell me, Lieutenant . . . what part of this order do you consider ‘unlawful’? Because I don’t think you have a case. You’re not being asked to do anything others before you haven’t done. Crushing a planet might seem radical, but it’s not like it’s a populated world. It’s a dead ball of rock far from the nearest inhabited planet, and it’s a confirmed Federation possession. So . . . what’s the problem, here?”
“The problem,” Xiong replied without delay, “is the role of the Shedai in this fiasco. Their presence inside the array is what gives it the power for this insane exercise. But no one’s obtained their consent. The experiment we’ve been ordered to run uses them as slave labor to make it possible. But we captured them as part of a military combat operation. That makes them prisoners of war—and, as such, they have certain rights under Starfleet regulations, as well as under Federation and interstellar law.”
Nogura felt exhausted just listening to Xiong prattle on. “It might interest you to know, Lieutenant, that there’s never been a formal declaration of war in the Taurus Reach. Not by us, or the Shedai, or anyone else. At least, not that we’ve heard of. So we can’t very well be holding prisoners of war when there is no war.” He scrutinized the isolation chamber with mock intensity. “In fact, if I had to characterize our encounters with the Shedai, I think their actions would better fit the paradigms of insurgents or terrorists. In which case, we’re fully within our rights to hold them as hostile nonstate actors, or maybe even as common criminals—both of which are routinely subjected to forced manual labor as a condition of their incarceration.”
“At least criminals are entitled to impartial trials before we put them in prison,” Xiong retorted, his ghost of a smirk suggesting his delusion that he’d scored a rhetorical point.
“Lieutenant, if I thought it was even remotely safe and practical to release the Shedai, individually or collectively, to face charges before a Starfleet tribunal, I would convene such proceedings with all due haste . . . right after I finished courtmartialing you and all your compatriots—a process that will begin immediately unless you all give up this hopeless insurrection and proceed with the new experiments, as ordered.”
Xiong said nothing, but the mood in the room remained defiant. Nogura spoke past the impassioned young department head and addressed the other Starfleet officers behind him. “Please understand: I don’t like being pushed around by bureaucrats any more than you do. But if you don’t comply with my orders and start running these tests, I will have no choice but to order all of you taken into custody. You will be court-martialed and convicted. Your careers in Starfleet, and as scientists, will effectively be over. You will be sent to penal colonies—in some cases, for the rest of your lives.” He let that hang in the air for a few seconds, then he continued. “The really bad news is that once you’re all out of the way, Starfleet Command will send out its own hand-picked bunch of eggheads, who, I have no doubt, will be far less ethical and scrupulous than any of you when it comes to putting this acquired technology through its paces. Frankly, I don’t know what they’ll do with unfettered access to your work. I’m not sure I want to find out. The real question is: Do any of you want to take that risk? Or would you rather keep this program under your control and be able to pull the plug if it goes too far?”
No one spoke or moved for several seconds. Then, one by one, Xiong’s team broke ranks and began drifting back to their work stations, to their cubicle offices, to their private research labs. Finally, only Xiong, Theriault, and Klisiewicz remained. Klisiewicz shifted awkwardly until he caught Xiong’s eye. “Ming, I’m sorry, but . . .”
“Go ahead,” Xiong said. “It’s fine. He’s right. Let’s get the experiment prepped.” He gave a reassuring nod to Theriault, whose embarrassed half-smile shrank to a thin line as her lips folded inward and vanished from view as she stepped away.
Nogura continued staring at Xiong, waiting for an answer. “And you?”
“I’ll stay,” Xiong said. “We’ll have the R and D team’s protocols ready for a trial run in a few hours.” He stepped forward and stood nose to nose with Nogura. “But as for pulling the plug before it goes too far? For the record, I think that ship
has sailed.”
“Then it’s your job to bring her home in one piece.” With a glance he dismissed Moyer and the security detail, then he looked back at Xiong and said sotto voce, “Do your best to make this work, but use your judgment. If it starts to go south, end it. I’ll keep the brass and the suits off your back. But we have to maintain the appearance of cooperation, or else they’ll send us all to some rock with no name and hand this lab to somebody else. Understood?”
A grave nod. “Perfectly, sir.”
That was all Nogura could reasonably ask for under the circumstances. “Then carry on, Lieutenant. As soon as you have results, report to my office.” He turned and followed the last of the security officers through the hatchway that led out of the Vault.
Nogura’s decades of experience as a Starfleet officer told him this entire undertaking was going to end in disaster.
His instinct for danger told him that was an understatement.
Outcast and alone, Ezthene [The Silver] had little sense of how long he had languished in exile aboard Vanguard; he knew only that the passing of time seemed to have slowed to a halt since the death of Nezrene [The Emerald], his fellow expatriate from the Tholian Assembly.
They had come to this place driven by conscience and necessity. She had been a weapons officer aboard the Lanz’t Tholis, whose crew had survived a close brush with the terrible power of the Shedai thanks in part to the intervention of human Starfleet officer Vanessa Theriault. Ezthene had been one of Tholia’s governing elite, a member of the Ruling Conclave of the Political Castemoot. He had seen wisdom in Nezrene’s recommendation of diplomacy toward the Federation, and he had risked everything to support her openly to the other members of the Ruling Conclave. The iconoclasts’ decision to stand on principle had been their undoing.
Realizing they were no longer welcome among their own people, they had concurred, in a private SubLink communion, that the only rational action left to them was to seek political asylum aboard this Starfleet starbase. To improve the chances that at least one of them would reach Vanguard to share their knowledge of the Shedai and what the Old Ones meant to all of Tholia, they had taken separate routes. Nezrene had evaded pursuit and reached Vanguard in short order, but Ezthene had been delayed for quite some time as an unwilling guest of Councillor Gorkon of the Klingon High Council—along with Vanguard’s former commanding officer, Diego Reyes, who, he’d learned, was not so dead as the galaxy had been led to believe.