by David Mack
Quick footfalls echoed in the corridor, then stopped.
A woman’s voice. “This will be a suitable location for our discussion.” She spoke with the cold precision of a Vulcan.
“I hope the food’s better than the ambience,” a man said, in a voice marked by a strangely hard-to-place North American twang. Pennington’s curiosity trumped his caution. He slowly leaned sideways and turned his head for a look at the people in the corridor. Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn he knew from her occasional impromptu performances in Manón’s. The bruised, bloodied mess of a man sitting on the deck in front of her was someone he had seen around the station but hadn’t met.
T’Prynn stood over the man, her posture relaxed, her smoky-sweet voice chillingly emotionless. “Who sent you to Ravanar?”
“Where?”
“Do not make me repeat myself, Quinn.”
The man reached up, grabbed a recessed horizontal edge in the middle of the wall and pulled himself back to his feet. “Why ask at all? You talk like you already know the answer.”
“It is just as valid to interrogate in order to confirm soft intelligence as it is to obtain fresh data,” T’Prynn said. Her head tilted slightly to one side, one eyebrow raised. Her voice remained inhumanly neutral. “You were sent to Ravanar to steal something, correct?”
Smiling, he said, “You have lovely eyebrows.”
“You would fit easily down this incinerator chute.”
“Whoa!” Quinn held up his hands. “I think you’re overreacting just a little—”
“Your actions led to the loss of a starship and the deaths of hundreds of Starfleet personnel, Mr. Quinn.”
Eavesdropping from around the corner, Pennington felt his pulse quicken. In the corridor, Quinn fell silent, his demeanor refashioned from insolent apathy to one of shock and guilt. He ceased struggling in her grasp, and she released him.
Words returned slowly to Quinn. “The Bombay…?”
“Yes, Mr. Quinn,” T’Prynn said. “The Bombay was lost in orbit of Ravanar, destroyed while delivering a replacement for the component you destroyed during your botched robbery.”
“The sensor screen,” he said, his voice lower than before, making it difficult for Pennington to hear without straining.
“Correct,” T’Prynn said.
“You have to believe me, I didn’t know it was a Starfleet base. If I’d known, I never would’ve taken the job.”
“So you admit you were hired?”
Quinn froze, looking like a politician who had just made a grievous faux pas in front of a live feed. “I’m not a snitch.”
“I would not expect you to be,” T’Prynn said. “After all, Mr. Ganz is a notoriously…” She studied Quinn’s disheveled state, then finished her sentence: “…unforgiving employer.”
“Hey, lady, I’m just a simple, legitimate prospector.”
She reached forward as if to poke him for emphasis, then lightly touched her fingertip to his collarbone.
He crumpled at her touch, writhing and grimacing in agony. As his knees folded beneath him, she kept her fingertip against him. He flailed desperately to pull her hand away, but seemed unable to bend his arms or turn them enough at the elbow or shoulder to reach T’Prynn’s arm. It was one of the most bizarre and intimidating things Pennington had ever seen a Vulcan do.
“The Vulcan martial art of V’Shan features a comprehensive study of pressure points and their effect on the central nervous system,” T’Prynn said, with not a hint of effort or compassion. “I have no time for your lies, Mr. Quinn. I am well aware of your service to Mr. Ganz as a ‘clandestine procurer.’ Denying it, while perhaps a useful stratagem in a legal arena, serves only to prolong your current predicament. Do you understand?” Quinn nodded furiously, his jaw clenched too tightly shut for him to answer verbally. T’Prynn withdrew her delicate finger from Quinn’s torso. He sagged with relief to the floor. She continued, “I have no use for your apologies, nor am I interested in curtailing your activities.” With slow grace she cupped his chin in her palm and turned his gaze upward. “But I do have use for your access to Ganz’s organization, and for the places you can go without drawing suspicion or attention.”
“Lady, ain’t you ever heard the saying ‘A man can’t serve two masters’?”
“A logical notion,” T’Prynn said. “But irrelevant to our conversation.”
“I think it’s damned relevant.” Quinn pushed himself back up the wall, one half-step at a time. “I have a boss.”
“I prefer to think of myself as your handler.”
Lurking beyond the shadowy corner, Pennington shook his head out of pity for Quinn. Bloody hell, this chap is slow.
All at once, Quinn caught up with T’Prynn’s meaning. “No, no, no, no, no.”
“Mr. Quinn, you owe a debt to Starfleet, and to the people whose lives have been lost because of your interference. You compromised a secret listening post, one vital to tracking the movements of Klingon ships in this sector. You can either accept your responsibility to repay this debt through service…” Her eyes turned toward the chute to the garbage incinerator.
Quinn responded with a glower of sullen surrender. “Where do we start?”
T’Prynn handed him a Federation credit chip. “Go have your drink. Have several. When I need you, I will tell you.”
Pocketing the chip, Quinn shambled away without another word. The Vulcan woman lingered behind for several seconds. Pennington continued to observe her. When she turned in his direction, he retracted his leaning posture to conceal himself. About a minute after Quinn had left, Pennington heard T’Prynn’s footfalls growing fainter as she disappeared back into the bowels of the station.
What the hell did I just hear? He dropped his duffel, snatched his data tool from his belt, and hurriedly jotted notes. Quinn. T’Prynn. Bombay. Ravanar. Listening post. He stared at the words, then added more keywords to his list: Sensor screen. Ganz. Theft. Extortion. Cover-up.
It was the sort of lucky break every investigative reporter dreamed of…and exactly the kind of sensationalistic story his editor would never run, not without independent confirmation from at least two other sources. If I could get this guy Quinn to go on the record…Immediately, he scoffed at that idea. That’s a long shot, he has a lot to lose…and T’Prynn won’t talk. But if Bombay shipped top-secret gear to Ravanar, someone in the station’s cargo division might be able to confirm that. He made a note to follow that angle. It’s a start.
He put away the handheld device and hefted his duffel over his shoulder. A sharp twinge flared in his shoulder socket as he carried the heavy bag to the incinerator chute. Setting it down, he harbored second thoughts. Maybe I could rent my own storage unit. Just keep all this stuff tucked away…. Then he imagined his own worst-case scenario, a greatly exaggerated report of his demise that would lead to his duffel, full of romantic keepsakes of his dead mistress, being delivered to his wife Lora.
Pennington opened the incinerator chute hatch, picked up the duffel, and pushed it into the dark, vertical channel, which swallowed the bag with ease. He counted off the seconds until he heard the distant metallic echo of an impact, and he said a silent farewell to his mementos of Oriana.
Then he closed the hatch and vowed to learn the whole truth about how she died, and who was to blame.
11
“Would either of you care to explain,” Jetanien bellowed, “how I can view this as anything other than an unmitigated disaster?”
Having decided that if he wasn’t sleeping tonight then neither would anyone else, Reyes had summoned Jetanien and T’Prynn to his office after returning from his meeting with Desai. He couldn’t recall ever having seen the ambassador in such supremely high dudgeon. “Disaster’s a strong word,” Reyes said. “This is more of a complication.”
“Excellent,” Jetanien said. “How comforting. Nothing fixes a major security breach like an empty bromide.”
“The commodore is correct,” T’Prynn said. It annoyed Rey
es that even in the middle of the night she still looked crisp, fresh, and alert. “Captain Desai’s inquiry, though inconvenient, is hardly an insurmountable difficulty.”
Reyes regarded both T’Prynn and Jetanien with the same creased expression of incomprehension. “Why do you two always talk like you’re paid by the word?” Neither one reacted visibly to his comment. He continued, “Yes, Ambassador, this is a bad situation. But, as the lady said, we can keep a lid on it.”
“It is the nature of legal inquiries to expand,” Jetanien said. “The JAG office is not known for conducting superficial investigations. If its questions about the Bombay’s mission or the Ravanar colony’s true purpose become too pointed—”
“Then we’ll know it’s time for damage control,” Reyes said.
“After they have deposed witnesses and served subpoenas,” T’Prynn said, “it might be too late to contain their findings.”
“So what are we talking about? Running interference?”
“No, sir,” T’Prynn said. “It is too early to resort to counterintelligence tactics. Doing so at this stage might, in fact, create more threads of evidence than it would conceal.”
“Point taken. But Captain Desai—” The door signal buzzed once, halting the conversation. Reyes pressed the door-lock release switch on his desk. His auburn-haired gamma-shift yeoman, Midshipman Cadet Suzie Finneran, entered carrying a tray on which rested three beverages: a large mug of sweet coffee, for Reyes; a steaming cup of tea, for T’Prynn; and a misshapen bowl that contained a cloudy broth, which even from across the room stank like a bucket of clams Reyes had once forgotten in the afternoon sun, as a child vacationing on Earth with his parents for the first time. Finneran set the tray on Reyes’s desk. The commodore suppressed his urge to dry-heave.
As the yeoman left the office, the stink of Jetanien’s soup proved too much for Reyes, who pushed his own coffee aside. He had thought he would need it to stay awake as the wee hours crept inexorably toward the start of alpha shift, but Jetanien’s pungent breakfast brew had more kick than smelling salts.
When the door closed, Reyes picked up where he had left off. “Captain Desai could put us in a bind if she presses too hard. Unfortunately, we can’t ask her to drop it.”
“Agreed,” T’Prynn said. “That, too, would draw suspicion.”
“We also have to send out a ship to investigate, look for survivors, and survey what’s left of the colony,” Reyes said. “Standard procedure is to send the closest one. Right now, with the Endeavour and the Sagittarius still on assignment, that’s the Enterprise, but I’d rather not bring them into this.”
Jetanien lifted his bowl to his beak-shaped jaw, tucked part of it inside his mouth, and savored a loud, guttural slurp. Reyes waited patiently for the diplomat to swallow his gulp. Lowering the bowl from his face, Jetanien looked back at Reyes, then seemed irked to notice T’Prynn watching him, too. “Begging a thousand pardons if I offended your delicate sensibilities.”
“I merely was riveted by my anticipation of your next remark,” T’Prynn said.
Reyes added, “I’m just impressed you didn’t get any on you.”
Depositing his bowl brusquely on Reyes’s desk, Jetanien seemed to scowl, though not a single feature of his leathery dark green hide shifted in the slightest. Great, Reyes grumped to himself. Just where I wanted that bowl full of sewage—closer to me.
The ambassador straightened to his full, imposing height. “If the concern is that Captain Desai might unwittingly expose our operation, why not bring her into our inner circle? Surely if she understood the scope of—”
Reyes cut him off. “Because she doesn’t have the security clearance,” he said. “The only reason Xiong’s cleared for this project is because we need him.”
Jetanien reached up and clutched the edges of his cassock. “How are we to proceed?” Reyes recognized the clutching gesture as one of Jetanien’s more subtle signs of frustration. If and when he learned to recognize a few more of the Chelon’s “tells,” he planned to invite Jetanien to join him, Fisher, and Cannella for poker some night.
“Depends how vulnerable we are,” Reyes said. “What’ll Desai find if she digs?”
“Very little,” T’Prynn said. “The transmissions between here and the outpost were all well-encrypted. The Bombay’s cargo manifests and our bills of lading show no mention of classified technology. And the Bombay’s crew had no knowledge of our true mission, and therefore could not have revealed it.”
“Vulnerability in the legal sense depends on culpability, Commodore,” Jetanien said. “Unless you acted with negligence or malice aforethought, there is no reason to suspect that Captain Desai will have any motive to pursue her inquiry beyond determining the exact cause of the Bombay’s destruction.”
“That might make its own problems,” Reyes said.
“If you are referring to the potential political repercussions,” Jetanien said, “leave that to me and my associates. If need be, I can take steps to seal her inquiry’s findings for national-security reasons, provided she doesn’t uncover anything criminally actionable.”
“In other words, as long as I don’t give her a reason to court-martial me, you think we can keep this quiet.”
“Possibly,” Jetanien said. “For now, we should follow established protocols. Send the Enterprise.”
Reyes turned toward T’Prynn. “You’d concur?”
“It seems the most prudent choice for now, sir.”
“All right, then,” he said. “We’ll have Enterprise ferry Xiong to the colony while we ride this one out. Meeting adjourned.” His two visitors turned to leave. He tried to take a calming breath and was met by a sulfuric odor. “Your Excellency,” he said. Jetanien turned back toward Reyes, who reluctantly picked up the ambassador’s clammy, amoeba-shaped bowl of swampwater stew. “Take this with you…. Please.”
12
Less than an hour after leaving Reyes’s office, Jetanien watched Federation Special Envoy Akeylah Karumé guzzle her fourth cup of coffee in two minutes. She was bolstering her courage and sharpening her focus before meeting with the Klingon delegation. The tall, brightly attired human woman preferred the caffeinated beverage be as rich and dark as her own ebony skin tone, and she had sharply refused a yeoman’s offer of sugar with the ironically bitter retort, “No, thanks, I’m sweet enough.”
Karumé stared at the door to the conference room. Jetanien worried that she might not be ready for the intimidating task of serving as the go-between to the shrewd, aggressive Klingons. “Be careful how you phrase things,” he said. “I want to get a sense of what they know about the Bombay’s destruction. Do not be put off if they speak rudely to you or make an issue of your sex. Try to draw them out.”
She glared at Jetanien while handing her coffee cup to an assistant. “Perhaps you’d like to speak to them yourself, Ambassador?”
“No,” he said. “I cannot attend every parley. That is why I have a staff—so that I may delegate. Now, because Lugok saw fit to stab Mr. Meyer, it falls to you to speak for the Federation.”
“As you wish,” Karumé said. “Give me a moment.”
“Whenever you are ready, Ms. Karumé.”
She closed her eyes and stood absolutely still, deep in a thought-purging meditation. Because he himself was in no hurry to face Lugok, Jetanien waited in patient silence.
Normally this meeting would have been postponed until a more reasonable hour of the morning, but Jetanien wanted Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise to have as much reliable intelligence as possible before they shipped out several hours from now. In any event, he had lately come to realize that the Klingons’ schedule was somewhat offset from those of most station residents, which likely made the timing of this hastily convened meeting less of an inconvenience for them than it was for Jetanien and his staff.
“I’m ready now,” Karumé said. Three steps toward the door, she halted and looked back at Jetanien, who had followed her. “I thought you said you can’t atte
nd every parley.”
“I cannot,” Jetanien said. “But I plan to attend this one.”
Her brow furrowed. “Am I running this meeting, or are you?”
“You are.”
“Fine. In that room, don’t interrupt me, don’t contradict me, and don’t undermine my authority as the Federation’s interlocutor. If I’m to have credibility with the Klingons, I must have real authority, not just the appearance of it.”
“Very sensible,” Jetanien said. “Please proceed.”
“Follow me,” she said, and continued toward the door.
She barged through it. By the time he had stepped into the room, Karumé was halfway to the conference table.
Lugok, his thick paunch stretching his black-and-gray uniform and metallic sash, rose quickly from his chair. A broad grin lit up his swarthy face. “Ambassador, your concubine is most rude! She doesn’t even wait for—” He was silenced by Karumé’s backhanded strike to his face, which caught him utterly by surprise and knocked him backward onto the table. Karumé had her hand locked around his throat before he could right himself.
“I’m Federation Envoy Karumé,” she said, her voice imperious. “You speak to me. I’m allowing Ambassador Jetanien to observe this meeting, as a courtesy.”
Jetanien was about to interject that, as his subordinate, Karumé was in no position to grant or deny him permissions of any kind; then he remembered the promise he had made before walking through the door. He stopped himself before approaching the table, and instead lingered by the wall near the door, watching and listening from a respectful distance.
Recovered from his initial surprise, Lugok reached up, placed his hand over Karumé’s, and pried it off his neck.
“You have fire…for a human,” Lugok said, peeling her fingers loose one at a time. Gripping her wrist, he lifted her right arm over her head. “But your hands are weak.”
Undaunted, she smirked at him. “Maybe. But they’re quick.” A glint of light flashing off metal caught Jetanien’s eye, and he realized that in her left hand Karumé held Lugok’s d’k tahg. She had pressed it, cutting edge first, against the man’s crotch. Keeping her eyes on Lugok’s face as he looked down at his predicament, she added, “Look familiar?”